Following up on my post about “the real libertarian,” I asked folks over at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen to provide me with some data. If you don’t read the League, so haven’t seen this request, I’m repeating it here. Please take this quiz, and report 1) your results (the coordinates it gives in “departures” from freedom and order) and 2) your own ideological self-identification (irrespective of what the quiz says).
Either email me the results at jhanley{{at-symbol}}adrian.edu or post them in the comments.
Of course if you already did this for me through my League post, please do not do so again. (I probably don’t need to say that to anyone here, but it’s a methodological CYA).
Thanks. I’ll let you know the results and just what question I’m looking at when I get the data put in order.
I consider myself a strong liberal. The test basically confirmed my self-identification. I scored Order: 2 Equality: 8.
I haven’t managed to alienate all my liberal readers? I guess I’ll have to work harder.
Thanks, CL!
Order 5, Equality 9
And your self-identity? (I think I know, but methodological propriety requires that I let you state it without prompting.)
Not me, James! I always look forward to your insightful commentary. I find you to be generally reality-based rather than ideologically driven, which is quite refreshing in anything to do with politics.
Out of curiosity, where do you score on the test?
When I took the test before I came out at 1, 3.
I just retook it and came out a 0, 2.
I guess I change my mind on some issues since last November. ;)
I’m a 1,1. I self-identify as libertarian.
Overall I think the test uses a reasonable set of measures. But I do quibble with both of my 1′s. One of them came from favoring legal gay marriage. I don’t see how that sacrifices freedom at the expense of equality; I would say it enhances both. The other came from self-identifying as pro-life. Again, I don’t see how that sacrifices freedom at the expense of order. I simply see it as trying to maximize freedom between two or more parties.
Thanks, AMW.
Order 2, Equality 7
One annoyance is the lack of any axis for purely pragmatic roles for government (e.g. infrastructure.) It’s not clear where they would fit on the usual definitions on any of the axes.
Lumbercartel (love that name!),
How do you self-identify?
Order 2; Equality 9. I self-identify as “liberal” (with major qualifications, caveats, and “on the other hand”‘s).
Oops:
A cautiously (in the sense of “conservative” outside of politics) pragmaticly humanitarian leaning heavily towards civil libertarian.
James Hanley,
I’m Order 0, Equality 3 but I may have clicked one choice accidentally but I’m sure it only would have affected my Equality score not my order score. So I may have been an Order 0, Equality 2.
I don’t much worry about living in a society ordered by government.
I, as you well know by now, self-identify as libertarian.
The quiz did seem to be a bit binary but, as was pointed out in the previous thread, it probably wasn’t designed to give a great amount of gradation.
AMW,
I am also a bit dubious about my smiley face being shifted towards liberal by answering certain questions. Such as;
“Has your family benefited from government assistance?” I said yes, since I have taken unemployment and benefited from other government programs. Was I supposed to tough it out and not take money that was available to me in the name of preserving my ideological purity? I’m a libertarian not a chump.
And like you, I answered that same sex couples should have the same marriage rights as heterosexuals. How does that move me away form the “freedom” corner?
My third Equality point may have come from saying that I favor life imprisonment without parole over the death penalty. Again how does this choice move me away from the shining purity of the “freedom” corner?
While I am pro-choice, I agree that marking pro-life shouldn’t necessarily pop a “1″ into the order category.
Self identify as liberal. Order 1, equality 6. Not sure about the ‘should do more’ or ‘should do less’ types of questions as they seem to imply that where we are right now is somehow neutral in some universal sense.
I agree with Lance that abortion isn’t necessarily a good measure (and that in general, using it to call out “hypocrisy” and the like is silly). Most abortion-related reasoning depends 100% on when you think a “person” comes into existence, not really on some other philosophical framework. I find that if you allow people their assumptions about personhood, their abortion-related political positions tend to be totally reasonable and consistent.
Thanks all,
In response to the issue about shifting on “freedom” in an answer about abortion, I wonder if the problem really isn’t just that the axis isn’t well named. If there’s an internal coherence among the questions, so that those who choose a particular direction in the answer to one question are more likely than not to choose the same direction on the other questions, then there’ll be internally consistent movement along that axis regardless of what we call it, no?
Overall, being based on only twenty questions, I would say that the quiz worked pretty well to identify my ideological profile. At least as a rough approximation.
Since you are named you may want to take a look at this
http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2012/04/25/michigan-college-invites-pat-boone-for-commencement/
How many of us don’t have a parent or grandparent who has received Social Security? (Not to mention my father’s GI Bill, public schooling for ancestors as far back as I can trace, etc.)
Good point lumbercartel, what someones family have done doesn’t strike me as a good proxy for their views. On the other hand if the authors of the quiz know that answering yes on that question is strongly correlated with supporting government assistance they may be justified in using it as an indicator at least on a population level.
Matty,
Thanks. Ed told me he was going to write about it, but I hadn’t seen it yet.
Order 2, Equality 2. Identify as a libertarian.
Thank you, Todd.
Late to the party, but I got Order 1, Equality 7. I self-identify as a liberal, with exceptions.