Chan's Personal Blog

Today I was at my weekly lunch meeting with Eton. Usually we talk a little bit about the wierd political ideas that float around in university. Anyways, we were talking about our political orientations, and he wasn't sure exactly how right wing he was.

So, I promised Eton a link to a survey that can gauge your political orientation. The political survey can be found here. It consists of 75 questions, and it took me about 20 minutes to complete. I felt this was a better version than the commonly used survey found at politicalcompass.org. This survey is way less ambigious in its questions, and seems to give more consistent results. At politicalcompass.org, my results would waiver quite a bit depending on how I read the question.

I think this survey is interesting for people my age as a lot of young people aren't even registered to vote, and have no idea what their political orientations are. Most will vote the way their parents do, rather than supporting a party that shares their beliefs, values, and ideas. So, perhaps this is a step to make people more aware of politics which would be a good thing.

I finished the survey tonight, and my results are the following:


The numbers range from -16 to +16. So for example, on axis 1, if I were -16, that would make me a communist, and if it were +16, it would make me a nazi.

An explanation of axis 1, left/right:

"This axis is quite like the familiar left/right political division. It mixes economic issues -- varying from laisser faire to interventionist perspective -- and social or 'moral' issues such as recommending the death penalty to punish criminals. We choose to give 'the right' positive values on this axis." (Laisser faire is a philosophy of noninterference.)

To give this axis some perspective, the NDP would be considered a left-wing party, while the Conservatives would be considered a right-wing party.

An explanation of axis 2, idealism/pragmatism:

"This axis is much less important than the first. It represents a combination of philosophies you could call 'pragmatism', 'utilitarianism' and so forth, mixing social, religious and economic issues. We have chosen to give an atheist, utilitarian perspective positive values on this axis."

I kind of interpretted this as, negative numbers == more theistic, positive numbers == more atheistic.

To interpret the results, it shows that I'm slightly leaning towards the right, and slightly leaning towards idealism. This is somewhat suprising as other political tests I've taken put me down as a centrist. How is that possible you ask? Easy, I don't trust big corporations (usually supported by the right), and I don't trust unions (usually supported by the left).

Anyways, try out the survey and please post your results in the comments.

I came across this article entitled, "Koranic duels ease terror." My initial reaction was... ooo.... this must be some elaborate hand-to-hand fight to the death in some sort of arena. I was sadly mistaken. The article talks about a judge in Yemen who tries captured members of Al Qaeda. He issued an interesting challenge to his prisons, "If you can convince us that your ideas are justified by the Koran, then we will join you in your struggle, but if we succeed in convincing you of our ideas, then you must agree to renounce violence." The prisoners agreed to this theological duel. The judge asks these terrorists to justify killing civilians, by using the Koran to backup their beliefs.

The results are quite interesting:


The lack of terrorist attacks thus far is important as Yemen was a country that witnessed some notorious attacks. The most famous is the suicide bombing of the USS Cole which was an American warship.

This does show that fighting terrorism with bullets and bombs doesn't always yield the best results. It does illustrate that unconventional techniques can be used against the terrorists in this unconventional war.

I was reading Time Magazine today, and came across an interesting article entitled, "25 Most Influential Evangelicals In America." I think out of the 25, I recognized about 6 of them. The article initially caught my eye as Rick Warren is on the front of the article. He's the guy that wrote the Purpose Driven Life which is one of the best sellers of all time. My church ran a "40 Days of Purpose" program which is based on The Purpose Driven Life book, it was pretty good. The picture of him in Time Magazine is funny because he's all dressed up; during the 40 Days of Purpose, we watched videos by him, and he's always wearing Hawaiian t-shirts.

My general feeling about this article is mixed. They seem to portray evangelical leaders as these rich political special interest activists that has infiltrated the highest levels of government. But hey, all the other lobbyist groups have been in bed with the government just as much. Maybe it is because Christians are becoming better at being politically organized? Maybe they're creating a political counterweight to groups of opposing values and views, which is fair.

It also seems like the only thing they're interested in are controversial subjects such as anti-abortion, creationism, gay marriage, stem cell research, etc. I think those issues are important, but it paints a very one-dimensional version of Christians. They don't really go over the good that those Christians have been doing in society such as feeding the poor, helping broken people get back on their feet, helping rebuild nations hit by disasters, etc.

Another thing that I noticed is the lack of young leaders listed in the article. Most people listed are over the age of 50, which is fine; however there are many young leaders that are doing some very amazing things for God as the baton is being passed to the next generation.

The one thing I did appreciate about the article was that they pointed out that both Republicans and Democrats seek help from leaders of the church. Generally, there's this perception that the right (Republicans) are God-fearing people, while the left (Democrats) are these godless infidels. The best quote I've heard is, "God is not a Republican or a Democrat." (Care of Myron's blog).

The most interesting bit from the article was about faith-based initiatives in prisons. These are programs where they try to teach inmates how to lead a good life using teachings from the Bible.


The clash between the Church of Secularism and the Church of God continues...