Politics of an American Family

I have often found a clash in the political views of my family. Occasionally, there may be a light argument between myself and my parents or sisters, but nothing too drastic. Out of curiosity, I had my each of my family members participate in an online political test to see where their views fall on the political compass.

Standard rhetoric limits the spectrum of political thought to a ‘left’ or ‘right’ ideology. While this may be acceptable in discussing economic issues, real political affiliation is more complicated than the standard left-right line. The political compass test plots the result of political affiliation in both economic and social dimensions.

They closely evaluate the public statements, manifestos, interviews and, most importantly voting records of world leaders to find out where they fall on the compass.  Feel free to take the test yourself (post your results in the ‘comments ‘section below), but for now, here are the current results of my family’s political affiliation (click to enlarge):

Based on these results, you can see that most of my family falls within the inner few units of political center. In contrast, I have developed a much more leftist, libertarian viewpoint.

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Focus

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is James Patrick Taylor. I grew up outside of Chicago in a town called Naperville, the only boy in a family of six children. I did well enough in school to go off to college in central Illinois. It was there, beginning with the atrocities of 9/11, that I began to take an interest in world affairs.

I graduated with a chemical engineering degree, but a lack of desire to put it to use working for a large corporation, as a few of my friends began to do. Since school, I have done quite a bit of world traveling to broaden my perspective of our place in the world.

I have come to realize that there are good, kind people in every country on this earth. I believe there is an overall desire to do good and to leave this world in better shape for future generations. Sadly, there are also people in this world that fall victim to a desire for money and power. These are the wealthy elites that hold the current grasp of world power.

My specific focus in this blog will be on the United States of America and its participation in world affairs: past, current, and future. As a citizen, I feel that I bear a part of the responsibility for the actions of my government.

I understand it may be difficult to hear the facts of our past and current participation in world affairs; the truth is not always pretty. But it is critical to understand the role we have played in the past in order to accomplish the tasks we face in the future.