Where do I fit in in Irish politics?

Lockstep

nesf wrote: »

But Labour said little of that, especially the higher tax bands for the rich in their manifesto. Doorstep promises and the opinions of individual candidate do not a party line make.

Not really, I was working for him in the election.

Labour advocated cutting the standard tax. Fair enough by me, I wouldn't say cutting the standard tax from 20% constitutes free market policy, I'd say it's more in line with socialism (or given that it seeks to retain capitalism; social democracy) given that it involves progressive taxation.

nesf

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Not really, I was working for him in the election.

Labour advocated cutting the standard tax. Fair enough by me, I wouldn't say cutting the standard tax from 20% constitutes free market policy, I'd say it's more in line with socialism (or given that it seeks to retain capitalism; social democracy) given that it involves progressive taxation.

Well it's very centrist really. Tax cuts for the worse off rather than tax hikes for the middle class. To the left is the territory of the old Labour party that would favour 60-70% rates at the top level of income and similar. Labour have moved decidedly to the centre with their proposed policies in the past decade.

Lockstep

nesf wrote: »

Well it's very centrist really. Tax cuts for the worse off rather than tax hikes for the middle class. To the left is the territory of the old Labour party that would favour 60-70% rates at the top level of income and similar. Labour have moved decidedly to the centre with their proposed policies in the past decade.

Fair enough it's more centrist, but it's still not what I'd deem Labour to be right on the left right/scale.

Labour has moved further to the left with Gilmore however. He's attempting to bring back a more old school Labour.

nesf

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Fair enough it's more centrist, but it's still not what I'd deem Labour to be right on the left right/scale.

Meh, it only depends on where you put the centre point. If you're drawing a graph for the last 10-15 years, Labour at the last election were to the left. If you're including parties from the 60's and 70's they'd be on the right compared to the old school leftist parties.

Much of a muchness tbh. It's all just lines in the sand. Much easier to just agree that Labour are very much the leftist party of the big 3.

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Labour has moved further to the left with Gilmore however. He's attempting to bring back a more old school Labour.

Indeed. More's the pity.

Denerick

I've taken this over the last couple of years. Economically I've moved slightly to the right, but I've become more and more libertarian as my distrust of the state, and their supposed organs of control - the lily livered 'people' - grows more cynical every day:

Lockstep

nesf wrote: »

Meh, it only depends on where you put the centre point. If you're drawing a graph for the last 10-15 years, Labour at the last election were to the left. If you're including parties from the 60's and 70's they'd be on the right compared to the old school leftist parties.

Much of a muchness tbh. It's all just lines in the sand. Much easier to just agree that Labour are very much the leftist party of the big 3.

Meh, I see what you're saying.

Although I am still rather shocked that Labour has been placed on the right of the scale and a Libertarian Fianna Fáil. Centrist economic policies? To a degree but I'd say left on centre.

Denerick

The problem is that this test doesn't work on the basis of prevailing political categorisations. It takes authoritarianism, Libertarianism, Communism and capitalism as four distinct wholes; depending on your answers and how you correspond to these categorisations your 'pure' political compass emerges. Its a bit pointless doing the same for political parties, as they are by nature diverse and pragmatic, and not particularly bothered with political principles other than the base points of democracy, limited liberty etc. The compass is a much better gauge of individual political philosophy.

af_thefragile

Ha, i did it and this is what i got...

Kinda interesting to see how almost everyone got their results in the same quadrant.
I guessed i'ld be a lot more libertarian though... I'm really all about liberty and freedom...

Iwasfrozen

Mine

Mostly as expected, I've always considered myself a hard-line lefter.

S-Murph

An extremist and proud

markesmith

Pretty similar to a lot of you, to the left of Gandhi, bit more libertarian than Friedman. Makes you wonder why Labour doesn't do so well in Ireland. Apparently we're historically suspicious of socialism.

