Friday, August 14, 2009

World's Smallest Political Quiz

One fact about my family has defined more about the way I look at everything than any other: My father has been a passionate Republican for my whole life while my mother was just as passionate of a Democrat. It was like growing up with James Carville and Mary Matalin in reverse, only not political operatives but just intelligent and educated voters who care. Objectively, their points of view were unsurprising, as he was an executive at large companies while she was a Ph.D. who opted to teach in and, eventually, run public high schools instead of working in the relative luxury of colleges. They generally lived by what they preached and that obviously led to some heated debates at the dinner table. While this drove me absolutely nuts as a child it also made me learn the importance of being politically aware very early on.

The second most important lesson I learned is to respect people who disagree with you. Sometimes it feels like I'm the only person in Generations X or Y who feels that way. The vitriol between parties makes me physically ill when it's my friends spouting it. Disagreements are necessary and even helpful but the sheer petty meanness from both major parties is purely depressing and helps not one single person in this world.

Even worse, I've never fit on the right/left line, so the debates have always made me feel like even more of an outcast than I felt from being a geeky girl with odd interests all my life. I've also found that a lot of people I've met who THINK they know what party they belong in actually disagree quite a lot with that party. That's one of the many problems of a two-party system, many (if not most) people join a party that fits one or two of their pet issues and ignore that party's position on everything else.

So, you can imagine how thrilled I was to receive an email from Dad with a link to The World's Smallest Political Quiz and a note about how he was surprised by his results. I immediately took it and, while not surprised when it told me I was a libertarian (I joined the Libertarian party a while back after doing a lot of research before transferring my voter registration to a new state), it was a revelation to see just how intensely libertarian I am. What validation! People have been trying to convince me I'm a Democrat for years despite my enormous issues with many of that party's stances and their underlying system of beliefs. I knew that wasn't right.

Being a natural skeptic in general, though, I felt the need to test the quiz a bit further and had my boyfriend take it. He scored precisely where I expected, as pretty much a super-liberal. Yup, I ended up with a significant other almost as different in his beliefs as my mother was to my father. We really do grow up to be our parents!

So now I want to encourage everyone in the country to take this quiz, it only takes a couple of minutes but it is by far the best way I've found to distill what you think into something quantifiable. The other wonderful thing about the quiz is that it will lead you into ways to explore the parties you might fit well into, regardless of which they may be. No matter how politically aware you may be there is always more to learn. Always.

Perhaps the most important thing about this quiz and the group that publishes it is that they are trying to redefine the political landscape, get away from the left/right line that leaves so many people like me out in the cold. Libertarians AREN'T conservatives, as many people think, and statists aren't liberals. They use a diamond-shaped chart that makes so much more sense than any straight line ever could, the world isn't flat and neither should our political options be. There is no category where you can divide the nation's population into exactly two positions, let alone one as sophisticated and complicated as politics.

John Adams famously said, "There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and converting measures into opposition to each other." The man should be considered a prophet.

Please take this quiz!

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