Right Wing Nation

 

I love taking political quizzes. They’re fun, and I find it interesting to see where they place me (nearly always as a right- or conservative-leaning libertarian, or vice versa). But however much I like taking these quizzes, I don’t take them seriously.

Plotting political space on a conservative-liberal axis is overly simplistic. But all attempts to add a second (or third) axis really clarify nothing. And the reason is that they plot issues, when issues aren’t important: the reasons for taking stances on issues is.

Let’s take the gay marriage issue, since it’s so hot right at the moment, specifically the Marriage Protection Act passed by the House. One’s stance on the MPA says nothing about his or her politics; the reasons for that stance, on the other hand, say everything.

We have two people, Beth and Bob, who both support the MPA. She supports it because she wants to “protect marriage from gay people” and doesn’t think a Constitutional marriage amendment will ever be ratified.

Bob, on the other hand, supports the MPA for entirely different reasons. He does not believe that it is the government’s role to “protect marriage” from anyone. He believes that the issue should be the domain of the states, not the Federal government, and this is why he supports the MPA.

Beth is your classic authoritarian conservative. Bob is your classic Jeffersonian Federalist. Beth is unlikely to find any form of libertarianism attractive. Bob probably finds a great deal about litertarianism attractive.

They’re both Republicans. They’re both conservatives. But it really doesn’t say much that they share either of these labels. The Republican Party subsumes a large diversity of ideologies, despite propoganda to the contrary. And as for conservative, well, that means very different things to different people.

Beth is the type of conservative that makes liberals wet their diapers. She is deeply religious and her church is to a great extent her community. She firmly believes that the United States is going to hell in a handbasket because the government is not taking an active part enforcing the standards and values of her religion on the nation.

Bob is a very different type of conservative–though liberals will not or cannot see the difference. Like Beth, he is deeply religious, and though he may attend church regularly, he feels that ultimately his religion is between him and his deity. Like Beth, he feels the United States is going to hell in a handbasket, but for entirely different reasons. Where Beth sees a lack of governmental control, Bob sees an excess.

Beth, like the liberals, wants the Federal government made stronger. Bob, unlike both, wants the Federal government made weaker and the state governments made stronger.

Yet most political quizzes will put Beth and Bob in the same political space–or at least close to each other–because these quizzes do not take actual political ideology into account, only the stance on issues. Even quizzes that would place Beth and Bob into two different spaces do so on the basis of issues and do not reflect the actual political differences between the two.

We’ll ignore the just plain idiotic questions on some, like “do you support gay marriage?”

Beth and Bob both oppose Roe vs. Wade. Beth opposes it because she believes abortion is murder and must be outlawed. Bob, on the other hand, sees abortion and Roe vs. Wade as two different issues. He opposes Roe vs. Wade as an abuse of an overly powerful court, but he may very well support a woman’s right to have an abortion.

But the differences between them can very well skew political perspective to the point that it is ass backwards. Bob is the civil libertarian; Beth is not. Yet, they may seem quite the opposite.

Beth supports the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bob feels that it was unconstitutional and should be repealed. Suddenly, Beth looks like the civil libertarian and Bob does not. And even though most would lump Beth and Bob together, they most likely would not be able to get along very well if politics came up — even though they take the same stances on many issues.

Bob is my type of conservative. If you look at his stances on issues, he may very well appear to be some sort of evil right-wing racist homophobic three-legged-lesbian-of-color hating nutcase. But he is not. Bob is a strict constructionist, a Jeffersonian Federalist, a Goldwater Repubican, a non-Rand-groupie Libertarian. Ultimately, Bob believes that if we don’t stop focusing on the trees and start working on the forest, the United States as the Founding Fathers meant her to exist will die.

And I agree with Bob.