I can generally tell who I am talking to by how they peg me. If I am called a right-winger, I know that I have someone on the line who self-identifies as a left-liberal. Same thing the other way. Problem is, it doesn't work. I'm neither left nor right. I'm a libertarian.
David Nolan, founder of the Libertarian Party, recognized this shortcoming in the left-right political spectrum and devised what is often referred to as the Nolan Chart. Rather than being a linear device, it is diamond shaped. It includes the traditional "left-liberal" and "right-conservative", but adds "centrist", "libertarian" and "statist".
Adding these three designations makes the identification process imminently more useful. Consider: Using the old left-right spectrum, would you call Hitler a left-winger or a right-winger? Given only those two choices, I would answer, "Yes". Hitler was obviously an authoritarian statist.
The Advocates for Smaller Government host "the World's Smallest Political Quiz". I plot libertarian, but to the left side of the libertarian designation, 100-90.
Take the quiz and see if the left-right approach hasn't in fact let you down in terms of your own self-identification.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Mark Edward Manning
I came out as a Libertarian. (My Personal issues Score is 60%.
My Economic issues Score is 90%.)
2 - bhw
Shocker: Left-Liberal
Left-Liberals generally embrace freedom of choice in personal matters, but support central decision-making in economics. They want the government to help the disadvantaged in the name of fairness. Liberals tend to tolerate social diversity, but work for what they might describe as "economic equality."
[I don't necessarily agree with the economic equality part. I'd say equal access to economic stability.]
Your Personal issues Score is 100%.
Your Economic issues Score is 20%.
Libertarian 34.89 %
Left-liberal 18.76 %
Centrist 30.22 %
Right-Conservative 7.50 %
Statist 8.63 %
3 - Andrew Ian Dodge
I come out as a hard-libertarian naturally.
Your Personal issues Score is 100%.
Your Economic issues Score is 100%.
4 - bhw
Another quiz out there is The Political Compass. It's quite a bit longer than the quiz you posted, Mike, but I like it because it gives you two scores:
Economic Left/Right
Authoritarian/Libertarian
It doesn't then sort you into a political category, though.
The intersting thing about my score on the quiz mentioned in this post is that my left-liberal score is only 18%, yet that's my political label. I'm 65% centrist/libertarian, but my three answers of "disagree" on the economics side earn me the left-liberal label.
Interesting to think about....
5 - Hal Pawluk
The page tells me I'm a "Centrist" but this seems a very simplistic quiz.
Entertaining approach, though.
6 - Vic
Hal,
I am stunned to discover that we both came out with the same label.
Go figure.
Vic
7 - boomcrashbaby
My score is the same as bhw's. Left-liberal, 100/20.
Mike, if this is in reference to me referring to you as 'the right', I didn't mean right-winger. I don't see you as that. I was just dividing things into left/right for that statement. Didn't mean it as offense.
If you go to that diamond (results chart), and draw a line down the middle, you will see that on the left side is the definition of left (liberal) and on the right side is the definition of conservative, and you are just one square over on the right side. I do interpret you as being on the right side of the spectrum, but I don't define that WHOLE side of the spectrum as bad, so hopefully it wasn't interpreted that way.
Several questions the quiz posed, I felt didn't give enough info to vote on (example 'privatize social security' can be mandatory, can be choosing to opt out of social security, etc.) and in those instances that I felt were vague or incomplete in making a decision, I went ahead and leaned left.
8 - Big Time Patriot
Most surprisingly I came out as "left-liberal" :-) .
I agree that the way right and left issues are divided up currently seems VERY artificial. In particular I don't get how people who feel anti-abortion on moral grounds wouldn't also see the pain that unfettered capitalism can unleash on the average American. (Pop Quiz: was the Great Depression caused by OVER-regulation?) Somehow if Jesus was around today I don't see him as a CEO. And is welfare in "principle" an anti-religious idea? There could well be arguments about it's "practice" but it seems that part of the conservative viewpoint is that "welfare" is just plain evil all around. That doesn't seem to me to coincide with a Christian viewpoint, but these different issues all get lumped together. Strange.
9 - Vic
I can't discuss welfare without being branded a racist, so I will defer from commenting since I just don't want to deal with it.
Vic
10 - Hal Pawluk
I said it was entertaining, Vic :-)
11 - Big Time Patriot
I wasn't really trying to start a discussion of being anti-welfare OR anti-abortion, I am most interested in those who are anti-welfare AND anti-abortion.
I don't see how being "pro-life" somehow doesn't translate into being for thinking that people deserve a "minimum standard of living" as a matter of human decency. Making sure every fetus comes to term and then trying to cut support systems for the poorest ones after they are born just doesn't hang together for me.
I just use it as an example of how to seemingly unrelated issues get lumped into "right-wing". Another example is how "conservatives" seem now to be against "conservation". Many conservatives used to be FOR preserving the environment, but now it is not part of the "mainstream conservative" viewpoint. (This whole discussion is about the generalities of labels and movements, I'm quite aware each individual is just that, individual in their beliefs).
