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I clicked preview but that didn't work, sorry for the missed link. :)

No, they just ignore the traditional colour/political spectrum associations. I'm sure there's some baroque historical reasoning behind it. Very disconcerting the first time you see a state breakdown map though, since the heartland/Bible belt is all red, which is hardwired to "Yay!", in my mind at least.

Republicans are generally a fair way into the Right/Authoritarian area of the political compass while Democrats will normally be a little bit South-West of them.

I find this idea of a Political Compass an easier way to view political systems.

Stalin was left wing (in the traditional sense), did he support free speech, real democracy and did he respect other people?

Obviously, you need to learn about Political Compass

The political compass separates the traditional left/right line into a plane -- the horizontal axis is left/right which indicates to what extent you believe government should control/regulate the economy, and the vertical axis is authoritarian/libertarian which indicates to what extent you believe governement should control people's behaviour.

It seems to me (I Am Not An American) that Americans regard their left/right line as running from top-left to bottom-right (left is authoritarian, right is libertarian), whereas in many other countries, the line is seen to run from bottom-left to top-right.

Obviously I've exaggerated the slope of the lines somewhat!

(None of which explains what religion has to do with it.)

Disclaimer: Slightly left of center, libertarian, atheist, British.

I agree with you that the "left/right" axis is inadequate - though I wouldn't say that it's "idiotically simplistic" (to me, that's unnecessarily inflammatory language - let's not start any flamewars over this, m'kay?). Simplistic, yes. But it does represent broad tendencies, which is useful on a strategic level, i.e. Nader does tend to take votes away from Democrats more than Republicans, because they are both to the "left" of the political spectrum. You can be as nuanced as you want about this, the fact is that this is a hard, cold political reality. Ignore it at your own peril.

Meanwhile, I find the approach taken on the Political Compass web site much more relevant: in addition to the "Left/Right" axis, which is basically an economic scale, there is a "Totalitarian/Libertarian" axis, which is more social in nature. Check it out if you don't already know about it.

I get the feeling that that quiz is a little biased toward the libertarian party. I think this one is better, though it is longer:

http://www.politicalcompass.org/

For the candidates, check out:

http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/u selection.html

If your curious, this was my score from your little quiz.

Your Personal issues Score is 100%.
Your Economic issues Score is 40%.

I came out near Nader and the Dalai Lama on mine.

Their ichonochasms quiz is fun as well.

I think you misunderstand the term libertarian, it refers to a social viewpoint not an economic one. You can be a libertarian and still support strong state control over the economy. Check out this link. Look under the anaylsis section and take the test if you like. You can also see the positions of the leading candidates for the US election.

The political compass ... for those of you looking for ways to express the (at least) two-dimensional nature of our politics. Somewhere in there, you can find charts with the relative positions of various world leaders, artists, current US 2004 presidential candidates, and more.

Crap - wrong link. Try this one instead...

politicalcompass.ORG

Oops.

More than one axis needs to be considered when political issues are discussed. Thankfully, we have this.

Try it and report where you fall. (I'm a left-wing libertarian, as I suspect many Slashdot types are.)

Really old, but I happened to be thinking of it earlier today - the Political Compass. Apparently I'm way off to the left, and down a bit.

You are somehow labeled as "right" or "left" depending on the whim of the moderators or random members of the community.

Really old, but I happened to be thinking of it earlier today - the Political Compass. Apparently I'm way off to the left, and down a bit.

Maybe all posters in this new section should take said test so that posters with conflicting views may safely ignore viewpoints that they disagree with. After all, there's a place for partisan publishing (scroll down a bit...) ;-)

Try the Political Compass for a better idea. This website attempts to help you escape from the 1-dimensional system into something a little more precise.

Um, while Socialism and Communism started out as the same thing, they've forked and now evoke very different reactions. Socialism is now associated with the sharing of wealth among the many. Communism, on the other hand, is socialism PLUS the giant police state that controls everything you do.

You might want to check out this, because you're confusing economic positions with Authoritarian/Libertarian positions.

hehe. Since when did Matt and Trey become conservative. Matt was in Bowling for Columbine ;)

And Michael Moore was in the NRA! What the hell is your point? Moore has often tried to distance himself from the left.

Check out Political Compass. See, for instance, - On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It's not sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental political differences between them that the old categories on their own can't explain.

Do you know where you stand?

