It’s no secret that libertarians are bit, well,
different. As my libertarian friend and
co-author John Coleman once said:
On the negative side, Libertarians are crazy. Most became
libertarians because they have some social quirk that disallows
them from participation in normal society --picture excessive
drug use, Dungeons and Dragons play, or fascination with the word
"metrosexual" for instance. They are strange. You can't take them
home to your parents, unless, of course, your parents are members
of some druid cult. They frighten small children.
Indeed, it turns out that toddlers (and small animals) may have
reason to wary of libertarians:
According to the study (pdf),
published this Spring in the Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, conservatives are likely to feel more strongly about
social taboos revolving around purity, authority and ingroup
loyalty, while liberals feel a stronger sense of obligation
around issues of harm to animals and other people. Libertarians,
those rootless individualists, scored lower in every moral
category.
The researchers selected over 1,500 politically committed
volunteers, and subjected them to a range of questions exploring
their attitudes to different taboos and trangressions. Asked
about impaling a child’s hand, 78 per cent of the conservatives
responded that they would refuse to do this “for any amount of
money,” compared with 70 per cent of liberals and just 59 per
cent of libertarians.
In fact, more of the liberal respondents felt strongly about
kicking a dog than about harming a child (75 per cent versus 70
per cent refusal for any amount of money), while fifty per cent
of the libertarians would agree to surgery giving them a
prosthetic tail if they were paid enough to do so.
Question for our libertarian readers: How much fiat currency
would it require for you to punch a baby, slap a puppy,
and sew on a tail?
