John had a great post on Collaboratory, and I had a long answer, so I'm just going to re-post here.



ultimately, even this better model is too simplistic. it would be better to break it into, say, 20 values and see where people chart.

eg, i value faith and resultant morality (not morality for it's own sake) highly, but i don't place a big value on country. i'm against 'abortion, euthanasia, divorce and suicide'.

on the other hand, i'm not going to push these on anyone. i propose them, but i will not impose them. so, ultimately, i value freedom more highly than legislated morality.

i value survival more than self-expression, but once basic survival and a modicum of life-quality is reached, i want to promote freedom, again. i don't dislike foreigners, homosexuals, or people with AIDS. but i'm pessimistic about what politics can pull off.

so, i have some major breaks from these categories. but if you were to chart me anyway, i guess i'd be about in the neighborhood of Poland, India, and Bosnia (left of center and just below the midpoint. notice, left here is actually more conservative).

i had two posts 1 2 about a year ago that address my beliefs in detail.

more -

fascinating:

- that the countries hang together by continent enough to color them together.
- Europeans are pro-EU and anti-Russia and Israel.
- Americans are ok with Russia and Israel and less sanguine about the EU.
- more French think the spread of American ideas is a bad thing than Lebanese.

The “quality of life” axis is the one most closely associated with political and economic freedoms. So Mr Bush is right when he claims that Americans and European share common values of democracy and freedom and that these have broad implications because, at root, alliances are built on such common interests.

i don't know, maybe i'm closer to America in aggregate, but answering the questions differently.

America... is strikingly traditional on average. But, to generalise wildly, that average is made up of two Americas: one that is almost as secular as Europe (and tends to vote Democratic), and one that is more traditionalist than the average (and tends to vote Republican).

America['s] domestic political debate revolves around values to a much greater extent than in Europe. Political affiliation there is based less on income than on church-going, attitudes to abortion and attitudes to race. In America, even technical matters become moral questions. It is almost impossible to have a debate about gun registration without it becoming an argument about the right to self-defence. In Europe, even moral questions are sometimes treated as technical ones, as happened with stem-cell research.

all of this points to my dissatisfaction with the two-party system. i'm more 'traditional' than Dems and less 'self-expressive'.

but if i could pick 4 parties i'd go to one of those other grids. i'm a classic liberal on the idealog grid.

liberal | communitarian equality

---------------------------------------------------

libertarian | conservative | freedom

freedom order


then you have to add in that i have, personally, more conservative values (this might go on another grid). then you have to add in that i have a lot of problems with the Dems, including their support of programs that don't work (i'm against the part of them that is 'tax and spend').

a similar grid from self-gov.org



Left-Liberals prefer self-government in personal matters and central decision-making on economics. They want government to serve the disadvantaged in the name of fairness. Leftists tolerate social diversity, but work for economic equality.

When you put the two surveys together, I shade Libertarian to some degree, especially in tax policy. I think we should have drastically reduced taxes and have people pay for most of their services on an individual/use basis. Does that alone I don't think we should subsidize business or protect it with tariffs, but i think we need minimum wage laws and some public foreign aid. When you add up the first three in that last sentence, I'm pretty much 'anti-business'. The way I think of it, I always put individuals and their right to earn a living wage over the rights of businesses to grow and earn more money.

Heck, in some ways, I could wear any of these four titles, in different respects. But if I had to pick one, I'm a classic liberal (which doesn't equal a US Democrat. I have massive disconnects there.).

There's a similar, more extensive test over at Political Compass. The grid is similar, too, but flipped and then turned counterclockwise about 45 degrees (if you can visualize that):



To conclude:
- In economics I value basic equality over freedom to create wealth.
(So, I want to leave the minimum wage in place and collect a small amount of tax revenue.)

- In moral issues I value freedom over order.
(Though I choose conservative morality based on my religious beliefs I will not impose those morals on others.)

This puts me somewhere between classic liberal and libertarian.

so there's more than you wanted to know :-)