See where you come down on the electoral compass. It's a great way to test your political self-image against the actual policy positions of the candidates in this election year.
I fall squarely in the upper left quadrant, and my answers are closest to John Edwards and, after him, Barack Obama. So I guess I am an unabashed lefty after all...
What's curious about my electoral compass-point, though, is that in terms of my political philosophy I am actually a conservative -- in the sense that I believe in anti-Utopian, gradualist change, and lower-case meaning derived from contingent cultural traditions.
But I happened to be raised in Berkeley, so the values that I want to conserve are lefty values, emphasizing freedom of expression and equal opportunity for all, instead of religious authoritarianism or private property absolutism. Other people come to liberalism through a different path -- they break away from their upbringing and embrace a transformative, radical position in support of abstract human rights or the rejection of the Powers That Be. I come to my liberalism the way that 18th century "liberals" like Jefferson did: because it seems to me that it allows the maximum of human flourishing, while responding to our deep down sense of fairness. I do not need to believe that it will ever create a Perfect Union, only that we are always striving together, as the Constitution has it, towards "a more perfect Union."
Where do you fall on the electoral compass? What is the political philosophy that lurks behind your specific policy preferences?
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Posted by: | November 16, 2009 at 09:01 PM