Inside the libertarian mind

[Pointedstick]

http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB1 ... 31904.html

The study collated the results of 16 personality surveys and experiments completed by nearly 12,000 self-identified libertarians who visited YourMorals.org. The researchers compared the libertarians to tens of thousands of self-identified liberals and conservatives. It was hardly surprising that the team found that libertarians strongly value liberty, especially the “negative liberty”? of freedom from interference by others. Given the philosophy of their heroes, from John Locke and John Stuart Mill to Ayn Rand and Ron Paul, it also comes as no surprise that libertarians are also individualistic, stressing the right and the need for people to stand on their own two feet, rather than the duty of others, or government, to care for people.

Perhaps more intriguingly, when libertarians reacted to moral dilemmas and in other tests, they displayed less emotion, less empathy and less disgust than either conservatives or liberals. They appeared to use “cold”? calculation to reach utilitarian conclusions about whether (for instance) to save lives by sacrificing fewer lives. They reached correct, rather than intuitive, answers to math and logic problems, and they enjoyed “effortful and thoughtful cognitive tasks”? more than others do.

The researchers found that libertarians had the most “masculine”? psychological profile, while liberals had the most feminine, and these results held up even when they examined each gender separately, which “may explain why libertarianism appeals to men more than women.”?

[dualstow]

Hah, I read that article the other day and thought of you guys and this forum.

They don't see why, in order to get a small-government president, they have to vote for somebody who is keen on military spending and religion; or to get a tolerant and compassionate society they have to vote for a large and intrusive state.

I like libertarians even though I don't count myself among them. I think it's healthy to think about what a good thing we have going here in the West -- Clint Eastwood can give a speech to an empty chair without getting sent to a gulag -- and at the same time see how things could be better. I sincerely wish that there could be a third political party that was as powerful as the main two and if I could choose, I'd choose libertarians.

[MachineGhost]

The researchers found that libertarians had the most “masculine”? psychological profile, while liberals had the most feminine, and these results held up even when they examined each gender separately, which “may explain why libertarianism appeals to men more than women.”?

It seems I took that YourMorals.org test five years ago.  Here are my scores (in green):

[align=center][img]http://www.yourmorals.org/surveyresults ... f_part2_20&[/img][/align]

[MachineGhost]

I like libertarians even though I don't count myself among them. I think it's healthy to think about what a good thing we have going here in the West -- Clint Eastwood can give a speech to an empty chair without getting sent to a gulag -- and at the same time see how things could be better. I sincerely wish that there could be a third political party that was as powerful as the main two and if I could choose, I'd choose libertarians.

You may have your wish in 2016.  Something is going to happen to make a third-party viable ala Perot according to the long-running economic cycle.  The implication seems to be that whoever is elected Presidential this year is going to do such a horrible job, that voters will be truly fed up and disgusted.  The cynic in me says it is unlikely to be Libertarians, but I fail to deduce what else the outlier could be that wouldn't involve going from one party to another.

[Pointedstick]

I like libertarians even though I don't count myself among them. I think it's healthy to think about what a good thing we have going here in the West -- Clint Eastwood can give a speech to an empty chair without getting sent to a gulag -- and at the same time see how things could be better. I sincerely wish that there could be a third political party that was as powerful as the main two and if I could choose, I'd choose libertarians.

You may have your wish in 2016.  Something is going to happen to make a third-party viable ala Perot according to the long-running economic cycle.  The implication seems to be that whoever is elected Presidential this year is going to do such a horrible job, that voters will be truly fed up and disgusted.  The cynic in me says it is unlikely to be Libertarians, but I fail to deduce what else the outlier could be that wouldn't involve going from one party to another.

You really think so? I have to say I doubt it. What signals are you seeing that seem to indicate of a third-party gaining prominence?

[MachineGhost]

I didn't say that the third-party was necessarily going to win an election, just that it is due its regular cyclical appearance and will exert an influence.  Some factor will first have to so unsettle the body politic that the third-party becomes feasible.  All we can do is speculate.  But I am wary that we must be on guard for Hitler-type outcomes if we go into a worldwide synchronized recession with sovereign debt defaults left and right.  History repeats and rhymes because of the same cycle influences over and over (and also that people never seem to learn).

If you look at Perot, he actually ran on fear-mongering about the Federal debt and may have even won if he hadn't pulled that dumb dropout stunt and sounded batshit crazy afterwards.  Now the debt situation is unimaginably many times worse.

[notsheigetz]

If you look at Perot, he actually ran on fear-mongering about the Federal debt and may have even won if he hadn't pulled that dumb dropout stunt and sounded batshit crazy afterwards.  Now the debt situation is unimaginably many times worse.

I also believe he might very well have won that election if he hadn't dropped out. I remember even a few mainstream pundits predicting that he would. People were really fed up with demopublicrats at the time and were looking for an alternative. I haven't seen anything like it since and I wonder where all those people went.

[Ad Orientem]

[Pointedstick]

Ad Orientem, that's hilarious! It's so true!