| So
you've taken the World's Smallest Political Quiz and you want to learn
more about it. You've come to the right place!
(If you haven't
taken the Quiz yet, a lot of what's here won't make much sense. It
only takes a few moments to take
the Quiz.)
This FAQ answers
some of the most commonly-asked questions about the Quiz, and gives
a detailed look at the history and purposes of the Quiz. The FAQ was
written by James W. Harris, editor of the Advocates' magazine
The Libertarian Communicator and editor of the Advocates'
free bi-weekly email newsletter The
Liberator Online (the world's largest-circulation libertarian
email newsletter.)
Contributing
ideas, insights, and suggestions were Advocates Founder and Quiz inventor
Marshall Fritz, Advocates President Sharon Harris, Quiz Chart inventor
David Nolan, Advocates Board Chairman Carole Ann Rand, writer Glen
Raphael, and Advocates Internet Coordinator Paul Schmidt. Many others
have contributed as well by reading, by making suggestions, and answering
questions. Thanks to all!
Contents
1:
Who produces the Quiz?
2:
Why the Quiz was Created
-
What is the
goal of the Quiz?
-
Why did the
Advocates create the World's Smallest Political Quiz?
-
What is the
"left-right" or "liberal-conservative" line,
and what's wrong with it?
-
Speaking out
against the "left-right" line
-
The origins
of "left" and "right"
3:
How the Quiz was created: a short history
-
The two parts
of the Quiz
-
Centerpiece
of the Quiz: David Nolan's Chart
-
Adding the
questions to the chart: enter Marshall Fritz
-
What's the
most important part of the Quiz: the ten questions, or the chart?
-
The Quiz for
computers
-
The Quiz
on the Internet
-
The Quiz chart
becomes diamond-shaped
4:
Purposes and uses of the Quiz
5:
Is the Quiz a trick? ...and other criticisms/questions about the Quiz
-
Isn't this
just a trick to get people to score "libertarian" -- even if they're
not libertarians at all -- so they'll think they're libertarians
and support libertarian causes?
-
The number
of people who've scored libertarian on your Web Quiz seems way
out of proportion to what I'd expect. Isn't this an indication
that the Quiz is flawed, inaccurate, or is just a trick to get
people to score libertarian?
-
Doesn't the
fact that the Quiz is used as an outreach tool by some libertarians
mean that it isn't objective or accurate, and therefore has no
real scholarly or practical value?
-
What about
"Framing Bias?"
-
Are these
leading questions? Do they avoid the hard issues?
-
The "Weed-Out"
questions.
-
The "Invisible
Question."
-
Why just 10
questions? Wouldn't more questions produce more accurate scores?
Wouldn't longer questions, with more details, be better?
-
Why THOSE
10 questions and issues? Why not some other issues?
-
What about
foreign policy? Why isn't there a section on this important issue
in the Quiz?
-
Is something
wrong with your counter? I noticed the number on it, took the
Quiz, and when I checked back, the number hadn't increased at
all. Then later I noticed the number had jumped by a huge number.
What gives?
6:
Your score and what it means
-
What does
my score mean?
-
My score says
I'm a _______, yet I know that's not true! I'm really a _______!
So isn't the Quiz flawed?
-
Are you saying
the Quiz is perfect?
7:
The Quiz outside the United States
8:
The Quiz in other formats: cards, disks
-
Where can
I get Quiz cards?
-
How many card
Quizzes have you distributed?
-
How can I
download a Quiz for my Computer?
-
Can I buy
the Quiz on disk?
-
How can I
download printable versions of the Quiz?
9:
The Quiz in the media
-
What are some
of the newspapers, magazines and books that have reprinted, discussed
and/or mentioned the Quiz?
-
How popular
is the Quiz on the Web?
-
Has the Quiz
been used on radio and TV?
10:
Can I use the Quiz in my...
-
I'd like to
print the Quiz in my newspaper / magazine / newsletter / zine
/ book / other publication. What do I need to do?
-
I'd like to
use the Quiz in campaign literature, or outreach literature, with
my name or the name of my organization printed somewhere on it.
Can I do this?
-
How can I
create a link from my Web site to the Quiz, so visitors to my
site can easily take the Quiz?
11:
The Quiz in classrooms
12:
Quiz web site numbers and explanation for the numbers
-
How many people
have taken the Quiz at your Web site? How do the results break
down by political ideology?
-
The number
of people who've scored libertarian on your Web Quiz seems way
out of proportion to what I'd expect. Isn't this an indication
that the Quiz is flawed, inaccurate, or is just a trick to get
people to score libertarian?
13:
How many Americans are libertarians?
-
How many Americans
are libertarians, or more libertarian than anything else?
-
How many are
conservatives, liberals, etc.?
14:
Operation Politically Homeless
15:
How would libertarians answer the Quiz questions?
-
How would
libertarians answer the 10 Quiz questions -- and why?
-
What do libertarians
believe? What is libertarianism? Where can I learn more about
libertarians, libertarianism and the libertarian movement?
16.
What are people saying about the World's Smallest Political Quiz?
17:
Conclusion
1:
WHO PRODUCES THE QUIZ?
The Quiz is
produced by the Advocates for Self-Government, a non-profit, non-partisan
libertarian educational organization, and we are the sole distributors
and copyright owners. (We are not affiliated with any political party
or candidate.) We encourage reproduction and distribution of the
Quiz, so long as it is reproduced in full and credited to the Advocates.
Please tell us when you reprint the Quiz. (For more on reproduction,
see "10: CAN I USE THE QUIZ IN MY…" below.)
We've been producing
a pocket-sized cardstock version of the Quiz since 1987. The Quiz
has been on the Web since 1995. An ASCII text copy of the Quiz has
been circulated on Usenet (the Internet newsgroups) since the late
1980s.
Advocates for
Self-Government
213 South Erwin Street
Cartersville, GA 30120
770-386-8372
Orders: 800-932-1776
Fax: 770-386-8373
Email
us
2:
WHY THE QUIZ WAS CREATED
The goal of
the Quiz is to give a fast, fun, and accurate assessment of a person's
overall political views, and to place those views on a new multi-spectrum
"political map" that is far more accurate, insightful, and
thorough than older political guidelines (such as the "left-right"
line).
The Quiz is
composed of two parts: a new political map or chart, and ten questions
on specific political issues to help a Quiz taker find his place on
that new political map.
Primarily, to
replace the flawed, misleading "left-right" or "liberal-conservative"
line (see next question) with a better, more accurate, more insightful
visual political map. (Other reasons -- and other ways the Quiz is
used -- are discussed in Section 4: PURPOSES AND USES OF THE QUIZ.)
The next few
sections will explain what "left-right" or "liberal-conservative"
line is, why replacing it is important, and how the Quiz attempts
to accomplish that.
Fifteen years
ago the standard view of politics -- the mental "map" almost
everyone used when thinking of political positions -- was the old
"left-right" line. It is still widely used today.
You've probably
seen it in textbooks and newspapers. It looks something like this:
<--------------
left ------------ center ------------- right -------------->
Or, when expanded
a bit:
<--- crazies
-- communist/socialist -- far left -- liberal -- centrist -- conservative
-- far right -- fascist -- crazies --->
This model is
misleading and fatally flawed. It doesn't have a place for many millions
of people who don't fit neatly into some variant of liberal or conservative.
In effect, it disenfranchises the millions of Americans who don't
feel that "left," "right," "liberal,"
"conservative" etc. accurately describe their views. Thomas
Jefferson, for example, wouldn't fit comfortably on that chart under
any of those labels. Neither would Jesse Ventura or Huey Long or Pat
Buchanan. America's real political spectrum is more complex than this
simplistic Crossfire model allows.
