Political compass: ID used to score like a -7 on the left/right scale.

[metroid composite]

Nope, I got a 4ish on pragmatism.

That...makes sense now that I think about it >_>

[Bobbin Cranbud]

...You can't be serious. 

EDIT: Just culled the quote to make it more clear what ideas I find so utterly ridiculous that Cranbud MUST be trolling.  It's still a lot.

Nope, neither unserious nor trolling.  I'm flexible on the specific structures but a dyed-in-the-wool monarchist.

[SnowFire]

Economic Left/Right: 3.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.85

1   left/right    -1.6468 (-0.0991)
2   pragmatism    +3.0165 (+0.1816)

Tentatively the first test is making me out to be more economically conservative than I actually am, probably because I don't want to crush capitalism or anything like that and thus was forced to disagree with a lot of "leftist" propositions, but would be more than happy to "guide" the market in all sorts of ways.  Both surveys have a lot of "never," "ever," and so on questions which...  well, the FAQ says outright that the questions ARE slanted, but a lot of those needed a "not true 99.9% of the time but is possible to concoct situations where they are correct."  No idea how the second test is determining pragmatism vs. idealism; I can think of questions I'd ask for a test like that (say, "Should a harmful activity be banned even if it is very difficult for the government to actually prosecute it, meaning that the vast majority of people who break this law will go unpunished?") , but they weren't on it.

Nope, neither unserious nor trolling.  I'm flexible on the specific structures but a dyed-in-the-wool monarchist.

See, that just generates more questions.  What kind of monarchist?  There are such things as modern monarchists, but you're describing yourself in a very old-fashioned way, and the rationale for monarchies in history is very very different than the kind one might propose today.  To put things another way, there's a big difference between "God put Juan Carlos on the throne to lead Spain and defying this is defying God," "I think that raising someone from birth to rule, taught by their experienced parents, is the genuine best way to train a good leader of a country," and "We shouldn't mess with tradition, and monarchies are a source of social stability."  Are you in favor of monarchy in general?  How should the royal family be picked if there currently isn't one?  Are you in favor of Dune-style futuristic eugenics to ensure "proper" rulers, or is this Plato-style "anyone smart so long as they're trained the right way from birth," or did God really just happen to pick some families for greatness, coincidentally decided by whoever was leading the revolting army at the time?

[Sierra]

Took the second test:

1    left/right     -4.1191 (-0.2479)
2   pragmatism    +1.9515 (+0.1175)

[Bobbin Cranbud]

See, that just generates more questions.  What kind of monarchist?

Like I said, I'm flexible on the specific structure, provided the executive is chosen by heredity (with possible quality controls from an independent body, as in Saxon England) and raised to the position from a young age.

I'm inclined toward an 'elector counts' structure, where MULTIPLE potential monarchs are raised to lead semi-independent states, and choose one of their number to fill a 'first among equals' role.

There are such things as modern monarchists, but you're describing yourself in a very old-fashioned way, and the rationale for monarchies in history is very very different than the kind one might propose today.  To put things another way, there's a big difference between "God put Juan Carlos on the throne to lead Spain and defying this is defying God," "I think that raising someone from birth to rule, taught by their experienced parents, is the genuine best way to train a good leader of a country," and "We shouldn't mess with tradition, and monarchies are a source of social stability."

I suspect my use of the phrase "the Mandate of Heaven" is throwing some people, because it SOUNDS like a religious term.  It essentially isn't.  It's a Confucian concept that the monarch's right to rule is grounded in, and his rule strengthened by, right conduct and right governance.  In western sources you occasionally run across the idea of noblesse oblige, and the idea of divine right (whether literal or figurative); the Mandate of Heaven makes the latter contingent on the former.  Of course, whether one reads it as LITERALLY the will of heaven or not depends on whether one reads Confucius as secular or not.  It works as either a theological or historical theory.

My support of monarchy stems from a LOT of different angles (one of which is Confucian philosophy).

