Several folks sent me a link to this, which is another one of those "Where are you on the political spectrum?" tests. I always find that the choices I'm given — in this case, Agree, Strongly Agree, Disagree or Strongly Disagree — are insufficient for some questions. For this one, I could have used Really Don't Care as an option and maybe Haven't Given It Much Thought. But really, the truest answer for some would be Need More Information.
Like, they ask you to agree or disagree with the statement, "Charity is better than social security as a means of helping the genuinely disadvantaged." I'm not sure what they mean by "social security" in this context and suspect they mean something like welfare or government aid. Assuming that's what they mean: Well, yes, I kinda concur if the charity is fairly and adequately distributed…but I think you need the "safety net" of government-furnished help for when the charity isn't there for people. So am I agreeing with their statement? Disagreeing? What?
Or they ask, "Abstract art that doesn't represent anything shouldn't be considered art at all." Agree or disagree? Well, this is kind of about defining art of any kind, forget about the abstract part of it. Or if we presume that a painting must represent something in order to be art, what if it represents a mood or a splash of purple or the artist's bad acid trip? Or if it represents something to others and not to me? I'm not asking anyone to answer these questions; just pointing out that the question could go in a lot of different trajectories.
Here's one: "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." I assume to most people, that's like asking if they think revenge is justifiable. But what it really means — and if you read it this way, you might give a different answer — is that punishment should fit the crime and not be excessive.
All that said, I took the test and it put me in pretty much the same place as the Libertarian one to which I linked yesterday: In the Liberal quadrant but darn close to the Libertarian border. Of course, the problem with both tests is that you wind up with an average which oversimplifies your views. I am more Liberal on some issues than others; even rather Conservative on many. I may hold zero positions that would individually place me where I fall on the graph. In fact, I would hope I am all over that graph. If you come down at the exact same place on every issue, you probably aren't doing a whole lot of open-minded thinking on any of them.