Nor does the
"left-right" line give any useful insight into the differences
between the various political categories. It doesn't tell us what
the important differences are between liberals, conservatives, fascists,
and so on. It tells us nothing of the views of these and other groups.
Furthermore,
the left-right model is inherently illogical. The model implies that
if you "go too far" (i.e., are consistent) with any political
idea, you end up, in some weird and unexplained way, at totalitarianism
or anarchism (or maybe both!). Pursue conservative thought to its
logical extreme, according to this model, and you somehow end up at
fascism (which is national socialism), or white supremacy or some
other authoritarian position. If you pursue liberal thought too far,
you supposedly end up at socialism or communism. This is inconsistent,
and ignores gigantic philosophical differences between, say, liberalism
and communism, or conservatism and fascism.
To see another
major reason why this model is irredeemably flawed, try to fit libertarians
on that line. Libertarians believe that people should be free to live
as they choose, in both the economic and personal realms, as long
as they don't harm others. So libertarians believe in a free market
-- which should put them on the "right," right? But they
also oppose censorship, the drug war and other attempts by government
to control the personal lives of peaceful individuals. Does that put
them on the left? Well, no. Does it put them in the "middle"?
No. There's just no place for libertarians on that map.
 Consider
that millions of Americans are libertarian or libertarian-leaning.
Libertarians and libertarian thought are a large and important part
of American politics, and have been since the country's founding.
(See 13: HOW MANY AMERICANS ARE LIBERTARIANS? below for estimates
of the number of libertarians in America.) Indeed, libertarian ideas
have played a central role in world history for centuries. But the
left-right line simply pretends that libertarians don't exist. It
does the same for others as well. (Left: Comedian Jimmy J.J. Walker,
star of the hit '70's sitcom Good Times, is one of the millions
of Americans who call themselves libertarians. He's shown here posing
with a poster-size version of the World's Smallest Political Quiz's
political "map.")
No wonder, then,
that many Americans -- used to thinking about politics with this familiar
left-right map -- couldn't figure out what libertarians were. Libertarians
weren't left-wing, they weren't right-wing, they weren't centrists
-- so they, in effect, didn't exist. Libertarians literally weren't
on the map!
The left-right
model thus gives a skewed, distorted, inaccurate picture of American
politics. It's a "flat earth" political map -- inaccurate
and misleading.
A new, more
accurate, more inclusive political map was desperately needed. That's
what led to the creation of the Quiz -- as an alternative to this
failed, flawed model.
It's important
to note that it's not just libertarians who reject the "left-right"
model. Increasingly, prominent educators, journalists and others from
across the political spectrum are calling for a more accurate model.
A few examples:
"Welcome
to an era of brand-name confusion in American politics. Everyone agrees
the hoary liberal-conservative labels are meaningless." -- Howard
Fineman, Newsweek, October 15, 1985.
"However
analysts strain to construe the outcome in conservative vs. liberal
terms, the truth is far more complex. Indeed, the increasing failure
of these two terms to describe the divisions and nuances of U.S. politics
merits renewed attention… The truth is that ‘conservative' and 'liberal'
are terms that came into common usage only in the early 19th century
following the French and Industrial revolutions, and their descriptive
utility is more and more limited in today's new political economy.
Our political nomenclature … needs an overhaul." -- Kevin Phillips,
"Old Political Labels No Longer Fit," The Wall Street
Journal, November 27, 1984. (Phillips is the author of several
books, including the bestseller The Death of Politics.)
"The simple
liberal-conservative equation misses a lot because public opinion
is more complex than that." -- Andy Kohut, Director, the Pew
Research Center for the People & the Press (USA Today,
July 17, 2001)
"Thinking
of politics in terms of a horizontal line is a cultural construction,
not an objective truth. There are all sorts of other ways to think
about political divisions, many of which don't limit us to decisions
between left and right." -- Robyn Ross, TCU Daily Skiff
(Texas Christian University, Fort Worth), March 3, 1999
"In popular
usage, liberals favor a greater scope of government, and conservatives
favor a narrower scope. However, this traditional distinction has
faded over time and now oversimplifies the differences between liberals
and conservatives… Obviously, most American opinions do not fit a
one-dimensional liberal-conservative continuum." -- The Challenge
of Democracy by Janda, Berry, Goldman. College textbook published
by Houghton Mifflin Company.
"…there
is no logical reason why voters could not be liberal on some issues
and center or conservative on others…" -- Hugh LeBlanc and Mary
Beth Merrin, "Parties and Candidates in 1972: Objects of Issue
Voting," Western Political Quarterly, 32 (1979)
"The whole
dynamic of left/right is fading away..." -- Matt Drudge, C-SPAN's
Washington Journal, March 19, 1999
"Like many
people who think about politics, I have grown impatient with the Left/Right
distinction. There's something almost insane about attempting to use
a one-dimensional spectrum to describe something as complex as political
philosophy." -- J.P. Zmirak, FrontPageMagazine.com (October 21,
2002)
3:
HOW THE QUIZ WAS CREATED: A SHORT HISTORY
We believe the
World's Smallest Political Quiz offers a far better political map,
and helps people quickly and easily and accurately place themselves
on that map.
The Quiz is
composed of two parts:
-
a diagram of a political map far more accurate and
inclusive than the left-right line;
-
a series of 10 short questions designed to help viewers
quickly place themselves and others on that map.
The following
sections explain how they came together to form the Quiz.
The chart that
is the centerpiece of the Quiz is based on a chart devised in 1969
by political scientist
David Nolan. Nolan, a libertarian (he co-founded the Libertarian
Party in 1971) came up with the chart because he was frustrated by
the old "left-right" line that leaves no room for libertarians
and others.
Nolan's insight
was that the major difference between various political philosophies,
the real defining element in what a person believes politically, is
the amount of government control over human action that is advocated.
Nolan further
reasoned that virtually all human political action can be divided
into two broad categories: economic and personal.
The "economic"
category includes what you do as a producer and consumer -- what you
can buy, sell, produce. Where you work, who you hire, what you do
with your money. Examples of economic activity: starting a business;
buying a home; constructing a building; working in an office.
The "personal"
category includes what you do in relationships, in self-expression,
and in general what you do with your own body and mind. Examples of
personal activities: marriage; choosing what books you read and movies
you watch; what foods, medicines, and drugs you choose to consume;
sports; your religious choices; organizations you join; who you choose
to associate with.
Since, Nolan
realized, most government activity (or government control) occurs
in these two major areas, political positions can be defined by
how much government control a person favors in these two areas.
The extremes are no government at all in either area (anarchism) or
total or near-total government control of everything (various forms
of totalitarianism).
Most political
philosophies fall somewhere in between.
In broad terms:
* Conservatives
and those on the right tend to favor more freedom in economic areas
(example: a free market), but more government control in social areas
(example: censorship).
* Liberals and
those on the left tend to favor more freedom in personal areas (example:
no military draft), but more government activism or control in economics
(example: a government-mandated minimum wage).
* Libertarians
favor both personal and economic freedom, and oppose most (or all)
government intervention in both areas. Like (some) conservatives,
libertarians believe that people should be free to make economic choices
for themselves. Like (some) liberals, libertarians believe in personal
freedom.
* Statists favor
a lot of government control in both the personal and economic areas.
Of course, liberals,
conservatives, and others may disagree among themselves on particular
issues, and hold different positions. Examples: a liberal might be
opposed to censorship and draft, but want to continue the Drug War
and end the minimum wage. Or a conservative may oppose censorship
and the draft, but favor restricting free trade. But the broad division
generally holds true.
