American Athens

A few years back, when I was a freshman in college, one of my first friends made was a libertarian. He wasn’t a “libertarian when convenient” like so many of our chirping pundits or Republican congresspeople, but a legitimate libertarian with whom I spent hours arguing about whether or not the government should continue to deliver mail, construct and maintain roads and highways or educate children. I’m not speaking merely of the federal government, but any government. His stubbornness and complete adherence to the (what I consider foolish) principles of extreme libertarianism were in a way admirable and fascinating, especially to someone who was struggling with his own political identity, as I was at the time.

All this is a long-winded way of getting around to a political quiz that he suggested I take. It’s called “The World’s Smallest Political Quiz,” which is an apt name for a libertarian quiz. I took the quiz and, lo and behold, I was a libertarian! (I just retook it and not surprisingly I’m now a liberal) For a few days, I considered myself a libertarian, but could never get quite behind the idea that the government should keep out of economic affairs, deciding to continue my search for an agreeable political ideology.

I was reminded of that quiz, and it’s unreliable results, this week, when I stumbled across Andrew Sullivan and Digby both pointed toward internet political quizzes that they’ve taken. Both of them attempt, through a series of misleading questions or false dichotomies, to bifurcate the political spectrum. The first, the Kamber-O’Leary Test, asks specifically about the American government and American political/social figures. It also, either aptly or laughably, scores on a scale of 0-40, with 0 being most liberal and 40 being most conservative; the figures who represent these poles are Jesse Jackson and Ronald Reagan, respectively — Colin Powell occupies the absolute center, which is cute I suppose. I’m a six, which I guess puts me somewhere between Rev. Jackson and Ted Kennedy, and strikes me, honestly, as fine company. Others have already remarked upon the particular skewed or just dumb questions, none better than Eugene Volokh (via this TL post, which also remarks on it), so I’ll leave this one at that.
The second, a quiz tied in with the book Applebee’s America, seeks to place the taker into one of three “Tribes” — Red, Blue or Tipping; I assume they’re rather self-explanatory. While I find the use of the term “tribe” to be rather foolish, as it assumes geographic and kinship ties which don’t necessarily exist throughout a particular voting bloc, that’s not exactly what I find most ridiculous about the quiz. By asking questions about personal social choices or preferences — Sprite or Dr. Pepper; eBay or Match.com; Discovery Channel or Court TV; US News or TV Guide — the quiz purports to discern to which “tribe” the taker belongs. Now, I haven’t read the book, and perhaps it’s not about voting behavior or social values at all, and I hope it isn’t, because I ended up in the Red Tribe. It’s presumably because I prefer Bourbon to Vodka, college football to tennis, local bottled water to Evian, and that I’ve no use for a dating site but great use for cheap internet-procured goods. Also, there are several seemingly false choices: like Bud or Coors, which both taste remarkably similar; Audi or Saab, which are two European sedan makers; Monster Truck or Pro Wrestling, two loud, large-venue, scripted, arena events that none of my friends would ever attend (I’ve been to several pro-wrestling matches, but it was a different era).

But that’s not what irks me the most. What makes me angry about a quiz like this, as separate from the others, is that it’s another way of making this country and its people appear as if they have nothing in common unless they live next to one another. One is either cosmopolitan or rural; a sissy or a hick; red or blue; coastal elite or heartland just-folks. The stereotypes can get worse: all Republicans — or all Red-Staters or Southerners or Church-goers — are anti-intellectual, homophobic racists and all Democrats are controlling, elitist hippies who think they know what’s best for everyone and what’s best is more taxes and more government. All these are labels that end up widening the divide between us without actually explaining or even describing the person with whom we’re talking.

We attach the label the moment we come into contact with a person to whom it might apply. It gets in the way of the real and constructive dialog that’s necessary for governing. I don’t mean to imply that all of our serious political problems could be solved by sharing a milkshake and playing cards with someone on the other side. I do mean to say that our tendency to label those with whom we disagree as a means of belittling them and discrediting their argument isn’t going to solve them either.

I’m not suggesting that we abandon progressive or liberal goals in favor of some kind of bipartisanship. I think that would be foolish and short-sighted. Rather, there are those who’ve been convinced that drinking Coors and Dr. Pepper, buying lottery tickets and TV Guide make you a Republican. If we buy into the same useless and misleading tropes, how can we convince them — and ourselves — otherwise.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 9th, 2007 at 12:34 and is filed under Uncategorized, W A Hurd. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.