Looks like I'm in the center-right
Just for yucks, I took the World's Smallest Political Quiz, just to see where I fell:
Not surprisingly, I fell on the centrist-conservative line. More surprisingly, my score wasn't as close to the libertarian range as I thought it would be. I never thought I leaned towards the statist side...
Oh, well, it's just a silly Internet test. I think my results on the Political Compass had me pegged better. Maybe I'll post the results sometime...
Not surprisingly, I fell on the centrist-conservative line. More surprisingly, my score wasn't as close to the libertarian range as I thought it would be. I never thought I leaned towards the statist side...
Oh, well, it's just a silly Internet test. I think my results on the Political Compass had me pegged better. Maybe I'll post the results sometime...
Good golly miss molly this one got me WRONG!! Had me pegged as half way between liberal & statist!!!
ReplyDeleteI'm centrist/conservative (fiscally central, socially conservative)
Hello? LIBERAL??????????)
Yikes! Ok, so I've been called worse, but geesh!
Apparently I'm a left leaning libertarian. I can't say that I'm all that surprised. Actually, Orac, I'm surprised that it didn't find that you leaned a little further to the left despite your professed political allegiances.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I just did the other quiz that you note in your original post and again I'm a left leaning libertarian.
ReplyDeleteA leftist libertarian? It's a hard concept for me to wrap my brain around. How does one reconcile the left's belief in the government as a means of providing a social safety net and safeguarding rights with the libertarian's belief in self-reliance and the minimal government possible?
ReplyDeleteOrac,
ReplyDeleteThe Murray Bookchin Reader is a good book that discusses different issues from a leftist libertarian perspective. However, if one was to ask me to sum up my political views in three or four sentences, I would say something to the effect of:
I personally think that the primary role of government should be to administer social welfare programs and provide us with services like education and healthcare. Now I can understand that there needs to be some control to ensure some semblance of order but that said I think that the government should only step in to prevent egregious crime and not act as a social engineer.
I guess that kind of view gets counted as leftist libertarian.
Actually given how few questions there are on the quiz, I could just list my answers for you:
ReplyDeleteGovernment should not censor speech, press, media or Internet: Agree
Military service should be voluntary. There should be no draft: Agree
There should be no laws regarding sex for consenting adults: Agree
Repeal laws prohibiting adult possession and use of drugs: Agree
There should be no National ID card: Agree
End "corporate welfare." No government handouts to business: Agree
End government barriers to international free trade: Maybe
Let people control their own retirement; privatize Social Security: Maybe
Replace government welfare with private charity: Disagree
Cut taxes and government spending by 50% or more: Maybe
I find myself broadly agreeing with CPvSS, and liberal-libertarian is pretty much how I would describe myself. In fact, it was only a few years ago that I came across the concept of equating conservatism with libertarianism, and that came as quite a surprise. In the UK at least conservatism is strongly associated with 'strong' law and order policies (statist control, especially with regard to areas such as sex, drugs, lifestyles and so on) and with strong foreign policy; any 'libertarianism' is restricted to free trade, minimizing the restrains under which business operates and so on. Conservatism is also associated with cutting spending on public services, but also with high expenditre on the military etc (and if that's not statist, what is?)...
ReplyDelete