A New Democratic Count

Two new Democrats have entered the race — Michael Bloomberg and Deval Patrick. And several have left. I need to reset the database again.

But before I do, here is the count between now and the last reset. In this count there has been a flood of traffic from Daily Kos. It appears that the Kossacks really like Elizabeth Warren. (I wonder if they read her book promoting stay-at-home motherhood…)

Plurality Vote Count

Plurality vote totals:

CandidateNumber of Votes
Michael Bennet0
Joe Biden4
Cory Booker2
Steve Bullock0
Pete Buttigieg9
Julian Castro1
John Delaney0
Tulsi Gabbard4
Kamala Harris4
Amy Klobuchar1
Wayne Messam0
Beto O’Rourke1
Tim Ryan0
Bernie Sanders11
Joe Sestak0
Tom Steyer0
Elizabeth Warren32
Marianne Williamson0
Andrew Yang6
TOTAL:75

The winner is Elizabeth Warren with 42.7% of the vote

Approval Vote Count

Approval vote totals:

CandidateNumber of Votes
Michael Bennet7
Joe Biden29
Cory Booker36
Steve Bullock3
Pete Buttigieg33
Julian Castro32
John Delaney3
Tulsi Gabbard15
Kamala Harris37
Amy Klobuchar24
Wayne Messam1
Beto O’Rourke18
Tim Ryan0
Bernie Sanders42
Joe Sestak3
Tom Steyer6
Elizabeth Warren55
Marianne Williamson8
Andrew Yang21
Ballots Cast:75

The winner is Elizabeth Warren with 73.3% of the vote

Range Count

CandidateNumber of Stars
Michael Bennet148
Joe Biden320
Cory Booker329
Steve Bullock127
Pete Buttigieg385
Julian Castro322
John Delaney101
Tulsi Gabbard146
Kamala Harris372
Amy Klobuchar292
Wayne Messam70
Beto O’Rourke282
Tim Ryan97
Bernie Sanders468
Joe Sestak85
Tom Steyer138
Elizabeth Warren562
Marianne Williamson114
Andrew Yang288

And the winner is: Elizabeth Warren

Instant Runoff (Ranked Choice) Counts

Instant Runoff required 6 rounds:

Round 1:

Michael Bennet0
Joe Biden3
Cory Booker2
Steve Bullock0
Pete Buttigieg9
Julian Castro1
John Delaney0
Tulsi Gabbard3
Kamala Harris4
Amy Klobuchar1
Wayne Messam0
Beto O’Rourke2
Tim Ryan0
Bernie Sanders13
Joe Sestak0
Tom Steyer1
Elizabeth Warren29
Marianne Williamson0
Andrew Yang7

Eliminated in this round:

  • Michael Bennet
  • Steve Bullock
  • John Delaney
  • Wayne Messam
  • Tim Ryan
  • Joe Sestak
  • Marianne Williamson
  • Julian Castro
  • Amy Klobuchar
  • Tom Steyer

Round 2:

Joe Biden3
Cory Booker2
Pete Buttigieg9
Tulsi Gabbard3
Kamala Harris5
Beto O’Rourke2
Bernie Sanders13
Elizabeth Warren31
Andrew Yang7

Eliminated in this round:

  • Cory Booker
  • Beto O’Rourke

Round 3:

Joe Biden4
Pete Buttigieg9
Tulsi Gabbard3
Kamala Harris7
Bernie Sanders13
Elizabeth Warren32
Andrew Yang7

Tulsi Gabbard eliminated in this round.

Round 4:

Joe Biden4
Pete Buttigieg9
Kamala Harris7
Bernie Sanders16
Elizabeth Warren32
Andrew Yang7

Joe Biden eliminated in this round.

Round 5:

Pete Buttigieg10
Kamala Harris7
Bernie Sanders16
Elizabeth Warren35
Andrew Yang7

Eliminated in this round:

  • Kamala Harris
  • Andrew Yang

Round 6:

Pete Buttigieg13
Bernie Sanders20
Elizabeth Warren42

And the winner is: Elizabeth Warren

Range with Runoff Count

First Round:

For the first round, we count just as in Range Voting, but we are interested in the top two candidates. If there is a tie for second place in this round, then we take the top candidate and all second place candidates to the second round.