Another way
of expressing this (a sort of "libertarian-centric" view):
conservatives tend to be more libertarian on economic issues; liberals
tend to be more libertarian on issues of personal freedom.
In order to
visually express this insight, Nolan came up with a two axis graph.
One axis was for economic freedom, and the other was for personal
freedom.
Once both areas
were on a graph, it was possible to put a scale on each of the two
axes of that graph. Nolan's scale started at zero (total state control)
to 100% (no state control). 100% in economics would mean a free market;
100% in personal issues would mean no government control in your private,
personal life.
By using the
scale on each of the two axes, it was possible to measure the amount
of personal liberty and economic liberty a person, political organization,
or political philosophy advocates, and then plot that on the graph.
Thus, while
the old "left-right" line attempted to measure politics
along a one-dimensional line, Nolan's graph divided political issues
into two dimensions: economic and social.
Nolan's original
graph looked something like this:
So, instead
of classifying all political opinion as being some variant of liberal
or conservative, Nolan's chart allowed a far more accurate measurement:
how much (or little) government control a person favored in personal
and economic matters.
This is a
breakthrough concept that instantly gives far more insight into politics.
By using this simple but accurate chart, it becomes much easier to
see and understand the differences between liberals, conservatives,
libertarians, and others. The chart more accurately places totalitarian
or interventionist philosophies -- fascism, communism, and so on --
next to each other, instead at opposite ends of a single line. And
it is far more inclusive, with room for libertarians and others; indeed,
virtually every political philosophy can be put onto that chart, unlike
the one-dimensional "left-right" line.
Nolan introduced
his chart in an article entitled "Classifying and Analyzing Politico-Economic
Systems" published in the January 1971 issue of The Individualist,
a libertarian newsletter.
In 1999, Nolan
was named one of the "2,000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 20th
Century" by the Cambridgeshire, England-based International Biographical
Centre (IBC), and he was included in their reference work of the same
title, to be published in late 2000. Nolan speculated his inclusion
in the book is due to his creation of the Nolan Chart, which has gained
international fame as the core of the World's Smallest Political Quiz.
In 1985,
Marshall Fritz founded the Advocates for Self-Government. Part
of the Advocates mission was to introduce and explain libertarian
ideas to the public. Fritz found that Nolan's chart was a great help
in explaining how libertarianism was distinct from conservatism and
liberalism. Fritz also came to believe that the inaccurate "left-right"
line was a major obstacle to the public understanding libertarianism,
since that line left libertarians off entirely. The "left-right"
line forced people to keep trying to shoe-horn libertarians (and others)
into the liberal or conservative camps, when actually libertarians
are neither. The left-right line also marginalized libertarians, by
making them essentially invisible. (See "2: WHY THE QUIZ WAS
CREATED" for more on this.)
Fritz saw Nolan's
chart as a way to challenge all this.
Convinced of
the validity of the chart, Fritz wanted to popularize it, while also
keeping it accurate so it could be accepted by academics and other
political thinkers. A great way to do this, he decided, would be to
turn Nolan's chart into a self-scoring computer game. In order to
do this, he came up with the idea of asking a series of questions
covering each of the chart's two broad areas, personal liberty and
economics. A person would answer several important and significant
questions on civil liberties and economics, and then the computer
would use those answers to instantly plot his or her score on Nolan's
chart.
Fritz spent
hundreds of hours testing and revising questions for the proposed
computer Quiz, seeking issues and wording that would consistently
produce accurate and meaningful scores on Nolan's chart. He circulated
print-outs of the chart and different sets of questions to numerous
people, ranging from friends and neighbors to political scientists,
to get their reactions.
Then longtime
libertarian Bernie Baltic looked at one of these print-outs and suggested
to Fritz that he could simply shrink the chart and questions down
to a business-card size handout. The result, Baltic suggested, would
be a unique and valuable tool that could be cheaply produced and easily
distributed.
Great idea,
Fritz thought. He played with the layout a bit, then ran off some
test copies of the little business-card-size quiz in 1987 in a Fresno,
California copy shop.
The little card
didn't have a name yet. After printing it, Fritz asked the copy-shop
clerk, "How'd you like to be the first person in the world to
take the world's smallest political quiz?"
As Fritz recalls:
"His eyes lit up at the words 'world's smallest political quiz,'
and then I knew I had the name."
Thus was born
the "World's Smallest Political Quiz" card
The first mass
printing of the Quiz was 3,600 copies. They went fast. The next order
was 15,000. They went fast, too. Then 30,000. As demand kept growing,
so did the print runs. The biggest so far has been 400,000 copies.
As of August
2004, over 7 million Quizzes had been printed and distributed.
It was clear
from the beginning that the Quiz was something special. The diagram
was an eye-opener, and the questions stimulated political thinking
and helped people place themselves on the chart.
The wording
and the graphics have undergone considerable change since Fritz's
first Quizzes. But the basic concept has remained the same.
The Quiz, then,
is a combination of two elements: Nolan's graph, and Fritz's idea
of ten short questions to quickly and easily help a person find their
place on that graph.
(Marshall Fritz
thanks the many people who contributed their time and thought to helping
shape the questions on the Quiz. These people include Steve Alexander,
David Bergland, Barry Conner, Dave Dawson, Don Ernsberger, Joe Fuhrig,
Jeffrey Hummel, David Nolan, and Perry Willis. There are many others
who played important roles as well. Fritz notes that literally hundreds
of phone calls and hundreds of hours of conversations with these people
went into formulating the Quiz.)
Both are important
-- it's the combination that gives the Quiz its appeal and makes it
work quickly and accurately.
But the most
central element is the chart. The questions are important, but their
function is to help people quickly and accurately place themselves
on the chart.
This is frequently
overlooked by many people. The questions are the most provocative
part of the Quiz, the part that people think about and ponder. But
the questions, important as they are, are just guides to help you
find your best place on the more accurate, more inclusive political
map.
Excited by the
great success of the business-card-size Quiz, Fritz put aside the
idea of a computer version of the Quiz, and in the pre-Web days, it
was quickly forgotten. But others picked up the idea a few years later.
In 1993, the
Quiz returned to its computer roots. Programmer Brian Towey, with
the help of his wife Ingrid, produced a full-color, instant-scoring
computer Quiz on disk, for DOS and Windows. Programmer Jon Kalb created
an equally outstanding version for Macs. These computer Quizzes were
a big hit, and were loaded onto hundreds of bulletin boards and computer
networks across the country, in the pre-Web days.
These are still
available on disk from the Advocates. (Though the easiest way to get
a copy of the Quiz for your computer is simply to download it from
our site. You can do so by clicking here: http://www.self-gov.org/download.html.)
(A tip of the
Advocates' cap to the pioneer programmers who worked with Marshall
Fritz in the early attempts to turn to Quiz into a computer game:
Dave Dawson, Virgil Swearingen, and Al Weiss.)
Advocates supporter
and computer programmer Toby Nixon created an ASCII text copy of the
Quiz in the pre-Web days, and this version was circulated widely across
the Internet, in newsgroups, computer networks, bulletin boards, and
on software. This version of the Quiz was bundled with other information
about libertarianism by software designer Paul Schmidt, and this package
too was widely circulated. The ASCII text version still circulates
on Usenet (the Internet newsgroups) and elsewhere.
In 1995, Paul
Schmidt -- by then serving as Advocates Internet coordinator -- created
the Advocates' Web page, the centerpiece of which was, and remains,
the interactive World's Smallest Political Quiz you find there today.