12 - Vic
Yeah, I caught that detail Hal. :-)
Vic
13 - Matt Egan
Big Tim Patriot---excellent point. I never understand how people on the far right reconcile being against abortion and welfare at the same time. You cna't have it both ways. For me, I am pro-choice, and I believe in welfare, although with reformations from its current status, that include, but are not limited to, more money spent on getting welfare recipients back into the workforce, educated etc. No more generations of families on welfare.
14 - Mike Kole
First, let me say that I am in favor of reproductive rights, and the right of a woman to have an abortion.
However, I am against having to pay for her abortion in the same way as I am against having to pay for welfare programs. You make your choices in life, including sexual intercourse, so you pay for the result, whether that result is one's choice to abort or to bring the baby into the world.
I do make an exception for rape, which as a first choice, should be paid for by the assailant, and as a last resort, could be state-funded.
This is distinct from the right-conservative view that abortion is simply wrong and not the right of a woman in any case.
15 - Matt Egan
Mike--agreed. Abortion should not be paid for out of tax dollars. Maybe in case of rape, as a last resort, as you point out. There should be little debate about the government paying for abortions. Its not their place.
I am continually amazed at the hypocrisy of the far right. They want less government, less taxes etc., but they love to legislate morality, and whatever else can be culled from the Bible. You can't have it both ways. I kind of went down this road in my Howard Stern article a couple of days ago.
16 - bhw
So abortion should be available only to those who can afford it? Did it occur to you that the people who can't afford an abortion are the same people who can't afford the obstetrical medical care required to bring a healthy child into the world? Pregnancy is a medical condition. If insurance companies pay for obstetrical care, they should pay for abortion. Ditto our medicaid program.
In an ideal world, women wouldn't get pregnant when they don't want to. But even with the best of birth control methods -- including the pill -- accidental pregnancies happen. Pregnant women who are uninsured and/or can't afford to pay for their medical care -- whether they choose abortion or birth -- should not be treated differently from people with other medical conditions.
17 - Mac Diva
All the no government funds for abortions stance does is set some children up for lives of poverty and, often, abuse. The child is born because the woman does not have the few hundred dollars for an abortion. She also doesn't have the thousands it takes to rear a child. So a baby, likely low birth weight and maybe drug-effected, is brought to a dwelling that does not me housing standards or is crowded. Increasingly, the woman is homeless. While the pathologies that impact the vulnerable set in to destroy both lives, smug people proudly pat themselves on the back for not allowing the government to pay for an abortion. There is something wrong with this picture.
18 - Mac Diva
Typo: meet for 'me.'
I can't think of the word I'm looking for to describe the emotion behind the attitude that forcing women to give birth because they are poor is something to pat one's self on the back in regard to. The word is German. It means taking pleasure in someone else's suffering.
19 - bhw
schadenfreude?
20 - bhw
Me, I love it when men decide that they don't want to pay for a medical condition that only women can have. Must be nice to sit on that perch and decide other people's medical options.
I think I've decided that I don't want my insurance company to pay for prostate surgery of any kind. If men took better care of themselves, they wouldn't have prostate problems. So why should I pay for their surgery?
21 - Lono
The government that governs least, governs best
- Henry David Thoreau
22 - Mac Diva
Bingo, Bhw! It it is too bad I can't add you to the references on my PDA.
Lono, it is not clear whether Thoreau originated that phrase, though he is sometimes cited for it. (As are Jefferson and Paine, among others.) I'm not at all sure that the proposition is true, either. Least government could be chaos or the complete abuse of everyone else by the powerful.
23 - Vic
Me, I love it when men decide that they don't want to pay for a medical condition that only women can have.
See, now that's funny, what I love is when men decide to have sex with a woman, get her pregnant, and then decide she's on her own.
Vic
24 - Mike Kole
Oh, that's right. I rejoice in the misery of others. I forgot about that.
The government doesn't pay for anything, as you well know, Diva and bhw. In the case of paying for abortions or any other medical procedure, the government is a tool for extracting money from a pool of people and directing it to individuals. This takes place whether or not the people the money is taken from support this.
Smug liberals pat themselves on the back for correctly preventing this process being used to benefit businesses. Why is there such a huge blindspot on the same process as bad decision-making on the part of individuals?
Individuals who protest having their money taken from them in this way are not causing the impoverishment of someone else, though they may well be acting to prevent their own impoverishment. The person who chooses to have sex when the possibility exists that they could become pregnant *and* they have no ability to pay for that possible outcome *is* choosing their own possible impoverishment. Take off the blinders and assign responsibility correctly!
And for the record, the man who has sex with a woman and impregnates her, accepts all the same responsibilities I have outlined above. All of them.
25 - Eric Olsen
Hey Mike, in the interest of fairness, you should also present the world's largest political quiz.