{"id":22740,"date":"2013-10-30T08:34:02","date_gmt":"2013-10-30T13:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=22740"},"modified":"2013-10-30T08:34:02","modified_gmt":"2013-10-30T13:34:02","slug":"the-libertarian-moment-or-small-governments-latest-15-minutes-of-fame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/10\/30\/the-libertarian-moment-or-small-governments-latest-15-minutes-of-fame\/","title":{"rendered":"The “Libertarian Moment” – or small government’s latest 15 minutes of fame"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Time<\/em>, Nick Gillespie<\/a> says that if “everyone from The Washington Post<\/em> to NPR to The Atlantic<\/em> are talking about some variation on ‘America\u2019s Libertarian Moment,’ attention must be paid”.<\/p>\n

The American Values Survey is based on responses gathered in late September and early October from a representative group of about 2,300 adults. The researchers used answers to questions about national security, economics, and \u201cpersonal liberty\u201d to create a \u201cLibertarian Orientation Scale.\u201d By such measures, 7 percent of Americans are \u201cconsistent libertarians\u201d and another 15 percent \u201clean libertarian,\u201d meaning they oppose increased government spending on things such as military operations and domestic surveillance, raising the minimum wage, and environmental regulations.<\/p>\n

Such fiscal conservativism is matched by social liberalism, with libertarians in favor of legalizing marijuana, protecting abortion rights, allowing doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs, and keeping the Internet unregulated. Libertarians are much more likely than most Americans to be male, white, and under 50 years old. They are also far less<\/em> likely than most Americans to be religious and to think that religion has a place in politics. This puts them at odds with \u201cother key Republican base groups\u201d such as the Tea Party movement and white evangelical Protestants.<\/p>\n

As befits people who put a high value on individualism, libertarians don\u2019t fit easily into existing political categories even as they are far more likely to pay close attention to politics than the average American (56 percent of libertarians versus just 38 percent) and to always vote in primary elections. \u201cThe Libertarian Orientation Scale and traditional measures of political ideology that run along a liberal-conservative axis are only weakly correlated,\u201d according to the survey.<\/p>\n

That means that the 22 percent of Americans who are consistent libertarians or lean libertarian are fully capable of throwing any election in their direction. That makes them the true wild cards of American politics. A majority of libertarians describe themselves as independent (35 percent), affiliated with a third party (15 percent), or as Democrats (5 percent), with the remaining 45 percent calling themselves Republicans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Time, Nick Gillespie says that if “everyone from The Washington Post to NPR to The Atlantic are talking about some variation on ‘America\u2019s Libertarian Moment,’ attention must be paid”. The American Values Survey is based on responses gathered in late September and early October from a representative group of about 2,300 adults. The researchers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,53,13],"tags":[550,517,327],"class_list":["post-22740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-politics","category-usa","tag-libertarianism","tag-republican","tag-teaparty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5UM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22740"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22741,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22740\/revisions\/22741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}