I cannot fix that with a single web page, of course. But, just to point you in the right direction, I present this little graph from a survey I took one morning in late May of 2009. There were a number of questions requiring an answer ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. When I had completed the set this graph popped up for the five areas they were measuring: my reaction to harm to others, my notion of the importance of fairness in a system, my beliefs about the importance of loyalty (even when some other harm had been done), my relative respect for authority, and, I guess, some kind of "smell test" for "purity" (things that disgust or my reaction to something "foreign").
The graph shows three bars for each area. Self-described liberals are shown in blue, self-described conservatives are shown in red, and I am shown in green.
Allow me to interpret the results.
Harming others unfairly or stupidly: I hate bullies. One of the questions in the survey asked about my reaction to somebody being cruel to an animal pointlessly. Just that one question provides the insight you need on this question for me: cruelty and bullying make me so angry I can hardly see straight. Nothing gets my blood boiling faster than the idea of somebody senselessly hurting an innocent animal or a child. I understand all living things die, and some will die for my dinner tonight. I grew up in farm country, after all, and I know it is tough business living at the top of the food chain. But, and this is important, there is a difference between a farmer caring for his cattle or chickens before slaughter and a kid torturing his neighbors dog. When it is the strong victimizing the weak it is obviously wrong (at least to me) and usually indicates a level of cowardice--not on the victim's part--but on the part of the bully.
Political tie in: State-sponsored cruelty, expressly forbidden in the US Constitution, has become fashionable of late. It is a great sorrow to me that such things have made us all look like bullies and cowards.
Fairness: How important is it in everyday life that the rules are the same for everyone? Is it OK for the well-connected and important get a break when the average Joe does not? When is justice too inconvenient? Based on the survey results I'm guessing my tolerance for inconvenience in this area is stronger than most others. I believe software engineers in particular are predisposed to believe that the world should be a meritocracy. Stupid, I know, but we all have our failings.
Political tie in: When people in the Clinton administration were thought to have committed crimes there was a dogged and unrelenting series of investigations. When Bush administration officials have admitted, publicly, on national television, that they have committed crimes, there is an unexplainable timidity among those most able to seek justice and truth about the matter. As a poor and hard-working sob, I can't help but feel disappointed that the rich and well-connected continue to defy the laws of my country with impunity.
Loyalty: As the bumper sticker (or .sig) says, "Friends help you move; real friends help you move the body." Sure, funny, and it helps me make my point. I'm not your guy for that. Should you be loyal to your friends or family, even if they've done something horrible? Nope. Loyalty is overrated. I find it offensive that the people who most preach Personal Responsibility are also the ones most likely to believe that loyalty to ones friends or family is more important than justice and their own honor. I will stand by friends, family, community, employer, country so that they may face the consequences of their actions but I'm not the sort of guy who volunteers to be an "accessory after the fact", or before it, for that matter. We tell kids not to give into peer pressure. Time for some adults to take their own advice.
Political tie in: I'll leave this as an exercise for the reader.
Authority: Do I respect authority? Would I do what I'm told, even if I know it is wrong? I respect the need for authority and am thankful when it is exercised properly. But, I feel no compunction to pretend an authority figure is acting properly when they are not, or they are effective leaders if they are not.
Political tie in: Too obvious to waste bits.
Purity: This was an interesting one. Are there things that just should not be allowed! The questions were really aimed, IMHO, at determining when that reptilian part of your brain, that primitive core, is repulsed. Something dead stinking-up the place? That probably gets (most) everybody. But, how about somebody wearing a dirty shirt to a social occasion? A burp? Flatulence? Dirty feet? A naughty word? Where do you draw the line?
The rejection or repulsion of things foreign is an interesting area of inquiry. This was the area I was most unlike the others (being ridiculously tolerant, if you believe the graph). Maybe because I am very tall, 6 foot 8 inches to be precise. I'm well off the charts from a standard deviation point-of-view. So, I'm the foreigner in most situations. My answers are probably a quiet appeal for tolerance of my monstrous and abominable presence if I quietly accept whatever unnaturalness you exude. Maybe because I have felt like an outsider most of my life for one reason or another that I have a "live and let live" philosophy. Or, maybe because I see my own faults all too clearly that I'm unable or unwilling to call others on their short-comings.
The graph does get one thing really right: it is very difficult to "gross me out!" I find that one attribute very helpful in this day and age!
Take a quiz yourself at http://www.yourmorals.org