The burning issues of today are considerably different from those of 1999, when I wrote the first edition of Quiz2D. The last change to the Quiz was in 2004, and that was primarily a rewording of the previous question set, attempting to make the tone a bit less strident.
Think of this post (and other posts under V7 Update) as forum thread kickoffs more than blog posts. Feel free to add your comment even for months old posts. I want opinions from a wide range of people – from liberals to conservatives, from libertarians to totalitarians – on what subjects the next edition of the Quiz should cover.
Property Rights Issues
I originally called this axis the economic axis in accordance with the traditional Nolan Chart, but gun rights are more of a civil liberties issue than an economic issue. But gun rights do fall under property rights; you can use guns to defend your property. This is why America’s political Right tends to defend gun rights more than the Left does. (But we do have plenty of examples of liberal gun rights defenders ranging from the early Robert Heinlein to the Black Panthers. Gun rights are a civil liberty issue as much as it is a property issue. It’s just that today the defenders of property rights are the louder defenders of this right.)
Some possible issues for the updated Quiz:
- Guns
- Healthcare
- Affirmative action
- Eminent domain
- Monetary policy
- Welfare
- Unions
- Education
- Civil asset forfeiture.
- Bailouts
- Environmental regulations
- Workplace regulations
- Contract enforcement
- Farm subsidies
- Consumer protection
- Trade policy
- Wealth transfers (either by progressive taxation or other means such as a universal stipend)
What have I missed? Which of the above do you consider the most important? The least important?
Personal Liberty Issues
The person liberty issues have perhaps changed even more than the property issues since I last changed the Quiz. Since I created the first edition of the Quiz we have had the War on Terror: monitoring, torture, and humiliation by the TSA. In parallel, many police departments have moved from the Mayberry Sheriff to the Imperial Storm Trooper school of law enforcement. And then we have Hollywood and the music industry wanting to have storm trooper rights of their own in order to crack down on pirates.
Back when I first wrote the Quiz I had a hard time coming up with enough personal liberty issues. Today, I could come up with many more. Maybe I’m becoming more liberal. Anyway, the current list off the top of my head:
- Surveillance
- No-knock arrests (storm trooper policing)
- Torture/Detainment (of foreign combatants)
- National Service (military draft or mandatory bedpan service…)
- Rights of the Accused (perp walks, rough treatment in jail before trial, delayed trials, etc.)
- Punishments (Three Strikes laws, etc.)
- Immigration
- Copyright
- Marijuana
- Hard drugs
- Sex Industry (porn, strip bars, prostitution)
What have I missed? Which of the above does not belong?
Issues Left Out
I have intentionally left out some major hot issues of the day because they don’t cleanly fit into the Nolan Chart political model.
Consider global warming. Currently, action on the issue comes mainly from the Left. But this is not inherently a Left/liberal issue. One could call for a carbon tax on purely conservative grounds: an excuse to get rid of the income tax, a tax on the enemies of the U.S. (if on oil), a tax which is not on labor or capital, but a sharing of God-given resources. One could imagine an ultra progressive Leftist (say, Lyndon LaRouche) attacking environmentalists as reactionary. We should turn Earth into a socialist Trantor, or be building artificial habitats on Mars or some such. In light of such sci-fi views, staying on Earth and preserving nature as is is a conservative, or even reactionary, position. That climate action is associated with the American (and Western European) Left was a choice by the respective factions. It could have gone the other way.
The same holds for some other controversial issues such as abortion and military intervention. Maybe I’ll have a future post delving deeper on why I have avoided these issues in the Quiz.
But maybe I should include some of these anyway, but just not use the results for scoring. Might gather some interesting data: how many eco-conservatives are there? How about pro-life liberals?
What do ye think? Worth recording? Or would this make the Quiz too long? Please discuss in the comments below.
Very good list of additional considerations. I’d particularly like to see secondary education, w/ specific focus on funding options, teacher evaluations, curriculum, mandated testing for advancement, home-schooling. I find in conversation that these are issues that sharply divide even mainstream suburbanites.
Secondary? Do you mean college or something earlier? Your mention of teacher evaluations etc. indicates something earlier than college.
Hello Accbar8, I agree with you I would like to see secondary education with some etra funding options. Also to see teacher’s be evaluated more and more home schooling.
I don’t even know where to start here – your site has inspired me so much over the years ever since I first came across it in late high school.
I should have a list of possible issues you could add in the days to come, but in the meantime I think one improvement that would be of use would be allowing users a choice between how many questions they wish to answer. If they want a general idea of where they are politically, they can answer eight or so. More precise results with a dozen or more questions could also be available if the user has the time available (which I would assume would be most people).
Hello,
I like your political quiz probably most of the ones I’ve seen – it seems most accurate, although of course it can only make the typical left – right Marx – Smith comparison rather than dealing with Social Credit, which I think is the free money you mentioned below, or Keynesianism…
Anyways, I was thinking that you might add nationalization vs. corporatism as one comparison, with regulation in the middle. So it would go such…
1) Nationalize all businesses, perhaps make them communized as well.
2) Nationalize some key industries but allow small businesses to exist.
3) Split large corporations. Have strong anti – monopoly laws.
4) Allow large corporations to exist but have some subsidies for small businesses.
5) Allow the free market to run it’s course, even if this means that corporations control all business.
I just want to say that this quiz is the best I’ve taken. I strongly believe that you must add a question on gay marriage/unions with options that discuss the issues that come with them like adoption (personally I don’t believe that even straight couples should be married under the eyes of the gov. Marriage is a religious matter in my opinion, that should remain desperate from gov.). I would also advocate for a question on capital punishment. Even if these cannot be used they would make for interesting data. I also agree with Greenfield, that a shorter test and lengthier one be made. Thanks again for making such a great learning tool