Every once in a while I like to check my political litmus — stuff like whether I’m still a libertarian, or how much of a libertarian I am, or how I score in tests purporting to tell me that. So once again, I took Bryan Caplan’s Libertarian Purity Test (which I found via Incite).
My all time high on this test was a score of 105 on March 11, 2004. I don’t know wy I was so high that day, but this time I only scored 100 — out of a possible perfect score of 160.
91-130 points: You have entered the heady realm of hard-core libertarianism. Now doesn’t that make you feel worse that you didn’t get a perfect score?
Not really. I find myself more and more inclined to resist such external judgments.
I suspect I’d find the type of person who’d score 160 to be a bit on the impractical side. The kind who like to argue late into the night over things like whether handguns should be sold to children in elementary school vending machines, who’d open the borders to the entire world, and who’d eliminate national self defense. While I have no objection per se to libertarian purity, and I think it’s good that there are such people, that kind of libertarianism would be a national suicide pact if implemented.
Most of my friends — whether liberal, moderate or conservative — would probably fall into the 50 through 80 range.
Which means I’m still a bit of a kook from the standpoint of most of my friends, as well as a less-than-pure sellout from the standpoint of libertarian purists.
Can’t please ’em, can’t join ’em.
Comments
13 responses to “the path to impurity?”
I got a 61, but am “that crazy libertarian guy” to My friends and coworkers. I guess they are all in single digits or something.
This test is misnamed: it should be “Anarcho-Capitalist Purity Test”. I scored 92 and I am a very strong minarchist libertarian; that is, I do think there are some functions, though rather limited, that are valid for government and would almost certainly not be properly discharged in an anarchistic situation. IMO, anarcho-capitalist rhetoric and control, usually, of the LP since ~1983, are the main reasons libertarianism has failed to gain many more adherents.
49. Yipee!
Whatever happened to the nut: Pieter Friedrich?
I got a 48 on the test!
134
“131-159 points: You are nearly a perfect libertarian, with a tiny number of blind spots. Think about them, then take the test over again. On the other hand, if you scored this high, you probably have a good libertarian objection to my suggested libertarian answer.”
40, this time. It was probably about there last time, too.
“31-50 points: Your libertarian credentials are obvious. Doubtlessly you will become more extreme as time goes on.”
I’m with Dennis. 42 – and actually, I’ve become less extreme.
Fascinating results. I’m more of a kook than I thought, and I think I should revise my speculations about how my friends might test out.
And Steven, what’s happened to you? You seem to be more conservative, yet your score is more than thirty points higher than the last time I linked to this test.
Spectrum drift?
I’m an anarcho-fascist.
Actually, my (or Dawn’s and Wanda’s) ideal is anarchy (zero government, everything privately owned including missile silos), but I also know that that’s impossible in anything like the foreseeable future, at least on this planet. In practice, I’m closer to Rand’s limited government capitalism than to Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalism, and I’ll even settle for Friedman in the meantime over what we have now, which is Keynes turning into Marx or worse.
Where I deviated from the Rothbard position on that quiz was where his anarchism becomes pacifism. I answered “no” to every question involving disarming the military or cutting military spending. I’m for increasing military spending. In fact, I would favor a Constitutional amendment mandating that our armed forces be kept at all times superior to all enemies or potentisl enemies, as well as explicitly establishing an Air Force.
One quibble with that quiz: In the section for Rand, it listed killing civilians in war as morally wrong, yet Rand herself is explicitly on record as stating that killing enemy civilians in war is morally right whenever necessary to win the war and save the lives of our own soldiers. That is the position of Peikoff and the Ayn Rand Institute, and I agree with it.
I think this is one of those areas where the extremes on a spectrum converge, as both Wanda on the Far Left and Dawn on the Far Right both long for anarchy. The difference is that Wanda’s idea anarchy would be scientific, atheistic, and chaotic, while Dawn’s ideal anarchy would be mythic, polytheistic, and hierarchical, a high-tech feudalism with a symbolic monarchy.
“God (and the Goddess: the Holy Quaternity) hath shapen lives three:
Boor and knight and priest they be.”
65. Apparently, I’m a libertarian with a cooked white and a yolk that’s solid but not dry:
“You are a medium-core libertarian, probably self-consciously so. Your friends probably encourage you to quit talking about your views so much.”
This test hasn’t met my friends.
61. How shameful; my readers are all confessing scores higher than mine.