busyval wrote:
Interesting that you surmised that I am young since I am close to 60 (in June). I am aware of politics but have not really been very interested in it. I live in a very conservative area and find that I don't fit in. Thank you for the Nolan chart. It was very informative. I fit into the Liberal category which I could have guessed. I think that our upbringing molds us somewhat but I like to believe that I think for myself. This quiz helped me know that I think for myself. I remember when growing up that people were more tolerant of other's viewpoints and I am frustrated that I feel that I need to hide my beliefs to not be put down and criticised. Thanks for your help.
Interesting that you surmised that I am young sinc... (
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My pleasure. Always pleased to be of assistance. I figured you were younger because you're just now 'getting into' the whole 'political thing'. That usually happens at a much younger age than yours. For instance, I have an 18 year old son who's current interest in politics is less than zero, if that's even possible. Let him get out of the house, start a family, and all that will change. That's when you usually see the 'awakening', because it really starts to matter. Until then, it's all a game.
That quiz is actually called 'The World's Smallest Quiz', it was invented by a guy named David Nolan. He was one of the founders of the Libertarian party way back in the early 1970's. The NolanChart website is named after him though he had nothing to do with it. I started writing for them many years ago. You can find my archive here:
https://www.nolanchart.com/author/larry-warrickThe earlier stuff gets into the nuts and bolts of libertarianism; the later stuff is more focused on current events of the time. I haven't written there in many years.
So, you're a liberal in your ideals. Interesting. As I understand it, that means you support ideas and programs such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, free markets, civil rights, democratic societies, secular governments, g****r e******y, and international cooperation. Did you look it up? I did:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiberalismDoes this sound familiar? "Liberals opposed traditional conservatism and sought to replace absolutism in government with representative democracy and the rule of law". That's right, the founders were very much the liberals of their day. These days, that's referred to as 'classical liberalism'. Of the 'liberals' we see today, many of them would be horrified if you were to assert their belief in the 'rule of law' or 'free markets'. That's because their whole movement, noble as it was, has been co-opted by an insidious ideology promoting collectivist ideologies such as socialism, Marxism and c*******m (generally known as Statism, a political system in which the state has substantial centralized control over social and economic affairs). Putting it bluntly, they are not their forefathers' children. The vast majority have
heard of the Constitution, but have no idea what's in it because they have
never read it, though some will claim they have, and they get extremely irate when you start using it to show why their statist ideologies are held in error.
I know there's a lot to unpack here, but just one last tidbit. Don't wear your politics on your sleeve. There's nothing wrong with holding your own set of morals and viewpoints. I find people tend to take me more seriously if I don't give myself a label. There are plenty of others out there who will be more than happy to drop you into a given 'pigeon-hole'. Don't let it get to you, that's what they're trying to do, and that's how you recognize a modern-day liberal. Because of their lack of political knowledge, they try to label everything and everyone with meaningless descriptives. Don't get suckered in, you're in good company:
Aristotle
Niccolò Machiavelli
Desiderius Erasmus
Thomas Hobbes
Baruch Spinoza
John Locke
John Trenchard
Charles de Montesquieu
Thomas Gordon
François Quesnay
Voltaire
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Denis Diderot
Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Richard Price
Anders Chydenius
Adam Smith
Immanuel Kant
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
Joseph Priestley
August Ludwig von Schlözer
Patrick Henry
Thomas Paine
Thomas Jefferson
Marquis de Condorcet
Jeremy Bentham
Emmanuel Sieyès
Antoine Destutt de Tracy
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Benjamin Constant
Jean-Baptiste Say
Wilhelm von Humboldt
David Ricardo
James Mill
Frédéric Bastiat
Johan Rudolf Thorbecke
Harriet Martineau
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Alexis de Tocqueville
William Lloyd Garrison
Friedrich Schiller
Many of those wrote books, pamphlets and articles. Some you can find for free here:
https://mises.org/libraryThe Mises Library is the world's most extensive online collection of literature and media of the Austrian School tradition, classical liberalism, and libertarian thought.