S-Murph

markesmith wrote: »

Pretty similar to a lot of you, to the left of Gandhi, bit more libertarian than Friedman. Makes you wonder why Labour doesn't do so well in Ireland. Apparently we're historically suspicious of socialism.

Or rather that the means to propagate and communicate politics and theories are controlled by for-profit media giants and state companies in the pockets of the present establishment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_ideology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

Its an up hill struggle trying to go against the grain of what is considered, through a process of socialization, 'common sense'.

Labour is hardly left wing either.

b12mearse

what is the political compass test?

Tar.Aldarion

Cokehead Mother wrote: »

Would've thought I'd be more to the right.

This is the most similar to the one I did a while ago, I was a little more left.

Mike 1972

Seems to be a problem with smaller parties. It puts me in the SDLP camp but the Alliance or Greens (which I thought I might be closer to) dont appear on the result (only the four largest parties here in NI are listed even though a previous question on which I thought I was most likely to go for had all of them)

The question on which I thought I was most likely to go for could have done with a "dont know" option as there was one party on there which I had never heard of before (and doesnt appear on the candidate list).

The rest of it is fairly well set up although I found myself having to vote "neutral" on bailing out Banks and Turkish EU membership when my position on these issues could be more closely summed up as "it depends".

Of course 99% of those who vote here come election day will do so on the basis of a hundreds year-old ethnic bunfight which is completly irrelevent to EU politics.

philologos

I've moved slightly further right, and more authoritarian.

af_thefragile

I have moved a lot right since i first did this test...
Well, i was a commie when i first did this test and now i'm a libertarian/anarchist. So guess its starting to show!


Also the i don't like the way the questions are phrased in that test. The questions have a very lefty tone to them.
No surprise why so many people are leftists. The test was surely designed by a leftist!

Mike 1972

Out of curiosity I tried it for a few different countries

I just had a look at where the UK (England) parties are positioned on the graphs. The results are a bit odd.

On the left/right scale the conservatives and BNP are dead centre with Labour slightly to the right and the Lib Dems a good bit to the left. and UKIP a good bit to the right

Tony Blair has a lot to answer for !

turgon

Im surprised by your result Jackass, on the authoritarian scale I thought you would be rubbing shoulders with Stalin

Mine changes every now and again. I started at somewhere like (-3,-2) and the last time was (3.5,-7.5) so its a big change. Thats only in the last 8 months, and especially in the last 2, since I started reading here more.

philologos

turgon: I was authoritarian and barely left until a few months ago. I've shifted across to the right mainly, I was never libetarian though. A few years ago I would have been a good bit further left.

turgon

I was referring to your conservative social values (ie going towards the top).

Tar.Aldarion

More left and less libertarian than last year, not much of a change.

philologos

turgon wrote: »

I was referring to your conservative social values (ie going towards the top).

I'm conservative to an extent. I do support civil liberties concerning free speech and the like. The ideals that allow for society to be a free sharing place of ideas. I do believe that society should come together to decide upon what is acceptable and what isn't within a community however

af_thefragile

Jakkass wrote: »

I'm conservative to an extent. I do support civil liberties concerning free speech and the like. The ideals that allow for society to be a free sharing place of ideas. I do believe that society should come together to decide upon what is acceptable and what isn't within a community however

isn't that what we libertarians say as well?

philologos

at_thefragile: turgon thinks that we should just let everyone decide what rules they want to live by for everything. I don't think that's practical and I think there needs to be strong moral norms as decided by a particular community. If any change is to be made to those moral norms it must be considered deeply to weigh up whether or not it is beneficial to society. If it is decided by a majority that it is then it should be changed, if not it should be left as is. Libetarians are much much more free about change.

Belfast

I think the test has too many leading questions


I do not fit in to any Irish political party.

Libertarian party in American is the only I fit in to.

No Libertarian party in Ireland.

turgon

af_thefragile wrote: »

isn't that what we libertarians say as well?