The Quiz quickly
became extremely popular on the Web, as we'll discuss further below.
(Or see Section 9: THE QUIZ IN THE MEDIA.)
A few years
after the creation of the Quiz, Marshall Fritz decided to rotate Nolan's
chart from a square to its current diamond shape, thus creating the
visual image called the Diamond Chart. (It looks rather like a baseball
diamond.) The reason? It put the left and right at, logically enough,
the left and right. And it also created a sort of vertical scale --
almost like a thermometer -- that measures support for maximum government
(the bottom, a zero-zero score) to little or no government (the top,
a 100-100 score). Logically, visually, and aesthetically, the change
made sense and made the Chart more useful. And Nolan himself had offered
a diamond shape in his early writings about the Quiz.
(In his 1974
book Key Influences in the American Right, Ferdinand V. Solara
also advocates a diamond-shaped map of the political spectrum, very
similar to the current Quiz chart.)
4:
PURPOSES AND USES OF THE QUIZ
We have two
major goals with the Quiz. The primary one, as discussed above, is
to replace the flawed "left-right" model with a more accurate
map -- such as the Quiz chart -- that includes libertarians. The second
use of the Quiz is as a tool to help libertarians better explain their
views to other people -- in other words, as an introductory or outreach
tool.
For either of
these purposes, it is crucial that the Quiz be as fair and accurate
as possible.
Since its creation,
the Quiz has been used by a variety of people in different ways. Here
are the four most popular.
1) As a more
accurate political map to replace the flawed and inaccurate "left-right"
line.
2) As an outreach
tool for libertarians. Because the Quiz makes it far easier for libertarians
to explain their positions and where they fit in American politics,
it has become the most popular outreach and educational tool among
libertarians. (That doesn't mean it's a trick, however. In fact, the
Quiz's value as an outreach tool depends upon its accuracy. For
more on this, see Section 5: IS THE QUIZ A TRICK? …AND OTHER CRITICISMS
OF, AND QUESTIONS ABOUT, THE QUIZ, below.) The Quiz is also used by
libertarians in "Operation Politically Homeless" (OPH) outreach booths.
For more on OPH, see Section 14: OPERATION POLITICALLY HOMELESS, below.
3) As a way
of clarifying and stimulating political discourse. Too much political
talk ducks or avoids issues. And many important political issues are
left out of political debates. The Quiz raises fundamental, serious
political issues, including some issues that receive far too little
attention. This is one reason many classrooms use the Quiz, to stimulate
discussions of import political issues.
4) As a way
of clarifying differences between various types of conservatives,
liberals and so on. The Quiz questions make it easy to see where people
who share the same political label may disagree among themselves.
(Examples: some conservatives favor ending the Drug War, some don't.
Some liberals favor free trade, some don't.) The Quiz helps make such
distinctions clearer.
Again, for any
of these purposes, it is crucial that the Quiz be as fair and accurate
as possible. Which brings us to the most common criticism of the Quiz…
5:
IS THE QUIZ A TRICK? …AND OTHER CRITICISMS OF, AND QUESTIONS ABOUT,
THE QUIZ
That's an instant
reaction of some people when they first encounter the Quiz. And it's
an understandable one. (It's good to be skeptical.)
But the answer
is no. The Quiz is not a trick, and it's not designed to produce false
libertarian scores.
It would be
very easy to produce a Quiz in which lots of people who weren't libertarians
or libertarian-leaning nevertheless scored libertarian. In fact, it's
very easy to take the 10 questions on the Quiz, reword them, and create
a Quiz on which virtually everyone will score libertarian --
or, alternately, a version in which no one will.
It's much harder
to come up with a short, fast Quiz that gives accurate scores, and
new political insights, to the vast majority of takers. But that has
been our goal from the beginning -- because there are very good reasons
for NOT wanting a Quiz in which non-libertarian-leaning people score
libertarian.
Here's why:
1) If the Quiz
were obviously fake, routinely giving phony and inaccurate scores,
people would simply ignore it. Our goal of changing the political
map to include libertarians and others would never be accomplished.
From the start, we've realized that the Quiz must be accurate if it
(and most importantly, the idea of a multi-spectrum political map)
is to be taken seriously by scholars, journalists, teachers, and others
as a tool of political analysis. Liberals must score liberal, conservatives
conservative, libertarians libertarian, etc.
It's because
it is so accurate that the Quiz model is today being taken seriously
by more and more opinion leaders.
2) People who
are momentarily tricked into defining themselves as "libertarians"
aren't going to be very happy when they find they've been deceived.
People don't like to feel they've been tricked or used. A deceptive
Quiz in which non-libertarians consistently scored "libertarian" would
win libertarians more enemies, not friends. And it would put more
ammunition into the hands of our enemies. It certainly wouldn't benefit
the libertarian movement.
3) A Quiz in
which almost everyone scored libertarian would be enormously wasteful
of the limited resources of libertarian activists and the various
libertarian groups who use the Quiz as outreach, to identify libertarians
and libertarian-leaning people. These groups want a tool that will
"filter out" poor prospects (i.e., persons not open to libertarian
ideas), and that will let them quickly identify those people most
receptive to libertarian ideas. A Quiz in which conservatives, liberals,
moderates, socialists and so on scored libertarian or libertarian-leaning
would be worthless for outreach.
4) A softcore
Quiz in which virtually everyone scored libertarian would devalue
or dumb-down the word "libertarian," making it almost meaningless.
The Advocates has always emphasized the importance of presenting the
full, uncompromising libertarian philosophy to the public, and it
would be counter to this goal for us to publicize a Quiz that watered
down the meaning of "libertarian."
Incidentally,
one proof that the Quiz isn't designed to make many or most people
score libertarian is obvious: most people who take the Quiz DON'T
score libertarian. The percentage of libertarian scores seems
to match very nicely the 20%-30% estimates from various sources of
how much of the American population is libertarian or libertarian-leaning.
In September 2000, Rasmussen Research, one of the leading poll companies
in America, administered the Quiz to a cross-sampling of Americans
and found that 16% scored libertarian. Obviously, if the Quiz is designed
to make most people score libertarian, we've done a pretty a pretty
lousy job of it. (For more on this topic, see Section 13: HOW MANY
AMERICANS ARE LIBERTARIANS?, below)
The percentages
of libertarian scores at the Quiz Web site are currently higher than
that -- around 35% -- but there are good reasons for that, which are
explained in Section 12: QUIZ WEB SITE NUMBERS AND EXPLANATIONS FOR
THE NUMBERS, below.
A simple reading
of the Quiz questions shows they are serious questions on a variety
of hot political topics that a typical cross-section of the American
public would disagree on.
In over a decade
of giving the Quiz we've found that the great majority of people agree
that their scores are accurate. Furthermore -- and this is an important
point -- the increasing serious media attention the Quiz is getting
is possible only because people who take the Quiz find it to be generally
accurate.
We believe our
Quiz model is more sophisticated, more inclusive, and gives far more
insight into American politics than the left-right line. And thus
it is far more useful to anyone who wants to understand American politics
-- students, political scientists, journalists, and others.
We are very
pleased that Gallup Polls has, during the past several years, begun
exploring a multi-spectrum political model similar to ours, as are
increasing numbers of political scientists.
We're also pleased
that political science professors agree the Quiz is an accurate measure
of people's political beliefs. For example, W. Phillips Shively, a
professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, wrote:
"While there are many sites on the Web that profess to tell you
your political views, this one actually does a fairly good job and,
as claimed, it is incredibly short!" And Cynthia Carter, a professor
of History and Political Science at Florida Community College (at
Jacksonville), wrote: "Although this quiz is provided by a Libertarian
organization, it does not lead you to answer in any particular way."
