Lots of folks have been taking this Libertarian Purity Test. I’m oddly proud to say that I scored a six out of a possible 160 – which is to say, I’m less than one-fourteenth the libertarian Will Baude is, and less than a third as libertarian as Matthew Ygelsias.
I would have scored a bit higher if there had been more questions designed to appeal to left-wing libertarian impulse. Not a word was asked about reproductive rights, for instance, nor much about gay rights. The questions towards the end of the test, designed to weed out all but the really hard-core libertarians, are frightening to contemplate (do you want a privatized judiciary?).
As it is, though, I’m glad to see that I’m one of the very lowest scorers so far (Evangelcial Outpost is keeping a tally)..
I got 10. Some of those stuff are scary. Libertarians are creepy.
Oh, man. I feel so impure. I scored an 18. Granted, I was being generous with some of the early questions, interpreting them as liberally as possible, before I figured out exactly what breed of hardcore I was alone in the basement with…
I dunno, they did manage to appeal to my hippie peacenik side with some of those military budget questions… I also scored 18. I just hope I don’t have to look at another picture of Ayn Rand ever again; that woman takes creepy to a whole ‘nother level.
I ended up with a, gasp, 19. I suspect that it was largely because of my cut-the-military-budget questions. In fact…
I changed some of the military questions and ended up with a 13. Some of the questions, though, I think I pretty tricky. For instance, “Does the U.S. interfere too often in other countries?” How the words “interfere” and “often” are defined change my answer entirely.
Privatized judiciary? Fuckin’-A…
Wow Amp. A 6. And me, the leftist Swede scored 18. I feel so ashamed.
I scored an 18 as well….wooo!
We do have a privatized judiciary in Oregon for most cases – if you sue for under $50,000, the case goes to mandatory arbitration, with relaxed rules of evidence.
The best thing about the arbitration system is that medical records self-authenticate – no having to bring in doctors (at big $$$) to testify in $5000-10000 personal injury suits.
me: 160 of 160. Micha is just more articulate about it.
10. I interpreted ” ‘vigilante justice,’ even against government leaders” to include the War of Independence, which is occasionally morally permissible. In general I had trouble with the “moral” questions: is bombing civilians morally equivalent to murder? I don’t really think so, I think it’s a whole different moral problem on a whole different scale.
I got 19 – I am so ashamed :((
I don’t understand how so much fascist ideology
could have crept into my though processes and I
am going to do a thorough act of introspection.
I should take it again and check the weighting of
the questions – to the best of my knowledge the
only things I agree with the libertarians on
are free speech and drug laws.
I got 17, and see nothing to be ashamed about.
Libertarians are not homogeneous. Even when I was an actual member of the libertarian party I would never have scored higher than 20, maybe 30, on a test like this. A lot of people vote libertarian becuase they’re sick of the fact that both major parties continue to perpetrate injustices like the drug war and the patriot act, but that doesn’t mean they buy into this extremist nonsense. You can be a libertarian without thinking the forgodsake *judiciary* should be privatized.
But this test isn’t designed to tell you how much of a libertarian you are, it’s designed (whether intentionally or not) to tell you what a complete freaking loony the person who wrote it is.
I was shocked to find that I got a 29 – I am a libertarian leftist.
i ended up at 31, and i consider myself a social democrat. whaddaya know…
I scored a 15. This doesn’t particularly bother me as I share common ground with libertarians on drug and free speech issues, but come on—privatizing roads, police and the judiciary? Ending public education? It just shows that these people really are from some other planet.
wow… I got 28, I feel so dirty.
Mind you, I think part of my score may result from a lack of understanding of some questions (getting lost in jargon).
I don’t understand how some of the things they talk about privatizing CAN be privatized. Did they really ask if the courts should be privatized? Isn’t that just like going back to lynch mobs?
Man, I’m glad I live in Canada :-) And I will continue getting the majority of my news information from Rick Mercer, This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Air Farce.
I would have scored a bit higher if there had been more questions designed to appeal to left-wing libertarian impulse. Not a word was asked about reproductive rights, for instance, nor much about gay rights.
Me too, only way more than you. For one thing, I don’t believe (as some lefties seem to) in collectivism for its own sake (as opposed to a pragmatic requirment for any attempt for social change). Or to put it another way, I dont think individualism (MY definition, not that of the ruling asses) is, for want of a better word, a politically incorrect term……
I scored a 92, and I am a card carrying member of the Libertarian Party. Vote Gary Nolan!
I am in favor of getting government out of pretty much everything, except: military, justice system, and government lands. Not that the gov’t does a good job, I’m just not convinced privitizing stuff will make it better in these areas.
I find it curious that I think the gov’ment should hang on to “public lands”–I’ll have to contemplate this for a while.
Here’s what I don’t get about Libertarianism. (perhaps someone could enlighten me) I can understand thinking that the government generally makes a mess of things and shouldn’t be entrusted with much. But would the private sector do any better? I think I trust the government more. The private sector seems, at times, greedy, dehumanizing, shifty…
I would say the primary appeal about Libertarianism is the element of choice. If your government is bassackwards, you’ve got to muster and organize thousands of people for years to ever get anything done, and even then you can’t be sure of success.
If a business is bassackwards, you can look for a competitor, and change happens MUCH quicker. (Think about how much organic stuff you can buy in super grocery stores…businesses respond to consumer demands!)
It is hard, nowadays, to find businesses that aren’t tainted by government influences (either by making it more profitable to work for grants, or to lobby for handouts), but small businesses are the best place to look. Reputation, quality, and good customer service are all elements a successful small business needs to survive.
