It promises to “discover your position in the political landscape for the 2009 European Parliament Elections.” It is Eu Profiler. My result puts me far to the left, and sitting on the fence about all things European (picture is me in the Portuguese “landscape”). The party in Europe I am closest to is the Piratpartiet of Sweden. And by reading their program online it seems a pretty nice match.
There is something unseemly about this survey. I makes political choices into an algorithm, of separable questions with individual weights. It makes party positions into discrete data points on a Cartesian axis. History personal and national is forgotten for the sake of the program. Charisma, trust, and imagination are not the axis. All that is exciting and humane about politics is expelled.
I won’t follow the advice and emigrate to Sweden to cast my vote. I doubt anyone will. Disciplinary projects like this, that want to shape reason and emotion are common. But their coming to existence doesn’t mean they are effective.
