Topic: About the Chart
Refining the Nolan Chart Survey: A few thoughts from the left Left libertarian: some questions posed.... The survey provided is interesting and seems to have some degree of accuracy, but could be refined. Important distinctions are not yet covered.by J. Todd Ring
(centrist liberal libertarian)
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Left Libertarian Questions
Letter re: Nolan Chart survey
The Nolan chart is new to me, and is very interesting. I just took the survey, and was suprised that the result it gave was a reasonably accurate approximation of where I would place myself on such a chart - on the border between libertarian and liberal; although if anyone actually sat down with me for a political conversation, I highly doubt they'd say afterward that I'm centrist, but ok - close enough for the moment I suppose. So it seems to have some degree of accuracy. I am writing, however, to make a couple of suggestions so that the survey can be more accurately reflective of the individual's views.
Reading the questions, I kept feeling there should be more options per question - even one more would make a potentially significant difference - allowing more precision of response. This would increase the accuracy of the results.
Second, there should be more questions. The questionnaire simply seems much too short to give any great degree of accuracy in charting the results.
In particular, separating out issues which are lumped together would increase clarity and accuracy. For example, separating currency issues from trade issues, and separating military issues from both of these. Corporate welfare and social welfare need to be distinguished more clearly, ideally in separate questions. Social and military spending questions should be separated. Debt should be a distinct question - options within that question of debt can link it to currency, spending, trade, social programs and/or military to allow for specific responses.
I realize of course that all of these issues are inter-related, but we cannot get a very accurate assessment of an individual's views if we lump issues together too much in a single question. Increasing the number of questions and options can draw out what the individual believes to be the important relationships among the subjects, rather than having these relationships overly predefined.
As I say, the survey seems to have some degree of accuracy already, albeit crude. Increasing options within questions, and increasing the number of questions would help this greatly.
My third suggestion is a bit more subtle. It has to do witht the wording of the survey. As we know about polling and surveys, how you word them affects the results enormously. In fact, there is a great video clip on YouTube that shows the sleezy Bush pollster Frank Luntz, (and yes, by any definition, this is an accurate and verifiable appraisal) managing to get one man on the street to give him two mutually contradictory answers on the same question, within about two minutes - simply by adjusting the wording. (See "Fuck you Frank!") I'm sure you are honest, but that does not mean that the wording is free of unintentioanal slant, which may lead respondants to favour particular responses over others. This can be entirely unintentional, as I'm sure it is here (no sarcasm intended, in case there's any doubt), but none the less, it skews the results.
I got the distinct impression that libertarians wrote the survey, as the tone and wording of the options reflected in a number of instances what a libertarian would think about such questions. The wording that comes across, therefore, has some degree of push toward libertarian responses. As I say, I am convinced this is unintentional, but it still distorts the results.
Ideally, you might expand the survey, increasing the number of questions as I described, thus increasing accuracy, modify questions to allow for greater choice, as described, to increase accuracy, and do these two things while addressing the third issue of unintentional "push" in the wording.
How to address the last point? One way would be to revise the survey with a team of people who hold views from across the spectrum - both left and right, up and down. That way the bias of one does not become the bias of the entire survey.
I'm not meaning to be nitpicking, as I found the survey both interesting and somewhat useful - just wanted to make suggestions for survey 2.0.
I would add that I would call myself a libertarian - but a *left* libertarian. The survey comes from a libertarian right perspective, as far as I can see, and is slanted that way. It also seems to presuppose that right libertarianism is libertarianism per se - as if that's all there is.
You might want to bring a left libertarian in when drafting the second edition survey, to get a more comprehensive sense of the spectrum to be covered, and hence what questions need to be asked. Chomsky would be an example of a left libertarian, for sake of a reference point. A thoughtful, well-informed, well-read anarchist would give you some sense of the libertarian left (and I'm not talking about the mindless and deceitful stereotypes the media throws out - Chomsky, Bookchin or Kropotkin represent the stream of thinking I am referring to here).
A left libertarian on the drafting team for the next survey edition would bring up some very important questions - questions which have been left out of the present survey, and also, apparently, the present discourse. For example, do you believe that monopoly capitalism has anything to do with free markets? Would you like to see anti-trust legislation be enacted to limit corporate oligopolies and ensure a fair playing field? Do you believe that excessive concentration of media ownership is antithetical to both free markets and to democracy? Do you agree that the merger of big government and big business is the very definition of fascism? Do you believe that the Fourteenth Amendment has been high-jacked by corporate lawyers to provide the ridiculous and dangerous assertion that corporations are persons, and that such corporate personhood must be stripped from law in order to protect citizen rights from the excessive intrusion by "corporate rights?"
In short, a left libertarian perspective raises questions and concerns about not only excessive concentrations of political power, but also, and equally important, questions about excessive concentrations of economic power. This is the distinction between libertarianism of the left and the right. Right libertarians tend to be, excuse the frankness here, both blind and dumb with regards to the very real power of highly concentrated corporate clout. Left libertarianism addresses this oversight.
Most people who call themselves libertarian do not know that there is anything other than right libertarianism, have no idea that the libertarian left even exists; and further, that what is called anarchism, though a very broad set of currents, actually has in its left libertarian currents (this is the predominant thrust of anarchism by the way, black bloc CIA plants and media spin aside), has more in common with their views than they might realize. There is a great deal of overlap and commonality between the views of the libertarian right and the libertarian left, and important distinctions as well. Check out the left side of libertarianism! There are some interesting thoughts there. (Kropotkin, Bookchin and Chomsky are a good start.)
