World's Smallest Political Quiz
Encyclopedia
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
Advocates for Self Government
Advocates for Self Government
The Advocates for Self-Government is a non-profit, non-partisan libertarian educational organization. It was founded in 1985 by Marshall Fritz and the current president is Sharon Harris....
, created by Marshall Fritz
Marshall Fritz
Marshall Fritz was an American libertarian activist. A native of Inglewood, California, Fritz was chairman, founder, and former president of the Alliance for the Separation of School and State. Prior to founding that organization, he founded the Advocates for Self-Government, a non-profit,...
. It associates the quiz-taker with one of five categories: Libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
, Left-Liberal
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
, Centrist, Right-Conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
, or Statist
Statism
Statism is a term usually describing a political philosophy, whether of the right or the left, that emphasises the role of the state in politics or supports the use of the state to achieve economic, military or social goals...
.
According to the Advocates, the quiz was designed primarily to be more accurate than the one-dimensional "left-right" or "liberal-conservative" political spectrum
Political spectrum
A political spectrum is a way of modeling different political positions by placing them upon one or more geometric axes symbolizing independent political dimensions....
by providing a two-dimensional representation. The Quiz is composed of two parts: a diagram of a political map; and a series of 10 short questions designed to help viewers quickly score themselves and others on that map.
The 10 questions are divided into two groups, Economic and Personal, of five questions each. The answers to the questions can be Agree, Maybe, or Disagree. Twenty points are given for an Agree, ten points for a Maybe, and zero for Disagree. The scores are added for each group and can be zero to one hundred. These two numbers are then plotted on the diamond-shaped chart and the result displays the political group that agrees most with the quiz taker.
History
The chart associated with the Quiz is based on a chart devised during 1969 by libertarian political scientist David NolanDavid Nolan (Libertarian Party)
David Fraser Nolan was an American activist and politician. He was one of the founders of the Libertarian Party of the United States, having hosted the meeting in 1971 at which the Party was founded.Douglas Martin, . New York Times, November 22, 2010...
. Nolan reasoned that virtually all human political action can be divided into two general categories: economic and personal. In order to express visually this insight, Nolan developed a two axis graph. One axis was for economic freedom
Economic freedom
Economic freedom is a term used in economic and policy debates. As with freedom generally, there are various definitions, but no universally accepted concept of economic freedom...
, and the other was for personal freedom.
Nolan introduced his chart by an article entitled "Classifying and Analyzing Politico-Economic Systems" published in the January 1971 issue of The Individualist, a libertarian newsletter.
During 1985, Marshall Fritz
Marshall Fritz
Marshall Fritz was an American libertarian activist. A native of Inglewood, California, Fritz was chairman, founder, and former president of the Alliance for the Separation of School and State. Prior to founding that organization, he founded the Advocates for Self-Government, a non-profit,...
founded the Advocates for Self Government
Advocates for Self Government
The Advocates for Self-Government is a non-profit, non-partisan libertarian educational organization. It was founded in 1985 by Marshall Fritz and the current president is Sharon Harris....
. Part of the Advocates' mission was to explain libertarian ideas to the public. Fritz found that Nolan's chart was a great help with explaining how libertarianism was distinct from conservatism
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
and liberalism
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
.
The first form the Quiz took was as a business card, with the ten questions printed on it along with the chart. As of August 2004, over 7 million Quizzes had been printed. The Quiz, then, is a combination of two elements: Nolan's chart
Nolan Chart
The Nolan Chart is a political diagram popularized by the American libertarian David Nolan. He reasoned that virtually all human political action can be divided into two general categories: economic and personal...
, and Fritz's idea of ten short questions to help a person find their associated place on that graph.
The quiz has also been represented in other forms. During 1993, Brian Towey, with the help of his wife Ingrid, produced a full-color, instant-scoring computer Quiz on disk, for the DOS and Windows operating systems. Programmer Jon Kalb created an equally advanced version for Macintosh computers. Toby Nixon
Toby Nixon
Toby Nixon is an American politician from Washington state and a former Republican member of the Washington House of Representatives from the 45th Legislative District.He was appointed to a vacant House seat in 2002, and was elected as an incumbent in 2004...
created an ASCII text copy of the Quiz in the era prior to the World Wide Web, and this version was circulated in newsgroups, computer networks, bulletin boards, and on software. During 1995, Paul Schmidt created the Advocates' website, with the current interactive version of the World's Smallest Political Quiz.
For an extensive and in-depth FAQ about the Quiz, see http://server.theadvocates.org/quiz-faq.html .
Modifications to questions
The ten questions have been modified over time.Former questions that have been removed:
- Let peaceful people cross borders freely.
- Minimum wage laws cause unemployment. Repeal them.
- All foreign aid should be privately funded.
New questions that have been added:
- There should be no National ID card.
- Let people control their own retirement; privatize Social Security.
- Replace government welfare with private charity.
Rephrased questions:
- People are better off with free trade than with tariffs. → End government barriers to international free trade.
- End taxes. Pay for services with user fees. → Cut taxes and government spending by 50% or more.
- Businesses and farms should operate without government subsidies. → End "corporate welfare." No government handouts to business.
Uses
On August 23, 2000, Portrait of America conducted a national telephone survey of 822 likely voters. Using the same questions and scale, the survey found 32% of American voters are centrists; 16% are libertarians; 14% are authoritarians; 13% liberal; 7% are conservative; and, 17% border one or more categories. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.According to e-mails collected by the quiz's advocates, it has been used in 420 schools in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The online content associated with several textbooks is also claimed to feature the Quiz.
See also
- Nolan chartNolan ChartThe Nolan Chart is a political diagram popularized by the American libertarian David Nolan. He reasoned that virtually all human political action can be divided into two general categories: economic and personal...
- Political spectrumPolitical spectrumA political spectrum is a way of modeling different political positions by placing them upon one or more geometric axes symbolizing independent political dimensions....
- Marshall FritzMarshall FritzMarshall Fritz was an American libertarian activist. A native of Inglewood, California, Fritz was chairman, founder, and former president of the Alliance for the Separation of School and State. Prior to founding that organization, he founded the Advocates for Self-Government, a non-profit,...
- David Nolan (libertarian)
External links
- World's Smallest Political Quiz
- The World's Smallest Political Hook
- Scott RasmussenScott RasmussenScott W. Rasmussen is the founder and president of Rasmussen Reports. He is an American political analyst, author, speaker, and public opinion pollster...
, Problems with Online Polling - Bryan CaplanBryan CaplanBryan Caplan is an American economist, a Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center, adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute, and blogger for Econlog. He is best known for his work in public choice theory and for his libertarian ideology.-Personal...
, Libertarian purity test - Votomatic, a variation of the quiz optimized for Ireland
- Best Political Quiz, popular US alternative to the Smallest Political Quiz