Let's End Flat Earth Politics!

Fifteen years ago the standard view of politics -- the mental "map" almost everyone used when thinking of political positions -- was the old "left-right" line. It is still widely used today.
You've probably seen it in textbooks and newspapers. It looks something like this:

<-------------- left ------------ center ------------- right -------------->

Or, when expanded a bit:

<-crazies-communist/socialist-far_left-liberal-centrist-

-conservative-far_right-fascist-crazies->

This model is misleading and fatally flawed. It doesn't have a place for many millions of people who don't fit neatly into some variant of liberal or conservative. In effect, it disenfranchises the millions of Americans who don't feel that "left," "right," "liberal," "conservative" etc. accurately describe their views. Thomas Jefferson, for example, wouldn't fit comfortably on that chart under any of those labels. Neither would Jesse Ventura or Huey Long or Pat Buchanan. America's real political spectrum is more complex than this simplistic Crossfire model allows.
Nor does the "left-right" line give any useful insight into the differences between the various political categories. It doesn't tell us what the important differences are between liberals, conservatives, fascists, and so on. It tells us nothing of the views of these and other groups.
Furthermore, the left-right model is inherently illogical. The model implies that if you "go too far" (i.e., are consistent) with any political idea, you end up, in some weird and unexplained way, at totalitarianism or anarchism (or maybe both!). Pursue conservative thought to its logical extreme, according to this model, and you somehow end up at fascism (which is national socialism), or white supremacy or some other authoritarian position. If you pursue liberal thought too far, you supposedly end up at socialism or communism. This is inconsistent, and ignores gigantic philosophical differences between, say, liberalism and communism, or conservatism and fascism.

To see another major reason why this model is irredeemably flawed, try to fit libertarians on that line. Libertarians believe that people should be free to live as they choose, in both the economic and personal realms, as long as they don't harm others. So libertarians believe in a free market -- which should put them on the "right," right? Nope. They also oppose censorship, the drug war and other attempts by government to control the personal lives of peaceful individuals. Does that put them on the left? Well, no. Does it put them in the "middle"? No. There's just no place for libertarians on that map.

Consider that millions of Americans are libertarian or libertarian-leaning. Libertarians and libertarian thought are a large and important part of American politics, and have been since the country's founding! Indeed, libertarian ideas have played a central role in world history for centuries. But the left-right line simply pretends that libertarians don't exist. It does the same for others as well.

No wonder, then, that many Americans -- used to thinking about politics with this familiar left-right map -- couldn't figure out what libertarians were. Libertarians weren't left-wing, they weren't right-wing, they weren't centrists -- so they, in effect, didn't exist. Libertarians literally weren't on the map!

The left-right model thus gives a skewed, distorted, inaccurate picture of American politics. It's a "flat earth" political map -- inaccurate and misleading.

A new, more accurate, more inclusive political map was desperately needed. That's what led to the creation of the Quiz -- as an alternative to this failed, flawed model. Take a couple of minutes, go here to take the quiz, and see where you really fall in the political spectrum:

World's Smallest Political Quiz

Source: http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz-faq.html#faq02