House of Eratosthenes

The maggot-infested dope-smoking hippies gave our New Mexico friend a score of 125, which makes him extremely conservative. Hehe, yeah right. Numerically, this makes sense since the score goes from zero to 400, with 400 being a flaming whack-job dimwit liberal. One-twenty-five is south of the the median…but if you ask me, Buck is extremely conservative like Top Gun is an extremely good movie.

We took it and we got a score of 38. Yup, our age is more than our CAP political-ideology score.

I wonder if, when the sandal-and-sock-wearing pony-tailed maggot-infested hippies construct their perfect society that works for everybody, will they keep me around? Could I be covered with ObamaCare benefits?

Can you say “Soylent Green”?

Update: The Barrister doesn’t understand all the concern about “wealth inequality” and from reading his comments, it doesn’t seem he’s ever quite gotten it.

I never have gotten it either.

Nowadays we’re constantly told money isn’t everything, what really matters is to do what you love doing. Well okay, then. If everybody just hunkers down and does what they love doing, and nevermind how much money they make doing it…the natural result of that is going to be that some of us will make leaps & bounds more money than others. And everyone will have chosen their lot, so okay that’s quite alright.

So it’s quite alright, then. Deal.

Update 9/16/10: Another thought about how the test is messed up. Left the following at Buck’s place:

Typically, when they contain the word “can” or “should,” we get into a situation where there is no such thing as moderate conservatism. Because in those situations, if you take the test again, you’ll notice CAP is exploring some utopian ideal that has already been tested a few times and found not to work. And so the conscientious conservative is going to click the 0, as I did.

That’s what conservatism really is, when you get down to it. It is having the courage — and long-term memory — to say “we’ve been down this road; if you don’t have a meaningful idea about how our next attempt is going to be different, then stick it.” “Moderate” means, although you know it didn’t work, and won’t work, you wish it would, so you click a four, six or a nine.

…or a one.

See, this is how we’re messed up as a society right now. When the question is “Government has a role to play in providing for the poor” or whatever it is they said…nevermind your political ideology, if you possess some proficiency in history you’re going to click ZERO. You won’t click one. Zero is the only acceptable answer…because you’re going to go back through our history of putting government in charge of providing for the poor.

You might spend a second or two thinking about what the lefties will want you to think about — “that guy got a samrich or a bowl of soup, and without a government program he woulda starved.” But after that, you’ll go…well waitaminnit, did everyone starve before there were government programs? No they did not. And once you have the government programs, do you have bureaucrats trying to keep the need up for the program, so they never lose their jobs? Yes you do. And does this alter the situation with regard to the poor being able to provide for themselves? Yes it does.

So we got a situation where government is digging a hole, then taking the dirt from the hole and putting it back in the hole. It has a legitimate role to do such a thing? Of course not. Nobody does. Zero is the answer.

This is a boolean. Clicking one, to show you’re almost-completely-conservative, would be the same as clicking ten. It would say “well I know this gets us into that absurd situation Morgan just described…but…clicking zero seems so heartless (so let’s try it a few more times even though we know what the outcome is).”

To me, that’s the question that defines conservatism. Conservatism is, if the idea’s already been tried and found to fail, saying “Show me how our latest attempt will be meaningfully different…or stick it.”

It is, in the final analysis, the thought process engaged by those who remain in possession of intellectual robustness and health. Its opposite is the obsessive-compulsive predilection toward consistent behavior with the expectation of an inconsistent result…and you know what Einstein said about that.

I was tempted to take the quiz a second time and see how high I could get my score. I bet that if you score over 300, you win a puppy!
- Jason | 09/16/2010 @ 00:16
Many of the questions are false dichotomies. I am not sure they actually measure what they claim too measure because the questions are effectively do you prefer bananas or Volvos. This appears to me to often be the case with liberals they don’t really understand how conservatives think
- Fai Mao | 09/16/2010 @ 06:38
Zero is the answer.

Nope. That’s prolly true for doctrinaire conservatives, the “my way or the highway” types, with no names mentioned of course. Politics isn’t one of the hard sciences; your Boolean analogy doesn’t apply. To reiterate a famous saying: “Politics is the art of compromise.” Keep your day job, Morgan. You’re a good idealogue but you have ZERO potential is a pol. Well, check that. You’d make a good dictator.

When I took the quiz I allowed for instances where I MIGHT support the often ridiculous statement posed by the “dirty smelly hippies” as a question or a values statement. A zero is equivalent to shouting “NEVER! OVER MY DEAD BODY!” whereas a two, three, or four would indicate “sometimes,” depending on how many “sometimes” I could think of right off the top of my head I rated those statements where I simply didn’t give a shit as a five… dead middle of the road, neither agree nor disagree. Are you telling me you had an opinion on every single one of those statements? Really?
- bpenni | 09/16/2010 @ 10:34
You’re a good idealogue but you have ZERO potential is a pol.

Just contradicted yerself.

Are you telling me you had an opinion on every single one of those statements? Really?

