From my experience most “progressives” who take the “political compass” testhttp://www.politicalcompass.orgare almost always “social libertarians” – a concept singularly unrepresented in any party in the US or abroad. That's because the "concept" is basically pompous rhetoric propping up mindless selfishness.You haven't taken the test, eh?
"Social libertarian" may not be the term used by that organization, but I think what is meant here is those of us who fall into the lower left quadrant on its graph:
The group that developed it is not composed of USAmericans; they are Brits, and they use political lingo as it is used in the rest of the world, not the US.
"Liberal" doesn't mean, in the rest of the world, what it means in the US; in fact, I've never really been able to figure out what it does mean in the US these days, I just recall it as meaning what Phil Ochs and I knew it meant back when, and what it meant was pretty much wishy-washy self-congratulatory skin-deep support of progressive causes as long as they weren't really contrary to self-interest.
As well, "progressive" still means something in the rest of the world, where it is losing all meaning in the US. My understanding of "progressive", dating from my early political involvement, in the 60s, is that it refers to what is also called the "non-aligned left", and in particular to people and groups that work to advance the interests of what is called, in Eurospeak, "popular" groups (i.e.
of the people: women, people of colour and other minorities, workers, immigrants, the oppressed and exploited in other places in the world, the poor and unemployed and marginalized) -- people and groups who may not be engaged in party politics, but are
political.
Myself, I fall very far toward the lower left-hand corner of that graph (where each axis goes from -10 at the left/bottom to 10 at the top/right, with 0 in the middle):
Economic Left/Right: -8.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.03
at last count. I value both individual authority over decisions about personal matters and collective authority over decisions about matters that affect the society and other members of it, e.g. economic policy.
Famous people whose policies/values have been analyzed look like this:
(This helps to explain why it is hard for a "liberal" or "progressive" -- or a "libertarian leftist" or "social democrat" -- to support some national liberation movements, e.g.: their leaders and ideology are more similar to Hitler's than Gandhi's when it comes to personal freedom, even though they are, at least in theory, poles apart from Bush when it comes to economic justice.)
-- no "neo-liberal" leader analyzed follows Milton Friedman onto the "libertarian" end of the scale on the personal-freedom axis. Note that "neo-liberal" is used to describe what is called "conservative" in the US.
We're not allergic to liberals--we ARE liberals. What the far left embodies is no more liberal than it is mint-flavored.Social democrats are in the lower left quadrant. Where does this "far left" fall? Hard to say. It's not like they actually articulate values or even policies very often, on matters that matter, such as are considered in the political compass analysis.
The lower left quadrant takes in people who propose that same-sex marriage be treated in exactly the same way as any other marriage and that reproductive choices be left to individuals, and who also advocate universal access to health care, through collective responsibility for the costs, and varying degrees of economic regulation and public control of resources (depending on where they fall in the quadrant).
"Libertarian", in this context, refers to values and policies relating to individuals' personal choices. "Left" refers to values and policies relating to economic activity and resources.
I would most certainly not be a "libertarian" as that term is used in the US, and I would be insulted to be called that. Of course, I am also insulted to be called a "liberal", although someone in the US who called me that might be meaning something I might not object to; I can just never tell. But I do know that what I am (which is somewhat represented by the New Democratic Party of Canada) really is unrepresented in the official line / electoral activities of the Democratic Party.