Hard-Core Liberal
July 21, 2009
I thought this was funny, interesting, and fun. I used to describe myself as a Liberal with Libertarian sympathies. But then I started using the term Progressive. Now, I don’t know what to call myself! I took a quiz at speakout.com to find out where I fit philosophically on the political spectrum, and here’s what it told me:
PoliticsMatch
Your Score
You scored the following on the PoliticsMatch questions:
Personal Score 92% Economic Score 20%
Where You Fit In Where your Personal score meets your Economic score on the grid below is your political philosophy. Based on the above score, you are a Hard-Core Liberal .
That little red dot…that’s me.
So, it says I’m a hard-core liberal, but it’s not that simple. On social issues, liberals and libertarians believe the exact same things. However, on economic issues, liberals and populists believe the exact same things:
Personal Questions: Liberals and libertarians agree in choosing the less-government answers, while conservatives and populists agree in choosing the more-restrictions answers.
That’s confusing and complicated! No wonder people are frustrated with the choices they have when voting. It’s hard enough just to figure out what you call yourself, much less try to figure out where all the candidates stand on any particular issues.
One thing was certain, however, I was nowhere near conservative. And I did already know that much. I also already knew I was hard-core 
Go HERE to take the quiz…have fun!
Be sure to report back,
Spring
July 21, 2009 at 12:03 pm
I got 95/16 “Hardcore Liberal”. Whatever that means. I think the quiz is poorly structured though. I strongly support the idea of letting churches provide “welfare” services. But I voted against it because they meant allowing churches to provide services currently offered by the state. And that I strongly oppose. Similarly, I have no real problem in teaching children to value families, teaching them moral behaviour, and doing so in schools. But that’s not what they meant by “family values”.
As for “sharing views with libertarians” – I support more government intervention, not less. I want more respect for civil liberties, but I also want more environmental regulation, more consumer protection regulation, etc. I want government to intrude into marriage more – by giving same-sex and common-law marriage parity with other kinds.
July 21, 2009 at 9:35 pm
i’m glad you posted, ian! nice to see ya.
July 21, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Interesting stuff — I’m apparently a populist-leaning liberal…I learned a lot from this, actually.
July 21, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Cool. My dot landed on the 90/30 Left Liberal (just one notch over from Spring’s), making me a Libertarian-Leaning Liberal. Or, as Holly would call it, a Liberaltarian.
July 21, 2009 at 3:51 pm
I am a moderate liberal.
July 21, 2009 at 9:36 pm
hardcore liberal also, here. (duh, hehe) my score was pretty similar to spring’s. i liked the explanation of the score and the breakdown of the positions. however, i agree with ian’s criticisms of the quiz. it did have a bit of problematic wording in places.
July 23, 2009 at 9:32 pm
I am a little confused by the quiz, since I didn’t get a dot. But I’m not very good at following directions shortly before vacations.
I still got “Hard-Core Liberal”.
July 23, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Doh. Okay, I figured it out. I got 95/8. I’m just a notch to the left of you, Spring.
July 23, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Um, also, I don’t think my definition of “populist” is the same as theirs. Maybe I just don’t know what a populist really is. And on top of that, it never asked me about decreasing overall taxation for the wealthy but apparently has an answer from me? How does that happen?