[Buddha-l] Political views of Buddhists

[Tony Trigilio]

I'm a little less communist than you, Richard, and a little more 
libertarian:

Economic Left/Right score:  -7.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian score:  -8.56

I'm pretty squarely in your quadrant, which explains my similar allergy 
to deans and department chairs, and my allergy to Benito's 
overgeneralizations about Buddhism, postmodernism, and values.

It explains, too, why I stopped grading final papers to take the survey 
. . .

Tony Trigilio
Columbia College Chicago



Richard Hayes wrote:

>Dear comrades, er um, denizems:
>
>Benito has made the interesting claim that most Westerners are Marxists. (I 
>guess that would explain why Germany, France, the UK, Australia, Canada, 
>Israel and the USA all have elected right-wing governments.) Dennis Lingwood, 
>founder of the Western Buddhist Order and a social and political 
>conservative, has observed with some alarm  that the majority of Western 
>Buddhists are political leftists. James Coleman has surveyed Buddhist 
>converts (not asian Buddhist immigrants) in the USA and found that 96% 
>identify themselves as politically left of center.
>
>For years and years I have found the terms "left" and "right" and "liberal" 
>and "conservative" unhelpful and almost meaningless. None of those terms 
>unambiguously capture how I would identify myself or most people whose 
>political and social views I know about.
>
>Some political scientists in the UK have devised a new way of discussing 
>political orientation. It places people on a graph with two axes. The x-axis 
>plots where a person stands on economic issues; left of 0.0 indicates 
>favoring government control of corporations, as well as favoring 
>tax-supported healthcare, education and social programs, while right of 0,0 
>indicates favoring free trade and minimal governmental regulation and low 
>taxation. The y-axis indicates where one stands on governmental social 
>regulation; above 0,0 indicates a tendency toward authoritarian policy, while 
>below 0,0 indicates libertarian policy.
>
>If you visualize a standard two-axis graph and imagine four quadrants, here is 
>where some well-known figures would fall according to these political 
>scientists:
>
>NW (authoritarian communist): Pope Benedict, Stalin, Kim Jongil, Fidel Castro, 
>Pol Pot, Robert Mugabe and Hugo Chavez.
>
>NE (authoritarian free-market liberals): Hitler, Olmert, Bush, Chirac, Blair, 
>Thatcher, Howard, Harper and Merkel.
>
>SW (libertarian communist): Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Dalai Lama XIV. 
>
>SE (libertarian free-market liberal): Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Thomas 
>Freedman.
>
>Denizens of buddha-l, your assignment if you should choose to accept it, is to 
>take the short political quiz at http://www.politicalcompass.org/ and to 
>report your score back to the rest of us. (This will help Benito do his 
>research into the political orientation of Western Buddhists.)
>
>My score: -8.63, -7.13 (This means I'm about 87% communist and 71% libertarian 
>and therefor in the same sector as Gandhi, HHDL and Mandela, although 
>consideraby more to the left than any of them. This would put me pretty 
>solidly in the sector of folks that Benito sees as Buddhists in dire need of 
>reform and cure, perhaps even of inquisition. My company in this sector, in 
>addition o HHDL, would probably be Thich Nhat Hanh and Bhikkhu Buddhadasa. My 
>high communist score would explain why I tend to get along pretty well with 
>Unitarians, Quakers and anabaptists, and the high libertarian score would 
>explain why I am so allergic to lamas, swamis, gurus, roshis, priests, 
>rabbis, imams, deans and departmental chairs.
>
>I'm eager as hell to hear reports of where my beloved fellow denizens reside 
>on the Political Compass graph. So drop what you're doing and take the test!
>
>http://www.politicalcompass.org/questionnaire
>
>  
>