Ian Green wrote:
> That's VERY interesting! The second chart is so much more accurate, 
> afterall, "liberals", "conservatives" and centrists are all statists.

Correct. What we see here is the limitation of two dimensions in
describing an n-dimensional political space.

Bryan Caplan's Libertarian Purity test does a much better job than
Nolan's smallest political quiz at establishing who is a libertarian
and who is not. Caplan goes pretty far in accommodating people who
may not have reached the same conclusions he has on his test questions.

http://www.bcaplan.com/cgi-bin/purity.cgi

Score meanings are:

> What Your Score Means
> 
> 0 points: You are not a libertarian by any stretch of the
> imagination. You are probably not even a liberal or a conservative.
> Just some Nazi nut, I guess.
> 
> 1-5 points: You have a few libertarian notions, but overall you're a
> statist.
> 
> 6-15 points: You are starting to have libertarian leanings. Explore
> them.
> 
> 16-30 points: You are a soft-core libertarian. With effort, you may
> harden and become pure.
> 
> 31-50 points: Your libertarian credentials are obvious. Doubtlessly
> you will become more extreme as time goes on.
> 
> 51-90 points: You are a medium-core libertarian, probably
> self-consciously so. Your friends probably encourage you to quit
> talking about your views so much.
> 
> 91-130 points: You have entered the heady realm of hard-core
> libertarianism. Now doesn't that make you feel worse that you didn't
> get a perfect score?
> 
> 131-159 points: You are nearly a perfect libertarian, with a tiny
> number of blind spots. Think about them, then take the test over
> again. On the other hand, if you scored this high, you probably have
> a good libertarian objection to my suggested libertarian answer. 
> 
> 160 points: Perfect! The world needs more like you.

Results are analyzed here:

http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/result.htm

Even with 64 questions instead of 8, the test still has a large
group at the far end who are perfectly, or nearly perfectly,
comfortable with Caplan's views on all questions.  This means,
to me, that these people occupy a political space that is not
completely mapped.

I am, of course, unreasonably and irrationally proud to have
scored 160 on his test.

Regards,

Jim