CandidateNumber of Stars
Michael Bennet153
Joe Biden318
Cory Booker339
Steve Bullock130
Pete Buttigieg394
Julian Castro336
John Delaney97
Tulsi Gabbard147
Kamala Harris386
Amy Klobuchar289
Wayne Messam71
Beto O’Rourke282
Tim Ryan99
Bernie Sanders470
Joe Sestak88
Tom Steyer140
Elizabeth Warren568
Marianne Williamson119
Andrew Yang296

The following candidates make it to Round 2:

  • Elizabeth Warren
  • Bernie Sanders

Second Round:

Here are the vote counts for the second round. A candidate gets a vote if he/she has the highest number of stars in the truncated ballot. If multiple candidates get the same, highest, star count, then multiple candidates get a vote. In this sense, the second round is somewhere between Plurality and Approval.

CandidateVotes
Elizabeth Warren54
Bernie Sanders30

And the winner is: Elizabeth Warren

Republican Count for Test Poll

We have a couple new entrants to the Republican race. Also, having too many people on the ballot makes people annoyed. So I am about to redo the database, adding the new entrants and eliminating many of the candidates from 2016. (I’ll keep some of the leading candidates form 2016 to give the Never Trumpers options.)

Anyway, here are the results from before my intended database purge:

Plurality vote totals:

CandidateNumber of Votes
Donald Trump21
Bill Weld2
John Kasich1
Ted Cruz2
Marco Rubio2
Ben Carson3
Jeb Bush0
Jim Gilmore0
Carly Fiorina0
Chris Christie0
Rand Paul5
Rick Santorum0
Mike Huckabee1
George Pataki0
Lindsey Graham0
Bobby Jindal0
Scott Walker0
Rick Perry1
TOTAL:38

The winner is Donald Trump with 55.263157894737% of the vote

Approval Vote Count

Approval vote totals:

CandidateNumber of Votes
Donald Trump28
Bill Weld4
John Kasich5
Ted Cruz23
Marco Rubio6
Ben Carson13
Jeb Bush8
Jim Gilmore0
Carly Fiorina1
Chris Christie5
Rand Paul12
Rick Santorum5
Mike Huckabee5
George Pataki1
Lindsey Graham3
Bobby Jindal4
Scott Walker7
Rick Perry14
Ballots Cast:38

The winner is Donald Trump with 73.684210526316% of the vote

Range Count

CandidateNumber of Stars
Donald Trump259
Bill Weld120
John Kasich139
Ted Cruz219
Marco Rubio141
Ben Carson183
Jeb Bush149
Jim Gilmore96
Carly Fiorina95
Chris Christie97
Rand Paul185
Rick Santorum107
Mike Huckabee140
George Pataki97
Lindsey Graham107
Bobby Jindal130
Scott Walker141
Rick Perry191

And the winner is: Donald Trump

Instant Runoff (Ranked Choice) Counts

Instant Runoff required 1 rounds:

Round 1:

Donald Trump21
Bill Weld3
John Kasich1
Ted Cruz0
Marco Rubio4
Ben Carson3
Jeb Bush0
Jim Gilmore0
Carly Fiorina1
Chris Christie0
Rand Paul4
Rick Santorum0
Mike Huckabee1
George Pataki0
Lindsey Graham0
Bobby Jindal0
Scott Walker0
Rick Perry0

And the winner is: Donald Trump

Range with Runoff Count

First Round:

For the first round, we count just as in Range Voting, but we are interested in the top two candidates. If there is a tie for second place in this round, then we take the top candidate and all second place candidates to the second round.

CandidateNumber of Stars
Donald Trump259
Bill Weld118
John Kasich139
Ted Cruz216
Marco Rubio146
Ben Carson191
Jeb Bush146
Jim Gilmore99
Carly Fiorina94
Chris Christie96
Rand Paul184
Rick Santorum108
Mike Huckabee138
George Pataki96
Lindsey Graham102
Bobby Jindal132
Scott Walker139
Rick Perry186

The following candidates make it to Round 2:

  • Donald Trump
  • Ted Cruz

Second Round:

Here are the vote counts for the second round. A candidate gets a vote if he/she has the highest number of stars in the truncated ballot. If multiple candidates get the same, highest, star count, then multiple candidates get a vote. In this sense, the second round is somewhere between Plurality and Approval.

