Posts: 392
Threads: 55
Joined: Apr 2005
Economic Left/Right: -4.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.05
In Keeslandia's ballpark, but I note with interest that only Gandhi and Mandela appear in the Libertarian half at all.
I thought like Antrium I had fewer "Strongly" answers, but upon review I realised many of my hot buttons -- not normally considered in polical orientation surveys -- like astrology and religious education were pushed. These seem to have pushed me in a manner I did not expect.
Several questions I found very difficult to answer in a meaningful way, e.g.:
Quote: In criminal justice, punishment should be more important than rehabilitation. [/quote]
To me (and I wikified my RP version of this for Sober Thought), social protection is more important than the interests of ANY party to a crime -- state, perpetrator, victim, witness, peace officer, judicial officer, etc. Punishment and rehabilitation (both terms which lack clarity) don't even exist as objectives, and sometimes not even byproducts.
In RL, the British government's use of social protection orders in many ways takes this approach. The orders do not result in a criminal record and not really a punishment since they lack usual levers (fines, imprisonments, legal impediments) one associates with punishment. While they have elements of rehabillitation in them, rehabilitation implies a return to a time before a fall (literal or metaphoric) but the social orders aim for an external (if not always "objective") standard of behaviour which may or may not have been achieved by those under orders. Generally, the orders are seen by their adminstrators and (perhaps somewhat surprisingly) many recipients as proactive and helpful.
Many aspects of the orders have both authoritarians and libertarians gritting their teeth or shouting opposition: the blighters aren't nicked and don't have rap sheets, and they don't have trials and are persecuted (sic, since law alone allows prosecution) for non-criminal behaviour. Like most tools, I think the orders are neither inherently good nor inherently bad, their value being largely determined by the society, government or agency which uses or wields the tools.
