Nolan chart
The Nolan chart is a political diagram created by the Libertarian David Nolan. He created it to illustrate the claim that libertarianism stands for both economic freedom and personal freedom (as he defined the terms), in graphic contrast to "leftist" liberalism, which advocates only personal freedom and "rightist" conservatism, which advocates only economic freedom. (Note that the term "liberalism", in this article, is used with its American meaning; in most other parts of the world, the Nolan Chart's "left-wing" would correspond to social democracy or socialism.)
The chart illustrates the claim that libertarianism is diametrically opposed to authoritarian control systems such as communism and fascism. Indeed, some critics have argued that one of the primary reasons behind the creation of the chart was to popularize the image of libertarianism as the "opposite" of two ideologies with a rather negative public image, thus putting libertarianism itself in a good light.
Differing from the traditional left/right distinction and other political taxonomies, the Nolan Chart in its original form has two dimensions, with a horizontal x-axis labeled "economic freedom" and a vertical y-axis labeled "personal freedom". It resembles a square divided into four quadrants. The upper left quadrant represents the political Left — favoring government that taxes more and spends more for activities such as welfare, healthcare, education, Social Security and funding for the arts and that encourages more barriers on trade and business regulations (which David Nolan labeled "low economic freedom"), but supporting personal choice in issues such as marijuana, homosexuality and the draft (which he labeled "high personal freedom"). At the bottom right is its converse, the political Right, whose coordinates place it as supporting high economic freedom and low personal freedom. Those on the Right want lower taxes and fewer social programs but support regulation by the government of cultural issues and personal behavior. The Nolan Chart places David Nolan's own ideology, libertarianism, at the top right, corresponding with high freedom in both economic and social matters. The fourth quadrant at the bottom left represents the antithesis of libertarianism. David Nolan originally called this philosophy populism, but many later renditions of the chart have used the label authoritarianism instead.
The Nolan Chart has also been rotated and visually represented in a few other ways, such as having conservatism and populism/authoritarianism at the top and libertarianism and liberalism at the bottom. In another popular portrayal, the Nolan Chart takes a rhomboid form, with left representing liberalism, right representing conservatism, down representing authoritarianism, and up representing libertarianism.
The chart is inspiration for many political self-quizzes based on these four categories—liberal, libertarian, conservative and populist/authoritarian—of political thought, many of which have been written in computer code to be taken by visitors on the Internet. The site FreedomKeys.com (http://www.freedomkeys.com) provides links to a variety of charts using the same essential ideas but using different names or survey questions.
The advocates and writers of these quizzes are most often libertarian, and a common remark by them about their tests is that people who are libertarians inside and didn't know it will discover their true political leanings. The detractors of the Nolan Chart are most often people who accuse people with libertarian beliefs of using it to further their agenda and gain converts to their party and political movement. One specific accusation is that libertarian "recruiters" try to convince people that, because they hold several libertarian positions, they should consider making all their positions libertarian in order to achieve consistency in advocating "liberty".
Critics of this diagram (and this kind of chart in general) claim that it represents at best a pseudoscientific illustration of a political point of view. The essential premise of the diagram is for many an oversimplified generalization; economic freedom and personal freedom are often inextricable, and both left-wing (Bakunin) and right-wing philosophers draw the same connection. Critics insist that the libertarian claim (and associated chart) rests on either the utilitarian assumption that libertarianism is a workable alternative to older, more familiar political systems or on the moral argument that it would be better only because it would leave people with more freedom, in the libertarian sense of the word. This freedom, in the extreme, may be perceived by some as tending toward anarchy, and driven by excessively self-centered or selfish motivation. In essence, they claim the "chart" exists only to distance the term "libertarianism" from the older terms of anarchism and socialism, the latter of which draws polemic connections to communism, which itself draws polemic connections to totalitarianism.
Other critics argue that the libertarian definition of economic and personal "freedom" is incorrect or flawed, and that non-libertarian ideologies actually give people more freedom than libertarianism does. One such argument is that freedom from government intervention does not assure individual freedom within the private sector, and that a strong but limited government is needed to preserve individual freedom against non-governmental powers. (This is the case Noam Chomsky makes when he refers to "private tyranny". [1] (http://archives.thedaily.washington.edu/1995/102495/chomsky.html), [2] (http://www.davidcogswell.com/MediaRoulette/NewMediaEnvironment.html)) Nolan's usage of "populism" shows that he rejects this argument.
A few of the people who oppose the use of the Nolan Chart are strong libertarians, Objectivists or other advocates of laissez-faire capitalism who believe that the political spectrum need be portrayed only through one dimension, but not the traditional Left/Right one. They propose an axis with totalitarianism/authoritarianism (statism) at one end, and libertarianism at the other end - something similar to the first diagonal of the Nolan Chart. They insist that all types of government intervention, in any areas, are the same.
See also
External links
- World's Smallest Political Quiz (http://www.self-gov.org/quiz.html) from The Advocates for Self-Government
- The Nolan Chart and its variations (http://FreedomKeys.com/nolancharts.htm)
- Archive of past versions of "Nolan Chart and its variations" (http://web.archive.org/web/%2a/http%3a//FreedomKeys.com/nolancharts.htm) (at archive.org)
- Two Kinds of Selfishness (http://FreedomKeys.com/paradox.htm#pcdt)
- Politopia, the Land of Custom-Made Government (http://www.politopia.com/)
- Positive & Negative Liberties in Three Dimensions (http://www.friesian.com/quiz.htm)
- Political Compass (http://politicalcompass.org/)
fi:Nolanin kartta
Categories: Politics