CandidateVotes
Donald Trump27
Ted Cruz16

And the winner is: Donald Trump

Democratic Count for Test Poll

The field is narrowing and people are complaining about the sizes of the ballots. So I am getting ready to weed down the database and restart the count. But before doing so, here are the results on the Democratic side as of Oct. 24, 2019:

Plurality vote totals:

CandidateNumber of Votes
Michael Bennet1
Joe Biden3
Cory Booker0
Steve Bullock1
Pete Buttigieg2
Julian Castro2
Bill de Blasio0
John Delaney1
Tulsi Gabbard7
Kirsten Gillibrand0
Kamala Harris3
Jay Inslee1
Amy Klobuchar1
Wayne Messam0
Seth Moulton0
Beto O’Rourke6
Tim Ryan0
Bernie Sanders16
Joe Sestak0
Tom Steyer0
Elizabeth Warren10
Marianne Williamson0
Andrew Yang12
TOTAL:66

The winner is Bernie Sanders with 24.242424242424% of the vote

Approval Vote Count

Approval vote totals:

CandidateNumber of Votes
Michael Bennet5
Joe Biden16
Cory Booker11
Steve Bullock6
Pete Buttigieg16
Julian Castro10
Bill de Blasio4
John Delaney5
Tulsi Gabbard12
Kirsten Gillibrand6
Kamala Harris11
Jay Inslee8
Amy Klobuchar10
Wayne Messam3
Seth Moulton3
Beto O’Rourke18
Tim Ryan4
Bernie Sanders33
Joe Sestak3
Tom Steyer2
Elizabeth Warren23
Marianne Williamson6
Andrew Yang18
Ballots Cast:66

The winner is Bernie Sanders with 50% of the vote

Range Count

CandidateNumber of Stars
Michael Bennet159
Joe Biden227
Cory Booker247
Steve Bullock163
Pete Buttigieg280
Julian Castro238
Bill de Blasio143
John Delaney139
Tulsi Gabbard287
Kirsten Gillibrand177
Kamala Harris225
Jay Inslee219
Amy Klobuchar206
Wayne Messam106
Seth Moulton100
Beto O’Rourke246
Tim Ryan136
Bernie Sanders415
Joe Sestak106
Tom Steyer128
Elizabeth Warren351
Marianne Williamson172
Andrew Yang327

And the winner is: Bernie Sanders

Instant Runoff (Ranked Choice) Counts

Instant Runoff required 9 rounds:

Round 1:

Michael Bennet0
Joe Biden2
Cory Booker1
Steve Bullock1
Pete Buttigieg3
Julian Castro2
Bill de Blasio1
John Delaney1
Tulsi Gabbard7
Kirsten Gillibrand0
Kamala Harris3
Jay Inslee1
Amy Klobuchar1
Wayne Messam0
Seth Moulton0
Beto O’Rourke6
Tim Ryan0
Bernie Sanders14
Joe Sestak1
Tom Steyer1
Elizabeth Warren9
Marianne Williamson0
Andrew Yang12

Eliminated in this round:

  • Michael Bennet
  • Kirsten Gillibrand
  • Wayne Messam
  • Seth Moulton
  • Tim Ryan
  • Marianne Williamson
  • Cory Booker
  • Steve Bullock
  • Bill de Blasio
  • John Delaney
  • Jay Inslee
  • Amy Klobuchar
  • Joe Sestak
  • Tom Steyer

Round 2:

Joe Biden3
Pete Buttigieg4
Julian Castro2
Tulsi Gabbard7
Kamala Harris3
Beto O’Rourke7
Bernie Sanders18
Elizabeth Warren10
Andrew Yang12

Julian Castro eliminated in this round.

Round 3:

Joe Biden3
Pete Buttigieg4
Tulsi Gabbard7
Kamala Harris4
Beto O’Rourke7
Bernie Sanders19
Elizabeth Warren10
Andrew Yang12

Joe Biden eliminated in this round.

Round 4:

Pete Buttigieg5
Tulsi Gabbard8
Kamala Harris4
Beto O’Rourke8
Bernie Sanders19
Elizabeth Warren10
Andrew Yang12

Kamala Harris eliminated in this round.

Round 5:

Pete Buttigieg5
Tulsi Gabbard9
Beto O’Rourke8
Bernie Sanders19
Elizabeth Warren12
Andrew Yang13

Pete Buttigieg eliminated in this round.

Round 6:

Tulsi Gabbard10
Beto O’Rourke8
Bernie Sanders20
Elizabeth Warren14
Andrew Yang14

Beto O’Rourke eliminated in this round.

Round 7:

Tulsi Gabbard11
Bernie Sanders24
Elizabeth Warren17
Andrew Yang14

Tulsi Gabbard eliminated in this round.

Round 8:

Bernie Sanders29
Elizabeth Warren18
Andrew Yang19

Elizabeth Warren eliminated in this round.

