The results of my answers was:
According to your answers, the political group that agrees with you most is…
LIBERTARIAN
Libertarians support maximum liberty in both personal and economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence. Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties.
Take the short quiz to see what you are:
The World’s Smallest Political Quiz
Everyone except complete sociopaths lives a libertarian life…until collectivism shows up and invites them to gather into factions to either boss others or rob them by heading to the polls to vote.
You go to the grocery store. They want $5 for a dozen eggs but you want to pay $1.99.
Do you:
A. Scream for like-minded people to gather, elect a leader who designates some knuckle-dragging goons to follow his orders and they walk over, grab the store manager and threaten to either rob him of his wallet or put him in a cage if he doesn’t lower the price to $1.99
B. Leave the store and look for someone willing to sell eggs for $1.99.
(I’m leaving out C. loot the store directly, because that’s cutting to the chase…what the goal of politics is from the get-go.)
In the marketplace we all maintain mutually-voluntary relationships. We don’t threaten each other and Walgreens doesn’t start shooting at CVS over who will sell the next bottle of wine, case of beer or bottle of amoxicillin.
Only when we turn to politics, and our MONOPOLY system of fiat-law-making, vicious enforcement and absurd, English-language-illiterate Judges (who can’t read the plain text of the supposed Law of the Land), do people suddenly believe it’s perfectly okay to threaten, assault, cage or even murder those who have DONE THEM NO HARM!
Rules! We have to have RULES!
(Has anyone gone down to a library lately to see how many linear feet of shelves are now occupied by the compendium of Federal fiat law, also known as the Federal Register? It’s probably nearing half a football field in length or more, all printed in small font.)
Libertarians are the only people who explicitly recognize that they do not have an ownership prerogative in their neighbors. They know they have no moral right to threaten their neighbors over seat belt use or what intoxicants they choose to ingest, or what vices in which they choose to indulge or what they’re allowed to pay a person willing to do work for them.
Conflicts between people usually do NOT require One Size Fits None law…most of the time, either contracts (like property covenants) or binding arbitration can non-violently resolve disagreements.
[Political] Government is for slaves. Free men govern themselves.
I need others telling me what to do like a dog needs intestinal parasites.
Bullshit., libertarians run for office for one reason. To undermine republicans .Voting for these sorry bastards is like voting for liberal democrats. It is always like this with third parties ass clowns.
Question: What is the difference between a Libertarian and an Anarchist?
Answer: 6 Months.
bb, “Big L” Libertarians (as in the oxymoronic Libertarian Party) are faux libertarians.
Libertarianism (the philosophy), properly understood, is incompatible with political activity.
In a sense, I agree with you. The LP is the “minarchist” part of the Republican Party, and as such they are the pets kept around to fool everyone into thinking that the republicans are the party of “smaller government.”
Only morons can still believe that, but then again, we’re talking about Boobus Americanus.
@NickelthroweR
I’m sure you’ve seen this one:
1. A conservative is a liberal who was mugged.
2. A libertarian is a conservative who was mugged by the (political) government.
From Wikipedia –
In moral and political philosophy, the social contract or political contract is a theory or model, originating during the Age of Enlightenment, that typically addresses the questions of the origin of society and the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual.[1] Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler or magistrate (or to the decision of a majority), in exchange for protection of their remaining rights. The question of the relation between natural and legal rights, therefore, is often an aspect of social contract theory. The Social Contract (Du contrat social ou Principes du droit politique) is also the short title of a 1762 book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau on this topic.
Although the antecedents of social contract theory are found in antiquity, in Greek and Stoic philosophy and Roman and Canon Law, as well as in the Biblical idea of the covenant, the heyday of the social contract was the mid-17th to early 19th centuries, when it emerged as the leading doctrine of political legitimacy. The starting point for most social contract theories is a heuristic examination of the human condition absent from any political order that Thomas Hobbes termed the “state of nature”.[2] In this condition, individuals’ actions are bound only by their personal power and conscience. From this shared starting point, social contract theorists seek to demonstrate, in different ways, why a rational individual would voluntarily consent to give up his or her natural freedom to obtain the benefits of political order.
