IW Political Bias Poll

[Barry the Sprout]

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.

[Barry the Sprout]

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.