Nolan Chart

... um, which was his, you know, w- way of looking at, uh, politics beyond the left and right perspective.

In other words, there was a, uh, person who created this thing called the Nolan Chart in the early '70s there, and this guy was a libertarian.

And i- in the early '70s, this birth of kind of left libertarianism came out, and the Nolan Chart basically just adds two more, y- you know, categories to the two categories of left or right.

Which the notion, the metaphor of one being politically left and politically right itself is a modern concept.

It comes from the French Revolution where, you know, those have sat to the left of the king and those who sat to the right of the king.

We've created this whole huge edifice of, uh, you know, political regalia.

And, um, Wilson, as I said, he was seeking to l- look at things beyond left and right.

And if you, for instance, look at things through a Nolan chart, you could see politicians who represent different interests within their own little political, uh, uh, uh, um, party.

And then on the other axis, it looked at what role should government have in terms of managing your personal life and the personal decisions that you make.

And so you had this new model which was born and it was aptly named the Nolan Chart.

Sometime later, Marshall Fritz got the idea to figure out how to deploy this concept.

And he wanted to demonstrate to Americans, he basically wanted to shatter this left-right false narrative and demonstrate that there actually is a much larger breadth of ideology that put libertarians on the map, properly speaking.

Because prior to that, where do libertarians go on a left-right spectrum? Nobody really could say.

And so these five questions on economic issues and five questions on personal liberties issues plotted people on this Nolan chart, which was a diamond shape.

And then from there, the Advocates has been using this tool for nearly 40 years as an outreach tool, demonstrating that people are actually far more libertarian than they realize, and that for those people who feel politically homeless, maybe libertarianism is actually the right home for them.

So that's the work that we continue to do up to this day.