Hey guys. Politics are crazy right?

You can probably tell that this post is going to be around political ideologies. I’m going to be honest, prior to this unit I had been doing a lot of research into political ideologies and geopolitics so I feel pretty acquainted with these topics (I got a perfect score on our intro quiz). Sorry for the subtle flex but this kinda stuff is my definitely my thing.

When we started studying this area, we began with the opening question of “what is a political ideology?”.

We spent about four days on lectures and note taking. We discussed what an ideology is, as well as the attributes of different political ideologies. During these lectures we were asked to take notes using one of five specific note taking styles.

I chose the mind map style and I have to say, in my opinion, it’s surprisingly better than the others. I found it made my notes immensely easier to study and much more engaging to write. I’m definitely going to use this style for future note taking. Here is an example of my mind map:

After we took a look at what ideologies are, we had to take a step back and figure out where each of us fit into them. To help us with answering this bold question, we took a Political Compass Quiz. In case you don’t know what a political compass is, it’s a two dimensional graph with your social stance on the Y axis and your economic stance on the X axis. Here’s where I landed:

If I’m being truthful, its placement wasn’t a big surprise to me. As I previously mentioned, I have done a lot of research into politics. During this research, I came across a movement called Libertarianism. This movement advocates for individual rights as well as a free market economy. I found I really identified with the ideas behind the movement. If you want to read more about what Libertarianism, please go here.

Even though there are plenty of sources that can help people understand politics and the values or perspectives of politicians, I feel like not enough people take advantage of them to better understand them.

Below I created a simple political compass that shows the political stand point or positioning, if you will, of past and present politicians. This can help people understand which politicians fit best with their political views. To create this political compass, I researched different politicians and their positions on different topics. I then placed them within the graph.

I found this really, really interesting because before I made the compass, I had no idea how similar some politicians were and how different others were. I also began to think about if the earlier politicians influenced the ones that came later or if the more recent ones would be surprised, maybe even shocked, to see how closely they aligned with some politicians from the past.

So far I’m finding this unit really interesting. I appreciated learning about different ways to take notes and how it fit well into the work we did with this unit. I didn’t realize how many  political “ism’s” there were and how much choice people have in deciding where their political ideas will fall. I’m really looking forward to the rest of this unit.

Until next time friend, tootles!