Political Compass' Analysis

[Martin]

By now I'm sure we've all taken the quiz itself, but I'm wondering what you think of their analysis. What they do for a number of countries is they take the local parties/leaders/governments is place them on the grid. Here are some examples:

US Primaries

EU Governments

UK Parties

Canadian Parties

When you consider things from this perspective, there are few interesting questions that come up:
- do you think there's a disconnect between Washington and Americans? If you look at previous PC threads, you'll see that plenty of people place themselves in other quadrants, so why are there no politicians to represent these people? Do you think its the conservative movement has simply managed to shift the debate ?

- why does the idea of "socialist" Europeans / Canadians persist when there is such a small difference?

- If you look at virtually every major comparison index between countries (Press freedom index, government transparency, quality of life,, human development, happiness, economic competitiveness, social mobility etc etc) the Nordic countries consistently outperform everyone else and always place at the top. So why is there such a dearth of governments and parties advocating their free society approach?

 

[Sacrilege]

- why does the idea of "socialist" Europeans / Canadians persist when there is such a small difference?

When these nations have differing geopolitical goals, re: the Iraq Invasion, Americans think that all "free people" should obviously see that "Saddam will imminently use WMD," and when Europeans disagree, Americans need some monolithic reason to explain this. Call Europeans socialist and of a different mindset is an easy way to compartmentalize them and their views.

The reciprocal stands when Europeans wonder how Americans can support Bush after all of his failed policies. They chalk it up to religious brainwashing, inherently violent American society, or some other monolithic idea.

 

[imported_Tango]

How can Zapatero's Spain and Prodi's Italy be on the right side of that graph?

 

[TheVrolok]

Originally posted by: Sacrilege

- why does the idea of "socialist" Europeans / Canadians persist when there is such a small difference?

When these nations have differing geopolitical goals, re: the Iraq Invasion, Americans think that all "free people" should obviously see that "Saddam will imminently use WMD," and when Europeans disagree, Americans need some monolithic reason to explain this. Call Europeans socialist and of a different mindset is an easy way to compartmentalize them and their views.

The reciprocal stands when Europeans wonder how Americans can support Bush after all of his failed policies. They chalk it up to religious brainwashing, inherently violent American society, or some other monolithic idea.

Nicely said.

 

[Vic]

I think it's not that Europe is socialist (quite the opposite in fact, the EU is a perfect example of neoliberalism), but that American socialists so frequently point to Europe as an example of socialism.

The rest is just an issue of priorities. It costs a lot of schools to build a bomber, and it seems that American workers prefer building bombers to schools. And hell, once you build something you gotta use it, right? And so forth off to the voting booth.