Dear Thinker:

Pasted below my signature is a sobering scattergram that appeared in a commentary in the August 10th Wall Street Journal.

The scattergram shows the results of a survey that was conducted of voters in the last presidential election.  Democrats are represented by blue dots; Republicans by red ones.

The scattergram is divided into quadrants.  Those who prefer various forms of collectivism and redistribution over economic freedom fall into the upper-left and lower-left quadrants. Seventy-two percent of voters fall into these quadrants.  This isn't surprising, because, as I've calculated and written about extensively, over 60% of households are dependent on the government in some way.

Those who prefer individual liberty over the state putting its nose into people's personal affairs and legislating private behavior fall into the lower-left and lower-right quadrants.  They are in the minority.

Those who prefer both economic freedom and individual liberty fall into the lower right quadrant.  They represent only 3.8% of voters and are commonly referred to as libertarians, although a more accurate label would be "classical liberals," which is what the nation's founders were, although many of them were slaveholders.

The more I've studied evolutionary psychology, the more convinced I've become that these statistics mirror human nature, or if you will, the genetic hard-wiring of Homo sapiens. In any event, it is largely a myth that Americans believe in freedom and liberty, or at least as evidenced by what they decide in the privacy of a voting booth.

Cheers,

Mencken's Ghost