Round 9:

Bernie Sanders43
Andrew Yang23

And the winner is: Bernie Sanders

Range with Runoff Count

First Round:

For the first round, we count just as in Range Voting, but we are interested in the top two candidates. If there is a tie for second place in this round, then we take the top candidate and all second place candidates to the second round.

CandidateNumber of Stars
Michael Bennet156
Joe Biden228
Cory Booker240
Steve Bullock163
Pete Buttigieg275
Julian Castro242
Bill de Blasio160
John Delaney140
Tulsi Gabbard287
Kirsten Gillibrand179
Kamala Harris227
Jay Inslee225
Amy Klobuchar203
Wayne Messam105
Seth Moulton98
Beto O’Rourke249
Tim Ryan135
Bernie Sanders412
Joe Sestak105
Tom Steyer127
Elizabeth Warren351
Marianne Williamson172
Andrew Yang328

The following candidates make it to Round 2:

  • Bernie Sanders
  • Elizabeth Warren

Second Round:

Here are the vote counts for the second round. A candidate gets a vote if he/she has the highest number of stars in the truncated ballot. If multiple candidates get the same, highest, star count, then multiple candidates get a vote. In this sense, the second round is somewhere between Plurality and Approval.

CandidateVotes
Bernie Sanders47
Elizabeth Warren39

And the winner is: Bernie Sanders

Hopefully with a narrower field, more people will complete the poll.

Primary 2020: A Voting System Experiment

Our election system is broken! Plurality-Take-All voting Does Not Work when you have more than one candidate on the ballot. Remember when Ralph Nader “stole” enough votes from Al Gore so that we ended up with George W. Bush? Remember when H. Ross Perot gave us Bill Clinton?

“Fine,” some of you might say. “Just stick to our Two-Party System.”

Even that doesn’t work. Both parties have more than two candidates to choose between during the primaries. As I write this, the Democrats are considering over 20.

There is a better way. Scratch that. There are several better ways: several different voting systems that allow voters to better express their preferences when there are more than two candidates to consider. Better options include: Approval Voting, Instant Runoff, Condorcet Voting, Range Voting, and Star Voting.

But which of these are the best?

To help answer this question, I have created a new poll: a simulation of the primary phase of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. In it, you get to experience voting using all of the above systems, and we will get to see how the voting system affects the results after enough people participate.

I have made primary simulations for the Democratic, Libertarian, and Republican primaries. To make the Republican primary simulation interesting, I have added candidates from the 2016 contest. (Otherwise, we would only have Donald Trump and Bill Weld. With two contestants, Plurality Voting works just fine.)

Please participate, and then tell your friends, acquaintances, students, teachers, etc. Our current system produces winners who make half the country extremely unhappy every four years. A better system would give us uniters instead of dividers.

A better system would also let us safely choose between more than two parties. We might see some reasonable third parties arise: greenish conservatism, pro life welfare statism, budget realism, etc.

After taking the poll, feel free to comment below. Which system do you prefer? What features should I add? Are there any bugs?

Nearly 120,000 Data Points Now

After years of neglect, I have finally gotten around to doing a tally of the quiz stats.  Not quite 120,000 points.  Traffic has definitely gone down since the glory days of this site.

But also: the site’s recording mechanism had been broken since January 2019 due to changes in PHP and my hosting provider’s Apache settings. Oops!

Hopefully, it should all be working correctly now.

In other news: quiz2d.com is now https! No more browser warnings when filling in forms. The Web is  more secure.

Hacked by Russians

Last Monday, a whole lot of files got corrupted on all my domains. My hosting provider traced it to a Russian server getting in via WordPress.

I had a backup of my non WordPress content, so most of the site should still work as it should. For WordPress proper, I clobbered all my old files and unzipped the latest WordPress. My content is in the database, and appears OK. But I have lost my old theme (which needed updating anyway).

Please have patience with this generic theme until I have the time to jazz things back up.

Right now, I am busy on a MAJOR new project for this site! After years of semi neglect, big things are coming soon.

Over 50,000 People Have Taken Version 7 of the Quiz

Have a look at the latest statistics for Version 7 of the Quiz. We are now up to over 52,000 takers! I would say that the statistics are significant, save that they are a bit biased. You can see the bias in the scatter plot:

allScatterV7_October_2014

A large fraction of my traffic these days comes from school sites. Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll are a lot more appealing if you are a teenager than if you are a parent of a teenager. I think this explains most of the bias to the upper left.