Political Compass (2 Axises)

I certainly wouldn't call the Democrats "left" at all; I think that's the flaw with the study itself.

Compared with scales created by such organizations as politicalcompass.org, the Democrats (let's, for the sake of argument, assume that John Kerry is a pretty leftist Democrat) are all slightly Right Authoritarian. This means that the "centre" the study speaks of is in fact well into the Right Authoritarian category of politicalcompass.org. So then it's not suprising that Fox News sits at the centre of this fabricated spectrum.

Check out the political compass and start expanding on the left/right axis.

See PoliticalCompass.org

(-6.62, -7.38)

--

The political compass will plot your viewpoints on a two dimensional scale and let you compare your ideas with past and present world leaders.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/

Of course, 'left' and 'right' are horribly inadequate terms too. This holds true too for the terms 'conservative' and 'liberal', as demonstrated by one of my favorite recent sayings: 'Bush: he's liberal in all the wrong ways!' (sorry, can't recall whom to credit) Reducing political inclination to a single spectrum is a vast and rather ridiculous oversimplification. As another responder pointed out, there is also an orthogonal issue of 'libertarian-authoritarian' tendencies.

A nice site to check out might be The Political Compass, which nicely illustrates the fundamental issue with projecting everything into a single left-right/liberal-conservative axis. Of course, even two axes probably isn't enough, but it's much closer to an accurate representation. Hope it's at least a little bit enlightening.

Check out the political compass.

It's hard to tell from the few essays I've read by Graham whether he is more right than left-wing, but it seems pretty clear that he is leaning to the libertarian side of things. Note that you could be both libertarian and right-wing, and have more in common with me (left-wing libertarian) than you would with GWB.

As to what the reviewer thought... sure, that might be postmodernist. A lot of people in Europe think I'm American when in fact I am Canadian; their belief and their claim does not change this. You could deconstruct the meaning of Canadian or American, but you couldn't reduce the fact I hold a Canadian (but not American) citizenship and passport.

It's murkier with political labels because there is no "proof" that can be easily produced such as a passport. All we can say then is that according to a right-left political spectrum hypothesis, much of Graham's politics seem unexplainable -perhaps even insane- while using a spectrum they are quite straightforward, and arguably more internally coherent than what passes as right or left-wing these days.

Since I don't like postmodernism all that much, I'll finish by saying in Wilberian fashion that the compass includes and transcends the old idea of the spectrum, and is therefore closer to the truth.

Take a look at your political compass and learn the difference between economic policy and social policy.

You're so ... uneducated ... you're not really worth replying to, but anyway: Hitler hated the communists with a passion for the same reasons you hate communism. He also was very warm and cozy with german big business, so the theory that he attacked the jews because they were the "business class" doesn't really hold water. Also, all the gypsies, homosexuals, slavic people who were killed hardly died in the name of "greater equality", quite the contrary. Aryans were definitely not equal with the rest according to Hitler, or maybe you missed that from your history class with Senator McCarthy?

No single political label can accurately describe them complex webs of a person's beliefs and opinions. That requires at least two labels ;) This site allows you to compare (a simplified matrix of) your views with elected leaders as well as famous despots [insert G W Bush joke here].

Here is a list of political quizzes, to help you determine where you really stand. Most of these are sponsored by libertarian groups.

• World's Smallest Political Quiz
• Should you vote Libertarian?
• The Enhanced-Precision Political Quiz
• Libertarian Purity Test
• The Political Compass

This quote (from The Political Compass FAQ) is instructive.

"Some of the questions are slanted

Most of them are slanted ! Some right-wingers accuse us of a leftward slant. Some left-wingers accuse us of a rightward slant. But it's important to realise that this isn't a survey, and these aren't questions. They're propositions - an altogether different proposition. To question the logic of individual ones that irritate you is to miss the point. Some propositions are extreme, and some are more moderate. That's how we can show you whether you lean towards extremism or moderation on the Compass.

Some of the propositions are intentionally vague. Their purpose is to trigger buzzwords in the mind of the user, measuring feelings and prejudices rather than detailed opinions on policy.

Check out the Political Compass. It divides the left/right spectrum into a liberal/conservative (i.e. social policy) axis and a capitalist/socialist (i.e. economic policy) axis, to give a plane rather than a spectrum.