I think that a person raised and educated to perform a specific function has a significant edge at performing that function.  Doing this within a family avoids the psychological trauma of, say, IDing likely candidates at a young age, taking them off to a high-intensity training course and raising them apart from their parents.  Plus, by keeping it in the family the future monarch can observe first-hand how his predecessor handles the job and assess accordingly.

I think that elective governments create a sense of responsibility (both to interface with the electoral process and for the results of that process), but do not actually give real agency to the electorate.  If you are voting for President in a country the size of the US, your impact is 1/5,000,000 greater than zero.  Giving people 'false agency' seems both disingenuous and undesirable to me.  The only non-elective, non-hereditary methods of choosing a leader I'm familiar with, however, tend to result in violent takeover and extreme aggression, if not outright oppression, from the executive.

I think that the process by which elected leaders achieve power is inherently harmful.  It actives encourages internal strife among the electorate, offers ample opportunity for interest groups to infiltrate, if not outright dominate, the government, and selects for ambition.  Leadership by conquest involves violence and turmoil by default and is even more likely to lead to factional strife, which is in turn likely to perpetuate the cycle of violence.  Hereditary rule provides for a smoother transition of power and can work to reduce factionalism.

There are other reasons but those are the big ones.

Are you in favor of monarchy in general?

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but... yes, if I'm reading you right.  I'm not in favor of a bad monarch over a good president, but I am in favor of a good monarch over a good president or a bad monarch over a bad president.  If you accept the possibility of a good dictator, I'd be inclined to favor even a bad monarch over one of those.

How should the royal family be picked if there currently isn't one?

I have no freaking clue.

Are you in favor of Dune-style futuristic eugenics to ensure "proper" rulers, or is this Plato-style "anyone smart so long as they're trained the right way from birth," or did God really just happen to pick some families for greatness, coincidentally decided by whoever was leading the revolting army at the time?

The Platonic one, although Aristotle made a more convincing case for monarchies specifically.  I'm not sold on it being terribly important WHO the monarch is provided he is properly raised and educated.  I'm a bit uncomfortable with Dune-style eugenics (or any style of eugenics) because it would tend to increase separation between monarch and populace, eventually to the point of them being separate sub-species, which I think is an undesirable outcome.

Keep in mind, although I'm in favor of powerful organized religion, I don't actually see any evidence for an involved, personal god.  (I'm somewhere between a deist and an agnostic; I believe a pre-universal First Cause is the most likely explanation for certain physical phenomena, but do not presume to know anything about the First Cause's nature or intentions, if such concepts can even be ascribed to it.)  In any case, an omnipotent entity could manipulate election results or the outcome of factional strife just as easily as it could genes, so one can as easily posit divine right for any form of government.

[VySaika]

1 left/right  -2.4969 (-0.1503)
2 pragmatism  +1.0336 (+0.0622)

About where I figured I'd be, really.

[metroid composite]

I suspect my use of the phrase "the Mandate of Heaven" is throwing some people, because it SOUNDS like a religious term.  It essentially isn't.  It's a Confucian concept that the monarch's right to rule is grounded in, and his rule strengthened by, right conduct and right governance.  In western sources you occasionally run across the idea of noblesse oblige, and the idea of divine right (whether literal or figurative); the Mandate of Heaven makes the latter contingent on the former.  Of course, whether one reads it as LITERALLY the will of heaven or not depends on whether one reads Confucius as secular or not.  It works as either a theological or historical theory.

My personal disagreement with this approach is that it still sounds like it has the problems that a typical theocracy does--which is to say a really strong mandate.

This really harkens back to "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely."  In most western governmental systems we've pretty much drawn a line in the sand and said "the government can't cross this line".  If, however, you base the principle of government on divine right instead (whether secular or not) suddenly there really isn't an aspect of life in which the government can't interfere.  This has a lot of implications...

