Where do you actually stand politically — and what do the labels really mean? This free course is an even-handed guide to political ideology: not which side is right, but how the major positions differ and how to map your own.You will start with what a political ideology is, see why the simple left–right line doesn't capture everything, and learn the political compass — the two-axis model (economic left–right and authoritarian–libertarian) that places ideologies more honestly.By the end you will be able to locate your own views, understand the main ideologies on their own terms, and read political debate with a clearer map. Everything is described neutrally — ArtaQuest takes no side. There is no quiz; you finish each video by writing your own question and learning from how your peers answer theirs
this video is sponsored by S although there are almost 350 million Americans there were really only two political parties and despite what the name would imply neither one's very fun at all this political division means you don't get any Nuance in policy and instead you either vote on which person you hate the least or just pick one or two things you absolutely don't want someone to mess up and then you compromise anyway While most people are not too familiar with the political Compass they have heard the term left and right you might have seen a spectrum like this in civic's class and they talk you some vague theory about reactionaries vers radicals or social reform vers conservatism but this is pretty meaningless to most people in reality when someone asks if you're on the left or right in America what they want to know is how many digits of the pride flag you've memorized even the most farle and Far Right extremes have more in common than you might think for example they both share the same common weakness follow-up questions take people on the far left they all make the same mistake which is waking up one day doing absolutely no research and then thinking there's no way that Ben Shapiro will have heard this one before similarly if you take someone on the far right who says I believe that white people are superior to the other races the obvious followup is asking if this is their sample group the reality is that just left or right doesn't capture the full Nuance of someone's political beliefs if you're a fiscal conservative who believes that government debt represents an inability to provide future public programs the left lumps you in with the people who storm the capital if you're a liberal who believes that investment into nuclear is the future of clean energy the right lumps you in with the people who think that the hard counter to fracking is a heartfelt land acknowledgement the political Compass introduces a bit more Nuance because while you still have a left and right you can flesh out what you believe about both economic and social policy and more importantly see how your beliefs relate to other people's to give the theme As you move up the compass you prefer big government as you move down you prefer small or less government and as you move left you prefer equal redistribution of resources and to the right you prefer to let free markets allocate resources unimpeded so let's look at each quadrant highest value first so you can see which one you most relate to and the pros and cons of each authoritarian rights highest value is virtue Pros everyone can pursue their own ideals cons me and my homies will determine what they are authoritarian left is equality Pros everyone shares equally in all the stuff cons there is no stuff libertarian left is compassion Pros what's mine is yours what's yours is mine and we can all love each other cons you hate your wife's boyfriend libertarian right is freedom Pros the rich get insanely rich the poor just die cons lastly the Cent's highest value is of course A5 wagu Pros All That Matters to him are beef and gas prices cons his whole world is currently in shambles in brief auright is if it ain't broke for me don't fix it lib left is friendly horny and broke lib right is temporarily embarrassed Millionaires and off left is everything would finally be perfect if we just got rid of that one [ __ ] up Jango block right at the bottom by using the quadrants it lets us see there's a lot more Nuance to someone's political opinion than just left or right for example to someone on the right everyone on the left seems the same but libertarian left will say you know communism sounds really nice everyone living as equals with each other working together in harmony with the environment I guess it just seems that while the theory is good the execution has been really bad then authoritarian left would say yeah but often necessary similarly to people on the left the right seems all the same but authoriz will say you know I get that people are different and can choose to live how they want to it's just the values of my culture are dying and all this chaos is taking over if people just Embrace how things were before they see it just works better than this and liite would say you're so right baby just unlock this video and it'll help cheer you up the authoritarian side of the compass also gets the libertarian side confused all the time mistaking both quadrants as woke but see if you can catch the subtle difference lib left says I treat people nicely because they're a human just like me with their own personality and preferences makes me sad that some people hate other people just because they don't act or look the way they think they should whereas Li bright just says yep customer's always right the libertarian side also confuses the authoritarian side both want to have top- down control of how things are run and how people behave but o right is much more straightforward if they don't like what you're doing they're going to hit you with a stick if o left doesn't like what you're doing they're going to convince everyone else that you have a stick in contrast if lib left's life isn't going so well they just adapt complain download hinge and wait for an inheritance whereas if lib wri's life isn't going so well they say no there is a way to fight the system which is of course a nasal strip buying an online marketing course and becoming a men's motivational speaker because an individual's beliefs radically shape how they relate to other people another way of understanding the compass is through how each views their ideal romantic relationship compared to how their relationships actually play out in reality o right's ideal relationship is the classic nuclear family nice house just outside of town stay at home wife good job couple of kids and a dog the relationship arright actually gets is their third failing marriage and fourth pair of tack glasses or they're a virgin in their early 20s with an anime girl as their ex- profile and their Main Hobbies using AI to generate anthropomorphic