Daily Archives: June 22, 2017

There has been debate this week about how many libertarians there are. The answer is: it depends on how you measure it and how you define libertarian. The overwhelming body of literature, however, using a variety of different methods and different definitions, suggests that libertarians comprise about 10-20% of the population, but may range from 7-22%.

Furthermore, if one imposes the same level of ideological consistency on liberals, conservatives, and communitarians/populists that many do on libertarians, these groups too comprise similar shares of the population.

In this post I provide a brief overview of different methods academics have used to identify libertarians and what they found. Most methods start from the premise that libertarians are economically conservative and socially liberal. Despite this, different studies find fairly different results. What accounts for the difference?

1) First, people use different definitions of libertarians

2) Second, they use different questions in their analysis to identify libertarians

3) Third, they use very different statistical methods.

Lets start with a few questions: How do you define a libertarian? Is there one concrete libertarian position on every policy issue?

What is the libertarian position on abortion? Is there one? What is the libertarian position on Social Security? Must a libertarian support abolishing the program, or might a libertarian support private accounts, or means testing, or sending it to the states instead? A researcher will find fewer libertarians in the electorate if they demand that libertarians support abolishing Social Security rather than means testing or privatizing it.

Further, why are libertarians expected to conform to an ideological litmus test but conservatives and liberals are not? For instance, what is the conservative position on Social Security? Is there one? When researchers use rigid ideological definitions of liberals and conservatives, they too make up similar shares of the population as libertarians. Thus, as political scientist Jason Weeden has noted, researchers have to make fairly arbitrary decisions about where the cut-off points should be for the libertarian, liberal, or conservative position. This pre-judgement strongly determines how many libertarians researchers will find.

Next, did researchers simply ask people if they identify as libertarian, or did they ask them public policy questions (a better method)? If the latter, how many issue questions did they ask? Then, what questions did they ask?

For instance, what questions are used to determine if someone is liberal on social issues? Did the researcher ask survey takers about legalizing marijuana or did the researcher ask about affirmative action for women in the workplace instead? Libertarians will answer these questions very differently and that will impact the number of libertarians researchers find.

While there is no perfect method, the fact that academics using a variety of different questions, definitions, and statistical techniques still find that the number is somewhere between 7-22% gives us some idea that the number of libertarians is considerably larger than 0.

Next, I give a brief overview of the scholarly research on the estimated share of libertarians, conservatives, liberals, and communitarians in the American electorate. I organize their findings by methods used starting with most empirically rigorous:

Ask people to answer a series of questions on a variety of policy topics and input their responses into a statistical algorithm

In theses studies, researchers ask survey respondents a variety of issue questions on economic and social/cultural issues. Then, they input peoples answers into a statistical clustering technique and allow an algorithm to find the number of libertarians. This is arguably the strongest method to identify libertarians.

Ask people to answer a series of questions on a variety of policy topics and plot their average responses on a 2-dimensional plot

In these studies, researchers 1) average responses to multiple questions on economics and then 2) average responses to multiple questions on social/cultural/identity/lifestyle issues. They then take the two averaged scores to plot respondents on a 2-dimensional graph (Economic Issues by Social Issues).

Ask people to answer a question about economic policy and a question about social policy

While not as rigorous as asking people multiple questions, this is another quick way to observe the diversity of ideological opinion in surveys.

Ask people if they identify as libertarian and know what the word means

The Pew Research Center found that 11% of Americans agree that the word libertarian describes me well and know libertarians emphasize individual freedom by limiting the role of government.

Ask people if they identify as socially liberal and fiscally conservative, an oft-used definition of libertarianism

A 2011 Reason-Rupe poll found that 8% of Americans said they were conservative on economic issues and also liberal on social issues. But the same method found 9% identified as liberal on both social and economic issues, 2% identified as liberal on economic issues and conservative on social issues, and 31% identified as conservative on both social and economic issues. They remaining respondents were somewhere in the middle. These results are consistent with polls from Rasmussen, and Gallup which finds a public preference for the word conservative over liberal. This means many people who endorse liberal policy are inclined to self-identify as moderate or conservative.