It's pretty neat, and it seems to peg me fairly accurately as a moderate socially liberal socialist. It obviously doesn't express all of the nuances of a possible view, but it certainly demuddles concepts that the left/right spectrum fucks up.

between "layman" and "academic". I think that it's been misused by neo-conservatives to create a false divide between the "ordinary Americans" and "those leftist urban fuck-nuts".

To see a decent example of what he's talking about, check out The Political Compass. I'll be the first to admit that the questions have a liberal bias, but my friends in GA took the test and ended up about where they thought appropriate, so it can't be TOO skewed.

Seriously, though, if you're going to say that McCarthyism is a fiction made up by the "Liberal Media", then I expect you to claim that the Holocaust was a myth perpetuated by those damn Jews and that mankind never landed on the moon.

Even if you ARE seriously making that statement, there are irrefutable episodes in history where Americans have made a mockery of our own Constitution.

why is the leader of a nominally socialist party tied into this destructive alliance with the most frightening right-wing rabble seen in a Western democracy for half a century?

Because there is actually not too much difference between New Labor and Conservatives, Republican and Democrat on the political scale, according to The Political Compass.
Try the test and see which party is really right for you.

liberal != libertarian
That's about as bad as getting "conservative" and "conservationist" mixed up.

Many of the problems with capitalism seem to be realted to individuals lacking information...

After all, you speak of the different economic systems but they are really just different points along the spectrum of government control. (...) So, are you planning to just pick different points on the scale until you find a "sweet spot"? Or are you hoping for new scale to appear?

In order to understand statements about both the Liberals and the Conservatives being like the Republicans, you must look at politics not as a single dimension (left-right), but in two dimensions. There is the economic (left--right or popular--corporate), and the social ( libertarian--authoritarian ).

For a better explaination of this, see The Political Compass.

As I see it, the Republicans and the Conservatives are Authoritarian (except for gun control), and economically right-wing (in everything but paying lip-service to the Canada Health Act, in the case of the Conservatives). I base this on the actions of the Reagan, Bush Sr, Mulroney, and Bush Jr administrations, and the public comments of Preston Manning, Stockwell Day, Peter McKay, and the current leadership candidates.

The Liberals are socially slightly authoritarian (remember, Gay Marraige and Marijuanna decriminalization were decisions by the supreme court, not the Liberal party, and the crackdowns outside the APEC (Vancouver, 1997) and FTAA (Quebec, 2001) conferences).

Economically under Chretien the Liberals tend to govern right wing, while running for office by making left-leaning promises. In 1993 these were scraping the GST and the FTA. Since they were elected Paul Martin (finance minister through most of Chretien's administration) has kept the GST, while allowing some corporations to defer billions of dollars in taxes.

Meanwhile Pierre Pettigrew has been negotiating the extremely corporateist NAFTA, FTAA and MAI agreements.

The Liberals also pay lip-service to the Canada Health Act while strangling funding to health care in poorer provinces.

Since Paul Martin came to the leadership moderates in the Liberal caucus like Sheila Copps are being forced out. This is very similar to the transformation of the BC Liberal party into a reactionary corporatist elite after it was flooded by disenfranchised Socreds, who elected Gordon Campbel their leader despite him being so right-wing he's even making Socreds uneasy. I actually had a conversation about this issue with Gordon Wilson when he was leader of the now defunct PDA. I suggested he join the NDP; about a week later he did. I doubt it was from my urging, I'm just some schmo who ran into him in the halls of the leg. when I was sightseeing in Victoria.

Under Bill Clinton, the Democrats tended to govern libertarian and economically centrist, except for negotiating the corporatist FTA, and NAFTA.

The NDP's official policies tend to be libertarian and left leaning. Party members are mostly libertarian and range on the left-right scale from centrist to quite left. In power in BC (I'm talking about this because of someone who implied the NDP is hated in BC), the NDP had 4 successive administrations (in 3 terms).

• Mike Harcourt was premier from 1991 to 1995 using a mostly centrist (in both dimensions) style. One notable exception to this was his cuts to welfare coverage, which many of the party supporters saw as an attack on the poorest, and a ploy to pander to the right wing press (the Vancouver Sun and the Vancouver Province, mostly). Reaction to this is part of why Glen Clark's leadership bid was successful (as a return to the party's principles), but not why he left office. He was nearly forced out due to the Liberal party's clamouring over the fictional "fudge-it budget", since proven to have been within GAAP, and the "bingogate" non-scandal, where Hon. MLA Dave Stupich leading the Nanaimo Commonwealth Holdings Society gave some bingo and raffle proceeds to the NDP and the Democrat (the provincial NDP's newsletter). These purposes were expressly in the Society's constitution, and were used by almost every party in the province at the time they occured (1983-1985).
• Glen Clark was premier from 1996 to 1999. His administration ired the corporatist media conglomerates (mostly the Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Province, and

