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Showing posts from March 7, 2004
I took the test The Libertarian Purity test, that is. Scored a 73, the same as National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru , and slightly higher than not only the estimable Charles Murray, but also my friends John Hood and Steve Hayward , who were contributing editors to Reason when I worked there. (John's still on the masthead ... for now.) I wouldn't abolish the public schools ... or Social Security or Medicare (though I would let anybody who wanted to opt out of the entitlements do so as long as they surrendered any future claims on the programs). Guess I'm a right-wing statist. That's only one reason quizzes like this are worthless. They allow for no sense of nuance, and in this particular case, they're badly skewed. You get 5 points for advocating the abolition of all taxes, but only 1 for saying taxes in general are too high. Nuts. The quiz also reminds me of an essay written for Reason about 30 years ago by the incomparable Edith Efron called "Secular Fundam