Update: The Flaw in the Quiz

     So I showed you my results from “The World’s Smallest Political Quiz.”  I was supposedly a Libertarian.  I was a bit surprised by that, since I generally consider myself a conservative.  Lots of people have called me a conservative.  I knew that I had some Libertarian views, but I was surprised to see my red dot so close to the top of the chart.

     I went back and experimented with the quiz.  I decided to try to make the result come out Conservative.  It’s pretty hard to do.  If you answer Agree on every question, you are at the very top.  If you answer Maybe on every question, you are in the exact middle.  If you answer Disagree on every question, you are at the very bottom.  It’s very hard to have your point hit in either the Liberal quadrant or in the Conservative quadrant.

     In other words, almost everybody is either a Libertarian, a Centrist, or a Statist.  That’s just  how Libertarians tend to classify people.  I wonder if this is a Libertarian sponsored site?  No, I don’t wonder.  I checked and found out that it is.

     Who is a Centrist, according to the quiz?  Mostly it’s an indecisive person.  To be a perfect Centrist on the quiz, you have to answer Maybe to everying, as I said above.  You are also a Centrist if you agree as many times as you disagree, which indicates, I think, an inconsistency in one’s views.

     Okay.  I finally figured out how to be a Conservative.  If you disagree on all the personal issues and agree on all the economic issues, then you will end up on the far right.  I don’t buy it.  That would mean that a staunch conservative is for censorship and against free speech, for the draft, for criminalizing sexual behavior, for banning drugs, and for a national ID card.  True, some Conservatives are for some of those things, but I don’t know anybody who espouses conservatism that disagrees with all of them.

     The quiz seems to be designed to show Conservatives that they are really Libertarians.  Okay.  Whatever.  I for one will not be rushing to join the Libertarian Party now, although I have considered it.

     There are other flaws with the quiz.  For example, the question about cutting taxing and spending is too specific.  It asks if you agree with cutting both taxes and spending by 50%.  Well, what if I believe in cutting spending by 50% and taxes by 30%, in order to pay down our national debt.  What if I believe in cutting spending but not cutting taxes?  You get the point.