Not a LIbertarian, Really.

[altivo]

Your Libertarian Purity Score

Your score is...

19

What Your Score Means

16-30 points: You are a soft-core libertarian. With effort, you may harden and become pure.

The actual quiz is found here and seems pretty complete and thorough to me. From the ease with which I answered "no" to so many objectivist and anarchist notions, though, I doubt very much that I'm likely to "become pure" any time soon. ;p

(Acquired from zenicurean)

Comments

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Since you're an American (?), I just have to ask...

What's with the Objectivists, anyway?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You got me. I think they are incomprehensible and quite bizarre.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Every time I see an Objectivist website, I think of them marching in these big rows, with brown shirts and armbands on, chanting "We're all individuals! We're all individuals! Praise Rand!" What gives?

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

I was surprised how many no's you could have and still score as a soft-core libertarian. I thought sure I'd rate as not libertarian at all.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

Yeah.. I must've answered no to 95% of the questions past the first section, and I still scored a 20.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The results are worded intentionally to try to convince anyone taking the test that they are a Libertarian, of course. To me a score of 20 out of a possible 160 points makes us 12.5% Libertarian. That's a pretty low percentage.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

Well, I scored 21. Blackjack! What do I win?
I'm not sure why a handful of my American furry friends call themselves Libertarian. The nearest I have come to understanding it is that it must be a reaction to the deeply entrenched two-party system. Neither party seems particularly good, both are "too religious" (quoting what one friend said), so the reactionary solution is to just have less government - as little as possible, thus Libertarianism. I don't know any Canadian Libertarians at all, and that is what makes me suspect that belief in Libertarianism is nothing more than discontent with the American system as a whole.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

In listening to self-styled Libertarians rant I have concluded that their reasons for declaring themselves as Libertarian vary so much that each is nearly unique.

Virtually all seem to have a very near-sighted notion of the purpose of government and the benefits pertaining thereto. When you pin them down, they usually have one or two pet peeves that they blame on government, and that color their entire view so completely that they see elimination of virtually all of the government structure as the best solution. These peeves, as stated to me, have ranged from the utterly silly (e.g. they make me vaccinate my dog for rabies; or they require me to have liability insurance for my car) through the short-sighted (e.g. they make me pay taxes and I don't get anything back for it; they make me pay taxes and give the money away to lazy people who don't work for a living) to the Rand objectivist (e.g. they try to create a level playing field that gives an unfair advantage to people who don't deserve it over those who worked hard to get their material goods.) Oh, and of course the paranoid gun-owner who is convinced that the entire purpose of the government is to take away his firearms. All these nut cases are prone to become Libertarians (which as far as I can see is a euphemism for what we used to call 'anarchists'.)

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

That's possible, but I have one friend who is not in any conceivable way a nut case, but is Libertarian. He has an LJ but doesn't use it so I won't mention who. He is a gay furry living in Texas of all places, and thus feels understandably repressed. No way would he vote Republican, but voting Democrat in Texas would be futile, so why not Libertarian. In his shoes, I think I could see the notion of having less meddling of government in peoples' lives would be an attractive one.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Voting Libertarian in Texas is even more futile than voting Democrat would be. Frankly, and being gay myself, I think a gay Libertarian is about as self-defeating as they come. Though Libertarians talk a good line about equal rights and non-discrimination, they also oppose any form of government intervention that would insure those equal rights.

It is because of our existing government that the gay community now has in many cases attained legal recognition of its existence and that its members have human rights just like anyone else, including the right to housing, employment, insurance, and privacy. Take away the gains achieved through legislation and court enforcement in the past three decades, and you have no gains at all (in fact, probably a net loss in light of present majority attitudes about gays that were expressed in a number of states at the last election.)

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

The problem with Ameritarianism and gay rights is that it's usually too utopian and radical an ideology to actually recognize how complex contemporary societal discrimination can get. Like communism, radical libertarianism often postulates that once everyone shares their magical moral code all social ills will remove themselves and we can all live happily ever after in the bosom of Social Darwinistic Anarcho-capitalism, minus the occasional commune and social experiment and social-democratic clique or corporate entity or whatever. While this idea is nifty, it ain't gonna happen any more than the proletariat's glorious revolution is. It's simply one of those problems that is intended to miraculously settle itself once everyone in America becomes magically enlightened to the benefits of their political ideology.