Author was way off*. Open source software is closer to socialism than anything, while proprietary software is pretty much capitalism. If you don't think so, look at the philsophies underpinning both of these:

--Socialism--
Egalitarian
Communal
Sharing/common good
--Capitalism--
Elitist
Driven by profits
No such thing as a common good

If you look at these traits, you would find that open-source software is closer to socialism and proprietary software is closer to capitalism. That's economics.

If you look at the political dimension, you would find that both open-source software and proprietary software are libertarian (to a large degree).

So to sum up, open-source software would be libertarian+socialism** while proprietary software (as exemplified by Microsoft) would be libertarian+capitalism. This basically means that, under the political compass two dimensional system, open-source software would be near the bottom left, while the proprietary one would be the bottom right.

(* The confusion over proprietary software and capitalism arises because Microsoft is thought to be a monopoly by some. Because of that, some people (namely capitalists) don't consider MS to be capitalist. These capitalists would argue that capitalism needs free markets and perfect competition. My theory is that free markets lead to monopolies or oligopolies and if this is true then these capitalists' reasoning is baseless. This is exactly what happened in the case of MS. MS was a small company competing under perfect competition at one time. It simply monopolized the market like all businesses attempt to. Therefore, one CAN consider MS to be capitalist, even though it has monopolize many of its markets)).

(** When I say libertarian+socialism, I'm not talking about libertarian socialism (which is anarchism), although it is close. Open-source software is not anarchist because there are rules (the existence of copyrights means that the person who wrote the software has more power than someone who did not. Under anarchism, you wouldn't have this situation because copyrights do not generally exist under many anarchist systems. If open-source software had no copyrights (i.e. author who wrote it has no more rights than someone who did not write it), then open-source software can be considered anarchist. From my view, public domain software is basically anarchist)).

Sivaram Velauthapillai

That's not an issue of Left or Right. That's an issue of libertarian or authoritarian. They are two entirely separate ideas.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/

Not any more. From the site politicalcompass.org Coke with Yet Another New Twist: Toxic Cola

The Indian parliament has banned the sale of Coke and Pepsi products in its cafeteria. Indian parliamentarians should take the logical next step, and ban the sale of Coke and Pepsi products in the entire country.

The ban came as the result of tests, including those by the Indian government, which found high concentrations of pesticides and insecticides, including lindane, DDT, malathion and chlorpyrifos, in the colas, making them unfit for consumption. Some samples tested showed the presence of these toxins to be more than 30 times the standard allowed by the European Union. Tests of samples taken from the US of the same drinks were found to be safe.

*****

Saying Free Trade works out well because faceless corporation make billions is just plain wrong.

You are absolutly correct. Just look at how much Coke cares about the people in India who drink their product. Do you think they care about us Americans any more?

Using a left/right descript is one-dimensional, and adding lables as "liberal" doesn't help one bit.

For one thing, I'm 99.7% certain that most liberal parties in Europe would be upset being labled Socialists ...

The two-dimensional division shown on http://www.politicalcompass.org/ gives you a better idea of the political spectrum, in my humble opinion anyway :-)

The political compass is an interesting site that classifies political viewpoints based on economic and social axes. It offers a test that attempts to define your views.

Communism is an economic structure. Democracy is a political one.
This is explained in detail over at the Political Compass website. They have a fun quiz too. :)

Find your place on the political compass.

And compare yourself to this year's crop of candidates

Raised in exclusive New York enclaves in a Rockefeller Republican household, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean would seem at first glance an unlikely candidate to take up the mantle of the Democratic Party's faithful. Indeed, Dean's background is somewhat similar to President Bush's. Both men attended Yale University in the late 1960s, and they come from wealthy families with roots in the Northeast.

If Bush is just like Hitler

the two look pretty close to me (politicalcompass.org, click on "Analysis -> View the analysis") unless my eyes are playing tricks on me. the only others who are closer to hitler are ariel sharon and Yasser Arafat.

I completely disagree with your view. Most of what you say is so simplistic that you don't even distinguish key features. I prefer to use the two dimensional Political Compass system which eliminates some of the disagreements over the contemporary left-right system.

