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Journal smittyoneeach's Journal: Political Compass Score 39

Journal by smittyoneeach
OK, now that I've bad-mouthed them, here I go:

Economic Left/Right: 4.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 0.62

So, yeah: I'm totally a right-wing SoCon, but I differentiate strongly between morality and ethics, and thus veer libertarian on federal Constitutional issues.
E.g.: life begins at conception, but if you pagans in Washington want to build altars to Moloch and sacrifice your offspring, then God have mercy on you. And, in the same fit of folly, declare sex with a mare 'love' and marry your horse. I'm not coming to Washington on vacation, that's for sure.
As for Economics, if you haven't read The Road to Serfdom, you probably think this sunshine Obama has been blowing up your nethers is somehow valid.

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Political Compass Score More

Political Compass Score

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  • Claiming that we are promoting the Obama regime as something to look up to.

    Morality, with or without an attached religion, is how you live your life, a completely, or should be, an absolutely personal matter. Something you have no right to impose on anybody else. Ethics, to be perfectly simplistic, is how you interact with those things outside yourself, a more social concern.

    And since my writing skills are quite limited, I will take a quote about that silly book:

    ...the State is simply a tool, and when it i

    • Did you actually read my blog post?

      Morality, with or without an attached religion, is how you live your life, a completely, or should be, an absolutely personal matter. Something you have no right to impose on anybody else. Ethics, to be perfectly simplistic, is how you interact with those things outside yourself, a more social concern.

      You did a fine job of summarizing what I wrote. Bravo.
      Alas, we're both 'wrong'. The cluttered thinking of the day, seeking to make the State a god, equates morality and ethi

      • Yes, I did... after I posted. Some things are self evident. There seems to be a minor bug where every comment was posted twice.

        And please note that I took that particular quote about the state for a reason. That should also be self evident, as I have posted on that very thing several times, but few people seem to pick up on it.

        • It's a WP blog, with Disqus for comments. Dunno how you're getting the dupes. May I ask your browser?
          The crucial point about the State is that it is composed of individuals. Fallible individuals. Which is why Al Gore horrifies me when he says [nytimes.com]:

          From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption.

          Either Al is a fool, or he thinks you are.

          • Seamonkey.. but it is a beta version (v2.13, recent, but needs to be updated) All other browsers should be banned by law :-)

            Al Gore is a politician who, like most of his compadres, believes that the law that applies to us does not apply to himself. I hardly care what he thinks or says, especially on this 'climate change' BS. He wants us to consume less so he can have more. I couldn't finish reading that spiel. I gag when I read what he writes, but there is no need to be any more concerned about him than any

            • Al Gore is a fairly representative sample of the statist ills that affect both right and left.
              Don't take my enthusiasm for Romney as naivete that he won't go wobbly. He will, and the napalm shower will greet him.

              • ...the statist ills...

                So small is your frame of view, you don't see a word I said. Is it subconscious, or intentional? I think it's a little of both.

                • Liberty. Start there.

                  • For ALL. Start there... You only want to shift authority to a different, equally tiny 'elite'. That is unacceptable.

                    • Thoroughly erroneous. If the Romney administration acts even a little like Obama, you're going to see the tatters of the mainstream media on one flank, and the Tea Parties on the other.
                      I realize that you cannot grasp the authenticity of the Tea Party movement, reality being such an affront to Commie thinking.
                      The interesting thing will be seeing how the Left explains a wobbly Romney getting blasted from the Right.

            • fustakrakich == countertrolling == iminplaya (== sometimes AC)

              Clearly, I've been here too long.

              • Ah, so you're like that logical_failure guy with all those sock puppet theories. This oughta be fun...

                • I'm pretty sure "sockpuppets" implies simultaneous usage, and an attempt to make them appear as different people. The accounts I referred to seem to have been created, used for a while, and then abandoned (and posting as AC for a while) before moving on to the next. And no such attempt.

  • But even compared to Rerum Novarum- Obama is way off.

    • We part company. I'll heed the Pope, insofar as he rightly divides the Word of Truth.
      The fact that an Economist may, spiritually, be a fool does not necessarily impact his math. Math.
      Hayek makes the great point that central planning is a crappy god, and we should echo that.

      • The problem is that Hayek's math- if followed- leads as much to central planning as if we had followed Karl Marx. The only difference between a libertarian and a crony capitalist is having enough capital to purchase politicians through lobbyists. The only difference between a crony capitalist and a communist, is that the capitalist owns politicians and the communist is owned by politicians.

        Without limits on the growth of both business and government, centralization is inevitable. Only morality can provid

        • Boss, I just don't buy off on your read of Hayek.

          • What is missing in Hayek's equations is the gravitational constant of currency (Return on Investment, Interest) in any capitalist system.