This growing
support makes us believe that our model -- or one very like it --
eventually will completely replace the old, inaccurate left-right
line. Because it simply is a better model.
No, for at least
two reasons:
1) As we've
written elsewhere in this FAQ, there are several major reasons why
it is vital for the Advocates and for libertarians that the Quiz be
an accurate tool, and not be slanted as a "trick" to get
people to score libertarian. Our goal is that the Quiz be an accurate
tool.
Libertarians
are probably the largest group that the "left-right" line
excludes. A more accurate political map shows that many people now
labeled "liberal" or "conservative" are actually
more libertarian than anything else -- but they don't know it, because
the rigid and artificial division of American politics into "left-right"
doesn't allow for that. Libertarians thus have a big stake in seeing
a more accurate map accepted. But that doesn't mean the map is therefore
inaccurate.
2) It is common
for partisan groups to use objective information from polls and surveys
to bolster their positions. Example: many polls indicate that a majority
of Americans favor legalizing marijuana for medical use. Groups that
favor legalizing medical marijuana naturally use these poll results
to argue for passage of laws to accomplish that. That doesn't mean
the polls are inaccurate or politicized. However, for that information
to be useful, it must be accurate. Phony polls and surveys don't bolster
a cause in the long term -- they harm it.
Actually, the
Quiz can be (and often is) used by non-libertarians to point out that
libertarians hold positions that they (non-libertarians) find objectionable,
such as ending the War on Drugs, opposing the minimum wage, opposing
censorship, and supporting free trade. This is possible only because
the questions are strong, clear questions on important political events.
The Quiz can be, and is, used by non-libertarians to show how they
differ from libertarians and other groups.
Libertarians
like, and use, the Quiz model because, unlike the "left-right"
line, it doesn't exclude them. They value it precisely because it
IS accurate, and ISN'T a trick.
One typical
way a test can be rigged to show false levels of support (called "framing
bias") is by excluding the middle; that is, by forcing people to answer
either "yes" or "no" to questions, even if they really don't agree
with either side, or are uncertain. (Example: "Public schools
should be run by -- pick one -- the federal government or local government."
Such a question doesn't allow for the libertarian response, which
is "Neither -- schools should be private.") Our Quiz is
designed not to do this. The Quiz has a "maybe/sometimes/need-more-information"
answer as well as "Yes" and "No," and we explicitly
ask Quiz-takers to pick that answer if that reflects their view, or
if they have any problem with the nature of the question. If you were
to answer "maybe/sometimes/need-more-information" to all ten questions,
you would score right in the middle, or "Centrist." So any "buts"
or uncertainties a taker may have about the questions are NOT filtered
out, and you are not shoe-horned into any category. The "buts" are
an important part of the scoring. (Thanks to Glen Raphael for suggestions
used in this analysis.)
No. None of
the questions are obviously "Yes" questions to all people. Here are
the ten Quiz questions. Note that these are serious questions about
a wide variety of controversial issues. Ask these questions to a cross-section
of the public, and you'll get a similarly wide variety of responses.
They aren't easy or obvious questions, and they certainly shouldn't
trick anyone into scoring libertarian. We've worked hard to have questions
that accurately place a Quiz taker on the Quiz chart, for the reasons
explained above.
PERSONAL
ISSUES
* Government
should not censor speech, press, media or the Internet.
* Military service
should be voluntary. There should be no draft.
* There should
be no laws regarding sex between consenting adults.
* Repeal laws
prohibiting adult possession and use of drugs.
* There should
be no National ID card.
ECONOMIC
ISSUES
* End "corporate
welfare." No government handouts to business.
* End government
barriers to international free trade.
* Let people
control their own retirement: privatize Social Security.
* Replace government
welfare with private charity.
* Cut taxes
and government spending by 50% or more.
Those ten questions
include two "weed-out" questions that few people would answer "yes"
to (along with answering "yes" to the other questions) unless
they held strong, consistent libertarian views -- specifically, the
questions about ending drug laws and cutting taxes by 50% or more.
This is to insure that the Quiz has integrity -- that the higher libertarian
scores truly reflect a consistent, across-the-board libertarian viewpoint.
Some people
have proposed that the Quiz be reworded to focus more on individual
choice rather than government policy. For example, instead of asking
(as the Quiz does):
* Repeal laws
prohibiting adult possession and use of drugs.
Some would prefer
something like:
* Who can better
decide whether or not I should be able to use drugs? Choose one:
a) Me
b) The government
The idea behind
such a suggestion is that people are more inclined to answer that
they, not the government, can best decide how to manage most (or all)
areas of their lives. And this, the argument goes, means they are
libertarians or libertarian-leaning. Such wording therefore is more
likely to prompt them to accept the label "libertarian."
But that's
exactly what's wrong with this form of question. Granted,
many people do feel they are perfectly capable of making
personal and economic decisions for themselves. But that's only part
of libertarianism. Libertarianism also means extending the right to
other people to similarly make such decisions. Libertarianism
doesn't just mean that you should be able to control your
personal and economic life, or that you are capable of doing so. (Most
people already believe that.) It means that everyone should
have that right. And that's where many people disagree. ("Sure,
I have the wisdom and self-control to decide whether or not
to use drugs. But there are too many other people who don't have the
wisdom/self-control/common sense/etc. that I have, and so I believe
drugs must therefore be kept illegal, to control these irresponsible
people for their own good and the good of society.") The proposed
alternate wording doesn't convey that, and thus it fails as an accurate
measure -- and is misleading.
The Quiz wording,
in contrast, is clearly talking about society, not simply the individual
taking the question. That's the "invisible question" in
the Quiz.
This isn't just
theory. We've seen questions phrased in this alternate way asked to
large groups of people. A large majority -- almost everyone, in fact
-- almost instinctively answers "Yes" to whether they --
as opposed to the government -- should be able to make such decisions
for themselves. Ask the Quiz versions, however -- ask whether
the government coercion mentioned in the ten Quiz question areas should
be repealed for all consenting adults -- and the number becomes more
reflective of reality.
In short, the
proposed alternate wording produces a high number of false positives
and conveys a distorted, inaccurate version of libertarianism. That's
why we rejected it.
We chose 10
questions -- 10 very short ones -- because the Quiz is designed to
fit on a business-card-sized handout. (Remember, it's called the "World's
SMALLEST Political Quiz.") And we also want the Quiz to be easy, fast,
and fun. Too many questions, or too many words, would get in the way
of that.
When we put
the Quiz on the Web in 1996, we wanted to keep the same questions
and wording, in part because the short wording keeps the Quiz fast
and easy, and in part to remain consistent with the popular print
version.
We've tried
tests with larger numbers of questions, and haven't found any more
accuracy using them. The 10 questions seem to be enough to pinpoint
most people's political leanings -- and that's enough for the purposes
of the Quiz.
Because, after
long experimentation, they produce the most accurate results. We've
tried other questions over the years, and this is the best mix we've
found so far.
As mentioned
above, we were also been forced to be very economical in the wording
of the questions -- there's just so much room on a business-card sized
Quiz, even in 8-point type! This also helps keep the Quiz short, of
course, which is one of its charms and selling points.
It's not easy
choosing the right questions. Three examples:
Gun
control. The early Quizzes contained this question: "Citizens
should be allowed to own handguns" in the personal liberty section.
Then someone pointed out that, in order to score perfectly as a leftist
or liberal, you would have to answer "yes" to that question. Yet obviously,
in the real world, many if not a majority of liberals and leftists
favor significant amounts of gun control, if not outright gun bans.
