The 3-Line Quiz
I created a political quiz to correct the inadequacies I saw in both the
one-dimensional (left-right) and two-dimensional (Nolan/Libertarian) political models. It is not as simple as the left-right
model, or as neat and seemingly tidy as the Nolan chart, but I feel it places a more correct emphasis on the right issues
while still giving most of the same information as the Nolan Chart. It has 3 lines, but it it is NOT three-dimensional:
it operates in two dimensions. It does not plot a point on a graph. Instead, a person has three distinct scores
(one per line, obviously) and each one reveals a different aspect of that person. Since it's
not a graph, I call each one a line instead of an axis.
[This is boring; please skip me straight to the quiz.]
It draws on European political history, especially the the last three centuries or so. I'm still
trying to figure out if that stops at cultural insult or if it will noticeably impact the test results for non-European
testers. I suspect it will be as accurate with Western and non-Western people, but I don't know how much that will be.
The left-right spectrum is a failure for two big reasons: it does not divide politics specifically, and fails to account
for authoritarians and libertarians. The Nolan Chart fails on certain issues such as affirmative action, college speech
codes and gun control, which are largely social issues but disrupt the social axis of the chart. It is also very
difficult to divide social and economic rights, which of course is sort of the larger point behind libertarianism.
So the chart I made does not divide the issues up as neatly, but still groups them together in such
a way as to distinguish between political perspectives.
The three lines should be apparent, and each one has a direct
opposite (conveniently, the colors are also opposite)
I pulled the terms liberal and radical from their 17th and 18th
century usage. Radical means essentially a democrat, supporting social equality. Liberal might make more sense
as a term conveying a moderate libertarian direction focusing on human freedom including free markets. Capitalist and
socialist should be fairly clear despite the constant ongoing struggle over the terms. Capitalist means laissez-faire,
markets, profit, private property, and investment capital. Socialist means opposition to laissez-faire markets, planned
economy, economic equity, and perhaps even abolition of markets, profit, wealth and private property. Conservative means
supporting social hierarchy, the opposite of social equality, and the structures and institutions that sometimes may entail.
Populist means supporting community sovereignty rather than the individual autonomy of liberalism.
The way the test works is you take a quiz for each line and then see whether you're a liberal
capitalist or a radical socialist or populist conservative or whatever other combination. If you get a moderate on any
one or two of the lines then your final ideological label will be the one or two line where you didn't get a moderate score.
If you get moderate for all three lines then you simply scored as a moderate. Most people won't get an ideological score
on all three lines, but it certainly does exist.
Confusing the liberal, radical and conservative categories on this test with their more
mainstream definitions could be troublesome, so be sure to leave that at the door.
For each line I tried to explain the specific levels and rankings.
Since the radical to conservative line is primarily about the
worth of people and their relations to each other, it manifests most prominently in the form of government chosen. Two
things for this line: Democrat and Republican refer to government, not the US political parties, and disregard the larger
economic roles of these governmental systems. Because a democracy, especially a direct democracy, asserts that people
are equal in opinion and perspective it is the most extreme. Republican is still representative but less forthright
about people being so powerful a force, and usually balances the will of the people just as it balances the powers of the
government branches. A moderate might see it all pragmatically and not really come to a conclusion that democracy or
social equality is especially better than the alternatives. Feudalism means, essentially, that some people are smarter
or better by birthright, race, sex or some other reason, and thus have a right to institutional, structural or social
power greater than others. This might manifest in a clergy or aristocracy. For the purposes of this line feudalist
does not have to literally mean the system of feudal or manorial economics, but rather a system of social castes, inequality
and even aristrocracy like medieval Europe, old Japan, or even the antebellum American South. Autocrat is more
or less dictatorship with strict levels and hierarchy and control isolated to a certain group or race or political party.
The liberal line is essentially a continuum between societal
or communal authority and individual autonomy or independence. At the top, an anarchist is not there in the strict sense
of one who opposes government, but in the more Enlightenment sense of one opposing coercion or coercive institutions.
It does not have to mean abolition of government, although certainly at the top it could mean that. Below that libertarian
does not have to be as extreme as the US libertarian movement can be, and it does not have to be strictly capitalist to enter
the lower portions of the libertarian element. Getting a score above moderate in the liberal section means supporting
individual rights and opposing government powers, especially those dangerous, unnecessary or violating individual rights.
Scoring below the line means siding with the right of the community on a number of issues to legislate standards for drug
use, gun ownership, and so forth. One does not have to oppose democratic institutions to score an authoritarian or even
fascist here, since this line asks what the government does and when it allows individual autonomy, not how the government
is formed or how decisions are made. A government could theoretically be completely undemocratic and libertarian or
completely democratic and authoritarian, since the lines are measuring different things here. Getting extreme opposite
scores between the Radical-Conservative and Liberal-Populist lines is not possible, but more moderately opposite scores is
entirely plausible.
This line should be relatively clear. An anarcho-capitalist
is again like the anarchist rating on the liberal line: it means a more idealistic lack of coercion rather than chaos and
lack of government. An anarcho-capitalist thinks that free, voluntary commercial interactions should be unhindered except
in a few circumstances (like physical violence or fraud), while a free marketeer is essentially just a supporter of private
property and the market but not to such an ideological extent. On the flip side, the communists may or may not be anarchists
(the scale does not necessarily count out an anarcho-communist), but they are against private property, wealth and profit.
The planner is more balanced for welfare, socialized medicine, taxes and so forth, but may not wish for the abolition of the
market itself as the communist advocates.
Nobody should expect to get an extreme score on all three lines, and part of the point
is that they are all different things. Scoring a moderate on one or even two lines does make one a moderate, it simply
means that from these perspectives one is a moderate. I mean, imagine a warehouse - it's big in width and length, but
in heighth it may be only a story or two. It is still large despite being somewhat average or small in one perspective.
So don't go into it thinking you extreme folks have something prove by racking up a high score.
All in all, the test admittedly needs some work but I think I have the framework more or
less settled and defined. To take the quizzes click below, where I have them divided into three pages to reduce
load times.
