Online Political Tests – Can’t find a good one

So its all fun and games with these online political tests… until you take a close look.

 

All I wanted is to spend a few simple minutes answering questions so that a cool graph can come up that tells me that  the only thing Right of me is the wall… and that compared to me, Pinochet and Milton Friedman seem to advocate marxism.

 

But instead, these tests seem to be written with such ninifyingly academic leftistness that they are impossible to answer truthfully (lest I answer all the “leftist” answers). Basically, freedom is so devoid from these people’s heads that they cannot even imagine it, much less write questions looking for it. Basically, they check for a “cartoon” version of conservatism or right wing, due to their biases, and though I know the answer they are “looking for” to indicate right or left, they are most often quite wrong.

 

This language problem actually has further huge implications, and here are some real examples from these tests:

 

(We are assuming American politics here of course)

 

Almost every question is like this:

Most of these lets assume ask you to answer something from “Strongly agree to strongly disagree”

 

“Countries should be allowed to use military force to secure certain natural resources.”

 

What the heck is that? Allowed by who? Of course they are looking for me, the conservative to say “yea bomb em!” But countries should be allowed?? By who?  The UN? The University professors who write this stuff?

As a member of a nation, a conservative will often support HIS nation using military force to safeguard its interests, including oil as this question implies… It does not get “allowed” it just does. It is allowed only by its very own government, be it democratic or monarchy or whatever.

Obviously the nation it is using military force against won’t see it as very “allowed”. Its an absurd question written by people who don’t live in the real world. Not knowing who it is that “should allow” these countries, I would have to disagree here, as a liberal would.

 

“You cannot be moral without being religious.”

 

Of course here they are looking for a certain religious base to morality prevalent among right wingers.

 

[Side note: First of all, its misguided. Religious people, due to their morality TEND to be right wing in political views. This is why communism, being immoral, was incompatible with Judeo-Christian values and had to ban religion.

However, these are personal beliefs, and are not part of the political right wing. There are just as right wing and/or libertarian atheists.

The point  being, right wing politics wants freedom from the government, so regardless of the fact that many right wingers would use that freedom to go to church on sunday, it does not support the government imposing any such religious view on anyone. That form of government intrusion would be left wing.]

 

But that is a “besides the point”.  To the absurdity at hand. Even people who (like me) believe in the divine source of morality (morality comes from gd), which is what they are looking for in this silly question, know that a moral act is a moral act and an immoral one likewise an immoral one. Of course people can and do behave morally all the time without being religious. If you don’t murder, you are not guilty of murder just because you are an atheist. Likewise if you DO murder, you are guilty of this immorality even if you ARE religious.

 

So once again, being a conservative who does believe morality comes from Gd, this question fails to get that from me, and I would be forced to answer (as a liberal would) that “I strongly disagree” since of course anyone CAN be moral (doesn’t mean that they will be of course).

 

 

“It’s a sad reflection on our society that something as basic as drinking water is now a bottled, branded consumer product.”

 

These type of judgment calls are so departed from economic or political policy, and so personal that its insane to have them in a litmus test of political philosophy. I do  happen to think it is a sad reflection… people today are  doubtlessly over materialistic (at the same time  not even capitalist), spoiled, and shallow. It does reflect on society that water is branded, as it does that every town in the US looks the same with the same 6 corporate chains repeated endlessly. It says something about the consumers. However, I DO NOT want a law against it… I am not against it because I believe water should be free or any other marxism, it is just a personal observation, the free market allows us to have opinions that are not laws and not impose them on others (smoking bar, none smoking bar etc).

 

This leads to a very dangerous phenomena today… most people do not differentiate between personal preferences and laws. We have been trained to believe our personal preferences should be laws, At least the personal preferences of 51% of the people, who may be a dictatorship over the 49%. This is sad and stupid (not to mention unconstitutional).  Smokers are against smoking bans, non smokers are for them, this kind of thing. I don’t smoke, and smoke obviously bothers me, but I am AGAINST any law banning it from private property (restaurants, bars, planes, are private for those of you who have forgotten). People chewing gum loudly bother me too, and super high fat high cholesterol meals may be unhealthy, but I don’t want to ban either. The government isn’t your mom, keep yourself and your family away from things you dislike, and let others do the same. Stop banning everything.

Here once again, I would agree with this statement, once again putting me on the left according to this silly question.

 

 

“Homosexuals are entitled to have the exact same rights as heterosexuals.”

 

Again, one can imagine the limited brained nerds who wrote this trying to ask: “The Right is against gay marriage, and the left is for it, Which are you?”

 

I am against a state sponsored gay marriage of course (and probably any state sponsored marriage at all), but this stupid test refuses to let me tell it so! Even the most super right wing conservatives in America strongly support the above sentence. Conservatives do not want ANY special rights for either straight people or gay people, they don’t believe in any law saying “Gay people have this right… or gay people don’t have this right”. Laws just say “people”. They apply to people equally, and only a few differentiate between genders (like a mom’s bigger right to custody of young children) and none do (or shouldn’t) differentiate men or women according to anything else, creed, orientation, race etc.