Hugo Grotius (1625), Thomas Hobbes (1651), Samuel Pufendorf (1673), John Locke (1689), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762), and Immanuel Kant (1797) are among the most prominent of 17th- and 18th-century theorists of social contract and natural rights. Each solved the problem of political authority in a different way. Grotius posited that individual human beings had natural rights; Hobbes asserted that humans consent to abdicate their rights in favor of the absolute authority of government (whether monarchial or parliamentary); Pufendorf disputed Hobbes’s equation of a state of nature with war.[3]
Locke believed that natural rights were inalienable, and that the rule of God therefore superseded government authority; and Rousseau believed that democracy (self-rule) was the best way of ensuring the general welfare while maintaining individual freedom under the rule of law. The Lockean concept of the social contract was invoked in the United States Declaration of Independence.
Why do these assholes always throw free trade in, like it’s a virtue. When you destroy the most valuble asset most people are born with, their labor, (and ZIRP has pretty much destroyed the value of their capital) and still expect them to pay their share of our first world society, welcome to the womb of the welfare state. Think walmart. With food stamps they can pay table scraps. Niggaz didn’t go all Ferguson when they had to get up in the morning and head in to maytag, or ford, or carrier.
It’s semantic mind fuck, people consider ‘free’ as a credit and not debit, so they naturally approve of anything labeled as free regardless of the deeper implications. Free lunch has a hook, free love can get you a lifetime of child support, free trade exposes you to competition with foreign exchange advantages elsewhere.
One day government sponsored death panels will be touted as offering freedom of life choice.
I side with Libertarians. But free trade? NAFTA was a bad idea. We can’t compete with countries that have such low wages.
The draft? When everyone has a stake in the game i think there would be less war’s.
I think libertarians are what Republicans should really be like. Ron Paul is my version of what i wish they were like.
The whole argument about people’s sex life. The whole gay thing. I don’t care what you do alone in your bedroom. But the push for everyone else to accept it. And for the church to have gay marriage ceremonies? I’m tired of hearing about this. They even teach this stuff in my kids school. Civil ceremonies by a judge would be ok with me.
Now how can the rest of the country be educated to be aware of this platform that is about more freedom. We need a serious contender for 2016 that can has some charisma and can get the message out. This is where RP failed. He just wasn’t dynamic enough.
It all boils down to chicken-shit.
Chicken-shits employ agents (the millions of badged and armed clowns surrounding us) to stick a gun in someone’s face to prevent that someone from doing something the Chicken-shit doesn’t like.
If I want to buy a cheap gun from someone in China, a Chicken-shit will get an agent to stop me, up to and even shooting me to stop me from simply exchanging what I’ve produced or traded for with someone across an imaginary line for something he has voluntarily chosen to offer me in exchange.
Who among us would be so in favor of protectionism that he will show up on a buyer’s doorstep and stick a gun in his face to halt the transaction? Oh, I don’t see too many takers, unless they can coordinate a street gang to back up their play, huh?
I don’t have all the answers. I do know that there ought to be DAMN FEW justifications for sticking a gun in my face, and all of them BEGIN with me doing something directly (not passively) to harm another person WITH INTENT to do so. Open competition is NOT doing harm to the person(s) who didn’t earn my business.
Ours is a sick society.
Reason #1 for why is that people now think it’s FINE AND DANDY to use force against others for no other reason than they don’t LIKE what the others are doing with their time, money, property or bodies. THEIR OWN STUFF. Not trespassing. Just a bunch of spineless chicken-shits who are full of bluster when they’re IN NUMBERS and pay agents to do their dirty work and keep the Chicken-shits’ hands free of blood.
It’s all about force, folks. Do you think it’s fine to INITIATE it, or not?
If protectionism makes sense to stop goods from coming in from Mexico or China, isn’t the same true of goods coming in from New Hampshire or Texas?
If autarky is good for the US of A, shouldn’t it be good for Illinois? Cook County? Elk Grove Village?
Full employment, for sure!
Principles work at all scales or they aren’t principles. I don’t have all the answers, but I have yet to see someone satisfactorily explain away this analysis.
The same bad news for people coming from “global trade” is coming, in a tidal wave, in automated manufacturing. People’s jobs are being automated out of existence in ways cheap Chinese labor never imagined.
