The Politics Test

Welcome to my Politics Test. You will be presented with 160 political opinions and given the option to agree, strongly agree, disagree or strongly disagree. You will be measured on a two-dimensional axis consisting of economic liberty and personal liberty. Your result will display your personal and economic percentages, a picture of the general 20x20 area that you ended up in, with a subcategory label and a description. Simply use the chart with your personal and economic percentage points to pinpoint your exact location. The chart you will be measured with is below. The advantage of such a way of measuring political views is that it all generally centers on the question of what the role or lack thereof of government should be. The use of two dimensions is a more accurate way of measuring where one stands on the political spectrum.

A "leftist" at Personal 50/Economic 20 is very different from a "leftist" at Personal 90/Economic 50, just as a "rightist" at Personal 50/Economic 80 is very different from a "rightist" at Personal 20/Economic 50. And just as a "libertarian" at Personal 65/Economic 65 is very different from a "libertarian" at Personal 90/Economic 90. Under a one-dimensional political spectrum, these differences do not show up - an anarchist and totalitarian would both come out as "centrists" on a one-dimensional plane, which makes no sense. Make it a two-dimensional spectrum and the glaring differences emerge. Indeed, a significant aspect of a two-dimensional spectrum is that left vs. right is only one way to look at it - up vs. down, or more government vs. less government is another way to look at it. It is this question of more or less government that often gets lost or forgotten in political discourse.