Maybe they intend to distribute pamphlets or something. I don't know.

The rest of the libertarians don't care. They just want to keep their rifles.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I have a very pragmatic approach to human rights issues. A promise that discrimination will go away once we conquer the tyranny of taxes and bloated government is an empty one. The American Libertarian state would leave all matters of social discrimination and persecution entirely in the hands of the populace, and refuse to intervene. It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain what the result would be.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

As a political liberal, and a European, I feel obliged to comment on this.

The term Libertarianism, as Americans understand it, is slowly creeping into European usage right now. The more political Liberalism is identified with "New" Liberalism, the more American political terminology takes over. Ergo, we've seen something like a melding of vocabulary recently and the line between Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism is a tad vague, if it indeed exists. I'm not entirely sure what of make of it. I prefer styling myself a Liberal, exactly for the reason that its connotations are more respectable and historically more accurate than those of "Libertarianism" which fundamentally brings up these images of gun-toting militiamen trading conspiracy stories and smoking weed in a bunker somewhere.

That said, Libertarians have been attempting to claim the ideological and political heritage of Classical Liberalism for a while now, and with some success, I might add.

So I could perfectly well see anybody right-of-centre economically but left-of-centre socially - I understand these are broad categories and maybe not entirely descriptive or comprehensive - identifying with the American Libertarians, especially since you've been seeing such a shift in the Republican Party toward more government spending and more social authoritarianism since the late seventies. Why anyone would pragmatically speaking want to identify with a marginal group which can afford to be radical mostly because it'll never get into power is sort of beyond me, but since I've kinda done that with the Liberal Party back here, I can't be too judgemental about it.

Libertarianism comes in shades, just like any other political philosophy, and I'm a bit frustrated over the fact that the strength of American liberal traditions is making the Libertarian Party home to all sorts of above-mentioned gun-toting militiamen. However, whether or not the overall Libertarian - or Liberal, if you prefer, as I prefer, a more moderate terminology - idea of less government intervention in economic and social matters is a "reactionary" platform is somewhat debatable. I wouldn't call the PATRIOT act or the Bush administration's relative theocracy-building exceptionally progressive policies, unless that happens to be one's politics. And, in Europe... in some countries, like mine, aggregate income tax rates for the middle class are hovering near fifty, our capital taxation is strangling the economy, and so forth. Which fact has, of course, already prompted even our socialist parties into embracing dramatically freer trade and tax policies.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes. I have been trying to explain to a non-US friend that the word "Libertarian" doesn't mean exactly the same thing here in the states as it does in some European or African nations.

US Libertarians combine social liberalism with economic conservatism and then embrace strong pro-gun/anti-control policies. To me this is the ultimate in oxymoronism. It takes the farthest extremes of the left and right and tries to bend them back to join them in a full circle, and if actually given power would tear itself apart almost instantly.

Despite the bitching about taxes you hear from these people, no one in the US is taxed at the rates that are paid in many European countries, nor are they likely to be. I would certainly like to see changes in the US tax structure, but I do not feel burdened by what I pay even though I object to the manner in which some of it is used. I take issue with certain traditional tax methods that have been in place since colonial times. This does not make me a Libertarian.

I am a social liberal, but I do not believe that discrimination and oppression of minorities will magically go away if we just eliminate most of the government. On the contrary, it will get much, much worse.

I am willing to tolerate freedom for firearm ownership, but only by people who prove themselves responsible enough to keep and use their firearms. This is not popular with the gun lobbyists, many of whom when you come right down to it don't even think you should have to pass a driver's license test in order to be allowed to operate a ton of lethal steel and glass. They also tend to object to traffic laws and feel that speed limits on roadways are a violation of their personal rights. I consider these people to be hopelessly narrow minded and self-centered, which makes them utterly unfit to run a government.