Thanks to The Anger of a Quiet Man I recently revisited the Political Spectrum Quiz - Your Political Label quiz, and found that though some questions had been revised, they were still badly worded, and far more biased and tendentious than those on the Political Compass one, or else they were vague and ambiguous.
Take this question, for example:
| 50. A person's morality is of the most personal nature; therefore government should have no involvement in moral questions or promote moral behaviors. |
|---|
| Disagree strongly |
| Disagree |
| Neutral |
| Agree |
| Agree strongly |
| How much does this issue matter? A lot A little |
This implies that the entire criminal justice system should be abolished. If someone steals from me, I should not call the police, but rather hire a private detective to catch the thief, and bring a private prosecution if the thief is found, to avoid involvement of the government in such "most personal" matters.
And it also implies that the government should not even promote moral behaviours among its own employees -- if civil servants take bribes, for example, that is "of the most personal nature", and therefore nothing to do with the government. Is this a serious question?
But it gets worse:
| 22. It is wrong to enforce moral behavior through the law because this infringes upon an individual's freedom. |
|---|
| Disagree strongly |
| Disagree |
| Neutral |
| Agree |
| Agree strongly |
| How much does this issue matter? A lot A little |
What exactly does it mean?
It implies that I shouldn't even bring a private prosecution if someone steals from me, because even if the government is not involved, the law itself will "infringe upon" [sic] the thief's freedom.
I presume that indicating agreement with these in the quiz would show that one was on the libertarian end of the spectrum, but the second question, especially, implies that libertarians are not merely anarchist, but antinomian as well.
Well, perhaps that is what the designers of the quiz intended, but I still think that the quiz is badly designed, biased and tendentious. If you want a better way to compare your political views with those of others, The Political Compass still wins hands down.
2 comments:
They were probably taking about sexual morality and failed to consider that it might be construed as all morality. I agree that it was a poorly worded question, though.
Yewtree,
We had, and as far as I know still have, a "Moral Regeneration" movement, which is government sponsored, and indeed our president, whose sexual morality seems to disturb even some of his most enthusiastic supporters, was at one time its patron. I believe it arose from concern that civil servants who took bribes did not seem to have any moral qualms about it, so I think anyone who thinks that "morality" refers only to sexual morality probably lacks a moral compass too.
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