 

Gay and straight men have identical rights! They are both free to do whatever they want in their bedroom, and they are free to get a state marriage license if they marry a woman!

 

They are also free to “marry” whoever they want under any organization or religion that condones it and go around calling themselves married. They can marry their dog if they want, but you cannot get a state marriage license (yet) for you and your dog.

 

So even though the left calls giving an entirely NEW and specific right to gay people (to have the right to get a state marriage license outside of its scope and definition) “exact same rights” the Right would call “exact same rights” the status quo. All men today in the US, have equal rights, and it includes the right to marry a woman and get a marriage license saying they did so.

 

Gays are not banned from marrying; they have the same exact rights of marriage as everyone else. But that just isn’t good enough for them is it, haha.

 

So yes I believe gays should have the exact same rights as heterosexuals, right to vote, to enter contractual agreements, to write wills, to be president, to be free, and to get a state marriage license when they marry a woman, and just like straight men, to not have the right to get a state marriage license when they marry a rock, a dog, a worm, a cow, a wall, a village people CD or another man.

 

Another statement I would have to answer yes, even though I know these nitwits were looking for No.

 

“The only social responsibility of a company is generating profit.”

 

This final one is so telling of a million other ones. Even though it may be a famous quote by milton friedman, in this context its another absurdity.

 

So what do the political test nerds want here? Well they want me, Mr. Conservative to say yes of course company’s ONLY responsibility is to make money as I am an evil capitalist.

 

On the other hand, they are looking for Mr. Liberal, to think about all the nice things they think “others” (ie rich people and big companies) should be forced to provide to him and his friends… “clean environment, day care programs for employees and customers, educational opportunities, awareness campaigns (for what I don’t know, liberals always have to be “aware”)…

 

Problem is the right answer here yet again puts me in the enemy camp. Why? Cause the political nil wits that wrote this don’t understand freedom. We don’t believe the only social responsibility of a company is to generate profit, we believe the company HAS NO social responsibility.

 

Its only job on earth is to do exactly whatever the heck its owner(s) want. This often is to generate profit, since people like money, but it doesn’t  have to  be. Maybe they do want it to run day care centers and make people “aware” or maybe they like to lose money because they think its funny, or maybe they want to use their company to conduct economic research or practical jokes on competitors. Why is freedom so far gone from everyone’s mind? A company’s job is to do whatever the heck it wants… and as long as its legal, it gets to do it all day long!

 

We are so immersed in the language of allow, should, responsibility, rights, liabilities, obligations that we no longer understand freedom. Even when trying to describe it, we end up saying this… that freedom is the “obligation to try to make money”… no its not! And capitalism is also not what its often described as… always in terms of greed, capital and profit… capitalism is freedom!

 

In this freedom, many chose to make money, but you can chose to go surfing all day long too. And likewise anything BUT capitalism is therefore the lack of this freedom to a degree or another. My work, earnings and spending will be dictated… in communism to take it all the way, I cannot surf all day long and be a bum theoretically, “everyone according to his needs, everyone according to his abilities”.. I have this giant un-payable debt to everyone else since I can breathe and think and work, and I owe society my entire life… and they in turn owe it to me… ugly indeed. We are all each other’s slaves. The better you are, the more slave you are, and the worse you are, the  more owner you are.  The capitalist, weather he surfs high on the waves in bumtown.. or rides his millions in a business empire, he owes his life and work to no one, and no one owes him anything either. Freedom.

 

Another funny example of this attempt at describing right wing principles in left wing language is when otherwise liberal Jews, try to defend a pro Israel (right wing) position. Often, Israel  has the “right” to the west bank, because “we conquered it in war” or all other sorts of hilariously absurd statements. The liberal mind cannot understand existence, only “rights” as if the world was a big courtroom drama.  Even in something as concrete and military as “conquering” the liberal does not get that the conquering itself wrestled the  land from someone else to you, for as long as you hold it, but rather that it gave you some sort of Monopoly “right”. I guess the same magical people that should “allow” nations to invade for oil in question number 1, here should give Israel right to Judea since it conquered it.

 

Of course, first off, if this was true, I suppose there is a previous long line of ppl that thus have a right to the land when they conquered it in war before us, starting 2000 years ago… but more to the point, this is why Israel, unlike no other country on earth, is always arguing that it has the “right” to exist. Other countries, like America, get to exist, no matter how many people they killed in order to do so… but the liberal Jew continues to look for rights of existence…and refuses to look around and say hey.. ” I exist”. Israel does  not have a right to exist, it exists! And it will continue to do so while we have the strength to defend it, and it will, gd forbid, stop to exist when we no  longer  have the strength to defend her… our “rights” will do precious little then as they do little now.

 

Jokes aside that I am therefore actually a liberal, if anyone knows of a well written online political test, Id love to take one that I can actually answer truthfully and have it tell me, Erik, you are off the chart.