female fighter jets in either case they plan to fix their life with a one-way plane ticket to Thailand and become each other's customer o left's ideal relationship is with Hassan perer the relationship off left actually gets is with Hassan P's chair lib left's ideal relationship is an open marriage in a humble off-grid Cottage near a Scenic Mountainside where they grow their own food and make their own clothes for a small like-minded community this doesn't happen because lib left doesn't have the millions of dollars it requires for a Hollywood aesthetic hobby Farm lib right side do a relationship is being an 85-year-old billionaire with an arum of Instagram baddies on his mega yacht in Dubai haters will criticize such a transactional relationship but while Li wri knows that girls only like him for his money he knows they love him for his terminal heart condition the next thing you might be wondering is what about the inter intersections between the quadrants this is pretty simple because it's usually where the rubber actually meets the road in real life in Western countries lib left cares about the environment while off left likes federal laws forcing you to care about the environment Center left is what happens when you're on your third wated up paper straw the movie theater and you realize that maybe some sea turtles need to die so you can live well you might be thinking okay I'm sort of getting this Compass thing we are of course just scratching the surface because a two-dimensional Compass isn't enough to capture the full Nuance of a quadrant views and you have to introduce the third dimension which is if you're technologically Progressive or regressive for example the bottom center on the compass is classically libertarian believes in self-reliance saving money hard currency survivalism and only trusts non-mainstream media like Joe Rogan and the Kremlin if you take this political view and make it technologically Progressive you end up with a narot transhumanism the belief that man will merge with machine and transcend to a higher form of life exactly this is the Japanese trying to cope if you take the same intersection and make it technologically regressive you get an AR primitivism or return to monk which is the sentiment humans just aren't living how we're supposed to man while this is a bit of a self-report when anyone actually describes fishing hunting Gathering and doing arts and crafts in a tribe they think they're describing how life was as a caveman but they're actually just describing camping figuring out where to put yourself on the compass can still be difficult because even three dimensions is not enough to capture the complexity of beliefs the human mind is capable of which is why we must descend further to include your capacity to change your beliefs over time to avoid ever thinking you're wrong which means we have to go beyond the political polyhedron to the obvious Next Step the political tesser act this political tesser act cannot be pinned down to a single belief as it's always in a Quantum superposition of both support and rejection of any conceivable opinion until someone you don't like expresses their point of view and you're forced to disagree for this reason it's important to know the point of view of each quadrant for all the most talked about political questions so you can start filling up your debate repertoire for example if you asked each quadrant should we have more gun control off right says no o left says yes lib left says yes and lib right says yes I should have more control of guns how would you fix the economy o left would raise taxes o right would cut expenses lib left would unionize and lib right would say to another liite here's $100 slap me oh [ __ ] okay give it back and I'll kick you in the balls and everyone else would be like holy [ __ ] they just increased GDP by $200 pro-choice or Pro lifee alright says Pro life lib left says pro-choice lib right says on site and off left is checking their quotas when should someone be able to do hormone replacement therapy off left anyone with approval for a medical Authority can go on hormone replacement therapy at any time off right kid shouldn't be allowed to do HRT lib left I just don't want kids going through puberty knowing they wanted the body of a different gender lib right I just don't want kids going through puberty what do you think about Free Speech lib Wright says no one should be punished for voicing their opinion lib left's Community note points out how other people treat you for your opinion is part of their freedom of speech auright revokes your blue check mark for violating the terms of service and off left has taken down your post for spreading harmful misinformation the Centrist then walks into the room and says you you better take your medication Elon you're arguing with yourself again you might look at the political compass and think man it's crazy that people believe in so many stupid ideologies when there's really only one that's actually correct which is why before you wage war in the comment section you need to know the ultimate trap card of each quadrant to make sure you don't fall into an unwinable argument and instead probe at their weakness to appear more correct lib left's trap card is the moral High Ground their weakness is how's your relationship with your parents off left's trap card is pretending to be lib left their weakness is trigger words like America is a decent country or mazeltov lib wri's trap card is the success of free market capitalism their weakness is how much tax have you paid in capital gains authorid trap card is their collection of cherry-picked crime statistics their weakness is undermining their credibility with questions like dinosaurs were they real or just the shape of nuggets this scares off right because they know what you're going to ask the shape of next all right you should be well prepared to go into battle if this video offended you just remember there's nothing you can do about it because YouTube removed dislikes ages ago if you try to leave a negative comment you will face the full Wrath of my terms and conditions only positive feedback will get a cute heart and most importantly this video is brought to you by S as an American you might be thinking with what's going on in my country I really want to move to Canada but being unable to read Celsius or the metric system communication would of course be impossible and there'd be no way for you to get a local SIM card for your phone what can you do about it well with s you can download an eim onto your phone giving you data coverage in over 180 different countries meaning you can significantly reduce or entirely eliminate roaming fees and you can get a global or Regional plan if you plan on visiting multiple countries this is especially 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