The official blog of the Libertarian Party
June 21, 2006
The Freedom Quiz
There's a new political quiz out there published by the Orange County Register. It's similar to the World's Smallest Political Quiz, but contains 20 questions instead of 10. As the questions are less generic (but immediately more relevant) than those offered with the WSPQ, I'd guess this test will probably be more accurate for the short term, but less accurate or effective in the long term. Here's their description of the Freedom Quiz:
Register editorial writers Alan Bock, John Seiler and Steven Greenhut developed these questions to highlight aspects of "small l" libertarianism, the freedom philosophy that animates our pages. We believe in limited government, respect for the individual, self-responsibility, free markets, free trade and property rights. Enough of that before we give away too much of our testing bias!
This quiz is the first feature in our "Summer of Freedom" series, where we'll introduce you to proponents of the freedom philosophy, examine areas of liberty that are in jeopardy and explore American history, too. So, take the challenge and find out your freedom IQ. The "freedom" answers are on page 5. (Students who fail are advised to read the Register's editorial pages more thoroughly!)
The questions (and choices for answers) are interesting and they asked two important foreign policy questions which the WSPQ doesn't address. Enjoy!
Posted by Stephen Gordon at June 21, 2006 11:29 AM
Reader Comments:
The quiz has highly unsatisfactory answers for many questions, unfortunately.
What would those be? It clearly sez that 'c' is the closest answer to represent small l libertarianism, and all other choices are worse.
I dont see too much wrong with the 'c' answers myself.
The questions and answers were obvious leaners toward libertarianism although the quiz did little to make anyone understand our position if they didn't already. Not everyone is smart enough to read between the lines, which probably makes them a Republicrat. Either that or they don't think we can win, or they are afraid of people that disagree with them being able to think and act for themselves. I think that's really why most people are not libertarian.
It's worthless to try to appeal to voters while at the same time calling them stupid morons.
I think this is the height of libertarian arrogance. If you were really smart the LP would be in second place by now after 35 years beuase we'd have a politically savvy message that appealed to "those morons" that we have to appeal to in any election we enter.
You can resume your arrogance when ( if ) we get majority libertarian districts in play.
Long story short -- re: this quiz; you get what you pay for.
The reasoning behind this statement? The questions are fine, as they go -- but the answers in many cases don't exemplify libertarian *reasoning* so much as the "acceptable" stances of the libertarian subculture.
My two cents:
Messrs. West and Galileo are absolutely right. Witnessing institutional arrogance in the LP personally sickens me due to my experience with it.
As far as I can tell, people support the current system of big government, big taxes, and big debts not because they are ignorant, or stupid, or moronic, or any other slur word that certain sanctimonious, rhetoric-barfing members of our party can use. People support it because they receive TANGIBLE BENEFITS paid for with state capital, such as schools, health care, and mass transit. It doesn't matter to them that these benefits are relatively pitiful compared with those provided by a free market, because most people have never seen the results of a free market; therefore they fear it as an unknown. What we need to do is SHOW people the results of a free market, not just tell people. If you show it, they will vote [for our candidates].
Individual arrogance I can put up with (Heck, I DID put up with it regularly back in the Democratic and Green Parties), but institutional arrogance is one big reason I left the Democrats never to return. (I left the Greens on far better terms for unrelated reasons, and although they do have many problems, institutional arrogance is definitely not one of them). It would appreciably suck to see the LP go the way of the DP by codifying the arrogance of some of its misguided members.
It's a good quiz, although I agree that it's better for the short term than the long term. As a conservative-leaning libertarian, I naturally scored in the 15-20 range, but I think the answers were pretty leaning, not unlike the quiz available on the Ludwig von Mises Institue webpage, www.mises.org (which, by the way, is an EXCELLENT quiz to take in order to learn about the different theories of economics.)
Some of the answers were obviously not meant to be chosen, and it was mostly the (a) answers, which makes sense given the Register's politics, but it still lends difficulty in establishing objective analysis.
| 
The quiz has highly unsatisfactory answers for many questions, unfortunately.
Posted by: Nigel Watt at June 21, 2006 11:48 AM