Political Compass

[bunglehead]

Economic left/right: -4.88

Social Libertarian/fucking dick:-5.85

 

Soem of those questions bordered on idiocy. I have a much more nuanced(read:confused) view of the death penalty than "Fer it" or "Aginst' it"

And what the fuck does being "naturally unlcuky" have anything to do with "moral values" or "economic" whatever?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Economic left/right: -4.88

Social Libertarian/fucking dick:-5.85

 

Soem of those questions bordered on idiocy. I have a much more nuanced(read:confused) view of the death penalty than "Fer it" or "Aginst' it"

And what the fuck does being "naturally unlcuky" have anything to do with "moral values" or "economic" whatever?

 

The FAQ link on the site provides some answers to the questions you raise.

[dryad]

The "naturally unlucky" question has to do with economic libertarianism. If you're an Ayn Rand-style libertarian, you wouldn't believe in luck, only in pull yourself up by the bootstraps individualism. Whereas if you belive that sometimes people just get unlucky, you may be more of an economic lefty and support protections for such unlucky folks in the form of unemployment benefits, welfare, etc.

[bunglehead]

Ooooohhh...

Well, fuck Ayn Rand.

And speaking of unlucky, The 4 homeless dudes that have been occuppying the alley behind my apartment are some of the unluckiest motherfuckers I've ever seen based upon how much they get beaten up, but the idea of a bunch of otherwise healthy mentally sound adult males getting welfare? Fuck that noise.

[MattLinden]

This "World's Smallest Political Quiz" makes the rounds often. It's interesting. http://www.self-gov.org/quiz.html

[dryad]

I really want to know the source/context of those two Gandhi quotes, especially this one:

"The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs."

Does anybody know?

[bunglehead]

Oh he said shit like that all the time!

And another one of his favorites was:

"Esther, you ugly!"

[Norman_Clyde]

"...the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history. The tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler seems to have done. If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, war against Germany to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war...

 

"Can the Jews resist this organized and shameless persecution? ...if I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me into the dungeon... And for doing this I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance, but would have confidence that in the end the rest were bound to follow my example. If one Jew or any Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now... The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary sacrifice, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of a tyrant. For the God-fearing, death has no terror...

 

"I am convinced that if someone with courage and vision can arise among [the Jews] to lead them in non-violent action, the winter of their despair can in the twinkling of an eye be turned into the summer of hope. And what has today become a degrading manhunt can be turned into a calm and determined stand offered by unarmed men and women possessing the strength of suffering given to them by Jehovah...The German Jews will score a lasting victory over the German gentiles in the sense that they will have converted the latter to an appreciation of human dignity."

 

Gandhi, quoted in "The Life of Mahatma Gandhi" by Louis Fischer. These words were first published in Gandhi's newsletter titled Harijan , Nov. 11, 1938. Many of Gandhi's words were first published in various issues of the newsletter.

Edited November 13, 2004 by Norman_Clyde

[catbirdseat]

Methinks that Gandhi was very fortunate that it was the British against whom he organized his non-violent rebellion. Had it been against the Germans, the outcome might have been different.

Economic Left/Right: -2.88

Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.13

[Norman_Clyde]

Gandhi was well aware of this difference (between the brits and the germans). An American publication called Jewish Frontier pointed out that "A Jewish Gandhi in Germany, should one arise, could function for about five minutes and would be promptly taken to the guillotine." Gandhi responded "...that does not disprove my case or shake my belief in the necessity of non-violence. I can conceive the necessity of the immolation of hundreds, if not thousands, to appease the hunger of dictators... Sufferers need not see the results during their lifetime... The method of violence gives no greater guarantee than that of non-violence."

[JayB]

I think this case illustrates quite clearly the hazards of elevating a human - no matter who - to the status of a demi-god and uncritically accepting his or her every utterance.

 

The viability of nonviolence as a political strategy depends upon the nature of the cause one is promoting, and the constitution of people and the political system that one is confronting an effort to advance the said cause.

 

Conducting a campaign that relies upon nonviolent persuasion of an entire population that has a long-established set of principles and sympathies that you can appeal to in an effort to convince them to persuade their democratically elected leaders to grant your wishes is a logical and moral strategy. Attempting to do the same when confronting a ruthless totalitarian regime is futile idiocy, and the notion that this approach represents a superior morality is dubious as well, unless those immolated on behalf of the cause are volunteering for the duty. Once the immolated include those too young to consent to such a thing, too old or frail to defend themselves against such a fate if they wanted to, then the situation becomes very different.

 

Thank god Churchill, and not Ghandi, was the one in a position to confront the Germans and rally what was left of the free world against them.

