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Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019); AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021); and HOW WE BECAME POST-LIBERAL: THE RISE AND FALL OF TOLERATION (2024).

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

All my friends are left-libertarians

Well, at least that's the trend so far with my "cloud of friends" on Facebook.

As for me, I'm not surprised to find myself right there in the middle of them, though I came out as more economically left than I used to. Then again, I can do the political compass thing a million times, giving answers that vary a bit with my mood, and I always end up in that left-libertarian quadrant: sometimes I'm a bit closer to the center economically; sometimes my social libertarianism score varies slightly; but I'm always very libertarian, socially, and always slightly left of centre, economically.

9 comments:

Roko said...

I'd be interested to see! I'm pretty close to the middle.

Economic Left/Right: -2.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.56

Russell Blackford said...

You still fall in the left-libertarian quadrant, roko, albeit in a much more moderate way.

Roko said...

yes, and so are all my university friends. That is interesting. Maybe it shows that people in a certain social network tend to share political opinions?

Blue Tyson said...

The X-Men Hellfire Club wasn't, though, even if yours is. :)

On a completely unrelated (and apologies for off topicness) note, your Witch King book - I remember a book with a title like that from when I was younger, was this aimed at younger readers at all?

Thanks,

BT

Russell Blackford said...

Only in the sense that, say, Michael Moorcock's Elric stories were aimed at younger readers. I.e., I'd expect that bright teenagers would be a natural audience for the book, but it wasn't a YA book in the sense of having a young protagonist ... or in any of the other senses that are used in the commercial fiction markets.

Blue Tyson said...

Ok, thanks for that. It was perhaps a different book, then.

Do you remember what was on the cover?

thanks again,

bt

Russell Blackford said...

Go here to see the cover:

http://www.users.bigpond.com/russellblackford/books.htm

Blue Tyson said...

Thanks. :)

Come to think of it, one of those school book clubs might have had the book I was thinking about, so that makes this one really unlikely.


bt

Russell Blackford said...

They are still all left-libertarians, to varying degrees.