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Your Political Identity Progress
60% Completed
You scored
Libertarian
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Your Scores
Personal Issues
Score: 50
Your support for individual liberty, civil rights, and personal choice
Economic Issues
Score: 50
Your support for free markets, property rights, and economic choice
About Your Type
Libertarians champion the principle that every individual possesses inherent rights to life, liberty, and property -- rights that exist prior to and independent of government. Rooted in the classical liberal tradition stretching from Joh…
What This Means
Your Political Philosophy
Freedom is the highest political value -- people should be free to live as they choose so long as they respect the equal rights of others. Government exists solely to protect individual rights, not to direct economic outcomes or enforce moral conformity.
Key Values
Non-Aggression Principle- Individual Sovereignty
- Free Market Capitalism
- Property Rights
- Voluntary Association
- Constitutional Limits on Government
- Civil Liberties for All
- Sound Money and Fiscal Restraint
Common Allies
Libertarians ally with conservatives on economic issues - free markets, lower taxes, deregulation, and gun rights - collaborating through groups like the Cato Institute and Reason Foundation. On civil liberties they align with progressives to defend free speech, oppose mass surveillance, reform criminal justice, and end the War on Drugs. These alliances are always issue-specific, never tribal.
Where a Libertarian Stands
The plain-language version: where this type lands on the issues people actually argue about.
Taxation
Taxation is taking money by force. Dramatically reduce taxes at every level. Government should be funded voluntarily or through minimal consumption taxes at most.
Economy
Government should get out of the way. Free markets, not central planning, create prosperity. End the Fed, abolish the income tax, and let voluntary exchange drive innovation.
Drugs
What you put in your body is your business. End the War on Drugs entirely. Legalize, regulate minimally, and treat addiction as a health issue, not a criminal one.
Military
Bring the troops home. End foreign interventions, close overseas bases, and maintain only the defense capacity needed to protect American soil. War is the health of the state.
Education
Parents, not bureaucrats, should control education. Support school choice, vouchers, homeschooling freedom, and competition. Public school monopolies fail students, especially the poorest.
Healthcare
Healthcare is a service, not a right. Remove government barriers to competition -- licensing monopolies, insurance mandates, FDA bottlenecks -- and prices will fall while quality rises.
Immigration
Free people should be free to move. Dramatically liberalize immigration. Immigrants who come to work and trade peacefully make the economy stronger and culture richer.
Welfare
Government welfare traps people in dependency. Replace it with voluntary charity, mutual aid, and a dynamic economy that creates opportunities for everyone.
Principles in Action
Consistent When It Counts
Where this type holds the line regardless of which party is in power: the intellectual backbone, not the talking points.
✓ Anti-War Across AdministrationsOpposes military intervention regardless of which party holds the White House.
Libertarians consistently oppose foreign military interventions, nation-building, and preemptive wars regardless of whether a Republican or Democratic president initiates them. This principled anti-interventionism distinguishes libertarians from conservatives who often support military action and progressives who may selectively oppose it based on partisan alignment.
✓ Free Speech AbsolutismDefends even offensive speech from government suppression.
Libertarians defend freedom of expression even when the speech in question is deeply offensive, unpopular, or factually wrong. They oppose government censorship of hate speech, misinformation, and political dissent alike, arguing that the remedy for bad speech is more speech, not government-imposed silence. This places them at odds with progressives who favor hate speech restrictions and authoritarians who suppress dissent.
✓ Drug DecriminalizationSupports ending the War on Drugs as a matter of personal sovereignty.
Libertarians have consistently advocated for ending drug prohibition since long before it became a mainstream position. They argue that individuals own their bodies and should be free to consume any substance, while bearing responsibility for their actions. This consistency predates progressive support for marijuana legalization by decades and extends to all substances, not just politically popular ones.
✓ Corporate Welfare OppositionOpposes government subsidies and bailouts for corporations and individuals alike.
While conservatives often defend tax breaks and subsidies for businesses and progressives defend entitlement spending, libertarians oppose both corporate welfare and individual welfare programs with equal fervor. They argue that government should not pick winners and losers in the economy, whether by bailing out banks, subsidizing farmers, or providing grants to favored industries.
✓ Immigration OpennessFavors dramatically freer immigration as an extension of free markets and free movement.
Many libertarians support substantially open borders or dramatically liberalized immigration, viewing freedom of movement as a natural extension of property rights and free markets. This puts them at odds with conservatives who favor immigration restrictions and distinguishes their position as principled rather than partisan. They argue that immigrants who come to work and trade peacefully should not be turned away by government force.
Did You Know?
The good, the surprising, and the honest critiques worth sitting with in the Challenging tab.
The Libertarian Party, founded in 1971, is the third-largest political party in the United States by voter registration, with over 700,000 registered members as of 2024.
The term "libertarian" was first used in a political context by French anarcho-communist Joseph Dejacque in 1857, though modern American libertarianism draws from a different intellectual tradition rooted in classical liberalism.
Friedrich Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" (1944) and Milton Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom" (1962) are widely considered foundational texts of modern libertarian economic thought.
The Nolan Chart, created by Libertarian Party co-founder David Nolan in 1969, was the first political model to map ideology along two axes -- personal freedom and economic freedom -- rather than the traditional left-right spectrum.
Libertarian-leaning economists have won multiple Nobel Prizes, including Friedrich Hayek (1974), Milton Friedman (1976), James Buchanan (1986), and Vernon Smith (2002).
New Hampshire's Free State Project has attracted over 6,000 libertarian activists who moved to the state to concentrate their political influence, resulting in dozens of libertarian-leaning state legislators.
The People Behind the Philosophy
The thinkers and leaders who shaped this worldview and carry it forward today.
FH
Friedrich Hayek
20th Century Economist & Nobel Laureate
Austrian-British economist whose masterwork "The Road to Serfdom" argued that centralized economic planning inevitably leads to totalitarianism. His concept of spontaneous order -- that complex social systems emerge from individual actions without central direction -- remains a cornerstone of libertarian thought. Won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974.
MR
Murray Rothbard
20th Century Economist
Developed anarcho-capitalist theory and applied Austrian economics to create a comprehensive libertarian philosophy
MF
Milton Friedman
20th Century Economist & Nobel Laureate
Chicago School economist who popularized free-market ideas through his bestselling book "Capitalism and Freedom" and TV series "Free to Choose." Advocated for floating exchange rates, school vouchers, a volunteer military, and legalization of drugs. Won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976.
JL
John Locke
17th Century Philosopher
English philosopher whose "Two Treatises of Government" established the natural rights framework -- life, liberty, and property -- that directly influenced the American Declaration of Independence and remains the philosophical foundation of libertarian thought.
Also Recommended
Understanding the Nolan Chart
Your result is plotted on the Nolan Chart — a two-axis map of political views. Instead of squeezing everyone onto a single left–right line, it measures personal freedom and economic freedom separately. That's why it can tell a Libertarian from a Progressive, a Conservative, an Authoritarian, or a Centrist.
Learn more about the Nolan Chart