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Political Spectrum - 09/15/2008

The generally accepted method of defining one's political views is along a straight line, with the far left being one extreme and the far right being another.  Most people would tend to place themselves somewhere along this line.  The far left would represent those that espouse a great deal of personal freedoms and zero economic freedoms.  The far right would highly advocate economic freedoms but zero personal freedoms.  Someone in the center would subscribe to some personal and economic freedoms with government oversight of both.  However, personal and economic freedoms are not mutually exclusive.  One can be an advocate of both, but the left-right spectrum doesn't have a place for these people to be represented.  Nor does it have a way to represent someone who supports neither personal nor economic freedoms.

In 1969, David Nolan created a new way of charting these individuals, a graph that was titled the Nolan Chart.  The Nolan Chart adds a second dimension so that both personal and economic freedoms are each represented:

This chart is much more representative of the political spectrum.  To find out where you are, take The World's Smallest Political Quiz.