This is where words can sometimes get muddled. All about what we define where the state has permission to define what is and isnt "acceptable."


Jackass believes that the community should come together and decide on social issues. He believes that things like prostitution should be decided on a group basis. So if 50%+1 of the community disagree with prostitution, the 50%-1 are forced to live with that decision.

I believe that the state should have no permission to decide on social issues. It should instead leave these up to each of the individual members because in cases like prostitution it does not effect those outside of the two consenting adults.

The problem I have with Jackass' stance is that I think it amounts to the majority forcing its moral opinion on the minority.

So in the ideal libertarian society the only role of the community is to decide on issues that concern situations involving lack of consent. Such as murder. Im sure the murdered party didnt consent to be shot, so it legislates to protect the rights.

I know thats a bit hazy, but do you get it?

In fairness to Jackass, he adopts a stance I used to have (you can dig up old threads of me fighting drug legalization), and I can see where he comes from. Its taken me a while to get my head around society so maybe he will join someday

IIMII

GhostInTheRuins wrote: »

I'm almost a Green Party sympathiser according to this. And I didn't seven elect either muesli or sandals in the survey!

af_thefragile

turgon wrote: »

This is where words can sometimes get muddled. All about what we define where the state has permission to define what is and isnt "acceptable."


Jackass believes that the community should come together and decide on social issues. He believes that things like prostitution should be decided on a group basis. So if 50%+1 of the community disagree with prostitution, the 50%-1 are forced to live with that decision.

I believe that the state should have no permission to decide on social issues. It should instead leave these up to each of the individual members because in cases like prostitution it does not effect those outside of the two consenting adults.

The problem I have with Jackass' stance is that I think it amounts to the majority forcing its moral opinion on the minority.

So in the ideal libertarian society the only role of the community is to decide on issues that concern situations involving lack of consent. Such as murder. Im sure the murdered party didnt consent to be shot, so it legislates to protect the rights.

I know thats a bit hazy, but do you get it?

In fairness to Jackass, he adopts a stance I used to have (you can dig up old threads of me fighting drug legalization), and I can see where he comes from. Its taken me a while to get my head around society so maybe he will join someday

Well, i don't care about what people do as long as they are free. But if someone decides to set up a brothel next doors to mine (saying its a free country), i would certainly have my objections to it.

I can go back to my example of the counties of Ireland ruling for themselves here.
I say the people in every society should come together and decide how they wanna rule the society without any external interference. So say Dublin could decide it wants to make drugs legal, whereas Galway could take a more conservative stance and say it doesn't want any drugs in its society. Same could go for prostitution and other controversial matters like that.

So say some guy likes to take drugs and feels he can't live without it, instead of fighting to bring drugs in the conservative society of Galway, he could move to Dublin. People who're getting sick of all the junkies in Dublin could move to Galway. Kinda like that.

Like i guess compromises would be have to made but they're still no way gonna be as big as the ones people would have to make to adjust in a commie state.

But apart from these controversial issues of drugs, alcohol, prostitution, homosexuals, abortion etc. people can have the freedom to live however they want to.

But the main difference regarding these controversial issues is that every county/community can decide its own stance on these issues.
Like going back to my Irish counties example, the people of Dublin have decided they wanna be very liberal and have legalized drugs, prostitution, gay marriages, abortion and all.
But Galway likes to stick with the good book and have taken a conservative stance on its society by making all of those things illegal and punishable as crime.
The liberals can move to Dublin to enjoy the freedom to do whatever they want.
The conservatives can move to Galway to get away from all the junkies and prostitutes in Dublin.

Kinda like that. Everybody gets their favorable place to live in.

Belfast

The New Political Compass
The New Progressives are In-Front, Deep Green,
Against Big Business and Globalization, and Beyond Left vs. Right
http://www.yesmagazine.org/pdf/NewPoliticalCompassV73.pdf