Then again, it is also possible that the government is biased to the lower right compared to the population. I center the diagram on the amount of government we have today vs. any attempt at finding an average or median viewpoint. Whereas a democracy is supposed to reflect the median in theory, in practice we have Gerrymandering, a two-party system, and a funding bias towards towards incumbents — i.e., bribery.

There are more people at the upper corner than at any of the other corners because the Nolan Chart is a projection of a higher dimensional space that makes libertarianism appear a more coherent political philosophy than others. Other projections are possible. The Political Compass uses a different projection which measures how libertarian you are not at all, but does measure how much you agree with a certain hard left political philosophy.

One of these days, I’ll get around to making quizzes with different projections…

Over 18000 People Have Taken the Version 7 of the Quiz

After a few months leaving things alone, I have finally gotten around to  tabulating the latest results from Version 7 of the Quiz (released in August 2012). A quick look at a scatter plot indicates that the Quiz is now reasonably normalized:

Yes, there is a cluster in the Libertarian quadrant, but this is to be expected for several reasons:

  1. The Nolan Chart does look at the political map from a libertarian perspective. Libertarianism thus shows up as the most coherent ideology by this mapping.
  2. The libertarian movement has done the most to promote quizzes such as this, so more of the takers of this quiz have been prompted to do so by libertarians. Indeed, the earliest links to this site were Libertarian Party affiliates.
  3. Political quiz takers in general will tend to be taken more by those unhappy with the two major party offerings.
  4. A sizable fraction of the traffic today comes from school sites. Young people destined to become Republicans tend to score more libertarian than conservative. Whether they will become more socially conservative as they grow older remains to be seen.

Then again, it is possible that libertarianism — broadly defined — is a growing faction in this country and currently underrepresented in our legislatures. Given the non random nature of this data sample, the scatter plot above should not be taken as strong evidence for this assertion, though.

The more detailed statistics, however, should be more useful for determining how libertarian young and/or independent voters are willing to be. (They can be used as for how conservative, liberal, communitarian, etc.) There is significant clustering in the center of the graph, so the specific answers may reveal some deal-killers for all factions.

The strongest smaller-government signal is for the issue of marijuana legalization. 60% of the quiz takers say we should legalize marijuana outright. Another 18% believe we should make marijuana less illegal than it is today, either by decriminalizing recreational use or by making medical marijuana legal.

On the other hand 56% of the Quiz takers believe we should continue keep our laws against harder drugs and/or increase enforcement. This is despite the fact that the Quiz grants users many incremental options between the status quo and outright legalization.

The strongest signal for bigger government comes from the Public Education question. There is strong support for increasing public school funding and graduate school educations for teachers. A mere 16.6% of takers favor some form of school privatization (vouchers, tax credits or simple public school abolition). Those who favor school choice have an uphill battle, at least with the Quiz2D demographic (which includes many students currently in public schools).

A few more highlights:

  • ObamaCare and/or outright socialized medicine has strong support.
  • Nearly 40% of Quiz takers believe we should legalize prostitution.
  • The Second Amendment still has strong support, though nearly a quarter of the takers believe we should have stronger background checks for pistols and semi-automatic rifles.
  • Over half the takers believe in some additional immigration restrictions.
  • There is a strong sentiment towards scaling back or privatizing Social Security over time.

Peruse the statistics yourself.

 

 

 

 

Housing Crisis

I guess I should have a question related to the current recession. Lots of options here. Could talk about banking and money, regulating the financial system or possible bailouts of homeowners who bought at the peak of the housing bubble.  Banking has lots of gradations of libertarian answers, but what could I put for authoritarian answers that hasn’t already been implemented? Ditto for the financial services industry. I can think of some useful additional interventions for the housing crisis. So here goes:

 

MORTGAGE CRISIS

The housing bubble has only partially popped. Millions of homeowners are still owe more than their homes are worth. Many banks are still fragile and many people are unable to move to find better jobs because they cannot sell their homes. Should we do something? If we do, how do we do so without creating a new bubble?

What should we do about the ongoing mortgage crisis?

  • Inflate the currency to bring nominal incomes and rents in line with current home prices.
  • Give out grants to homeowners based on how desperate they are.
  • Buy up surplus housing and demolish it to soak up excess supply.
  • Two of the above.
  • All of the above.
  • Do nothing beyond what we are doing now. The bailouts, new homeowner tax credits, and HARP suffice.
  • Let prices continue to fall but build equity by granting existing homeowners the value of their future mortgage interest deductions as a lump sum payment used to pay down existing mortgages and then eliminate the mortgage deduction.
  • Pop the remaining bubble. Eliminate all bailout programs. Yes, some people will lose, but others will gain by being able to afford homes on the cheap.
  • Pop the bubble even harder. Eliminate the remaining bailout programs, Fannie and Freddie, and the mortgage interest deduction.
  • Crush the bubble. Pop as above and go to a gold standard to eliminate inflation.

