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Where Do You Fit?

Furious said:
The more-Liberal-than-Ted-Kennedy candidate for president proudly went bird hunting before the election.
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And promptly showed that he is weak on tort reform by failing to shoot a lawyer.


Thank you! I'll be here all week. Try the veal, and tip your waitresses.
 
Hehe! They labeled me a liberal, which in the olden sense of the word is almost correct. I live in a socio-democracy and I support a degree of government interference in business, but I want to see a gradual shift to a more liberal Norway. I.e. I am a conservative liberal. That's market liberalism, people. :)
 
I really disliked the questions and options...but I'm an Enterpriser...not a surprise to me.

However I'm still waiting for the local Republicans to kick me out of the club when they notice the pirate fish and the t-rex eating a jesus fish emblems on my car.
 
Furious said:
As a nitpick, you are making the same fallacy of false dichotomy as the test. The claim of 25% of Liberals owning a gun doesn't specify what kind of gun they have.

I suspect only a very few Liberals want Dick Cheney face shooting guns controlled; its the street sweeping police armor peircing variety that gets them excited.
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Ooohhh, gets me aroused, too, oohhh, baby...

I think the vast majority of people want some gun control, myself included (though you'd hardly guess that from the most recent "Guns" thread). I don't want ex-felons owning guns, and I don't want minors owning guns, and I don't want crazy people owning guns. I agree that there are certain kinds of guns that no civilian could have a sane use for, though I think writing legislation that would effectively define those kinds of guns is probably akin to digging holes in a lake.

The thing is, remember, I got myself designated as a liberal by answering what I thought the liberalist of the liberals would answer; in other words, I tried to make myself almost pink. And thus put myself in the same category as the biggest, most liberal single group of Democrats - a significant minority of whom own guns.

Do I think they're hypocrites? No; as you point out, they probably just want laws against "assault rifles" and such (which, again, is probably like trying to dig holes in a lake), not confiscation. But was I surprised that this group - the tree-hugging bleeding-hearts that I (temporarily) identified with - had significant gun ownership? You bet.

To me that would be kind of like saying 95% of Liberals have a Bible in thier house, so they must prove that a vast majority of Liberals are actually against gay marriage!
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Lots of people have Bibles in their houses through no fault or desire of their own. Mrs. BPSCG and I have three. I bought one because I realized many years ago that even if you think the whole thing "has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies" (Mark Twain), it's a major work of western culture and no person can claim to truly be educated if he's unfamiliar with it. I bought the second because my father recommended it as the translation that most closely hewed to the original language, and it was, in his not inconsiderable opinion, the one that a devotee of Spinoza could approve of. And the third was a wedding gift from Mrs. BPSCG's mother, with sidebars on how to make a good marriage by following its teachings (we have yet to refer to it in the middle of our occasional screaming matches).

People have Bibles because it belonged to great-grandma Martha and she laboriously wrote into it all the births, weddings, and deaths throughout her long life before handing it off to grandma Eleanor, who carried on the tradition. That's how Mrs. BPSCG and I will likely come into a fourth Bible someday...
 
BPSCG said:
The thing is, remember, I got myself designated as a liberal by answering what I thought the liberalist of the liberals would answer; in other words, I tried to make myself almost pink. And thus put myself in the same category as the biggest, most liberal single group of Democrats - a significant minority of whom own guns.

Do I think they're hypocrites? No; as you point out, they probably just want laws against "assault rifles" and such (which, again, is probably like trying to dig holes in a lake), not confiscation. But was I surprised that this group - the tree-hugging bleeding-hearts that I (temporarily) identified with - had significant gun ownership? You bet.
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The test identifies 3 primarily Democratic groups - religious Democrats, poor world-hating Democrats, and everyone else. If you lean left at all and aren't in the first two groups, you're a "Liberal". This includes the "pinks" as well as moderates - hardly lockstep.

They were the least likely group to own weapons; the high-number just reveals how non-uniform the groupings really are. Note that the test does not consider this as a criteria.

I was marked as a liberal (which is fair), but I skipped several of the business questions because I didn't like the wording - I might have come out closer to enterpriser. I owned a shotgun and a hunting rifle until recently, when I realized I never used them and gave them away.
 
BPSCG said:
O
The thing is, remember, I got myself designated as a liberal by answering what I thought the liberalist of the liberals would answer; in other words, I tried to make myself almost pink. And thus put myself in the same category as the biggest, most liberal single group of Democrats - a significant minority of whom own guns.

Do I think they're hypocrites? No; as you point out, they probably just want laws against "assault rifles" and such (which, again, is probably like trying to dig holes in a lake), not confiscation. But was I surprised that this group - the tree-hugging bleeding-hearts that I (temporarily) identified with - had significant gun ownership? You bet.
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Are you capable of viewing issues from a leftist point of view, without resorting to incindiary language, and strawmen?
 
aerosolben said:
I was marked as a liberal (which is fair), but I skipped several of the business questions because I didn't like the wording
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I was tempted to skip most of the questions because I thought they were poorly worded or didn't reflect my views at all. But I was curious to see where the test put me.

