Fairness Doctrine

[songsmith]

I forget what was DOWN.

Moderate thought. Everybody wants you to be radical for their idea.

I've been reading into this a lot... it seems that the Fairness Doctrine was very seldomly enforced when it was in effect before, and a good percentage of the crybabies were fringe groups.
Besides, how exactly, would a bureaucrat monitor and enforce any extra time for any one crybaby, except after the fact, when any impact of what the crybaby might say would be out of context and long-forgotten.

And Joe, when you turn on CBS News, you get a lot of news completely unrelated to politics... weather, the economy, parents killing their kids, people are fat, somebody fell off a cruise ship, this week's missing blond rich girl, you know, the important stuff . Talk radio covers one issue: How Neocons are right, and everyone else is destroying our great nation. You're comparing apples and... road apples. --->JMS

[lonewolf]

I forget what was DOWN.

Moderate thought. Everybody wants you to be radical for their idea.

Moderate thought is CENTER.

It finally came to me. Somebody on RP posted a link to a web page that had this political diamond:

The left point of the diamond is liberal (in the modern sense)
The right point of the diamond is conservative
The top point of the diamond is libertarian
The bottom point of the diamond is communist.

There were lines drawn between the points to separate it into 4 quadrants. Most Americans are moderate libertarians which puts them into the upper two quadrants. The extreme left and the fascist right are in the lower two quadrants.

They asked multiple choice questions on several issues and based on your answers, they plotted where you stand in the diamond. I was north-northeast.

I'll see if I can find it.

[songsmith]

Aside from my glib response, I think the diamond idea is intriguing. I'd like to see it. I'd also like to find the old Wall Street Journal "quiz" that placed the far right on zero and the far left on 100 (that could be opposite, I can't remember, but you get the idea) and the number of yes answers you gave told you where you are on the con/lib scale. It had to be 20 years ago, and I haven't seen it since. It really drove home what my political stances were... I scored a 51, and I'd like to see what it would be now.--->JMS

[bassist_25]

I've taken the political ideology quiz and its off-shoots a couple of times. I always score as a libertarian. I've been told that the validity of the metric is biased towards people scoring as libertarians. I use to consider myself a libertarian, but then I realized that worshipping at the altar of Robert Nozick and the idea of no taxation was just as idealistic and utopian as workshipping at the altar of Karl Marx and socialism. Then I started calling myself a moderate libertarian to differentiate myself from the nuts who spent too much time reading Ayn Rand. Now, I just call myself a moderate and leave it at that.

[lonewolf]

Here's the quiz that Blain posted (almost 3 years ago)...not exactly how I described it, but close:

http://www.theadvocates.org/quizp/index.html

[slackin@dabass]

according to that quiz i'm about 100% libertarian. nice quiz. i like that.

LIBERTARIANS support maximum liberty in both personal and

economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one

that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence.

Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose

government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate

diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties.

and i ask you... where are the downsides????