War on Terror

War is the health of the State — except where it is the death of the State.  That exception thingy is why I have avoided the foreign intervention issue in prior editions of the Quiz. Taking out Hitler was good for liberty — but the process required quite a bit of death and taxes.

For this go around, my yardstick is amount of government vs. initiation of force. Even there, foreign policy is a bit ambiguous. Fighting WWII did require more government at home — and how!  But if the Axis powers decided to absorb the U.S. after taking care of Eurasia, the total amount of government would have been even bigger even at [U.S.] home  in the long run.

Nonetheless, given how much Ron Paul invested in the foreign policy issue, and how the War on Terror threatens to drag on indefinitely, the lack of a military intervention question is perhaps unacceptable.

For Version 7, perhaps a foreign intervention question focused just on the Middle East is appropriate, given the War on Terror. It can serve as a proxy for attitudes on intervention in general. In fact, George W. Bush gave reason to broaden the question given his Axis of Evil speech.

So, how is this:

WAR ON TERROR

Ever since 9/11  the United States has been in a state of open ended war against militant Islamic groups and countries which host them. This has been very expensive, and innocent people have been killed in the cross fire. Then again, we haven’t suffered a major terrorist attack since we began the War on Terror. If we don’t get the terrorists  over there, we might need a full on police state at home to protect the millions of soft targets — or so many claim. But would we be under attack by militant Islamists if we weren’t meddling in the Middle East in the first place?

What is the appropriate military response to terrorism in the 21st Century?

  • The U.S. response was appropriate more or less.
  • We should have pulled out of Afghanistan and Iraq much sooner. Take out the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, yes. Nation build, no.
  • The second Iraq war was a mistake.
  • The first Iraq war was a mistake, as was Desert Shield. Hussein was Saudi Arabia and Iran’s problem.
  • We shouldn’t meddle in the Middle East at all. Get out of the Persian Gulf. Let the Israelis defend themselves. “They hate us because we are over there.”
  • We should focus on energy independence so we can distance ourselves from the Middle East. Levy a large tariff on OPEC oil and/or spend some billions on a serious energy policy.
  • We should be more aggressive. Bomb Iran before they get nuclear weapons.
  • We should have invaded Saudi Arabia after 9/11. Most of the terrorists were Saudi citizens, and Saudi Arabia sponsored the Taliban.
  • We should take out North Korea to finish off the Axis of Evil.
  • Invade Cuba and establish democracy there.
  • Any to of the above aggressive actions (Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Cuba.)
  • Any three of the above.
  • All of the above.

 

My feedback from the right is that the above was a leading question. So here is a second try:

 

WAR ON TERROR

After the World Trade Center attack on 9/11, the United States embarked on a campaign of introducing democracy by force of arms and taking out terrorist cells abroad. It seems to have worked. We have suffered no major terrorist attack at home since, and democracies are sprouting all across the Middle East. But the price has been enormous in terms of treasure and lives lost. Did we overreact? And in the longer run, have the recent wars inspired as many future terrorists as we have taken out? Opinions vary.

What is/was the appropriate military response to terrorism in the 21st Century?

  • What we did. The U.S. response, including the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, was appropriate and sufficient.
  • We need to do more. We should intervene in Syria.
  • More: we need to stop Iran for getting nuclear weapons, by force of arms if need be.
  • More: there is another country or countries that need military correction soon.
  • Two of the above additional interventions
  • All of the above additional interventions.
  • Less. Taking out the Taliban and Saddam Hussein were worthwhile, but we shouldn’t have stayed for the extensive nation building afterwards.
  • Less. Afghanistan yes. The second Iraq war no.
  • Much less. Even the first Iraq war was a mistake, as was Desert Shield. Saddam was Saudi Arabia and Iran’s problem.
  • Much less. They hate us not because we are free, but because we are over there. We should focus on energy independence so we can end our involvement in the Persian Gulf. Levy a large tariff on OPEC oil and/or spend some billions on a serious energy policy.
  • Much less. Let’s get completely out the Middle East now, without waiting for energy independence. And let Israel defend itself.