Government, on the other hand, doesn’t need any of that. They just need to pass a law saying you need such and such a form, and you will spend as much time as needed to get these forms. No customer service or added value required. Just brute force and the penalty of more extortion.
Can you tell it is tax time?
The less government (force) is involved in anything, the better off we will be. (Less force, more peace and prosperity!)
Wow, Terry, you’ve almost got Libertarianism making sense to me… I believe in the wholesome integrity of small businesses (a romanticized notion, no doubt), but oh! fie! the big businesses, the WalMarts and Enrons of the world. And those low-wage WalMart Style Companies create a self-perpetuating cycle: Their underpaid employees have little choice but to buy cheap WalMart crap–it’s a modern day serfdom.
Yeah, Hayek got it backwards.
I wouldn’t confuse a Walmart job with a good job. It’s a crap job, with crappy pay. If people are trying to get to the middle income bracket working crap jobs, they are going about it all wrong.
Crap jobs are good to have around, because you can always get one, or two, and work your way up from there. If all jobs were excellent, with excellent pay, I would expect that potential worker’s resume also be excellent–and that just doesn’t happen all the time. Yay for crap jobs!
So says this ex-stockboy, who worked for a while at minimum wage (with another job very close to the same wage).
I got a 31… and I knew I was a libertarian. I really gotta wonder though.. aren there really people who answer YES to everything???
I got a 31… and I knew I was a libertarian. I really gotta wonder though.. aren there really people who answer YES to everything???
How did you guys score such low scores? I scored a 134. The only questions that the test maker had wrong for my beliefs are those immigration questions and a few of the state/military questions.
If you want a real low score, answer the questions as a dicator would. I tried it and scored 2. However, when I honestly took the test I got 59.
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56. I expected lower, but hey, I answered honestly.
64, medium-core libertarian. Sounds about right.
Scored 25. Just an ol’ softy, I guess.
Ooh, neat threadsurrection.
I score a 15, and I’m actually kind of creeped out that people actually can answer “yes” to a lot of things in sections 2 and 3. I mean, there are things I could maybe come up with a “yes BUT”, but those aren’t probably what Libertarians have in mind.
I got a 16. Soft core apparently. I have very specific areas of agreement with libertarians: less money for the Pentagaon and other war related agencies, more liberal drug and immigration laws, fewer regulations about what consenting adults do with each other. Had to say no to the “all consenting sexual activity” though, remembering a case of consentual cannibalism. Some acts, even if they could be considered “consensual sexual activity” still need to be illegal.
ETA: I said “yes” to two of the 3 point questions: 75% cut in military budget and bombing civilians=murder. Wimped out of the abolish the military altogether question, though, partly because it seemed to be abolishing the police as well. I guess I’m not a pure pacifist either.
@ Dianne
I would think sexual cannibalism crosses the line from consensual sexual activity into consensual violence/damage… sexual or not, consensual violence is a thornier issue than sexuality.
The test is by Bryan Caplan, he of the infamous essays arguing that women weren’t really oppressed in the 19th century because, hey, what’s the right to vote and participate in civil society when you can stomp your little foot and get hubby to do whatever you want?
I got a 16. I’m not sure whether that’s… the score I really should have gotten?… or not, and I’m not sure whether it’s higher or lower than my actual beliefs. I had trouble answering “yes” or “no” to a number of the questions.
ETA: Dianne, I answered yes to the same 3-pointers as you did.
Someone upthread mentioned answering yes to the vigilante question… I stared at that one for a while, too. I ended up answering no because it felt like a militia question, but I could have answered yes when thinking about resistance movements. I don’t know. I would have preferred something like “morally problematic, but sometimes needs doing anyway,” though maybe that’s the same thing as permissable.
It was not a well made test for reasons noted by several commenters above. There are just too many questions without a rock solid answer for too many people in it.
I came up at 22.
I would think sexual cannibalism crosses the line from consensual sexual activity into consensual violence/damage… sexual or not, consensual violence is a thornier issue than sexuality.
I would argue for the legality of some forms of consensual violence and/or damage, whether sexual or not. For example, I see no reason to interrupt two people putting on a demonstration fight at an SCA fest, as long as they are following safety precautions and neither has indicated that s/he wants out. And body modification, ie piercing and tattoos is arguably damage but illegalizing tattoos on consenting adults seems excessive…not sure what rule I’m proposing though.
@Dianna – all I’m saying is that when it comes to consensual violence, you have to draw a line somewhere.
You *don’t* need to draw the line somewhere when it comes to consensual adult sex, except where it becomes a violent or otherwise physically destructive act.
We’re talking about the Libertarian mindset of “no rules allowed”. I think it’s fair to say “no rules allowed” when it comes to sexuality, but not when it comes to damaging another person’s body.
That said, the question was also about prostitution and pornography, and “doing nasty things for money consensually” describes some pretty disgusting Max Hardcore stuff too, and I’m sure a lot of people who agree with the question on principle start having second thoughts when they think about that.
SiF: I agree in general. I do wonder whether there might be issues that need to be looked into concerning what is “consensual”. For example, obtaining consent coercively (ie have sex with me or I’ll divorce you/throw you out in the middle of the night/stop supporting you) is clearly immoral but, I think, not actually illegal, especially between married couples. I have doubts about how often prostitutes really freely consent to sex either, ie did they freely decide to become prostitutes or was some trauma or coersion involved?
OTOH, the idea of telling someone that they didn’t “really” consent when they did makes me extremely nervous so I may be a practical libertarian in this area: I don’t like the situation but can’t think of a law that won’t just make things worse.
I scored a 75. I consider myself a moderate libertarian with a slight spin to the left. I agreed with practically all the 1-pointers and about 60% of the 3-pointers.