So, I promised I would post my quiz results and then an explanation of why they make no sense. To that end, I took the same OkCupid! test twice (the exclamation point is in the name. I’m not really that excited about it). The first time, I answered the questions textually - I read the question and answered it just for the statement itself, not for what it implies about political ideology.

For all y’all who make sport of calling me a closet liberal, this is the proof you’ve been waiting for (Sorry it’s a pic and not html…the html editor is being funky.):

But, before you get all twitterpated over this, the test neither mentioned John McCain nor did it mention immigration (my two most commonly cited apostasies), so that’s not why it’s putting me there. The reason is because of questions like this one:

40. A society is only as successful as its least fortunate members.

I absolutely agree with this statement. However, given that this question was most likely there to figure out my place along the economic axis, I would assume this takes my answer as the “liberal” or lower economic freedom answer. Now this assumes that 1) conservatives somehow inherently disagree with this statement, which I don’t believe, or 2) that believing in this statement automatically assumes that the government should assist said least fortunate members of this society. As a commenter in a previous post pointed out, that’s quite a logical leap. For a variety of reasons, while I agree with that statement, I don’t want to reduce economic freedom in any way to act on that belief.

Okay, so what about when I answered completely on the basis of whatever I thought they were implying?

Still a centrist, but on the opposite end of the scale. Here, of course, I answered questions like the one cited above based on what it implied in terms of the test. Not a huge shift, but a shift nonetheless.

Interestingly enough, when I take this test without adhering strictly to one method or the other, I usually come out in the “Capitalist” area, a little north of “Centrist” and a little west of the axis. And if I had to place myself on this map just based on what I think about my own views, that’d be right about where I’d put myself.

The problem with this test is that it combines questions about personal belief with questions about policy belief. See, if there are people who disagree with the idea that a society is only as well-off as its least fortunate members, on policy, I’d probably totally agree with them. On the other hand, if there were people who advocated radical redistribution of wealth to solve this problem, while I’d find their policy utterly idiotic we’d probably agree on the basic belief.

The quiz, by the way, can be found at www.okcupid.com/politics

I actually thought a more interesting question was one of the optional ones at the end:

Which issue is most important for you and your significant other to agree on?
Taxes
The War in Iraq
George Bush’s IQ
Abortion
The Environment

Personally, my rankings would be 1) Abortion, 2) George Bush’s IQ, 3) The Environment, 4) Taxes, and 5) The War in Iraq. How bout you guys?