My issues with labels are two fold.
Firstly, anyone whose political opinions are so regimented, standardized and predictable that a single word can completely described them are, in my view, political sheep. Their views lack the critical depth, clarity, flexibility and adherence to the nuances and complexities of the real world that separates pure, mouth-breathing ideologues from genuine political thinkers. Fortunately, however, few people exist, because we are not talking about political automatons (for the most part), we're talking about people. Human beings. With their own lives, perspectives and opinions. A card carrying ALP member, for example, may not agree one bit with the current Australian government's attempts to try and defuse the singularly embarrassing and depressing asylum seeker debate via the Malaysia process, just because they are a card carrying ALP member. Likewise, there are plenty of born-and-bred GOP (Republicans for the rest of you) members who would never think of voting blue (or anything other than red) once in their lives, but have deep reservations about the social lunacy of the extreme social right of the GOP. So these labels such as liberal, conservative, left-wing, right-wing, start to lose meaning when the positions they refer to become vague. "Oh yeah, he's a liberal" - what does that even mean? What positions does he hold that makes him a liberal? If - well, when - he disagrees with some of those, do we call him 80% liberal, 10% conservative and 10% green? What?
Number two. More important. I've seen, so, so, so often, labels used as a byword for good/bad. Think guilt-by-association, or, erm, glory-by-association. A self-description of "libertarian" does not often mean "adherence to a political policy emphasizing limited (but not zero) government interference or control in all facets of a society and economy", but rather a tag to big up oneself by associating with the intellectual-highbrow school of libertarianism. A nice crutch for many far-right social conservatives seeking to show off their intellectual values whilst completely ignoring the "society" aspect, and hence appeal to the often genuinely libertarian centre. (not to mention that libertarians, generally speaking, show something approaching a social conscience. Being against public funding of hospitals is one matter. Advocating the refusal of treatment on financial grounds...).
The result is that many of these basic labels become, in the words of one poster on one forum I no longer frequent, anti-words. They actively obstruct meaning, and are often used as blunt instruments with purposes far beyond and far more insidious than merely summing up one's political views.
Which brings me to the original point of this post (I assure you, it had one!) - the Political Compass. For, oh I don't know, six years? now, I've regularly performed the test on the Political Compass website, to see how my views shifted. The test is available here:
http://www.politicalcompass.org/
What I like about it is that as a simplification tool, it works so well. It treats your views on the two fundamental scales - social and economic. It formulates your overall position based on your opinion to specific questions, and on specific issues, which is the only true way to gauge someone's opinion. It doesn't allow you to sit on the fence, it makes you think. Most of all, by giving it a weighted numerical scale, it avoids the whole vagueness and misinterpretation issue that a simple "left/right" label will end up, without immense qualification ("centre left-leaning social libertarian" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue).
And my latest result is (x-axis is the economic scale, y-axis is the, erm, state-control or social scale):
Yes, I'm surprised too. This is the first time I've been right-of-centre economically, just left-of-centre (although I have been shifting that way for a while). Just goes to show that you can't pigeonhole people's opinions when your own are constantly shifting.
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