Who’s going to reanimate Ned Ludd and begin to smash the robots?
@yahsure,
Great idea on the draft. Let’s have you or your sons (or daughters, the military embeds its camp followers now) be first in the lottery while public non-support of the war effort builds up. After all, it only took about 54,000 dead Americans and about 3,000,000 dead Indochinese to stoke enough anti-war fervor to force a political end to the Vietnam adventure.
Which is frying pan and which is fire?
A professional military that is, for all practical purposes the private army of whoever occupies the Oval Orifice? or a conscripted military that wastes not just the lives of those who volunteer for it but also those who simply wanted to be left alone?
You want to make war a lot less attractive?
1. Every politician who votes in favor gets a front row seat in a forward base, complete with his own M4 and helmet.
2. Every civilian who is an executive or a manager for a military contractor has to do 18 months on the front line ducking IED’s and bullets. If he or she is too fat or old, their kids get to do it (which won’t help as much, given that I question how much corporate executives anywhere actually care about their sons and daughters.)
Don’t re-introduce slavery in the form of conscription. No state that has to force young men to sign up deserve to survive as a political entity. If the threat is actually real (which is quite rare) then men both young and old will muster without being forced. Every other situation is just old men playing war with others’ lives.
So DC, what are you telling us? That you are 25 and making $10. an hour writing this stuff? Why do you think the country is in the condition it’s in? Free trade. Massive 3rd world immigration and lack of assimilation. You didn’t touch a single point I made. How are the brothers in ferguson supposed to earn a living and raise a family if clinton gave their jobs to Mexico and china?
To equate NAFTA, a 2000 page piece of legislation, with “free” trade is kind of laughable. Real free trade can be documented in one page.
As for Americans not being able to compete with 3rd world labor, we once had the highest wages in the world, yet made practically everything the rest of the world wanted. We did so, among other things, because we were the most productive people. We were productive because we easily had the most capital. Capital requires savings.
How can you save and invest when the Fed has interest rates at zero for six years running? Why try to save when the currency you’re saving in is losing its value at an accelerating clip, and those debasing it have the nerve to tell us it’s good for us?
How can you be productive when companies forego capital investments for stock buy-backs to goose earnings per share?
How can America restore its economy when the fuckers in Washington and on Wall Street are strip mining every last penny, regulating and taxing us to death? How can we match other countries in job skills when the government schools fail so miserably to teach the basics?
Ah, the hell with it. I’m going to have a belt and start my weekend. Thinking about the crooks in D.C. is simply too depressing for words.
Hat tip steve hogan. Enjoy your weekend, sir.
This is a truly bullshit quiz.
International free trade– what a joke. Like when the West bankrupts a little country by flooding it with hot money, then withdrawing said money, then sending in the IMF wolves with their loans that can never possibly be repaid, then raping the nation of its national resources? Like that kind of free trade? Or the kind where Americans lose their jobs to often literally enslaved southeast Asians?
“Privatize social security” would mean providing on the very largest corporate subsidies ever known to humankind, so if you said “Agree” to ending handouts to business and yet said “Agree” to this question, you are a fucking hypocrite. Or don’t we believe that this is a corporatocracy run by Wall St? Do we suddenly think that money could be invested amongst a bunch of small money management firms selected by meritocracy? Really?
“Replace government welfare with private charity” is a particularly large load of bullshit and we all know it. A country that hates people on welfare and, as an example of our empathy, wants to “turn the entire Middle East into glass” is not going to pick up the fucking tab by giving to private charities. The question is: Do we want a system that lessens crime through welfare, or do we want Dickens? Or worse, a hundred years before Dickens when anyone wealthy traveled with armed servants? Let’s get real.
And the last one — cut taxes and government spending by 50% — this is misleading. Cutting taxes by 50% doesn’t even begin to cut government spending by 50% because we have such enormous deficits. Conversely, cutting spending in half doesn’t mean we could afford to cut taxes in half. But, practical errors aside, this is a bullshit question because it doesn’t say where money would be cut. Period. Bullshit question. I answered “disagree” merely because I figure I would disagree with the corporations and the entrenched military industrial complex when it comes to where the cuts should be made. If you’re all FOR the military-industrial complex, or if you’re a wild-eyed dreamer and don’t believe that this cartel has our country by the balls, then by all means go ahead and Agree out of libertarian principle. Nice sentiment, bad outcome. If you’re older than 20 you should be ashamed of your naivete.