No, I think there was one of those where I put a 5. My comment applies to that subset of questions containing the European-nanny-state words like “should” “ought” “must” etc….questions dealing with how the world ought to function, as contrasted with how it really does. I think I pointed this out…

That’s the split. I think I’ve accurately identified it, along with the fundamental disagreement you and I have, and what I see you doing is validating my accuracy. I think policies should be formed around the way things really do work, and you agree with the liberals (to some extent) that policies should be formed around the way we wish things worked.

And that’s fine. What’s not fine, is demanding others take on your point of view when they have valid reasons for not doing it…labeling them as extremists or fringe if they don’t close on some minimal amount of the product.

Just a teaspoonful of poison is still poison.
- mkfreeberg | 09/16/2010 @ 10:38
I think policies should be formed around the way things really do work, and you agree with the liberals (to some extent) that policies should be formed around the way we wish things worked.

So, Morgan… should we continue letting K Street write legislation? Legalize bribery? Allow judges to be bought? Endorse and/or legalize the current state of affairs, in other words? Coz that’s the way things really do work today. Or should we change all that to the way we wish things should work? I’d opt for the latter.
- bpenni | 09/16/2010 @ 20:48
From what I can see about the way things really do work…getting K Street out of power, correlates to a lower CAP score and not a higher one. But you and I don’t really disagree here, since we both netted something south of that 200 mark.

What we’re really in disagreement about, is the health benefit involved in a catharsis. Any living thing that is denied the opportunity to reject things utterly, is given a slow death sentence. If you want to live, every now and then you have to purge. So we get these ideas like, get rid of the wealth gap so we can “all” become prosperous…which means we lose the learning effect that comes with a free economy. You can’t have a fractional answer to whether that’s a good idea or not — it either works, or it doesn’t. And we’ve given it a good, fair try. TOO BIG TO FAIL and all that. This is my idea of something that needs to be expurgated.

You, obviously, have other examples in mind.

Did you go through the entire test *never* clicking on a 0, is that what you’re saying? Even though you feel just as strongly as I do, that some ideas need to be chucked? If so, that’s what I mean by contradicting yourself — never clicking on a 0. I clicked on a 5; I clicked on a 3. I think there was a 7 or 8. I have this doctrine you don’t like: If it’s bad, why bother clicking a 1or a 2, zero is the right answer. But the word “always” or “never” doesn’t pertain to how I answered this thing…so who’s the extremist?

See, I think we’re being sold a bill of goods here. We’re being poisoned, slowly, because we aren’t allowed to absolutely, positively reject anything — we become “intolerant.” Through it all, this lobbying arm you detest so much, has only grown more prosperous and more invasive. These are the worst kinds of socialists of all, the ones who want socialism for the rest of us, and to keep the free market for themselves, without producing anything.

We aren’t really disagreeing too much here, Mister 125.
- mkfreeberg | 09/17/2010 @ 03:09
Did you go through the entire test *never* clicking on a 0…

Absolutely NOT. There were several.

We aren’t really disagreeing too much here, Mister 125.

No, we’re not. We usually don’t, except for drugs and Palin. I sense a connection there.

I didn’t mention this earlier, but I will now. There was this:

You’re a good idealogue but you have ZERO potential is a pol.

Just contradicted yerself.

Just for grins and giggles… this is the FIRST thing ya see when ya google the term:

i·de·o·logue Noun /ˈīdēəˌlôg/ /-ˌläg/
Synonyms:

* noun: ideologist

*
ideologues plural

*
An adherent of an ideology, esp. one who is uncompromising and dogmatic
o
a conservative ideologue

Emphasis mine, of course… That was my point… given that politics is the art of compromise. You simply DON’T compromise, ergo, a failed pol.
- bpenni | 09/17/2010 @ 13:32
Well, that looks like a good thing at which to fail.

Once it’s demonstrated something doesn’t work, how do you compromise on it? I think this cuts right to the heart of the matter. You can adhere to reality or show some of this compromise…but not both.

I really don’t see it as anything different from the situation in which you find out a drain clog removal agent, or a charcoal lighter fluid, is ineffective (or harmful). You can act like you know what you know — throw it out, and use something else from that point on. Or, you can go ahead and use what you know doesn’t work, a tenth of the time…or a twentieth…or a hundredth, to show your moderate spirit.

What’s the point in opting for the latter? I’m just not seeing it. If that makes me a poor pol, then so be it.

By the way. near the front of Atlas Shrugged, Part I Chapter I, Dagny Taggart and her brother James have a dialogue very much like the one we’re having here. Our answers to the question are far from new, and so is the question itself for that matter…this is a rather ancient dilemma.
- mkfreeberg | 09/17/2010 @ 13:49
Dang, I got a 68. Was shooting for zero!
- HoundOfDoom | 09/18/2010 @ 06:51
[…] Morgan scored 38. Buck came in at 125. I guess I’m a flaming liberal. No Comments […]
- The scoreboard « Tequila & Javalinas | 09/21/2010 @ 18:46

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