Political Leanings QuizFollow

That is Milton Friedman, a fairly notable champion of modern day libertarians.



Wait, so you're saying us dirty Liberals aren't really baby killing **** commies?


EDIT: who also hate puppies.

Edited, May 5th 2011 7:15pm by kiworrior

Seems more reasonable than the whole "Make money out of thin air" the Federal Reserve uses now.

Fair point! Still, imaginary money? Worst mistake you guys made was the Federal reserve act.

Off of the first quiz I ended up being a solid liberal.

Second quiz:
Economic Left/Right: -4.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.74


Gandhi and I go way back.

A lot of liberals in the last couple decades (as the label "liberal" has gotten a bad rap) have taken to calling themselves libertarians, presumably purely because of the similarities in the names. It's like they think that by calling themselves libertarians, it makes them a smarter/rarer form of liberal. Just look at Bill Maher. Last I recall, he was claiming to be a libertarian. He's not though. Wanting to legalize marijuana doesn't make you a libertarian.



Some, I suppose. But modern liberals believe in using government to create social outcomes. What defines a libertarian is a belief in limited government to a far greater degree than Republicans. It's why I often say I'm not a libertarian. I don't believe that we should abolish publicly funded education, or highways, or fire fighters, or police, the entire military, all social programs, and basically every single thing the government does today. That's what libertarians believe and it's nearly 100% in opposition to what "liberals" believe.

To be fair though, that's the platform of the Libertarian party, the broader political position isn't quite so severe, but it still revolves around having a government that does the absolute minimum it has to. So if you believe in a progressive tax system (really income taxes at all), you are not a libertarian. If you believe in raising taxes for the top 2% to pay for benefits for the poor, you are not a libertarian. If you believe in basically about 99% of the current modern US Democratic party platform, you can not be a libertarian. Not just the political party, but the political persuasion. They are basically diametrically opposed.



Sure. That's in that 1% of overlap. Of course, that 1% is also shared by most conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, etc as well. The problem is that other 99% of the social agenda which liberals and libertarians are in absolutely disagreement about. Again, think of the scale labels "Authoritarian vs Libertarian". This should give you the hint that libertarian is non-authoritarian (which is correct). Authoritarian means that some authority (the government typically) controls social outcomes. Think about how much of the liberal social agenda requires government action to make their desired outcomes happen. That's authoritarian and is the opposite of libertarian.


Edited, May 5th 2011 5:01pm by gbaji

Sweetums, 'phil: Fair points ;)

I needed a crappy internet poll to tell me I'm a Solid Liberal? Hell, I'm not even gonna take that other one.

That is a *one* definition of "social conservative" versus "social liberal". But the labels they used were "social authoritarian" versus "social libertarian". A social authoritarian believes that government should use its "authority" to impose social outcomes. Social libertarians are opposed to this. If you support government aid for poor people, socialized/universal health care, affirmative action, progressive taxes, and any of hundreds of political planks in the Democratic Party platform which involve solving social problems by creating government programs, then you are a "social authoritarian".

Remember, being authoritarian has nothing to do with whether you personally agree with the social outcome, but with the method used to attempt to achieve it.

I don't think the freedom to pollute is something you could consider a fulfilling right, and the result of allowing has potentially disastrous results.

We also need to be clear about the scope of what is permissible and what isn't. Having strict regulation of oil rigs in the gulf is something I wouldn't even consider debatable (at least not in the sense where I'm willing to credit the other side with a valid point--we're obviously free to debate to our hearts' content).

Whether or not we should raise the legal limit of acceptable CO2 omissions on the other hand, is something I'd say is debatable. I still fall on the side of environmental protection, because I don't think it's wise to allow every single American to ignore global CO2 levels because switching to a greener mode of transportation is inconvenient. I would definitely favor incentives to encourage people to switch/make it easier on top of such legislation as well.

I'd also support projects by the government to boost green public transit, like building trains.

Still, I would consider those emissions to be infringing on the rights of others to live healthy and happy lives in the long run. It might not affect them immediately, but it will down the road. And that's an easily predictable consequence, not a subtle one.



Your warped world is funny. ANYTHING and EVERYTHING is going to take legislation because of the very nature of gov't as a collective ruling body. That's not to say that legislation is always about control. Yes, a gov't is going to need to pass legislation to say you aren't allowed to murder someone. But it's a law such that the sacrifice to human rights is vastly outweighed by the increase in them. That is to say the right of someone to not be murdered vastly outweighs the right of someone to murder.

Note how this legislation is entirely about ensuring that people don't have their rights infringed upon, even if it means that they need to prohibit certain things. That's the very nature of a social environment though, and does NOT mean represent fascism.

Look at the difference between these two scenarios:
1. A gov't tells you that you must go to <insert denominational> church every Sunday, can only have sex with your wife/husband, must dress in a specific uniform, go to the job they choose for you and work the number of hours they tell you to for a wage they decide.

That's clearly fascist (and an extreme example). Compare it to:
1. A gov't says that you are free to go to church on sunday, but are not allowed to prevent others who wish to from attending. You are allowed to have sex with who you choose, as long as it does not infringe on their right to choose not to have sex with you (which requires that the gov't accepts them as being rationally responsible for themselves, so no children). You are free to wear what you want, within the limitations of codes you agree to (a job may have a dress code, for instance). You are free to work where you want and negotiate your own pay (and choose to leave the job should you find the wages unacceptable). Etc.

Yes, you aren't totally free. But you will NEVER be able to have a society that guarantees everyone every right. Liberals are all about guaranteeing society as many rights as possible. Sometimes that means that certain rights need to be eliminated. But this is only justified when the result is a substantial increase in rights of the whole. And the rights you lose are almost always rights that aren't considered valuable beyond the right of choice (that is to say, they have no intrinsic value in and of themselves).

What I mean is this:
1. You might argue that the right to read and educate yourself (without censorship) is intrinsically valuable.
2. On the other hand, the right to throw your cigarette on the ground or in an ash tray really only has a value due to the fact that you get to choose which you do.

Hell, it means that he barely understands even a basic flow of history, even if he's never engaged with political thinkers.

You can never have read Smith, Marx, Aristotle, etc. and still see the difference between a social gov't's protections and a fascist regime's mandates.

I'm frankly not sure how anyone could read those and not understand that they are both authoritarian. I suspect you don't understand that authoritarian doesn't just mean "rules that I don't agree with are imposed on me". Authoritarian means that rules are imposed on you. Period. The more laws, the more authoritarian. The more government, the more authoritarian. The more intrusion, the more authoritarian.


What's really going on is that modern liberals aren't comfortable with the fact that their policies are authoritarian in nature. They've been taught that "authoritarian==bad". So they find ways to change the labels in order to make themselves feel better about what they are doing. They convince themselves that it's ok to impose social change as long as it's "good" social change. And a graph like that one illustrates this. They're really just measuring the degree to which a social agenda matches theirs and labeling that "libertarian", with anyone who happens to fall in the other direction being labeled "authoritarian". But those are not even remotely the correct labels to use.

I think we as a country largely accept the meritocracy model, the only distinction is in the level of perfection (conservatives leaning towards a more perfect meritocracy and liberals leaning towards a less perfect meritocracy).