Where'd you come out? I'm a left liberal -- anyone surprised? Specifically, my scores were like this:

Your Personal Self-Government Score is 80%.
Your Economic Self-Government Score is 40%

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

Answers

Well, I'm ended up in the libertarian area but almost on the border of left liberal. My percentages were:

Your Personal Self-Government Score is 100%. Your Economic Self-Government Score is 60%.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

I came out Centrist - right on the point where Centrist, Left Liberal and Libertarian meet.

Your Personal Self-Government Score is 80%.
Your Economic Self-Government Score is 50%.


-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

Libertarian.

Your Personal Self-Government Score is 100%. Your Economic Self-Government Score is 60%.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

Left liberal. 100% on Personal Self-Government. 30% on Economic self-government. Does this mean I'm to the left of Beth?

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

I think it says something about my dubious background that I knew what this quiz was going to be, from its name, before ever going to the page. This quiz is a little bit of Libertarian propaganda. The questions are worded to skew toward the Libertarian (which we will here define as the zero-government-intervention) viewpoint.

I have been handed this questionnaire more times than I can count by a vast army of Libertarian zealots, and I have an honest and easy way of befuddling them: I simply answer almost all the questions as Maybe, guaranteeing that I will be a Centrist. And, in truth, all of the questions are "maybe" questions anyway. TV and Radio shouldn't be under government control? What does "control" mean? Certainly bandwidth allocation shouldn't be a free-for-all, but content might do better if completely unfettered. All the other questions are similarly complex. No draft? Well, probably not in peacetime, no. A war could change everything.

All the questions, that is, except one. The only reason I'm not in the dead center of the chart is that I always answer Yes to "Repeal regulations on sex for consenting adults," which moves me one square to the upper left.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

Your Political Philosophy: According to your answers, your political philosophy is left-liberal. Your Personal Self-Government Score is 30%. Your Economic Self-Government Score is 70%

Uh-huh. Sure. Left-liberal. Nice conclusion there people. Maybe I should have had more than 5 maybes.

I think I'm going to be sick ... ;-)

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

Yeah, the "maybes" skew the test in weird ways. I answered equivocated on drugs and open borders, even though I lean towards the libertarian side on both.

Columbine, I knew this test is a libertarian thing -- it was around when I was in college; the campus libertarians used to pass it out. But some of the things you think are "maybes" are definite for other people -- which may mean that you are in fact more of a centrist than you think you are.

And how are we going to announce Jarvis' new commitment to the Green Party? Fliers? Ad in the Nation?

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

Green Party ... sounds cool. Do we get hats? Like berets?

I think we need berets.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

In case anyone is curious, I said the government should stay out of regulating the press and Internet and people's bedrooms (hence, don't teach certain stuff either in the classroom- remember that thread?). I also said free trade is good, we should tax, we can provide foreign aid from public funds, and some basic minimum wage law is good. I think all the rest were maybes.

I think I would just differ with many people on where to draw the line, not on whether or not a line is needed. Well, except for MAYBE one issue ...

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

I wound up with 100% personal, 30% economic. Does this mean I'm Diana?

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

Your Personal Self-Government Score is 80%. Your Economic Self-Government Score is 20%.

I'm a left-liberal, so no surprises there.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

Another left-liberal here: Personal Self-Government Score was 70%, Economic Self-Government Score was 10%.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

left liberal. 90/30

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

Your Personal Self-Government Score is 70%. Your Economic Self- Government Score is 60%. Centrist.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

Left liberal 90/40...but not news to me. I've been that for a long, long time.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

Your Personal Self-Government Score is 100%. Your Economic Self-Government Score is 30%.

im a left-liberal. duh. i could have told me that.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

Like Columbine, my results are rendered moot because I answered maybe to all but two questions - drugs and repeal of sex regulations. In my polisci courses (one of my undergrad majors) we used to debate the probative value of quizzes like these. (We had lib-tys handing them out on our coast too, Beth) Bottom line answer is that they're useless, because they're too vague to have real meaning. A much more valuable assessment, in an election year especially, is the SelectSmart.com survey that takes your positions and compares them to the candidates so that you can see who matches your ideals most closely.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2000

Since I've had mucho experience with the quiz, I agree that it is skewed towards Libertarian, since the goal of it is to alert people who are Libertarians but don't know it. I don't agree that it is propaganda, since it has obviously given many people results other than Libertarian.

It is intended to be informational more than anything - when taken on the website, all maybe answers are linked to articles about those questions - in order to help the person taking the quiz to make up their mind on the issue.

Since its main lure is that it is so small, it is difficult to make each question completely spell out what it is saying, hence the "vague"-ness of some of the questions. I would venture to say that 99% of all quizzes of this nature, be they political or otherwise, are a bit vague. Anyhow, there's my two cents.

Oh, and, of course my results were Libertarian - Personal Self- Government score 100%, Economic 80%.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2000