Conclusions

In sum, the overwhelming body of empirical evidence suggests that libertarians share of the electorate is likely somewhere between 10-20% and the conservative and liberal shares arent that much greater. Libertarians exist, quite a lot, but you have to know what youre looking for.

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How Many Libertarians Are There? The Answer Depends on the Method You Use - Cato Institute (blog)

who wants diabetics to die as punishment for their sins of sloth and gluttony, the Trump Administration makes clear that this will be Administration policy too.

It needs to be clearly understood that the American Taliban Christians in the ranks of Trump defenders will support the denial of health care to every person whose illness they deem to be a divine judgment for sin. As court prophets to the rich and powerful, such prolife Christians will tell cancer victims, diabetics, the obese, pregnant women, STD and AIDS victims and a host of others that they are parasites who brought it on themselves and who should be punished with denial of health care because a just and righteous God wills it.

And all the while they pronounce death and judgment on the lebensunwertes leben in the name of a false Jesus, these Christians lie that it is a state social safety net and not their own brutal and vindictive hearts that keeps them from otherwise being as generous to sick as St. Francis of Assisi. Who do they think they are kidding?

Here is the original post:

On the heels of my conversation with the Good Catholic Libertarian - Patheos (blog)

Im paying too much to be forced to read ideological garbage

After he cut the microphone for the high school valedictorian who criticized the authoritative attitude of administrators, guaranteeing the suppression would go viral, Wyoming Area Secondary Center Principal Jon Pollard told the new graduates to watch what you put on social media.

Its advice that would have been better directed to another young person who showcased her narrowmindedness and disinterest in hearing other perspectives on Twitter.

University of St. Francis student Jennifer Martin tweetedWednesday that her professor (an adjunct, it turns out) gave her an assigned reading on national health care systems from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that is widely respected in D.C. for the quality of its research and thought-provoking events (one such event covered here last fall).

Cato also got tens of millions in fundingover the years from Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who are active in Republican politics, and it was co-founded by Charles four decades ago.

This was enough for Martin to declare that her professor had committed an academic sin, and she would get this person in trouble for giving her ideological garbage from a conservative propaganda machine to read. (Never mind the Kochs sued Cato for control of a board seat five years ago, and the settlement protected Catos independence.)

She even pinned it to the top of her Twitter feed.

What followed was a mostly civil back-and-forth between Martin a self-described liberal lover who claims repeatedly she would feel the same about reading a liberal think tank and some names that might be familiar to College Fix readers.

Former Fix writer Nick Pappas quipped: If I had to read the writings of communists, and listen to the words of terrorists, you can read what a few liberatarains [sic] think.

They argued a bit, with Martin saying Cato was not a reputable source and its article omitted data to push the limited govt agenda, and Pappas saying that Martin was setting an unrealistic standard for any article. (Current Fix writer Kayla Schierbecker joined in with a quip, too.)

Group blog Popehat, a great source of First Amendment-related posts, joked that If its any comfort its pretty clear you wont be able to understand [the article] well enough to be corrupted by it.

Various professors and young academics joined in to encourage Martin to broaden her reading to things she disagrees with and formulate thoughtful critiques.

The student kept insisting that political think tanks are not educational, but that she read the Cato article and it confirmed her view that Cato is political propaganda.

Philosophy professor Francis Beckwith of Baylor University (with whom I have a past connection via another think tank, the Discovery Institute) thanked Martin for giving him a good example of the genetic fallacy for his class.

Most responses were simply bemused. Charles Cooke is National Review Onlines editor, by the way, and the Niskanen Center (Will Wilkinson) is a much younger and explicitly activist libertarian think tank.

Before I go any further: The universitys website has no record of this professor Fran Steel that I could find, nor does Google, and USF (a Catholic institution) has not responded to my query as of late Wednesday.

But Martin refers to the professor further down the thread as an adjunct, and this could be an online class. USF is based in suburban Chicago, but it also has a healthcare-focused campus in Albuquerque, which would explain why Martin was offered a reading on healthcare policy.