You are simply looking at the results without the underlying philsophies. People can support the same position but have different reasons for it. You also fail to realize that different factions of a particular wing support different politicies. For example, the far-right in USA (eg. tradional conservative, Pat Buchanan) is protectionist, while most of the right wing (including neoconservatives, capitalists, and the so-called Christian Right) are not. In a similar manner, the far-left (eg. anarchism) is anti-state while other elements of the far-left (eg. communism) is pro-state. With your view, a fascist and an anarchist are the same. For instance, both are an anti-war (generally). But the underlying reasons are different. A fascist is against a war because he/she doesn't want to lose their "kind", while an anarchist is against the war because he/she is usually non-interventionist and war is state aggression.

Let me just ask you one thing: are unions generally left-wing or right-wing? With your view, I think you would say they are right wing, when in fact the reality is anything but.

typically by severely regulating immigration, lowring the # of H1Bs, imposing stiff tariffs on imports and regulating work exports.

You are mixing up economics and politics. Things like immigration are political; while tariffs are economic. Note that EVERYTHING is called political when in fact some things are economic decisions. The right wing is anti-immigration, while the left-wing is pro-immigration. The right wing is mostly anti-protectionist (it's against capitalism) while most of the left-wing is protectionist. The only faction of the right wing that is protectionist is far-right (such as traditional conservatives such as Pat Buchanan). Find me someone else on the right that is protectionist.

You must watch CNN too much. Its called "brainwashing".

I don't even get CNN but CNN does less brainwashing than the Fox News you surely follow.

Hehe yeah that has worked well for Russia, Cuba, China... They kept it, uh really low.

Did you even understand my comment? I was talking about institutions. You obviously have no clue. As a side note, Russia has a lower GDP now than when it was USSR. China's is clearly higher but China isn't as capitalist as you imagine (not that it was socialist to begin with).

This is an unfortunate reason why the US is headed for trouble in the 21st century, we are turning socialist, the other to-be superpowers are turning capitalist.

You know how you tell when a system is failing? The hardcore supporters stop supporting it and start denying everything. By claiming that USA is becoming more socialist, when in fact it is becoming more capitalist, you are in complete denial. Free trade, removal of tariffs, privatization, etc mean that USA is becoming more capitalist. I have no idea where you get the idea that it is becoming more socialist. I suppose in your upside down world, USA is tending towards socialism, while I guess Europe is heading towards capitalism.

If USA collapses, it will not be because of socialism, socialists, leftists, liberals, or any of that. It will all be due to capitalism. I can't fathom how you can claim otherwise.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

There is actually a 2 dimentional system. Check it out: it's called Political Compass. Take the test and see how you place yourself. It is the most accurate system I have found on the web.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Life is not black or white, true or false, yes or no - it is seeming contradictions and shades of gray.

I agree.... but I still think people belong to certain classes. It is hard to pinpoint a person. Humans are quite diverse and unless you know the individual you can't form a correct opinion.

The reason I support the Marxist view of classes and class conflict is because I think people have different interests. That is the only way to describe it. For example, consider a socialist vs a capitalist. A socialist would consider it evil that a few select people hoard huge wealth and resources, while a capitalist would be fine with that. In contrast, a socialist would consider it ok to distribute money from the wealthy, while capitalists consider that evil. So yes, people place on a spectrum (that's why I consider myself to be around 60% socialist and 30% anarchist). But they always will end up supporting one principle over another.

I work for a company - I develop software applications (Worker); however I am not 'craft' or 'union', I am a manager (Coordinator) and have some responsibility for other workers. Additionally, I have stock options and own stock in my company as well as other companies (Capitalist). Additionally, I buy and sell items on Ebay for a profit (Merchant). Finally, I write music and stories and have made a few bucks on individual works - but am not tied by contract to any such endeavor, and am able to pursue it as I see fit (Artist - my classification). What box would you stick me in?

I think what matters is the position you take in life... the ideals you support. I think it depends more on what the person carries out, rather than what they are. For instance, just because someone is rich doesn't mean they are capitalists, or vice versa. Someone like Frederich Engels was communist even though his family owned factories (if I'm not mistaken). So, in my view, your class is basically where YOU place YOURSELF in the econopolitical spectrum. After all, just because you call yourself a democrat does not make you one--you have to support democracy to be one.

If you want to know where you place, take the Political Compass test. Some people don't like the test but I think it's somewhat accurate.