[dryad]

Similarly, a nonviolent campaign has failed miserably in Tibet. Any attempt at protest has been met by shootings, mass arrests, and torture. One example:

A year after the massacre of the monks at the Monlam prayer festival, a wave of demonstrations broke out at the beginning of March. A group of about 12 monks, nuns and youths staged a peaceful demonstration at the Jokhang on March 5, 1989. As the number of demonstrators grew, the police eventually opened fire from roof-top positions. Most of the original demonstrators were killed. Protests continued the following day with around 1,500 Tibetans on the streets. Incidences of violence, such as shop burning, broke out. According to a Chinese witness, Tang Daxian, and reported by the Tibet Information Network (TIN) in June 1990, “the Chinese authoirities for the first time openly massacred the demonstrators. Some 400 died, several thousand were injured and 3,000 were imprisoned.”

This and many other examples here

[JayB]

The case of the Tibetans, and the Chechens, illustrates the reality that the use of violence as a means of achieving one's political can only work in a limited set of conditions - and one essential condition is a rough parity of forces or a set of local advantages that even the odds in favor of the weaker party.

 

When you are facing certain death no matter what - as the Jews were, there's nothing to be lost by fighting unless one can flee to safety elsewhere. In the case of the Tibetans and the Chechens, where ceding political autonomy - rather than one's life - is the cost of nonviolence then the situation is more complicated, and there are choices to be made. Is it better to secure whatever concessions and advantages that can be had within the system and withstand the costs and indignities that come along with such a strategy - and live, or risk the total anhiliation of everything that one is attempting to preserve on a doomed offensive? In most cases like this there are very few non-tragic outcomes IMO.

[catbirdseat]

It's funny the way Kerry is painted as a left wing liberal, but he is far to the right of most people I know. Nader is actually more in line with my own beliefs, but I still didn't vote for him for obvious reasons.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

It's funny the way Kerry is painted as a left wing liberal, but he is far to the right of most people I know. Nader is actually more in line with my own beliefs, but I still didn't vote for him for obvious reasons.

 

You've gotta take everything you find on the internet with a grain of salt. The authors of the site refuse to give their "formula" for how they compute the scores - that strikes me as a bit suspect. Everyone has an agenda, after all.

 

Having said that, I think Republicans and Democrats in the US are generally pretty damn close together.

[dryad]

Bear in mind that is a British site. America on average is much more religious and much more conservative than Europe, where Michael Moore books are extremely popular, and Nader would be considered perfectly mainstream. It's all relative. Kerry may be more liberal than Bush, but he's not by any means a lefty in the grand scheme of things.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

Is anyone else in the lower right quadrant?

 

(economic 1.00 / social -1.74)

[scott_harpell]

I am just left of center on the horizontal axis and dead center on the vertical axis.

[glacier]

-2.12, -2.58

[sexual_chocolate]

Similarly, a nonviolent campaign has failed miserably in Tibet. Any attempt at protest has been met by shootings, mass arrests, and torture.

 

It depends on what what means by "failure".

 

Tibet has seen its share of desperation, but to think that a violent response to the Chinese oppression would be changing the outcome I think seems a little naive.

Plus, this view overlooks the fact that some have taken up arms in the struggle, but I think China kinda has military superiority.

 

I think it's kinda hard for many to understand what the Buddhist and/or pacifist mind- and heart-set is, when most of our collective aim has historically been survival at any cost.

 

Could it be possible that there are people who have come to see that the greatest harm and danger is violence itself, greater even than death? And when one has gone beyond violence and fear entirely and absolutely in one's life, then the taking of life under any circumstances becomes inconceivable due to one's insights?

[Norman_Clyde]

[quote

the greatest harm and danger is violence itself, greater even than death? And when one has gone beyond violence and fear entirely and absolutely in one's life, then the taking of life under any circumstances becomes inconceivable due to one's insights?

 

This is the Gandhian point of view. These days, his approach is usually dismissed as naive and unrealistic, but in my opinion he gets too little credit for his bravery. If one investigates what he means by Satyagraha (literally translated as "truth force"), one begins to realize that active resistance, which renounces violence, requires significantly more bravery than fighting.

[dryad]

I never meant to imply that Tibet SHOULD engage in a violent response to the Chinese. For one thing, it would be absolutely futile because they would be outmanned and outgunned by a factor of maybe a million to one.

 

But even more importantly, nonviolence is an essential part of their culture and religion, so even if they did somehow manage to win, it would be at the cost of sacrificing an essential part of their culture, so it would be as if they lost anyway.

 

The only hope Tibet has is international pressure.

[catbirdseat]

China at least is beginning to understand how the west values Tibetan culture from a tourism standpoint. At least they are not bulldozing any more monasteries and are, in fact rebuilding some.