We werent all sure at The Fix whether this was even a real argument by Martin, or if it was a prank or parody. It fits every stereotype we have of students who refuse to engage with an argument based on some wholly subjective standard (its not responsible, as Martin says).

And we do have trouble believing shed really object to reading an article in, say, a Center for American Progress publication. Heres another Martin tweet that is posted on her front page.

What is encouraging about this thread is Martin keeps engaging with critics even as she says she shouldnt have to engage with Cato because of its (complicated) Koch relationship.

And given everything you hear about trolling and the inability of people of different views to have a civil conversation on anything, this is a pretty damn civil argument.

Lets hope Martin learns from this experience and becomes eager to explain why an argument is wrong, using her own responsible data, and not simply why the source of the argument invalidates it.

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Student tries to get professor in trouble for assigning her libertarian reading - The College Fix

Former Treasurer for the Polk County Libertarian Party of Polk County arrested for stealing funds from the party's ... The Daily Ridge Hamlin was elected as the treasurer of the Libertarian Party of Polk County in 2014 and was tasked with maintaining the savings and checking account for the Party. Beginning in January of 2015, Jason Hamlin began using funds from these two Party ...

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Former Treasurer for the Polk County Libertarian Party of Polk County arrested for stealing funds from the party's ... - The Daily Ridge

Is there room for another heel in the Illinois governor's race?

Former pro wrestler Jon "The Illustrious One" Stewart says yes and he's looking to put his rivals for the Libertarian Party nomination in a half nelson, then body-slam Bruce Rauner and whoever the Democrats select in the general election.

"Politics is wrestling with suits and ties on," Stewart, 50, told Chicago Inc. "I'm comfortable on a mic, and I'm not afraid to tell the truth."

It isn't The Illustrious One's first run for elected office. Back in 1997, he unsuccessfully ran as a Republican for the state House on the North Shore with a little help from President Donald Trump's counselor Kellyanne Conway.

"I was her first political client," said Stewart, who lives in Deerfield and now runs his family's used-car dealership. "She's probably one of the smartest people I've ever met so I'm not surprised she has got to where she is.

"I'm a little like her we both speak our minds, and sometimes we might speak out of turn, but we are not afraid."

But by Stewart's own admission, the best-known episode of his colorful life came in 2006 when he was mistaken for longtime "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart by a high school in Utah that accidentally booked him for a fundraising gala.

Stewart later took an unsuccessful stab at running for Congress as a Republican, before a falling-out with the late then-Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka led him to join the Libertarians in 2011.

Like Conway, Stewart remains a fan of Trump, who himself has dabbled in the pro-wrestling world. Stewart said he voted for Trump after previously backing Barack Obama because Trump is a necessary "Molotov cocktail thrown into the system in Washington, D.C."

That could cause problems for Stewart at the state Libertarian convention in March 2018, when party members will select their candidate in a caucus and might hold Stewart's failure to support Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson against him.

Two other Libertarian candidates, Matt Scaro and Kash Jackson, have also announced runs, and Illinois Libertarian Party Chairman Lex Green said Stewart "has to overcome" the irritation of party workers who spent $100,000 getting Johnson on the ballot in Illinois.

"But Jon is a good candidate, and there are many pragmatic libertarians who may be able to look past that," Green said.

Stewart is hoping that policies including a Trump-like plan to send 300 federal officers into Chicago's Englewood neighborhood to combat violence and replacing pensions with 401(k)s for new government hires will sway voters.

And he pointed to the 1998 election of former wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura as governor of Minnesota, as well as Trump's recent victory, as evidence of an enduring appetite for outsider candidates.

"When I first ran in the North Shore, I think most people were expecting a bleached blond guy in a leather motorcycle vest to show up, so they were surprised to find someone in a shirt who was engaged on the issues," Stewart said.

Though his campaign doesn't have much money, car dealers across the state have vowed to back him, he said, adding that people who underestimate him will be "surprised."

"The state's politics aren't working it's surreal at this point," he said. "How can the Democrats and the Republicans say, 'Give us one more chance?'"

kjanssen@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @kimjnews

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Former pro-wrestler with ties to Kellyanne Conway seeks Illinois governor nod - Chicago Tribune