I’m at the -5, -4 mark. Not surprising (I always knew I had more in common with the Dalai Lama than GWB 😉 )

I had a score of -6 and -4.92. Several of the questions are loaded and I wanted to sit on the fence by saying something like “not enough evidence to support this”.
I wonder how they claim to know Gandhi’s opininon on homosexuals adopting children or the Dalai Lama’s views on multinationals exploiting the plant genetic resources of developing countries. Of course, I am always happy to be categorized with the likes of Mandela and Gandhi.
We all seem to be bunch of social libertarian pinkos 🙂 Maybe we need some more diversity around here. Then again, maybe not.

I think that if you tend to merely ‘Agree’ as opposed to ‘Strongly Agree’, you might end up close to the middle of whichever quadrant the question is testing for.
Usha and Ruchira, you must both be in strong agreement on several of the left leaning questions for your scores to drop off that quadrant.

About Gandhi and Castro, my suspicion is that everyone who lands in the left half of the chart sees both of those guys; there’s no differentiation for being authoritarian vs libertarian, only left vs right. Probably everyone who lands on the right side of the chart gets the same two guys, too. Who? Maybe GW and Friedman? (Not too many major figures to choose from on the lower right.)
VP: I think the people they’ve plotted on the chart are those who have written copiously about their beliefs, and their positions on some of these matters can probably be reasonably extrapolated. But I wouldn’t be surprised if, for instance, the Dalai Llama has actually made a public statement about multinationals and plant genetic resources of developing nations. Did you see the collection of who-said-what factoids on the same site, which might surprise you?

What is truly astounding to me is where most of the US presidential candidates for 08 are clustered on this graph! The only two outside that quadrant are considered unelectable, good for a bit of oddball color to the debates. Hillary is accused of being too left wing?! What’s happening to this country! The democrats are not even centrist anymore, which is what we are led to believe. A stellar illustration of how little diversity and debate there is in US politics today, and the dangers this will continue to visit upon the world in the years ahead.
Yet, the ordinary Joe doesn’t see it that way; the candidates’ micro-differences have become his entire political spectrum. The rare politician who peers into his soul and utters a wail of pain is criticized for “his despicable conduct” — the latest casualty being Pete Stark, chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, reacting to the House accepting Bush’s veto of a bill that denies funding to a children’s health insurance program: “But you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.” Of course, this was seen as “disrespecting the troops” and Stark had to apologize.