This quiz is exactly why people who would identify as “left libertarian” wind up having to cast their lot in with the liberals, because nobody can seem to conceive of actual left libertarianism. It does a disservice to all libertarians because it pushes away would-be allies. Very destructive quiz in that sense.
D.C. Your answer wasnt worth much. Sounded like a lot of people who want others to do things for them.You do know that as a citizen you may be called upon to defend the country. Its part of the oath when one becomes a citizen. I guess American born people just take being a citizen for granted.
So you may actually have to get involved and not leave it to paid mercenaries.
I traveled the country for years and people all over the damn place told me of whole factorys closing up and going to China. It wasnt because the owners liked chinese food.
They wanted cheap non union labor and no environmental regs. Fuck these assholes and the trade agreements that allow it to happen. It needs to be made here and sold here. The tax’s can stay here also.That new factory in China, they can sell to the Chinese and improve their lives.
Libertarian.
Did well on every question except illegal drugs. Heh.
“The whole argument about people’s sex life. The whole gay thing. I don’t care what you do alone in your bedroom. But the push for everyone else to accept it. And for the church to have gay marriage ceremonies? I’m tired of hearing about this. They even teach this stuff in my kids school. Civil ceremonies by a judge would be ok with me.”
According to the article on the social contract above, a legitimate government provides security for the people, that’s all. When you start to excuse government overreach by accepting the false premise in your rebuttal, you have missed the point entirely. The government is no longer following the founders ideals in any manner or fashion, it has been co-opted by apparatchik lackeys of the plutocrats
This meddling in personal affairs is unnecessary. It violates the principle of separation of church and state. The government has no business interfering in church matters. My old boss said he and his family did not attend a church because the bible says, “where there are two in my name…” and he considered his home worship as church. Therefore, it follows that the government can not rightfully force a family to accept ideas contrary to their faith and set of beliefs.
yahsure, I don’t recall you giving me an oath. I don’t recall signing any bullshit like you cite when I bought my house, or landed my first job, or when any of my kids were born.
Collectivists are everywhere. I see you standing on all points of the compass. You embrace the slavery others foist on you like it’s your idea.
I guess I don’t get the “worker bee” thing. My life is not owed to the collective simply because I was born in the USA and choose to reside here.
As Sallust said and I write in comments here week after week, Most men don’t desire liberty; most only wish for a just master.
I guess you are still looking for that just master.
“My life is not owed to the collective simply because I was born in the USA and choose to reside here.”
There is thinking like that; it says you must assimilate and think like us. I go with Old Sarge’s idea: I was new in Palmerola and Sarge asked if I was going to the BBQ. I said, I haven’t contributed to it so I don’ think I can go. He snapped at me, You here, ain’t you?
There’s no conditions, if your here your queer and people gots to deal with it regardless of their druthers.
Did well on every question except illegal drugs. Heh. -SSS
See, Super Secret Squirrel, this is what goobermint does…all those drug tests you never got to experience getting stoned. =)
But now you will say you tried it and did not inhale. BWAH.
You was robbed of yer freedom by a entity SSS [Nuts on the slope], with laws written by, who the fuck needs to be kicked in the fuck, to stop you from experiencing what mother earth giveth thou.
Yet, never has those elected taken drug tests..that I know of.
Hmmm
DC, no disrespect, but this is how I know you’re a kid. You don’t get the whole worker bee thing? Then you’re not the guy signing the front of the checks on friday. Pass-fail, every payday. It’ll make a different kind of man out of you. Wiser, more humble and angry at different things. Worker bee thing is how men get the stability and confidence to shoulder the plow and raise a family. And care about a stable society.
This is a pretty limited test… a better test is one that looks at left vs. right and authoritarian vs. libertarian and places you on the two axes. The test at politicalcompass.org is a pretty good one. It also helps make sense of the fact that two people can both be “left” or “right” and not agree on anything or one “left” and the other “right” and agree on a lot — the missing piece is the authoritarian vs. libertarian axis.