You mean like pointing out one righty believer in astrology negates Sam Stone’s statement about his experience?
You mean like how anecdotes actually don’t mean much in terms of, well, anything? Huh. Weird.
It exists:
– Trilateral Commission - Wikipedia
But, then so did the Illuminati.
Are they ‘in control’ of the global economy?
If they were, would we know?
There is a known positive correlation between authoritarian tendencies and a belief in luck, astrology, and other such things.
It remains a ridiculous test.
Well, it’s true. That free feat at first level is a pretty big deal, and having any class as favored class can open up a lot of multiclassing options. Oh, and the bonus skill points, too.
Yeah these sorts of tests are so ridiculous it’s not even funny.
I just quit half way through another one that someone had posted on facebook when a lot of the questions were excluding the middle, or poisoning the well, etc.
Build away. That’s what democracy is all about. Maybe you need to develop some sort of institute to help … you could give it a snappy name, something brief and easy to remember … Cato Institute, maybe?
I just figured the binary nature of the questions were to force you to decide which option you were closer to, the idea being that getting a lot of data points along the graph lines would give you some approximation of where you actually stand in relation to others … not that you agreed with all the positions you indicated you were closer to. I don’t think any reasonable person could ask all those excluded middle questions and imagine that they were getting an accurate answer on each question … just a data point that moves you in one direction or other on the graph.
ROFLMAO. Good luck with that.
I admit, we will need it.
I doubt that’s possible. America is going to slide farther and farther to the right until it tips over into some kind of outright Christian Corporate Fascism, and I don’t think anything will stop it. Even the disasters of Bush weren’t enough to get us anything better than Obama.
Because the Democrats tend to be farther right than both their base and the general public. Just look at their refusal to even consider real UHC; a real “public option” was never on the table despite the polls saying it had the most support. Instead they went with a warmed over Republican plan; they are willing to sacrifice their own chances at winning elections rather than stand up to the Republicans.
The Democrats could at least try to be actually centrist, instead of being slightly less crazy Republicans. But they won’t; they’ll grovel before the Republicans, and cave in, and help the Republicans drag the nation farther and farther to the right because they are too corrupt and spineless to do anything else. You could have a completely Democratic Congress, and they’d cave in every time the Republicans shouted “liberal” at them from the sidelines; they are that terrified, that spineless.
I agree. Conservatives MUST vote for Gary Johnson to pre-empt Evil Captor’s subsequent efforts.
The Master speaks: Is the Trilateral Commission the secret organization that runs the world?
More seriously, peaceniks lack scholarly legitimacy - we actually could use a think tank to work through the strategic implications of a US military build-down. (Also, the Koch Brothers have decided to repossess Cato, so there might be some tumult in winger-land over the next few years.) http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/03/ed-crane-and-the-cato-institute-vs-the-kochtopus.html
This is very true.
A while back we had a series of threads organized by Sentient Meat based on the questions.
Does The Political Compass give an accurate reading?
Political Compass #1: Globalisation, Humanity and OmniCorp.
#2: My country, right or wrong
#3: Pride in one’s country is foolish.
#4: Superior racial qualities.
#5: My enemy’s enemy is my friend.
#6: Justifying illegal military action.
#7: “Info-tainment” is a worrying trend.
#8: Class division vs. international division. (+ SentientMeat’s economic worldview)
#9: Inflation vs. unemployment.
#10: Corporate respect of the environment.
#11: From each according to his ability, to each according to need.
#12: Sad reflections in branded drinking water.
#13: Land should not be bought and sold.
#14: Many personal fortunes contribute nothing to society.
#15: Protectionism is sometimes necessary in trade.
#16: Shareholder profit is a company’s only responsibility.
#17: The rich are too highly taxed.
#18: Better healthcare for those who can pay for it.
#19: Penalising businesses which mislead the public.
#20: The freer the market, the freer the people.
#21: Abortion should be illegal.
#22: All authority must be questioned.
#23: An eye for an eye.
#24: Taxpayers should not prop up theatres or museums.
#25: Schools shouldn’t make attendance compulsory.
#26: Different kinds of people should keep to their own.
#27: Good parents sometimes have to spank their children.
#28: It’s natural for children to keep secrets.
#29: Marijuana should be legalised.
#30: School’s prime function is equipping kids to find jobs.
#31: Seriously disabled people should not reproduce.
#32: Learning discipline is the most important thing.