* If the divine leader finds a piece of entertainment offensive (Harry Potter and Xenogears jump to mind as two that religious groups have objected to) they can just ban the book/game.
* If the divine leader finds certain fairly private actions offensive (say, interracial marriage and blow jobs--two things that used to be illegal) they can just ban those actions.
* If the divine leader wishes to influence the children, they can directly affect curriculum (for example, prayer in schools and teaching Intelligent Design in Science class being two that religious groups keep trying to push for).

Basically, such a mandate opens the door to a level of governmental interference that I, personally, would find unpleasant.

[SnowFire]

(Apologies, the interest in the previous post was more in finding out your position rather than starting a debate, but since metroid has already jumped into that arena...)

Cranbud: I see.  Okay, good to hear then, as you've basically made about the only remaining argument for monarchy that doesn't either require futuristic yet expensive genetic engineering or dictates from God.  It's an okay argument in the abstract, and certainly one that was used as late as the 1930s...  just...  it's an argument that has absolute reams of evidence against it.  The evidence is in, and all the fears about democracy they had in 1850 - that mediocre idiots who curry favor with the unthinking masses will be elected - have proven overblown, while monarchies have for the most part continued to fail it up.  This is especially true if only mature democracies are studied - that throws out cases like Chavez or Hitler.

Your complaints about elective democracy have merit, but I suspect this is a case of being able to spot the practical flaws in the system you know while comparing it against another system at its theoretical optimum.  Meanwhile monarchy falls way short of its optimum all the time - plenty of nobles only learn how to party in their youth rather than how to rule, and that's been true for a long time.  Charismatic rabble-rousers at their worst are bad leaders, yes, but few reach the insanity of a "bad son" in the succession.  And so on.

I think that elective governments create a sense of responsibility (both to interface with the electoral process and for the results of that process), but do not actually give real agency to the electorate.  If you are voting for President in a country the size of the US, your impact is 1/5,000,000 greater than zero.  Giving people 'false agency' seems both disingenuous and undesirable to me.

But... the people do have agency.  True, "I personally am mad at President Bush" changes little.  But "I am mad at President Bush because he appointed cronies, failed to respond to Hurricane Katrina properly, and mismanaged Iraq..."  well, so long as other people think like you do, the result is unpopular actions get you kicked out of office.  Which is the whole point.

The only non-elective, non-hereditary methods of choosing a leader I'm familiar with, however, tend to result in violent takeover and extreme aggression, if not outright oppression, from the executive.

Really?  There's "appoint a successor" (granted, this often turns into monarchy; see the Julio-Claudians) and "a council picks" notably.  The Politburo picked a new General Secretary of the USSR pretty consistently without bloodshed after Stalin.  Same with the General Secretary of China, since they arrested the Gang of Four after Mao, it's flipped Secretaries several times peacefully.  Same in Vietnam.  Checking Wikipedia...  the SLORC in Burma/Myanmar have done one succession without bloodshed, and unfortunately I suspect they'll be able to do more if they decide to continue to keep power.

You'd have more of a point before 1700, when this really was true and the death without an heir was an invitation for a kingdom to split up and for every disconnected town to go their own way.  Of course, that was back when travel/communication was bad and stopping the ambitious Duke from arming himself and contesting the throne was hard.  That's not really an issue anymore.  (Also, some of the better monarchies did in fact have councils or traditions like this - the original Islamic Caliphate picked a successor based off councils for awhile, even if the successor was usually related to Muhammad, and the same with the Mongols.)

I think that the process by which elected leaders achieve power is inherently harmful.  It actives encourages internal strife among the electorate, offers ample opportunity for interest groups to infiltrate, if not outright dominate, the government, and selects for ambition.  Leadership by conquest involves violence and turmoil by default and is even more likely to lead to factional strife, which is in turn likely to perpetuate the cycle of violence.  Hereditary rule provides for a smoother transition of power and can work to reduce factionalism.

