I scored a 23. Which, while it is a nice Eristic number, tells you jack shit about my true political views. They’re still hamstrung by the outdated one-dimensional map.
Asking me how liberal or conservative I am is like asking my how brown my emotions are.
Interesting… You’ve given me an idea. What would the test look like if it were to accomodate rational libertarian thought?
These are the responses I would add to the first 11 questions they gave, and in each case I would choose the new response:
Add: The only problem government should attempt to solve is the problem of coercion.
Add to each: None of the above
Add to each: Myself
Add: Government should eliminate involuntary taxes
Add: It should be cut down until it does nothing more than defend its citizenry from coercion, both foreign and domestic
Add: Eliminate arbitrary burdens on third-party participation
Add: Herbert Hoover
Add: As a nation of property owners whose rights accrue from their property
Add: Maggie Trowe
Add: Eliminating laws of prohibition
Add: By strictly holding people responsible for their actions, eliminating social safety nets, and abolishing race-based equity schemes
That’s funny - from my (European) standpoint I was thinking “If Jackson is as far left as they can muster, then that’s a very right-slanted test”! FWIW, this non-American scored 13, which puts me between Bill and Hillary (the horror!).
9 I imagine in a more comprehensive quiz I’d tend even further to the left.
5, and agree with jjimm’s assessment. The test is very right slanted compared to Europe. I much prefer the Libertarian Polital compass.
I’m off to dust off my copy of the Communist Manifesto.
Hey, are you calling me a curmudgeon? It’s cantankerous curmudgeon to you, boy! Or girl, whichever is appropriate, oh ye of indeterminate gender.
What?
I mean, the rest of your post was fairly predictable libertarian stuff, but i don’t quite get this.
Are you saying that individuals’ rights to freedom of speech, of religion, of association, or whatever, are merely a product of their property?
Yes.
Well, since you apparently don’t have the inclination to expand on your explanation without a specific request, let me ask you this:
Does the extent to which one has rights have a relationship to the amount of one’s property? Does someone with even the merest piece of property automatically accrue all the rights of someone with lots of property? Is this theory of rights a sliding scale, or an on/off switch?
Eleven. Right between the Clintons.
5, right smack dab on top of Ted Kennedy’s red, bulbous nose.
Damn, I thought I was going to take the liberal prize, but NinjaChick snuck in one under me.
I guess I should have wanted to raises everybody’s taxes, not just the blood-sucking rich corporate bastards.
Hey, I voted for Jesse in '88, shouldn’t that get my score lowered by a few points?
mhendo: While I do not presume to speak for Libertarian or Libertarians in general, here’s my philosophy as coming from one who self-identifies as Libertarian and understands the philosophy:
All rights derive from being secure in one’s property. I own my body, therefore you cannot alter or harm it without my consent, nor can you prevent me from doing as I wish with it. I own my mind, therefore that, too, is inviolable, on the same terms as my body. My house is also my property, as is my lamp and my car and my rug and a piece of graphite I picked up off the ground and claim by right of adverse possession. 
If I own a newspaper, I can print what I will with it (my property, my rules) as long as I don’t harm anyone else’s possessions. And, yes, reputation is a possession, so slander and libel are actionable.
Spying on me is an infringement of my enjoyment of my property, and so lessens the value of it. Therefore, privacy is essential to my ownership of my property.
To become more esoteric, my soul is my possession, so my religion is not subject to outside approval.
Finally, nobody’s property rights trump' anyone else's property rights. If a government decides to deprive a homeless person of his refrigerator box without due process and compensation, that's just as bad as a burglar breaking into a home and stealing an expensive stereo set. (Violent crimes may be handled differently from nonviolent offenses, but that's not essential. Not all Libertarians think the death penalty is effective.) This is the basis of the no initiation of force’ doctrine all Libertarians share: Self-defense is a fundamental right, but throwing the first punch reduces you to the status of one who has trammled another’s property rights in a serious way. (A minority of Libertarians are actually pacifists.)
I don’t think I’ve left much out.
31!! Wow, I better go do an ammo check…
26
Mhendo
I agree with what Derleth has said. Rights are an essential part of a person, and are bestowed by God (if you’re a thiest) or nature (if you’re an atheist) because you have certain rights even when you are born — rights that accrue from ownership of your body and your mind. They are your original property. Whatever additional property you might acquire peacefully and honestly by using your body and your mind logically accrues to you. In libertarian philosophy, rights and property are synonyms.
Derleth, thanks for going into that. I am actually familiar with most of your arguments, and indeed with the general tenor of libertarianism and some of its key thinkers. The problem i have is with the rather useless definition of property that seems to animate much libertarian thought.
If everything from my mind, my soul and my body through to my worldly material possessions is the “property” from which my rights derive, then it seems to me that the category of property itself is serving very little purpose as a definitional or explanatory framework.