#33: ‘Savage peoples’ vs. ‘different culture’
#34: Society should not support those who refuse to work.
#35: Keep cheerfully busy when troubled.
#36: First generation immigrants can never be fully integrated.
#37: What’s good for corporations is always good for everyone.
#38: No broadcasting institution should receive public funding.
#39: Our civil rights are being excessively curbed re. terrorism.
#40: One party states avoid delays to progress.
#41: Only wrongdoers need worry about official surveillance.
#42: The death penalty should be an option for serious crimes.
#43: Society must have people above to be obeyed.
#44: Abstract art that doesn’t represent anything isn’t art at all.
#45: Punishment is more important than rehabilitation.
#46: It is a waste of time to try to rehabilitate some criminals.
#47: Businessmen are more important than writers and artists.
#48: A mother’s first duty is to be a homemaker.
#49: Companies exploit the Third World’s plant genetic resources.
#50: Mature people make peace with the establishment.
#51: Astrology accurately explains many things.
#52: You cannot be moral without being religious.
#53: Charity is better than social secuity.
#54: Some people are naturally unlucky
#55: Schools and religious values.
#56: Sex outside marriage is usually immoral.
#57: Gay couples should not be excluded from adoption.
#58: Pornography should be legal.
#59: Adult bedroom activity is no business of the state.
#60: No one can feel naturally homosexual.
Many of these questions ended up involving conversation about how biased the question itself is. However, it still resulted in some good debates.
In order to get an accurate result, conservative or libertarian test takers must do this.
Because of the more frequent recent use of the Senate filibuster, I’d say that any bill passed from '09-'11 was going to be as far right as the most conservative member of the Democratic Senate caucus if it was going to become law. I’d thus lay most of that at the feet of Lieberman and Nelson, not Obama or the larger more liberal part of said caucus, and thus the more conservative bills which resulted were because of structural issues in how our government has been constructed and run, not because Democrats as a whole have moved farther right.
Now, at this point, you could trot out the accusation that only if Obama had been much firmer with the Blue Dogs he could have gotten more liberal bills passed-then fine. I think it is more likely that would just drive the Blue Dogs into the Republican camp.
Obama is the least liberal of the Democratic presidents, which sounds just about right to me.
It sounds exactly wrong to me (though LBJ might give Obama some competition on the left). But I hear this kind of thing all the time from people who have forgotten JFK’s tax cuts and social conservatism; FDR’s footsie with segregationists; Carter’s getting a primary challenge from his left because of his Southern conservatism; Clinton’s “era of big government is over”/V-chip/school uniforms/welfare reform/executing a retarded guy. And if we’re going back to Wilson, he was a flat-out racist who segregated the federal bureaucracy.
ETA: What John DiFool said. Obama cannot just wave a magic wand! He had to work with what red-state Democrats would go for, which is frustrating but realistic.
shrug I don’t think he’s really kowtowing to Blue Dogs. I think he his inherently centrist, and I thought so before the elections in 2008 (I’m sure I could dig up some posts here where I say as much before his election.) His track record is pretty much exactly what I expected, if not a little bit more right. I thought he would have at least gotten public option healthcare through. I find it hard to believe anyone truly considers him a strong leftist. You gave me LBJ, but do you really feel he’s to the left of FDR and the New Deal?
Not on this planet, he’s not.
If you’re responding to the second sentence, I agree. If the first, then I’m lost. Have you ever lived or been to the rest of the world?
They were in the Republican camp. That is, before they mostly lost and were replaced by actual Republicans. So in the end sucking up to them accomplished nothing.
There’s no point in kowtowing to people who are your enemies and who aren’t going to cooperate anyway. Obama’s and the Democrats’ unwillingness to admit that has been one of their major weaknesses for a long time. They keep trying to compromise with their implacable enemies, and it doesn’t work.
Which shows that the author has little understanding of American politics, considering he believes Ron Paul would have been a better candidate for the GOP than Mitt Romney.
Besides the word fascism being used as a synonym “for people I don’t like”, considering that religosity is declining in the US and what most of the Religious Right really wants is just a return to the 1950s, not a theocracy this is just ridiculous.
As I said before, some of the claims like that Lyndon B Johnson less liberal than JFK is ridiculous-Johnson was the most liberal President post-World War II.
Here would be my rankings for Democrats (from most to least liberal)
- LBJ
- Truman
- Obama
- Carter
- JFK
- Clinton