The key word here is "can" work to reduce factionalism.  For example, let's take Syria, where King "President" Assad, in an amazing coincidence, happens to be the son of the previous "President" Assad.  Assad is an Alawite, a minority of about 10% of Syria.  Do you think that Alawites fill roughly 10% of government posts?  Or do they fill like 50-80%, because they can be counted on to be loyal, as they're getting a way better deal by having this government be in power and thus would lose out majorly if the government fell?  And don't get me started on the Saudi monarchy.  This is nothing new, either.  The Castilian-raised Spanish monarchy from 1700 or so forward economically ignored Catalonia/Aragon/Valencia due to their funny dialect, poor economy, and habit of allying with the French when Spain and France fought.

I would propose that democracy does run into serious problems if 60% of the electorate is of one faction and capable of consistently voting together (see: Shiites in Iraq), hence Madison's famous desire for a multitude of factions to cancel each other out.  Just...  with monarchies, sure, maybe the monarch will be even-handed, but maybe they won't be.  And when that 60% supermajority doesn't exist, any democratic leader who blatantly pandered to too small a part of the population would get kicked out.

I suspect my use of the phrase "the Mandate of Heaven" is throwing some people, because it SOUNDS like a religious term.  It essentially isn't.

Nah, I'm familiar with the concept.  I was just more raising the fact that the stated grounds for monarchy back in the day tended to be something along the lines of the Divine Right of Kings.  Glad to hear you don't actually buy into that (though it sounded like that anyway when you said that the nature of the religion didn't matter - a hardcore Christian Monarchist, for all that they're nearly extinct now, certainly would think the religion matters a lot.)

Are you in favor of monarchy in general?

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but... yes, if I'm reading you right.

I meant "monarchy for everyone" rather than "I support the Xian monarchy specifically, and maybe they should even rule the world because that family is just that awesome."

If you accept the possibility of a good dictator, I'd be inclined to favor even a bad monarch over one of those.

Monarchy vs. Dictatorship is a more interesting proposition.  If you're stuck with that form of government, I'd probably prefer a dictatorship?  But monarchies tend to produce utterly incompetent leaders and get themselves overthrown, so the monarchy might be better after all (if for the "wrong" reason).

Eh.  Didn't mean for this to go on so long.  Don't feel obligated to debate or anything, was just curious before.... but... yeah, monarchism is a proposition I feel has a whole lot of problems in the modern situation, even if we were to adopt the other parts of your platform - monarchy is still a bad idea in a 1900 agrarian society.

[Cmdr_King]

Met: to my knowledge, states that had oral sex laws on the books have never actually repealed them, so it's still illegal!  Just unenforcable.

[metroid composite]

Met: to my knowledge, states that had oral sex laws on the books have never actually repealed them, so it's still illegal!  Just unenforcable.

Nah, they were struck down by supreme court ruling in 2003:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_States

[Mad Fnorder]

Economic Left/Right: -4.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.05

On the first test. Didn't really know what to expect, but I am a life-long northeasterner.

[Idun]

   Axis   Position
1   left/right   -1.6867 (-0.1015)
2   pragmatism   -2.8409 (-0.1710)


moderate again. :[

[Just Another Day]

Economic Left/Right: -8.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.54

Axis   Position
1   left/right    -9.2124 (-0.5545)
2   pragmatism    +2.1343 (+0.1285)

No real surprises. I'm a lefty even in Canadian terms, go figure. I've got a fair bit of sympathy for the utilitarian benefits of strong authoritarian governments, but kinda feel that they're outweighed by the risks/historically demonstrable rarity of actual benevolent dictators. (China has had a few, but they are enormously outnumbered by incompetent sadistic clowns)

[NotMiki]

Met: to my knowledge, states that had oral sex laws on the books have never actually repealed them, so it's still illegal!  Just unenforcable.

Back in HS there was a rather high profile sodomy case in Massachusetts (nonconsentual biting by a local TV personality, as I recall).  It kinda raised eyebrows, but as my math teacher memorably explained, "Nobody wants to run for reelection as the guy who voted yes to sodomy."