Mansplaining by Kyle A. Lohmeier
If one is dumb and spends time on political groups on Facebook, as I am and do, they’ll find no shortage of people posting the results of a “political compass quiz” they took online somewhere. Well, that is, in the “better” examples of such groups, you’ll find that. There are some such Facebook groups that are just full of uncritical imbeciles who can do no more than parrot the latest post from Occupy Democrats. Such places are almost as complete wastes of time as the human beings who form their core are wastes of space.
I was first exposed to the political compass quiz ages ago, in the pre-internet days, when it came on card that was folded into the size of a business card and was called “The World’s Shortest Political Quiz.” These were often found associated with the campaigns of local politicians running for office as a Libertarian and/or with libertarian campus organizations. They were somewhat instructive but their real utility came in exposing people to the idea that the typical “left-right” political spectrum we think about in the USA doesn’t allow for an accurate way of thinking about how government interacts with the governed. At the risk of sounding obscenely pedantic to those already hip to this fact, I’ll elaborate here.
There are two points of interaction between government and governed: social issues and financial issues. In the two-dimensional political spectrum we think about in the USA, the “left” and “right” both believe in a government that is a mix of social and fiscal domination of the peasantry. Typically, the “left,” Democrats,” pay lip-service to letting people be free when it comes to social issues, but wants to enslave them economically. The “right,” Republicans, pretend to care about reducing taxes and spending while attempting some bizarre, pseudo-religious social engineering experiment to return American society to that of the Eisenhower administration.
Where these “political compass” quizzes come in handy is breaking that strict left-right mold apart and allowing each point of interaction to be considered separately and on its own merits, divorced from party affiliation or anything else. This is accomplished via a series of questions, how many depends on the quiz, but typically there are 10 to 100, and they cover a variety of economic and social issues to which the respondent answers within a range of five responses between “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” The responses are then tallied and the person’s political stance is plotted on a grid like the one below.
Answers on social issues are plotted on the y-axis, the responses on economic issues on the x-axis. The intersection of the two falls within one of the four quadrants we see in the chart. The quadrant offers a broad idea of where a person stands philosophically, and the position of the dot therein offers a more nuanced and accurate idea of that person’s beliefs. That’s the idea, anyway. Results that place a dot at or near the center of the grid would be gained from someone who is very conflicted and has no actual philosophical grounding. Other than that, the farther into the corners and edges the dot lands, the more accurate the picture of the quiz-taker, I find.
So, the upper left quadrant represents communism; utter economic control by government and the attendant social control needed to make men into machine cogs. The upper right quadrant is more akin to fascism; strict social controls with some economic liberty. The lower left quadrant is where Bernouts end up; and is the reason for this rant.
If I had a dollar for every post I’ve seen in some Facebook group or another where a kid posts a test result with his dot deep in the Bernout zone, asking “am I an AnCap?” I could retire now. No, kid, you’re not an AnCap. You’re not any sort of anarchist. You’re not even a libertarian; and I don’t give a shit what the test result says about “left-libertarian,” there is no such goddamn thing.
Yes, I know there are some limited historical examples of a “left-libertarian” society or another that existed for a bit. There are some limited historical examples of intelligent people believing rather strongly in phrenology too – such isn’t the basis for a rational argument. Hell, Sir Isaac Newton was obsessed with alchemy – and there were few, if any, of his time who understood the nature of the universe better than him.
The historical non-argument notwithstanding, there is no such thing as “left-libertarianism” or “anarcho-communism” for the same reason there are no carnivorous vegans – the terms are as contradictory as calling one’s self an “atheist muslim” is.
Human nature would prevent a society from ever voluntarily agreeing to pool all of its resources and then redistribute them evenly to all; such would always require an external apparatus to enforce. Any such external apparatus would have to have a legal monopoly on the initiation of violence to enforce the redistribution of wealth; and such an apparatus would be indistinguishable from government, even if it let you smoke pot when you weren’t slaving away for the good of your fellow worker. Which, by the way, it wouldn’t do for the same reason your boss sends you home from Wendy’s when you show up smelling like an Amsterdam coffee shop. If you want the state between you and your “pay”check, you’re essentially turning government into your shift manager. Do you like your shift manager? No? Think you’d like your shift manager any better if he had a gun and could use it with near impunity? No? Do you think you’d like your armed shift manager any better if he could manage you even when you weren’t at work? No? Think about that.
Equally goofy are those whose responses would find them plotted in the upper right quadrant. A government obsessed with enforcing bans on race-mixing, homosexuality, abortion, drug use, gambling, prostitution etc. by necessity needs to be huge and intrusive. Being a huge and intrusive government costs money – a lot of it. So, wanting a government that lets you keep all of your paycheck while locking up icky gays and race mixers is as unrealistic as wanting a government that lets you stay at home all day high as fuck while providing you with “free” housing, food, water, healthcare, internet, transportation, etc. Naturally, it is in this quadrant most self-styled “alt-right” people would end up in, as their “philosophy” is as goofily fucked up as that of any social justice snowflake.
So, if the upper right and lower left are goofy, and the upper left pure evil, that leaves the lower right quadrant. Like the upper left, the lower right quadrant represents a philosophical consistency. Whereas those falling in the upper left believe government should control every aspect of the individual’s life, the deeper into the lower right corner you go, the less government you want meddling with your financial or personal affairs. Those AnCaps joining me in the farthest bottom-right corner realize they don’t need government for anything at all. Ever. And never did.
Those landing a little farther up from that corner, essentially “minarchists,” are the only ones with a just claim to the title “libertarian.” They may still see some use for the state, but at least it’s limited and the state is theoretically kept nearly powerless over most matters. Philosophically, I’m opposed to the idea of giving the state only the most important jobs, but pragmatically, I see minarchism as our best hope in the foreseeable future.
Point being that while, yes, these quizzes plot people’s beliefs about government as they relate to fiscal and social issues independently, there’s still no escaping the fact that, again broadly speaking, there are two approaches to philosophy when it comes to government: Either the individual owns their own body, or they don’t. If they do, which they in fact do, then no one should be able to get a score far from the lower right corner since, to provide answers that would move your dot away from there reveals a willingness to compromise on individual self-ownership. And that, dear readers – the fact that every human owns their own body outright – is the basis of all valid human philosophy. Any contention that seeks to mitigate or abridge that fact in any way, or the logical conclusions that naturally flow from that fact, is inherently invalid.
Where do you stand? Here’s some links to the aforementioned quizzes.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/test
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