            Because it takes money to make money, investors, not labor or consumers, are the true rulers in capitalism (Karl Marx did notice this, despite his other flaws, that's why he named the system capitalism; as it centralizes on wealth).

            The one thing most libertarians seem to forget, is that government, any government, is created primarily to protect and defend wealth, and only

            • I think our simplest method to moving away from excessive centralization is reforming the Federal Reserve.
              While I think the Aggregate Evil Of Humans is probably a constant, I submit that the Unintended Consequences of that evil are best minimized by re-invigorating the 9th and 10th Amendments.

            • Because it takes money to make money, investors, not labor or consumers, are the true rulers in capitalism (Karl Marx did notice this, despite his other flaws, that's why he named the system capitalism; as it centralizes on wealth).

              It strikes me that money is merely a proxy for property. That is, your physical stuff is part of your net worth, and your money is the other part because it is "potential property", convertible into actual private property. Money is just a convenience for trading things owned, so

              • But in capitalism, money can be converted to more money directly, through the miracles of Interest and Return on Investment. No other property required.

                "And I think a notable counterpoint of our current times to what you wrote next is Apple Inc. It became the richest company ever, market capitalization wise, not just by the actions of the investor class. Consumers (most of whom are laborers) decided who would rule in that space."

                Apple hasn't been innovative since the Lisa came out. All of their technology

                • My dispute with "it takes money to make money" was not that you can't make money from money, but that that's not the only (or even most used, in practice) way.

                  But yes, money plus time can be traded for more money. And a tradeable amount of money grows more valuable as the amount goes up* (because there's fewer people who have larger amounts of money that they can afford to part with for a while), and hence can fetch more money back later in trade.

                  *Outside of govt.-induced market distortions like the housing

                  • Ok. I get it....yes. I need to think on that for a while. Never occurred to me that other property *also* has centralizing gravitational force.

        • You come closest to understanding the critique of that book I quoted above. The state is a hammer. The corp is the owner of said hammer, and we, as the followers of their money and power, and orders, are the wielder. I am very interested to see if they will take it away from us if we were ever to break free of the spell.

        • Without limits on the growth of both business and government, centralization is inevitable.

          I would broaden this (and me, being me, would word it matter of factly instead of implicitly activist) to say that the growth in size of any group of human beings inevitably results in centralization. This goes for not just businesses and governments but also churches, political parties, special interest groups/charities, labor unions, you name it.

          I.e. whatever it is that people come together on is not so material as

          • Yes, but in a way, the evils of decentralization are both more tolerable and more solvable, by men, than the evils of centralization.

            If an evil of decentralization becomes locally tyranical, you can always move away from it. Not so much so with centralized tyranny, which would see your leaving as a defeat for the corporate body.

            • What B D calls the 'left' are just people who fight back to keep others from forcibly removing their own wealth. Making sure that tyranny stays local through resistance is by its nature 'leftist'. It has nothing to do with coveting. It is more of a domination thing. My contention is that those who wish to dominate are not 'leftist' by any means. They are simply tyrants. Despite our differences, I see your descriptions here, and his to a large extent, as spot on. To me, you are describing physical science. E

              • Here's why we are NOT describing physical science: Money doesn't have a physical existence. Neither does dominance, strictly speaking.

                Civilization is engineered, not grown; allow nature to take its course and let everything grow as big as you can, is the route to extermination of the weak. The big difference between civilization and evolution is that civilization protects the weak instead of exterminating them.

                There is no such thing as a human action that does not cause harm; the small pleasures you spea

                • I think where we part ways is when you believe that humans are 'above' the forces of nature and biological instinct. We are not. In fact the belief that we are could very well be the basis of original sin, in that we act precisely the same as all other life forms when we are supposed to know better, or it could be that we just think we know batter, in other words the sin is in our arrogance, with the belief that we are godlike.

                  Human engineering is no less natural than a termite 'society' building its giant

  • From your linked page (in your prior JE) and the first two pages of questions of the test, that site is the creation of someone who is solidly Left-wing and (commensurately) cannot see from any angle but his own. So the questions are framed in terms of the Leftist viewpoint, and the responses simply in terms of affirming or denying that narrow viewpoint.

    So the test is only effective in identifying if you're a Leftist or not-a-Leftist, but can't provide distinguishment in the variations of why one is not in

  • And, in the same fit of folly, declare sex with a mare 'love' and marry your horse. [defendproc...efaith.org]. I bet you think that teh gheys caused Sandy (Katrina and Isaac? [defendproc...efaith.org]), too. Oops, my bad.. I meant 9/11 [youtube.com]... "probably.. what we deserve..."

    You and your peeps really going off the deep end there, looking freakier every day.

    • No, I don't think there is any direct link between sodomy and natural disasters.
      Also, I'm not arguing indirect linkage, either.
      But I'll allow that, should you have anything to worry about, repentance remains an option.

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