Cobb

56. Dunno why. I did vote to keep SS, welfare, & medicare/medicaid. I also voted against such stuff as disarmament and disbanding of the fed.

I guess you have to read my site to find out what I'm like. I do tend to frighten my idealistic [cough]soft-headed[/cough] democratic friends, and my mom (who almost literally worships Bill & Hillary) just doesn't speak to me about politics.

*shrug*

I got a 38; I'm a refugee from the LP in and of itself - I think they've gone completely off the deep end these days, myself.

I'm with you, though - I can't fathom anyone so far over the bend that they score too much higher than 50-60 or so...

Okay, I fudged a little bit to reflect my views when I was a bit younger, but 95, and I don't think I was anywhere near as extreme as I once was.

And the difference between now and then? At some point in the last half decade or so I said "screw it, they're not going to play fair so it's okay for me to use the government for my own ends."

In essence: I now sanction the use of violence and believe that theft in response to theft is okay. And that lowers my score.

63 - Of course I object to the phrasing of many questions, and dont like the true/false format. Too many gray areas. Take OSHA for example: the regulations are there for a reason, yet too often mindless bureaucrats levy fines based upon the letter of the law, ignoring the intent and any extenuating circumstances.

So what am I like? I want my taxes to go primarily to my community, where I actually have a say in how they are spent. I want my state to prudently oversee the local governments to insure a modest level of uniformity. I want as little intrusion from the federal government as possible. Just as Federal programs designed for Atlanta don't necessarily work in Portland OR, Colorado mandated programs for Denver don't always work in Durango. Most importantly, I want people to take responsibility for their own actions. Government should not be a life-long wet nurse.

Scott,
I'm in the same boat as you with 57 score. My parents and I cannot talk about politics.

I tend to think of myself as a Constitutionalist rather than a Liberatarian. I support a separation of powers (which I see as eroding) and believe that the money should be, for the most part, distributed as close to the community that is providing it as possible.

Support of those who need help is important, but perhaps I am a bit idealist to believe that people should help people get back on their feet, and not the goverenment which can only provide a "one size fits none" solution.

Leah, one of my big problems is that institutional "charity" (it can't really be charity if its tax dollars) can only provide a "one size fits all" solution, and thus there's incredible waste.

One of my ongoing sagas is someone we'll call X (pardon the awkward phrasing, but I'm trying to preserve anonymity) who's got the state disability services trying to set up X in a business that works around the disability. In the process, they've bought many tens of thousands of dollars of equipment that X has asked for, but they've done so without a dialog with X to make sure that X knows how to use what X asked for. And, of course, the state's purchasing procedures make all of these things obsolete by the time they arrive.

So X has a wonderfully equipped business, no know-how of how to run it or really how to run the equipment, no budget to tie some of the equipment together, and...

And I'm picking up the pieces, have donated an old old computer and spending my own money to buy cables and assorted bits to tie this whole system together and try to train X (because there's no money in that budget for classes), when with some guidance up-front and the same administrative time spent organizing the skills of those of us willing to give our time to the needy the state could have spent a tenth the money and acheived more.

Now the real issue is that we have to do this from a "pull" standpoint rather than a "push" one. We have to be proactive in our communities to find these people and help them before the state spends the money, because there are going to be these sorts of programs for the foreseeable future and we need to work towards making sure that money gets well spent in our homes.

But the other side is that people are becoming used to asking for help from the government before they ask for help from their neighbors, and that their neighbors have become disengaged, willing to believe that "the government will take care of that".

Sixty-seven. I'm a true anarchist, I guess.

Came across this test through a friend at work who scored in the mid-80s to low-90s.

My score? 18. ;-)