The Political Affiliation Quiz

Your SOCIAL Ethics

Persuasion

Physical Coercion

Liberal

Your Personal Values

Conservative

Libertarian Libertarian Democrat Republican Persuasion Physical Coercion L i b e r a l C o n s e r v a t i v e

You’re probably wondering, “Why did I end up where I did?” We asked ourselves the same question, with puzzlement all around. Here’s what we discovered: Political affiliation, either with a political party or a philosophy, is influenced by a number of factors. Two of the most important are the Personal Values and Social Ethics that we hold.

What are Personal Values?

Personal Values are simply the things that are important to you in life, such as desiring a clean environment, caring for the homeless, or your views on drug use. Because you, like others, are unique, the order of importance that you place on your Personal Values varies. Many of the questions you answered were designed to reflect your Personal Values along the liberal-conservative spectrum shown in the chart.

What are Social Ethics?

Social Ethics are how you choose to interact with others. How do I choose to promote my personal values? How do I interact with my family, friends, and neighbors in my community? How about across the country, including with people I have never met? There are really only two ways we can promote our personal values to others—persuasion or physical coercion. Persuasion is the use of peaceful strategies to influence others, such as through conversation, reason, and rhetoric. Coercion is the initiation of physical force or fraud against other people to restrict or mandate certain behavior.

Political Affiliation

People tend to affiliate with a political party based on their Personal Values. However, most of us do not believe in using physical coercion to force our values or beliefs on others. But isn’t this exactly what most political parties do? If you doubt this, please study the stated policy positions of political parties and see for yourself. So, if you do not believe in using coercion against other people, then you may want to think carefully about your political affiliation. In the future, how will you promote your Personal Values—by supporting coercive political organizations, or by peaceful persuasion?

Okay, so what does that mean?

It appears that you have liberal personal values. This suggests that you place a high value on such things as fairness and equality, social justice openness to new experiences, and a changing, progressive society.

You have libertarian social ethics, indicating you have respect for the freedom of others to make their own choices. While you may desire to change another’s view or behavior, you will would prefer to use voluntary, persuasive means as opposed to initiating or threatening to use physical coercion to do so.

As a liberal libertarian, we encourage you to explore various social problems to see how libertarian positions that are in concert with your social ethics can promote human happiness, harmony and prosperity.