This is partially inspired by a conversation on Labour List, the premier British Left of Centre blog, where a version of the Political Compass Test was taken by several diverse commenters.
Now most people who visit the political blogosphere know the parameters of that test: authoritarian/libertarian, socially interventionist/economically interventionist. Like Myers-Briggs, these are static and almost self fulfilling quadrants which test how much you believe in individual freedom versus social responsibility, whether in crime, foreign affairs, the economy, gun ownership or reproductive rights. We all know the tests, and probably where we come out in them.
I think that the events of the last three years make that compass profoundly irrelevant, an old paradigm which can only provide a direction in an outdated map. Follow me below the fold while I suggest that the old metrics no longer apply and we are in a new world looking for new bearings.