So the question threatened the integrity of the test. So, even though
we consider the issue a very important one, and a strong indicator
of one's political leanings, we reluctantly dropped it, in order to
keep the Quiz scores accurate.
Abortion.
Abortion was omitted because of the considerable disagreement among
people of all political persuasions -- including libertarians -- on
the issue. Though a very important political issue, it simply isn't
a determinant of whether or not one is a libertarian or liberal or
conservative.
Death
penalty. This is another very important political issue,
but again, it isn't a determinant of whether one is or is not a liberal,
conservative, libertarian, etc. Therefore there's no insight to be
gained by including it on the Quiz.
A great deal
of careful thought and analysis has gone into the choice of questions
and the wording of those questions. At least 2,000 man-hours of discussion
have gone into choosing the wording and layout of the Quiz. And the
Advocates leadership regularly discusses potential changes and improvements
to make the Quiz more accurate and useful.
There are three
major areas of national political concern. Two are addressed directly
in the Quiz: economics and personal freedom.
The third major
areas of national political concern is foreign policy. Foreign policy,
in turn, is chiefly concerned with two big areas: peacetime relations
between nations, and the military (which includes defense spending
and military action).
Foreign policy
is addressed indirectly in the Quiz, and there are three such questions
that relate to the topic -- almost as many questions as there are
in the other two major areas of national political concern.
In the "Personal
Issues" section, there is a question on whether or not to impose
a military draft.
In the "Economic
Issues" section, there are questions about ending government
barriers to international free trade, and whether taxes and government
spending should be cut by 50% or more (which would, almost certainly,
result in a leaner defense budget and a more narrowly focused national
defense policy).
Liberals, conservatives,
centrists and statists all tend to disagree strongly among themselves
on both peacetime and wartime foreign policy issues. (For example,
there are hawkish liberals and isolationist conservatives, and vice-versa.
And there are anti-free-trade conservatives and pro-free-trade liberals.)
So adding foreign policy to the Quiz would not be very helpful in
distinguishing between these groups -- and it would make the Quiz
much clumsier and more complex.
Unlike the other
political groups, libertarians tend to be consistent on foreign policy.
They tend to be non-interventionist on military issues and favor free
trade. (They also tend to oppose government-funded foreign aid and
favor more open immigration policies.)
So the libertarian
"Yes" answers to the three Quiz questions mentioned above
covers considerable foreign policy territory for libertarians, while
avoiding the confusion that would come by attempting to distinguish
between a "liberal" or "conservative" foreign
policy.
To be more specific
on how the Quiz questions cover foreign policy for libertarians: without
a draft and with dramatically lower taxes, unpopular wars of foreign
intervention (like Vietnam) are far less likely to be fought. And
free trade is a key position for libertarians, since libertarians
believe it encourages peace, abundance and harmony between nations.
6:
YOUR SCORE AND WHAT IT MEANS
The Quiz measures
tendencies. For instance, if you score "libertarian" with a
70/70 score (seventy points on the personal and economic sides, the
lowest score that will put you in the libertarian section), you may
not agree with libertarians on all issues, but you will find you have
more in common with libertarians than any other political group. The
same if you score "left," "conservative," etc.
The higher you
score, the more clearly is your tendency defined. That means the highest
scores in the libertarian area reflect not just a libertarian tendency,
but very consistent libertarian beliefs. If you scored "libertarian"
100-100, it is virtually certain that you are a libertarian.
As discussed
above, we have a couple of "weed-out" questions that almost no one
would answer "yes" to (along with the other questions) unless they
are strongly libertarian, in the strictest sense of that word.
Reports from
people who take the Quiz tell us the vast majority of people feel
their scores are accurate. Many people find new insights about their
political beliefs when they take the Quiz.
However, a small
percentage of people don't feel their score is accurate. Why? Reasons
vary, but for at least some of them, we think it's because they have
given themselves a label that doesn't reflect the views of most people
who wear that label.
The Quiz assumes
that conservatives/those on the right are in favor of free markets,
free trade, lower taxes and the like. It assumes that liberals/leftists
favor free speech, no draft, no restrictions on sex between consenting
adults, and so on.
Obviously, while
a good guideline this isn't always true.
For instance,
while most conservatives favor few restrictions in the economy, there
are some conservatives who favor much more government intervention.
Some people who call themselves "conservatives" would restrict foreign
trade, subsidize some businesses, raise taxes, increase foreign aid,
support a minimum wage, and in other ways oppose economic policies
that most conservatives advocate. Similarly, economic "conservatives"
who favor a large amount of self-government in the personal area (no
censorship, no draft, no War on Drugs, etc.) will score as moderate
libertarians.
Similarly, there
are self-described "liberals" who favor restricting free speech, censoring
the Internet, imposing a peacetime military draft, and so on. Such
individuals might not score "liberal" because they are out of step
with positions that the Quiz's model liberal advocates.
There is plenty
of room in the Quiz score to allow for deviation from many assumed
liberal or conservative positions, and still score properly. But if
someone opposes enough of the positions typically characteristic of
a particular group, they won't score as a member of that group. We
believe this is generally not a flaw of the Quiz, but rather an indication
that the person is mistaken in the label he has given his views.
The Quiz suggests
that people who favor most or all of the restrictions in both the
economic and personal questions are statists -- that is, they favor
much more government control over both the personal and economic lives
of citizens than liberals, conservatives, libertarians, or centrists.
The statist score, like the other scores, has a significant range.
(In fact, the statist score has the broadest range -- it makes the
least fine distinctions of any of the sections.) Someone scoring 0-0
may favor an extreme amount of government control, such as a dictatorship.
Someone in the higher range of the statist section may simply favor
more government that most people in America currently want. People
who score in the higher part of the statist section might be more
accurately called "interventionists" or "populists" or "authoritarians,"
to make a finer distinction.
Other reasons
that a Quiz score might be inaccurate for someone: if they interpret
the questions in a different way than intended, or if they misunderstand
a question.
If you're not
happy with your scoring, we suggest you consider your answers to the
10 Quiz questions. Ask yourself if your views really reflect the views
that most people who wear the political label you've given yourself
hold. You might also try taking the Quiz for someone who is typical
or representative of a particular view, and see how they score.
Another suggestion:
find the place on the Quiz chart where you feel most comfortable,
and ask yourself if you agree on most issues with most of those who
wear that label.
Finally, remember
that the Quiz is composed of two parts: the chart and the 10 questions.
Even if you think the questions don't, for whatever reasons, trigger
a correct position on the chart for you, we hope you'll agree that
the chart is a far more inclusive, accurate, and insightful map of
politics, when compared to the old "left-right" line.
No! We do think
the Quiz Chart is a far more accurate picture of the divisions of
American politics than the "left-right" line. And we think
our 10 questions are a good, fast, accurate way of pinpointing most
people's positions on that chart.
But any tool
can be improved. We have refined the Quiz many times during the past
decade (most recently in mid-2004), to make it more and more accurate.
We will continue to do so, to make it even more accurate.
However, at
the same time we are cautious about meddling too much with a tool
that has been used by millions of people, the vast majority of whom
report very satisfactory and insightful results.
The Quiz may
not be perfect, but we've worked hard to refine the questions over
the years to try and remove bias and come up with a Quiz that reflects
the real political world for the vast majority of takers -- while
also keeping the Quiz short, easy, understandable, fast, and fun.
Hundreds of man-hours have gone into refining this simple-looking
tool to make it fun, fast -- and very accurate. People from across
the political spectrum find it useful and eye-opening. People use
the Quiz because it works.
7:
THE QUIZ OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES
 Absolutely.
