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PoliticsMatch

Your Political Philosophy

Personal Questions:  Liberals and libertarians agree in choosing the less-government answers, while conservatives and populists agree in choosing the more-restrictions answers.

Economic Questions:  Conservatives and libertarians agree in choosing the less-government answers, while liberals and populists agree in choosing the more-restrictions answers.
 

Your Score

You scored the following on the PoliticsMatch questions:
 

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 .

This measures how much you believe government should intervene in people's personal lives. Personal issues include health, love, recreation, prayer and other activities that are not measured in dollars.

• A high score (above 60%) means you believe in tolerance for different people and lifestyles.
• A low score (below 40%) means you believe that your standards of morality & safety should be enforced by government. 

Economic Score

This measures how much you believe government should intervene in people's economic lives. Economic issues include retirement funding, budget allocations, and taxes. 

• A high score (above 60%) means you believe in personal responsibility for your financial matters, and that free-market competition is better for people than central planning by the government. 
• A low score (below 40%) means you believe that a good society is best achieved by the government redistributing wealth. You believe that government's purpose is to decide which programs are good for society, and how much should be spent on each program.

Examples

The chart below indicates how four "hard-core" political philosophers would answer the questions. From this example, you can see how you fit in with each philosophy.  Your answers are on the left.

• A "hard-core liberal" would answer personal questions to minimize government involvement, but would answer economic questions to include government intervention.
• A "hard-core libertarian" would answer both personal and economic questions to minimize government involvement.
• A "hard-core conservative" would answer personal questions to include government intervention, but would answer economic questions to minimize government involvement.
• A "hard-core populist" would answer both personal and economic questions with proposals that include government intervention.

= Strongly Support    = Support    = No Opinion    = Oppose    = Strongly Oppose
 

= Strongly Support    = Support    = No Opinion    = Oppose    = Strongly Oppose

= Strongly Support    = Support    = No Opinion    = Oppose    = Strongly Oppose

= Strongly Support    = Support    = No Opinion    = Oppose    = Strongly Oppose

Final Notes

To ensure balance among political viewpoints, we arranged the wording of the questions so that half the time, the answer involving more government is answered by "support", and half the time by "oppose." Hence, each of the "hard core" philosophers would choose "support" for 3 or 4 of the Personal questions and for 3 or 4 of the Economic questions.

There are four questions which are not counted in your political philosophy. Those questions do not fit this theory -- for example, Democrats typically oppose unrestricted gun ownership, while a 'hard core liberal' would support it on grounds of the government not intervening in a personal issue. These omissions ensure that the theoretical definitions match with current-day politics.

Many of these statements cross over the line between personal issues and economic issues. And many people might answer what we call a "Personal" issue based on economic reasoning. But we have tried to arrange a series of questions which separates the way you think about government activities in these two broad scales.

Political Map and some content from Advocates for Self-Government.

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