Nolan Chart
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The Nolan Chart is a political diagram popularized by the American libertarian David Nolan. He reasoned that virtually all human political action can be divided into two general categories: economic and personal. He developed the chart to illustrate the claim that libertarianism represents both economic freedom and personal freedom (as he defined the terms), in graphic contrast to left-wing "liberalism," which, according to Nolan, advocates only "personal freedom", and right-wing "conservatism," which, according to Nolan, advocates only "economic freedom".
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[edit] Development
The chart and its concept are attributed commonly to David Nolan. A similar bi-dimensional chart appeared during 1970 in the publication The Floodgates of Anarchy[1] by Stuart Christie and Albert Meltzer, with anarchism in the equivalent of the Nolan Chart's Left-Wing corner, fascism in the equivalent of the Right-Wing corner, "capitalist individualism" in the equivalent of the Libertarian corner and "state communism" in the equivalent of the Populist (Totalitarian) corner. In Radicals for Capitalism (p. 321), Brian Doherty traces the idea for the chart to an article by Maurice Bryson and William McDill in The Rampart Journal of Individualist Thought (Summer 1968) entitled "The Political Spectrum: A Bi-Dimensional Approach".
David Nolan first published the current version of the chart in an article named "Classifying and Analyzing Politico-Economic Systems" in the January 1971 issue of The Individualist, the monthly magazine of the Society for Individual Liberty (SIL). During December 1971, he helped to start the group that would become the Libertarian Party.[2]
[edit] Positions
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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, with each sample in the population assigned to one of the quadrants:
- Top left — the political Left. Those supporting low economic freedom and high personal freedom.
- Bottom right — the political Right. Those supporting high economic freedom and low personal freedom.
- Top right — libertarianism. David Nolan's own ideology, corresponding with those supporting high economic and personal freedom.
- Bottom left — the antithesis of libertarianism, corresponding with those supporting low economic and personal freedom. David Nolan originally termed this philosophy populism, but many later renditions of the chart have used the label statism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, or fascism instead.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Christie, Stuart, Albert Meltzer. The Floodgates of Anarchy. London: Kahn & Averill, 1970. ISBN 978-0900707032
- ^ "David Nolan - Libertarian Celebrity". Advocates for Self Government. Archived from the original on 2008-06-16. http://web.archive.org/web/20080616110300/http://www.theadvocates.org/celebrities/david-nolan.html. Retrieved 2008-09-09.
[edit] External links
- Nolan Chart website
- Nolan Chart website Survey
- World's Smallest Political Quiz from The Advocates for Self Government
- Another version of the Nolan Chart
- Wiki version of Nolan Survey
- The Nolan Chart and its variations
- Archive of past versions of "Nolan Chart and its variations" (at archive.org)
- Politopia, the Land of Custom-Made Government
- Positive & Negative Liberties in Three Dimensions
- The Enhanced Precision Political Quiz... IN 2D
- Political Profile Test
- Political Spectrum Quiz
- Vote Match Quiz
- A voting index of the U.S. Congress (prepared by Prof. Clifford F. Thies for the Republican Liberty Caucus.)
- Maurice C. Bryson and William R. McDill, "The Political Spectrum: A Bi-Dimensional Approach," Rampart Journal of Individualist Thought 4, no. 2 (Summer, 1968): 19–26.
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