Political Alignment in the Blogosphere

Entertainment if nothing else

Tim Lambert has an interesting exercise at his Deltoid blog: a Political Compass Test, which attempts to measure your political leanings on a two-dimensional scale, with a Left/Right axis and a Libertarian/Authoritarian axis.

Before you get too excited, note that Lambert cautions: "I don't think the results of the tests should be taken too seriously - I found several questions that were rather ambiguous and my results might have been different if I had interpreted them differently."

One such question is "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth - agree or disagree?" This phrase is commonly interpreted as a call for revenge, but some are aware of a deeper meaning having to do with measure, i.e. an eye is much more significant than a tooth . . . (it really should have come down to us as "an eye for an eye BUT a tooth for a tooth") . . . so this sort of thing will skew results a bit.

Much of it is more straightforward, though, and the test is fun. Lambert has graphed results from the blogosphere. Enjoy.