But if you want my opinion, well... it depends on the scope of your activities (information which I don't have). If you only engaged in something in a minor fashion then I wouldn't consider you belonging to that class--unless you strongly support it. For instance, you probably aren't an artist. You also likely aren't a merchant. Sure, you engage in selling and buying but so does everyone. What matters is the degree to which you are engaged in it. You probably also are not a capitalist (although I'm not 100% sure). Just because you own stock in a company doesn't make you a capitalist in my eyes. What matters is the degree of influence and your opinions. If you are sympathetic to capitalism, the corporations, and so forth, you would be a capitalist. But if you just own 0.001% of a company's stock and aren't supportive of it, I don't think you can be considered a capitalist. Technically if you deposit money in a bank (a key capitalist institution) you are a capitalist but almost 90% of the people use banks. Does that make them capitalists? Not really.

So it boils down to one of two IMO: working class or co-ordinator class. Whichever class you are sympathetic to, would dictate your class (not knowing anything else about your beliefs). If I had to guess, you would be belong to the co-ordinator class IMO. I would guess that you would support your corporations when there is a conflict between workes and the company (eg. strikes, lockouts, asking for higher wages, employment termination, class war (eg. Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia) etc).

Sivaram Velauthapillai

I don't think you know what capitalism is. Here is a very good reference of capitalism. You can also read stuff from Milton Friedman (God of capitalism) or the CATO institute (bastion of capitalism). Capitalism requires FREE MARKETS. The stuff I mentioned involve government intervention and is against capitalism. Minimum wage, for example, is anti-capitalist. All the capitalists call for the abolishment of it. Public healthcare, schools, libraries, etc are government MONOPOLIES. Therefore capitalists call for privatizing all of it (just read the capitalist press like the Wall Street Journal or what economists say (90% of all economists are capitalists)). Tariffs and subsidies are anti-capitalist because they distort the free market. And so forth.

You can't call these things "supplemental" when they conflict with the key requirements of capitalism.

Based on what you are saying, you don't sound like a capitalist to me. Take this test to see what you are.

This post is flavored by my being a US citizen, so take it as you will.

I'm much closer to you than you think :)

Sivaram Velauthapillai

GA: At the end of the trial, the Progressive magazine lost a small fortune, even though it managed to get the Morland article published without censor. Essentially, it was a case of limited private funds versus a bottomless pot of Government gold

I'm not sure where I stand on the article and its attempted censorship, but I am somewhat amused that one of its authors said the above. Doesn't it sound *exactly* like a typical right-wing diatribe against the government? The article in question was in the well known *leftist* magazine "The Progressive".

Why is that surprising, really? The term 'progressive' is usally used to refer to people in the left+libertarian corner of the political compass. Progressives are opposed to the domination of individuals by authorities, whether those authorities be public or private. This is just one of those cases where opression comes from the government (though we shouldn't ignore the partnership of government and private power in this case -- what's called the military-industrial complex). The real irony is actually the way people in the right+libertarian corner are able to conceptualize the domination of individuals by non-governmental power as 'voluntary.' Nevertheless, when complaining about the government, it's no surprise that left-libertarians and right-libertarians will sound alike.

Unless you think you're being funny mentioning "_bloody_ prerequisite" you obviously need to read the Bible a bit more with less biased eyes, sure the the returning of the Savior is a good thing. But the coming of the Antichrist is not. There are lots of other bad things that will happen around then too.

Sure. And I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with the implementation of the technology. Hell, on the Political Compass scale, I'm two clicks shy of being as Libertarian as the Dalai Lama.

My point is that from the standpoint of a fundamentalist Christian (using the sweeping stereotype), this should be great news. Or at least a step in the ultimately right direction.

As for me, I'm not sure how the whole thing is supposed to work. I'd far rather take my chances with putting a bullet in the anti-christ than waiting for Jesus. Unless I can get the Pay-per-View rights.

"it's all thanks to our right-wing "left-wing" governmentit's all thanks to our right-wing "left-wing" government"

I think that perhaps you're confusing right-wing with authoratarian. They're not synonymous.

The Political Compass.

Ashcroft: Personally - I'd say as socialist as they come

See also: The Political Compass

*Small-l libertarianism should not be confused with the big-l Libertarianism of the U.S. Libertarian Party, which is, in terms of economic policy, neo-liberal (i.e., even farther to the right than the Republicans).