Ok, heres a poll to see where you think this IW forum is on the political scale if at all.

Looks like most people won't touch this with a ten foot pole. Now we know what good those were when I bought them in D&D

Wow, I wonder what you voted... :rolleyes:

Anyways, it depends on your perspective, I suppose. The average American rightwinger (or at least someone who claims to be moderate rightwing) is frustratingly ultra-right to European standards on a number of subjects, while I suppose the same goes the other way around with the average European leftwinger. Things have been said on this forum that would have been mostly regarded with disbelief and a pity/ridicule-hybrid in the European press, while it's apparently quite normal to American standards - and that goes vice versa just the same, I suppose. http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/no...ons/icon37.gif

As far as political bias goes, it mostly depends on who are active on the forum - it differs from period to period. But on average, I suppose it's rather balanced. ;)

[ 10-29-2003, 05:32 AM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]

IW is really varied - we have loads of lefties and loads of righties. It often causes the most flame wars in both the GD and CE forums. Someone will say "gay marriage is cool man, let's respect it and share the love!" and then some other dude will come in and say "ugh, disgusting hippies, let's shoot them all" or something along those lines. Moderators get involved, topic gets closed, badaboom. Tis how it usually goes round here.

lol, I thought I was being real discreet with my sig. Nah, really though, i'm a moderate conservative, I don't have patience for ultra right or left.

perfect example, azimath. no one ever calls themselves an extremist - that's a label for everybody else! ;)

if you spend any significant amount of time in other countries, and especially on other continents, you start to realise just how narrow the "extreme" viewpoints back home are.

Hehehe. I'm not extreme! Your just weird! I get it I get it hehe.

It doesn`t lean at all IMHO.

Funny, I think the people who says it leans right are insane but...

in my opinion, the question about lean is fundamentally flawed in as much as it's a gross oversimplification.

there are individual rights issues as wide ranging as gun control, abortion, euthanasia, civil/women's/and homosexuality rights, and the death penalty (not to even tackle the terrorism bills).

there are social program issues as wide ranging as health care, education, the social security pension, and welfare and unemployment coverage.

and then you have the economic issues such as corporate governance, foreign aid, federal deficit management, trade, tarrifs, industrial protectionism, consumer activism.

any individual can be far left on one thing, far right on another, and middle of the road on still another - and that might just be three things within one of those lists!

add to this something as gross as aggregating the expressed opinions of all those on the board... whew!

as someone who said this board has a far right leaning, it probably has more to do with how outspoken those extremists are (and yes, i'm not the extremist, they are! ;) ), than that they represent all of IW's 14,000 members.

but then again, george bush is representing america to the world - how do you think they think about the US because of him?

I think its got a slight right bias in that more people are right than left, but thats by my own view of what right and left are. I'm about as left as things get though, and that is only from my point of view.

Sorry, just had to add a few points in relation to sultan's post. I sort of see what you mean but I don't quite think its pointless to say "left" or "right" in all situations. They can be used as quite general terms as they rely, for the most part, on a conception of humanity. As such the unifying thing that brings together right wing views on government spending and right wing views on controlling crime are that they are both inspired by the same conception of humanity and therefore society. As a rule a "conservative" will tend to hold the view that people are idiots (greatly simplified... it used to come from the idea of Original Sin though, so thats basically the idea I'm going for) and as such that the government is justified in telling them what to do. The extreme case is a sort of Hobbesian view of human nature leading to the idea that unchecked authority isn't bad as its a hell of a lot better than what people would do without it.

Very generally liberals tend to give human nature the benefit of the doubt, leading to the idea that government involvement is a bad thing unless its absolutely necessary. The most extreme example of this is libertarianism which is so anti-government its often seen as conservatism despite having a completely different ideological starting point. And of course theres socialism, which is just far too complicated to go into...

But my point is that to say someone is "right" is still applicable as there is such a thing as a unified "right" position. Just because people who consider themselves right don't always hold that position doesn't destroy the positions credibility, just theirs. And of course, the same goes for the left, which has its own fair share of incoherent people as well.

well said, barry. i guess the point i failed to make clear was that not everyone speaks up and not every issue is discussed. so any opinion on whether the board is right or left is limited by an individual's exposure to what is said at the board.

so, personally, i find my own views more left than right, so find most of the views i read here expressed as right-of-centre (because we all place ourselves in the centre ;) ). but i acknowledge that may be a limitation due to the range of issues i've read the posts of and the noisemakers posting in them.