Frankly, I think this kind of test is slightly above your daily horoscope as far as any real value goes. More for entertainment purposes.
 
BPSCG said:
I was tempted to skip most of the questions because I thought they were poorly worded or didn't reflect my views at all. But I was curious to see where the test put me.

Frankly, I think this kind of test is slightly above your daily horoscope as far as any real value goes. More for entertainment purposes.
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It may be inprecise, but it has some amount of accuracy. I've yet to see anyone say, "It tagged me as Liberal, even though I am Cthulu."
 
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BPSCG said:
Frankly, I think this kind of test is slightly above your daily horoscope as far as any real value goes. More for entertainment purposes.
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Quite. And you also said that among the many logical fallacies in the questions, there was one so arcane that you couldn't even name it Very well.

And yet curiouslu you have drawn results ---- strange, inconsistent results --- from the poll.

Can you explain?
 
Liberal.

Who'd have thunk it?

More than a few false dichotomies though.
 
I don't think the false dichotomies are really false dichotomies. I took them to be the extremes of each issue, i.e. the question about how you think the government is doing has "I think they its doing a bang up job" at one end, and "I think it sucks donkey balls" (not the actual wording, of course) at the other, with a couple of choices in between, so marking simply 'agree' (as opposed to 'strongly agree') would mean you think it's doing well but not as good as someone who might mark 'strongly agree'. That's how I took things, anyway.

I do, however, think they could stand to have a finer gradation of their choices.
 
Dr Adequate said:
Quite. And you also said that among the many logical fallacies in the questions, there was one so arcane that you couldn't even name it Very well.
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Yeah. It was related to this question:
  • Poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return
vs.
  • Poor people have hard lives because government benefits don't go far enough to help them live decently
I agree with half of each statement, and disagree with half.

Poor people can get government benefits without doing anything in return. But they don't have it easy.

And poor people do have hard lives. But not because government benefits don't go far enough.

What fallacy is that? I don't think it's false dilemma or excluded middle.

And yet curiouslu you have drawn results ---- strange, inconsistent results --- from the poll.

Can you explain?
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Yeah. Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. (Emerson) :duck:
 
Maybe this deserves its own thread, but from past history it will get hijacked by flames in a minute.

BPSCG said:
I think the vast majority of people want some gun control, myself included (though you'd hardly guess that from the most recent "Guns" thread). I don't want ex-felons owning guns, and I don't want minors owning guns, and I don't want crazy people owning guns. I agree that there are certain kinds of guns that no civilian could have a sane use for, though I think writing legislation that would effectively define those kinds of guns is probably akin to digging holes in a lake.
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A question: How do you propose to determine who is a "crazy person"? Felons, yeah, I agree, minors, yep, for the most part, except as part of sporting events where they are supervised by adults (and maybe that means the adult owns the gun) but how do you determine "crazy people"?

People committed to a hospital with either self-harm or other-harm potential are not the question. People with a history of that, i.e. repeated hospitalizations, history of clinical episodes, yes.

What do you think about some kind of mandatory training? Perhaps including both safety instruction (EVERYBODY SHOULD HAVE THAT) as well as some example of what guns actually DO to people (obviously via historical and news photos, not demonstration, d'oh)?
Lots of people have Bibles in their houses through no fault or desire of their own. Mrs. BPSCG and I have three.
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Heck, I have more than you. :p Bibles in German, bibles in Welsh, bibles in English English, KJV, RSV, GNV... Most of them (except for the GNV) way older than I am. I haven't read them all (wouldn't learn much from the German or the Welsh), I have read the KJV and RSV end to end, it was part of my dismissing faith entirely, in fact. Reading them in parallel is just soo soo soo interesting, indeed.
 
jj said:
A question: How do you propose to determine who is a "crazy person"?
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Another "digging holes in the lake" issue. No way you could write a perfect regulation. But you could certainly catch some of them. People with a legal guardian, for example (not as common as one might think). People with Alzheimer's, but again, a formal diagnosis is pretty rare - has to be done by autopsy, IIRC.

I'm just saying that I believe there are people, in principal, who everyone agrees should not have guns. Even the NRA, I would guess.

What do you think about some kind of mandatory training?
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Haven't thought much about it, but my gut reaction (which I have learned not to trust) is that it's a good idea. If you have to pass a basic competency test to drive a car, why shouldn't you have to pass one to carry a gun? Dunno if that would be a second amendment issue or not.

Heck, I have more than you.
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Yeah, but you're older. :p

I have read the KJV and RSV end to end, it was part of my dismissing faith entirely, in fact.
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Cripes it would probably make me want to end my life. I started reading the Moffat version end-to-end years ago and finally gave up on it. Kinda like Shakespeare - I think it would help to have extensive notes printed on alternate pages explaining what the hell they're talking about.
 
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