The Quiz is used in many countries, and has been translated into several
languages, including Japanese (shown to the left), Spanish, French,
Croatian, and Russian. It has been used in Canada (a version for Canadians
was prepared by Canada's Fraser Institute, and the Quiz was praised
in Canadian Lawyer magazine a few years ago).
The Quiz is
also used in schools around the world, including the Cameron Heights
Collegiate Institute (Ontario, Canada), Bilkent University (Ankara,
Turkey), and the University of Granada (Spain).
The Quiz Web
site is regularly visited by people from around the world, and we
regularly get very positive response from people outside the United
States.
Our email newsletter,
The Liberator Online, has over 60,000 subscribers in over 100
countries as of August 2004, making it the world's largest libertarian
email newsletter. Most subscribers learn about this newsletter at
our Web site, where the Quiz is also located. (The Liberator Online
is free, and
you can find out more and subscribe at our Web site.
The words "liberal,"
"conservative," and "libertarian" can have very
different meanings in some cultures outside the United States.
Libertarian
in many countries can mean a leftish form of cooperative living, left-wing
anarchism, or similar things.
Liberal in many
countries means a sort of moderate libertarianism -- what is sometimes
called "classical liberalism" in America. Even in America,
some libertarians refer to themselves as "liberals" or "real
liberals" or "classical liberals" or "Jeffersonian
liberals" (though fewer and fewer do so, because of the confusion
it inevitably brings). The roots of (American) libertarianism are
definitely in classical liberalism, and libertarianism might be accurately
defined as a more rigorous, more robust, more consistent liberalism
(in the sense that many non-Americans use the word liberalism).
Conservatism
in many counties focuses more on personal and economic control and
enforcing tradition, as opposed to U.S. conservatism, which is a sometimes
confusing mixture of traditionalism and classical liberalism. Also,
sometimes "conservative" in former Communist countries refers
to those who adhere to the old Communist line.
On the Quiz,
we use the standard U.S. usages for these terms. As the Quiz continues
to develop a world-wide audience, we will explore possible alternatives
for users outside the United States.
8:
THE QUIZ IN OTHER FORMATS: CARDS, DISKS
They're available
in a variety of forms, business card sized and shirt pocket Deluxe
size. You can see them at our online catalog -- and order them, if
you wish at our Liberty
Store.
Or you can call,
write, or email the Advocates.
(Quizzes are
FREE for education professionals for classroom use. Contact us about
this.)
Advocates contact
info is at the beginning of this FAQ.
As of August
2004, we had distributed over 7 million Quizzes. And orders continue
to pour in.
Plus, millions
more people have seen the Quiz reprinted in newspapers, books, magazines,
etc.
Easy and FREE -- for PC or Mac!
Visit here:
http://www.self-gov.org/download.html
It's easy and FREE. Here's a
PDF file.
We MAY still
have a few left. Contact us (contact info is at top of this FAQ).
9:
THE QUIZ IN THE MEDIA
Newspapers that
have printed and/or discussed the Quiz:
The Washington
Post, The Atlanta Constitution (the South's largest daily paper),
The Atlanta Journal, Sunday Miami Herald (South's largest Sunday paper),
Creative Loafing (America's largest free city weekly), Pittsburgh
Tribune-Review, Harrisburg Patriot-News, Pittsburgh Press,
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dallas Voice, Fresno Bee,
York Dispatch (Pennsylvania), Libertarian Party News,
Liberty Today, Holmes County Advertiser (Florida), the
Galveston County Daily News (Texas), the Gainesville Times
(Georgia), Canadian Student Review, the Charlotte Sun Herald
(Florida), the Rapid City Journal (Oklahoma), the Tallahassean
(Florida)... and many more.
Magazines that
have printed and/or discussed the Quiz:
Campaigns
and Elections ("the Bible of political professionals"), Canadian
Lawyer, Reason, The Individualist, numerous local
and state Libertarian Party newsletters, Mademoiselle (1.3
million readers), Worcester Magazine (New England)... and more.
(See next paragraph for computer magazines that have discussed the
Quiz.) Rolling Stone (circulation eight million) mentioned
the Quiz indirectly while writing about the Advocates, referring to
our "electronic pamphlets" on the pre-Web Internet.
Internet/computer
magazines that have reviewed the Quiz Web site:
Yahoo!,
Internet World, PC Novice, Web Guide, Web Bound… and more.
Books that have
reprinted and/or discussed the Quiz and/or the Quiz Web site: The
Politics of Diversity (textbook, West/Wadsworth Publishing);
Politics On The Net; Modem Nation: The Handbook of Grassroots
Activism Online (Charles Bowen, Times Books); Most Popular
Web Sites: The Best Of The Net (Lycos Press); Luckman's World
Wired Web Yellow Pages; Libertarianism In One Lesson (David
Bergland); Personal And Economic Ideology: British Politics And
The Political Compress (Nigel Meeks); The Internet Phone Book
(New Zealand); Send In The Waco Killers (Vin Suprynowicz)...
and more.
Online supplements
to high school and college textbooks that feature the Quiz include:
Introduction to Government & Politics: A Conceptual Approach,
Sixth Edition (Thomson Canada Limited), Essentials of American
Government: Continuity and Change, 2004 Edition (Pearson Longman),
Power & Choice: An Introduction to Political Science
(The McGraw-Hill Companies), A Quick Guide to the Internet for
Speech Communication, 1999 Edition (Allyn & Bacon), A
Meeting of Minds: A Brief Rhetoric for Writers and Readers (Pearson
Longman), Government in America: People, Politics, and Policy,
Seventh Edition (Pearson Longman), Political Science: An Introduction
(Prentice Hall), Challenge of Democracy, Seventh Edition
(Houghton Mifflin Company), and American Government: Policy and
Politics, Seventh Edition (Pearson Longman).
Incidentally:
the Quiz is reprinted and written about constantly, and we're sure
we don't hear about many reprintings and reviews. So if you see it
reprinted or reviewed, please let us know!
The Quiz has
become one of the hottest political attractions on the Web. As of
July 2004, over three million people had taken the Quiz online.
An average of
10,000 people currently visits our site each day.
Over 4,000 visitors
currently take the Quiz online each day.
Over 13,400
Web sites links to the Quiz site.
The award-winning
Quiz Web site has been praised by top Web sites and reviewers including
(to name a few): Yahoo! ("the Quiz is savvy and willing
to tell you the truth"), Web Guide, PC Novice, Internet World,
Congressional Quarterly, MSNBC, Magellan Internet Directory,
Lycos, Infoseek, FreeMarket.Net, Political Site of the Day, StudyWeb
and many, many more. (A longer list is at the site.)
The 1999 edition
of Luckman's World Wide Web Yellow Pages gives our Web site
their very highest ratings in every category.
The Quiz has
become so popular on the Web that the Magellan Internet Directory
once described the Quiz as "ubiquitous."
Radio:
It's been given over the air by some of America's leading radio talk
show hosts, including Rush Limbaugh, Neal Boortz (over 3 million daily
listeners, named America's leading male talk show host by Talkers
Magazine), Larry Elder (top Los Angeles host), Mike Foudy, and many,
many others. Many radio talk show hosts have links at their Web pages
to the Quiz.
Incidentally,
we have an extensive
list of libertarian or libertarian-oriented radio talk shows at
our Web page, complete with links.
