I took that test a while ago. I'm a slightly left-leaning libertarian with "green" tendencies (I already knew that before I took it).
It's an interesting way to view political opinions, however. Most people just think that the political spectrum consists of simply a line with "liberal" at one end and "conservative" at the other, when in reality it's not that simple by any means.
You can't vote? I thought in Australia it was the law that you had to.
http://www.politicalcompass.org/usprimaries2007
The major liberal party in the US is mostly right wing? This country is messed up.
The US has no major liberal party. The closest thing would be the Green Party, but they don't even represent a sizable minority of the voting population. It's quite a shame, really... A lot of Democrats think they are voting liberally.
Libertarianism does not necessarily have to be right-wing or left-wing. Those gun-people are not left-leaning libertarians (gun ownership is a personal freedom, not an economic one, so in theory they would be left-leaning, not "far-right"), as they are against many other personal freedoms aside from the "right to bear arms" - just ask them how they feel about homosexuality.
Left libertarians believe in strong personal freedom but limited economic freedom, centrist libertarians believe in both strong personal and economic freedoms, and right libertarians believe in strong economic freedom but limited personal freedom.
I'm in the opposite quadrant as the late Milton Friedman.
And that's a very good thing.
As I see it, there are two serious problems with this test:
First, there's no room for ambivalence. You either agree or disagree (or strongly agree or strongly disagree). I'd have liked to see an, "I don't care," option.
Second, the assumption is made that you want your personal preferences enforced. I found that I could answer the questions in two distinct ways--in accordance with what I think (or feel), or in accordance with what I actually want government to do (as little as possible, as it happens). In the latter case, I'm way off in the lower-right quadrant (7.88,-6.82), in the former, I'm a
bit more centrist.
I did find it interesting (though not at all surprising) that the lower-right quadrant is completely devoid of political "leaders."
Not sure what country you're from, East, but in the last Australian federal election there was only one political party in the lower right quadrant and they were wiped out.
In the U.S. it's the Libertarian party, which is pretty much a joke (I speak as a former card-carrying Libertarian who finally grew weary of their silliness). It's hard to find "leaders" from among anarchists.
right libertarians believe in strong economic freedom but limited personal freedom.
Bollocks.
I agree - according to that test i'm a "right libertarian". I believe in strong economic freedom AND strong personal freedom.
I use the term "limited" in a relative sense - of course libertarians of any kind are going to agree with stronger personal and economic freedom than other political worldviews. Compared to other libertarians, however, right-libertarians are generally more socially conservative than left- or centrist-libertarians (i.e., they may want to limit/prohibit things like drug use and abortion, or want to permit religion in public schools). On the other hand, left-libertarians are more likely to agree with some socialist ideals, like welfare, restricted capitalism, limited private ownership of land/natural resources, etc.
And no right libertarian has ever advocated allowing public schools to endorse religion.
Maybe none of them that you know...
Economic Left/Right: -7.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.62
Mine is Economic Left/Social Libertarian
No surprises here, I suppose
damnit, NOW you submit your scores
Just pencil me in falling off the southwestern corner of the chart...
Dang, beyond Tigger? I had no idea I was that dangerous!
Economic Left/Right: 0.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.21
Callista, the American media and the constant GOP barage have so distorted and poisoned the word "liberal" that I think a lot of people -- probably a majority -- don't realize that if they look at their values and compare them to authentic liberal values --hey! they are more liberal than they thought.
The Washington Post, several months ago, had a similar test that compared the your stance on the issues with the stance of the [then] top 12 Presidential candidates. My second-best friend (an evangelical Christian and long time republican voter) got her results and said, "Oh, my gosh! My top candidate is Barack Obama at 92%!"
She had assumed she wold be worlds apart from Obamaa because of the non-stop "Liberal! Liberal! Dirty Liberal!" talk about him.
Saint, I'm glad you necrobumped this. It's fascinating to me, ezpecially seeing them laid out on Pika's graph...