If you like I'll be a representative of the (highly diverse) libertarian left for this forum for the moment, assuming I'm the only one so far (maybe I'm not), until there are more to fill the gap. I can't say how often I'll post, but you'll have more diversity of views in any case.
PS: Ron Paul rocks! I don't agree with all his views, but he strongly supports civil rights and the Constitution - and in action, not just rhetoric. I hope he will be the next President. He very well may be.
The views expressed in this
article are those of J. Todd Ring only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. J. Todd Ring is
solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an
employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
Posted By: Christopher Espinal
Date: 2008-01-31 20:49:13
I find it weird that whatever is posted on this site as a column can be searched on google news. Why not just post these ideas about refining the site on google groups? A lot of people discuss their issues with Nolan Chart in that discussion group.
Posted By: Christian Prophet
Date: 2008-02-21 23:27:09
You are lucky that you came out centerist liberal libertarian. I would love to come out centerist liberal conservative libertarian, with a love for monarchy. But the chart won't let me be what I want to be.
I have a problem with these labels - period. With the exception of debating potential amendments to the Constitution, these labels are misleading and used to abuse our Republican form of government. They make people believe that our system is a democracy... one that allows laws to be passed within the limitless spectrum between "liberal" and "conservative" perspectives. However the spectrum is quite narrow (Article 1., Section 8). If our government respected these boundaries, our country's problems would be microscopic compared to what they are today.
Posted By: Jahfre Fire Eater
Date: 2008-03-13 21:41:16
You said you're new to the Nolan Chart so I can't blame you for not knowing what the Nolan Chart survey is for.
The Nolan Chart survey was deliberately designed to show that people are more libertarian than they thought they were. Now don't you feel silly? :-)
Your suggestions would not improve the survey, they would defeat its primary purpose. Nice try. Don't feel bad. I've seen a steady stream of people try to "improve" the survey before they had any idea what it was for. I've known some auto mechanics who operated in the same manner.
Actually, if you take the survey, you begin to realize that your views do not simply exist on a line, but on at least a plane. That is the first revelation that no one talks about. All you get on the radio is far left - left - center - right - far right. Walter Block has a great video about that on Mises.org.
So you should first be delighted that even though the Nolan chart has been around since the early 70s, (and now you want a 2.0??) you found a way of realizing that the left-right paradigm is a bust, and therefore does not properly recognize all thought (especially socio-economic). Congrats.
Second, are your views (as they are pulled away from the forced alliegence to the left-right) more freedom and liberty or more statist and authoritarian? In this question you will realize that both the left and the right have these tendancies, and so it would be incorrect to lump all statist and authoritarians or freedom and liberty in either left or right.
The questions do not naturally pull you into a libertarian-conservative area- they pull you up from a strict right-conservative identity or down to a statist authoritarian as the case may be, and they clearly have illuminated your social freedoms that in a left-right line lay dormant- or maybe you thought of yourself as a liberal in the left-right sense- but your economic freedom score showed you more conservative than you care to be known for. In no other way, other than the Nolan chart, could you have discovered this.
A left democrat must learn to kill off his proclivity for economic freedom, and a right conservative is supposed to kill off his social freedom in a left-right world. This is why Rush says centrists are in the middle of the road and will be run over. He has saying- Hey you, choose sides!
So be grateful for the Nolan chart- it makes people think more clearly about issues and teaches them not to accept what they are told to believe by the powers that be or the media. Once they start down such a path, the left-right paradigm will do nothing for them anymore, and neither will they swollow the lies of those attempting to force feed lies to us based on it.
This is why anti-war voters cross party lines- because war is the health of the state, and statists are polar opposite of liberty and freedom. Therefore, liberal and conservative anti-war types are all at-least anti-state. Someone who is anti-war is not properly identified using left-right because left-right does not recognize freedom and liberty.
Here is hoping Bob Barr wins the LP nomination- for all its worth. Ron Paul could have had it and would not take it.
Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2008-04-11 04:43:47
First, welcome to the Nolan Chart website, J. Todd!
Second, in answer to your speculation, I am the libertarian who wrote the questions to the survey.
Third, regarding your suggestions, I'll reply to you with the same reply I give to everyone else who thinks the survey needs to be reworked. Write up your own questions and answers, and send them to me via the contact page of this website. So far, no one has done that. That's why I don't take these kinds of criticisms very seriously. It's easy to criticize; it's much, much harder to actually write objectively accurate questions and answers.
Heck, I'd even consider alternative answers to just one of the questions. You want me to put a panel together to rewrite the questions? I can't even find one person willing to volunteer to actually do the work! It'll be interesting to see if you break the record and become the first person willing to actually do the work...and let me assure you, it's hard work!
By the way, for scoring purposes, each question must have only four answers: one statist answer, one liberal answer, one conservative answer, and one libertarian answer. Yes, that's limiting, but it also makes the scoring reasonable. Start throwing in more answers and then trying to assign weights to them with respect to the various camps, and the process becomes unwieldy.
Jahfre: "You said you're new to the Nolan Chart so I can't blame you for not knowing what the Nolan Chart survey is for.
The Nolan Chart survey was deliberately designed to show that people are more libertarian than they thought they were."
I think you're referring to the Advocates for Self Government survey, the ubiquitous World's Smallest Political Quiz.
http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html
The WSPQ is obviously biassed the way you mention. There are only five Yes or No questions, presented in the same order: The Libertarian Answer is always Yes, and the statist answer No. A person who simply answered Yes to everything would come out as a top-diamond Libertarian.
I didn't find those problems in the Nolan Chart LLC survey: the options were multiple choice, rather than Y/N, and the choices were rotated.
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