 National
Television: The Quiz was briefly discussed on Fox's Crier's
Report (during a 1998 interview with Minnesota Governor Jesse
Ventura). During the December 4, 1998 edition of CNN's Talk Back
Live, host Bobbie Batista (left) held up a copy of the Quiz and
told viewers that she had given the test to members of the audience
prior to the show. Batista said in part: "...and it was interesting
to note. We asked people to put their names on these and to list what
party they were, or where, politically, they thought they stood. And
after they took this test, it was different for a lot of people. I
don't think that a lot of people in this country really do know where
they stand, politically, in terms of party definition."
10:
CAN I USE THE QUIZ IN MY…
Great! We have
sharp, camera ready artwork that will be glad to send you for FREE.
Just contact us (contact info is at the beginning of this FAQ). Or
you can just copy the Quiz from a Quiz card. Anyone can reprint the
Quiz as long as they print it unaltered exactly as it is, credit the
Advocates, and include our copyright info. And please send us a
copy of the publication (or send us notification, if it's an online
publication). We strongly encourage printing the Quiz in your
publication -- readers enjoy it. We will help in any way we can. And
we'll give added publicity to your publication by mentioning the reprint
in our publications.
Yes. Many campaigns
and political organizations have done this. Contact us (contact info
is at the beginning of this FAQ). You can print it yourself, or we
can refer you to an excellent printer. We can also give you other
useful advice about doing this.
Certainly. Simply
link your site to the quiz page at
http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html. You may link to our site,
but you may not copy the World's Smallest Political Quiz to
any other location. Recreating the Quiz is a violation of our usage
agreement, designed to protect the integrity of the Quiz. We provide
the Quiz online, on disk and in several print versions for your convenience.
Please help us preserve the Quiz by honoring the usage agreement!
11:
THE QUIZ IN CLASSROOMS
Yes. According
to research conducted by the Advocates in 2004, at least 154 colleges,
universities, high schools, middle schools, and preparatory academies
in the United States and around the world have used the Quiz in the
classroom in recent years. The list includes famous schools (Harvard
University) and less-well-known ones (Westwind Preparatory Academy,
Phoenix, Arizona); and large schools (Texas A&M University) and
small ones (Winnebago High School, Nebraska).
In more than three-quarters of those schools, the Quiz was used in
Political Science or American Government classes, while other schools
utilized it to teach everything from Computer Science to Sociology
to National and International Health.
Of the 154 schools, 147 were in the United States. The other seven
were The American School in Japan (Tokyo), the Cameron Heights Collegiate
Institute (Ontario, Canada), Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey),
Singapore American School, Acadia University (Nova Scotia, Canada),
Aberdeen Composite School (Saskatchewan, Canada), and the University
of Granada (Spain).
The Quiz has been recommended by educational groups such as the California
State University Social Sciences Research and Instructional Council,
which stated: "The World's Smallest Political Quiz [can be used]
in Political Science classes to develop an understanding of one's
political philosophy and how it compares to the political philosophy
of others."
The Quiz chart
and the Advocates Web address are printed in the major political science
textbook The Politics of Diversity (West/Wadsworth
Publishing).
The Web page
for the popular college textbook American Government, invites
students to visit our page and take the Quiz.
The political
science college textbook The Challenge of Democracy devotes
several pages to the superiority of a multi-spectrum political map
-- similar to that of the Quiz -- over the old "left-right" model.
Top textbook
publisher Houghton-Mifflin provides a link to the Quiz as part of
its "American Government Documents Collection" supplement
to its textbooks. Other online supplements to textbooks that feature
the Quiz include: Introduction to Government & Politics: A
Conceptual Approach, Sixth Edition (Thomson Canada Limited),
Essentials of American Government: Continuity and Change,
2004 Edition (Pearson Longman), Power & Choice: An Introduction
to Political Science (The McGraw-Hill Companies), A Quick
Guide to the Internet for Speech Communication, 1999 Edition
(Allyn & Bacon), A Meeting of Minds: A Brief Rhetoric for
Writers and Readers (Pearson Longman), Government in America:
People, Politics, and Policy, Seventh Edition (Pearson Longman),
Political Science: An Introduction (Prentice Hall), Challenge
of Democracy, Seventh Edition (Houghton Mifflin Company), and
American Government: Policy and Politics, Seventh Edition
(Pearson Longman).
Great! We'll
send you as many copies of the card Quiz as you need for your class.
No charge. Just contact us (contact info is at beginning of this FAQ).
Alternately,
if you have computer access, you can use the Quiz site on the Web.
Either way,
please let us know the results.
12:
QUIZ WEB SITE NUMBERS AND EXPLANATIONS FOR THE NUMBERS
The number increases
daily, as we have about 4,000 visits per day to our Web page.
As of July 2004, more than three million people had taken the Quiz
at the site.
Here's how the
results broke down as of August 2004:
Liberal
18.90%
Conservative
7.44%
Centrist
30.11%
Libertarian
34.90%
Statist
8.65%
-
The number of people who've scored libertarian
on your Web Quiz seems way out of proportion to what I'd expect.
Isn't this an indication that the Quiz is flawed, inaccurate,
or is just a trick to get people to score libertarian?
There have been
quite a few attempts over the years to try to determine what percentage
of the population is libertarian or libertarian leaning, as well as
what percentage are conservative, liberal, statist, centrist, etc.
etc.
Different methods
have been used. Most estimates seem to put the number of libertarians
or people who are more libertarian than anything else at around 20%-30%
of the population. (See Section 13: HOW MANY AMERICANS ARE LIBERTARIANS?,
below, for more on this.)
People giving
our Quiz in the "real" (i.e., offline) world to large groups
of people at fairs, conventions, college campuses, flea markets and
so on typically report that they get a response consistent with this.
We take this to be a rough but significant validation of the Quiz's
accuracy.
Our Web site
is a different matter. We don't claim that number of libertarian (or
any other ideology) scores at the Web site are representative of the
public at large, or Internet users. There are several reasons why
there are more libertarian Quiz scores at our Web site than one would
find in the general population or among Web users. Here are two important
ones:
1) The Advocates
for Self-Government is a libertarian organization, and is natural
that our Web site attracts many people who are already libertarians
or strongly inclined to be libertarians. Many libertarians visit our
site to take advantage of the numerous libertarian resources we have
there. More libertarians visiting the site means, of course, that
more libertarians will take the Quiz than if it were at a non-libertarian
site.
2) The Internet
is a hotbed of libertarian thought. There are far more libertarians
and libertarian-inclined people among Internet users that among the
public at large. Numerous reviewers -- most of them NOT libertarians
-- have observed this. Some examples:
Wired
Magazine: In his pathbreaking article "Birth of the
Digital Nation" in the April 1997 Wired, longtime Internet
writer/critic and Wired contributing editor John Katz (who
is not a libertarian) wrote that "On the Net, government is rarely
seen as the instrument of positive change or social good. Politicians
are assumed to be manipulative or ill-informed, unable to affect reform
or find solutions, forced to lie to survive." Katz further noted
that "Where freedom is rarely mentioned in mainstream media anymore,
it is ferociously defended -- and exercised daily -- on the Net."
Katz described Internet users as "... not representative of the
population as a whole: they are richer, better educated... have disposable
income and available time... [These] digital young are bright. They
are not afraid to challenge authority... Some of their common values
are clear: they tend to be libertarian, materialistic, tolerant, rational,
technologically adept, disconnected from conventional political organizations
-- like the Republican and Democrat parties -- and from narrow labels
like liberal or conservative... The closest thing that the digital
world has to dogma is its ingrained libertarianism, its wholehearted
commitment to political and economic freedom, its fierce opposition
to constraints on individual expression... The online world is the
freest community in American life."
Merrill
Lynch: A poll commissioned by Merrill Lynch (reported in
the December 1997 Wired magazine and by Associated Press) divided
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