What i’m saying is that, if you apply the definition of property equally to everything, from my soul and mind to my car and house, the term itself becomes largely meaningless. Furthermore, there seems to be a certain tautology to libertarian rights talk, which often comes out sounding something like, “my rights accrue to me from the things that i have a right to be secure in.”
I sometimes think the problem is the need to create a foundation whenever you are designing a system in which rights are important. If we have “rights,” then those rights must spring from something, otherwise they’re just arbitrary, right? For some religious people, the foundation for their rights lies in the tenets of their religion, ostensibly handed down from a deity or some other superior being.
In the American legal system, the foundation of one’s rights tends to be seen as the Constitution. Of course, a common argument is that the Constitution simply enumerates our “natural” rights, the rights we already have whether the government tells us so or not. But this often leaves out the question of what “natural” rights are, and from where they derive.
Essentially, my complaint is that much rights talk is a superstructure erected on a nonexistent base. Rather than conceding that our rights are, in themselves, social constructions, some people suggest that they are naturally-occurring phenomena, like gravity or oxygen, which were there before humans and will be there after we’ve gone.
Now, i should add now that, just because i make these points doesn’t mean i don’t believe in rights. I believe in an absolute right to free speech (and, please, no-one bring up the tired old “yelling-fire-in-a-crowded theatre” rule), freedom of religion and association, and a bunch of other things. But i also concede that my definition of these things as “rights” stems from a moral belief that has little foundation except my own convictions of what is good and proper. There is no more “natural” reason for me to believe this than there is for an authoritarian to believe that he has the right to stifle freedom of speech and religion.
I realize that plenty of people, most of them much smarter than i am, have addressed these issues, and i suppose i could start giving my reactions to thinkers ranging from John Locke and Wilhelm von Humboldt to F.A. Hayek and Ayn Rand. But, when it comes down to it, i have trouble with rights talk that implies an impersonal, objective moral order that is, or should be, equally obvious and equally accessible to all people.
I have no problem with arguing for certain rights, i just think that when we do, we should be conscious of the fact that subjectivity and inidividual moral preferences are important factors in the creation of what some people like to call “natural” rights. Those rights might be natural in that they are enumerated and recognized by human beings, but they don’t exist before we arrive, just to be plucked from the air and laid down as the foundation of our social system.
Of course, a religious person who believes that rights come from a deity or some other creator can make a claim to a pre-existing, absolute moral order. I might not agree with that person, but their claim is, at least, consistent. Even a relatively mildly religious, or even agnostic person, like the Deists that were so prominent among the Founding Fathers can claim that God hands down this moral order. But it seems to me that someone who adopts a secular, naturalistic approach to the world has very little foundation on which to lay an absolute moral order from which rights accrue.
Mhendo
I hope I cleared up for you how that is deduced in libertarian philosophy. You were likely composing while I had already submitted. I’m not saying you need to agree with me to be my friend or anything. 
I’m just letting you know how we derive natural rights and what they are. I can understand how a rational person might disagree.
And now that i’ve posted, i see that Libertarian has also added something.
All i would add to my previous post is this:
Even as an atheist, i have trouble with the notion that nature “gives” me something that exists outside the social system in which i live. While i believe in natural phenomena and occurences, it seems to me that seeing nature as the foundation of rights does little more than make nature into a substitute deity, with all the faith and irrationality (to my atheist mind) that this implies.
You say that in libertarian philosophy, “right and property are synonymous.” From my experience of libertariansim, this seems about right. What i’m questioning is the tendency of some libertarians to assert that this equation somehow pre-exists or transcends human social relations.
And i still maintain that defining “property” as everything that we are and everything that we have makes the term itself too all-encompassing and actually serves to deprive it of useful meaning.
Fair enough.
I agree with many of the rights that libertarians assert, i just don’t find the libertarian argument for rights derivation particularly compelling.
I tend to be a social libertarian, but an economic social democrat. I’m more willing than a proper libertarian to draw distinctions between personal freedom and economic freedom. So, for example, i have little problem with a certain level of taxation and welfare provision.
But again, i can provide no rationale for my beliefs beyond my own personal convictions that they make for a better society.
jjimm wrote
[quote]
That’s funny - from my (European) standpoint I was thinking “If Jackson is as far left as they can muster, then that’s a very right-slanted test”!
[quote]
and
TwistofFate wrote
Yes; that does seem accurate. But I contend it’s pretty left for American standards.
Our last 20 years have been resided over by Presidents averaging around 27 on this scale (2 Clintons + 1 Bush + 2 Reagans. higher, if Bush2 was included, as no doubt he’s considered somewhat conservative). And pretty much by definition, the President is a representative of middle-of-the-road politics.