Libertarians are morons, and I generally think myself one. I consider the goal of government is to obviate itself and this is a philosophically unavoidable conclusion. That being said, this article is just retarded.
Did this study control for economic status, which is positively correlated with both a conservative viewpoint and IQ level? Did it control for age? Did it control for ANYTHING aside from college education? Which, according to them, is unimportant. They highlight a study that shows that once IQ is controlled for (they used a TEN QUESTION vocab quiz as a proxy for IQ... yeah) education drops to second in a question of economic knowledge. Sooo, basically, people who read a lot know more than those who don't. Alert the media.
And how about mixing in a few pro-progressive economic questions, as opposed to economic questions that are all frequent talking points on Fox News? Moreover, we all know how complex questions given forced simplistic answers always leads to usable data.
As I said, I'm in many ways a libertarian, which is one of the hardest viewpoints for others to understand since government is so omnipresent in the lives of pretty much everyone in existence, but facile, methodologically crap research like this does the position no service. The Caplan & Miller paper it cites can be found in no journal, and it sounds suspiciously like the argument that school benefits stupid people because it rewards diligence, and intelligence is what really matters. Yep. If you're a conservative who flunked out of college, don't worry! You're actually the smart one. Unlike those liberal, commie professors.
This shit got mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. That's why I don't read it, anymore.
Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? (Wall Street Journal)
Economic Enlightenment in Relation to College-going, Ideology, and Other Variables: A Zogby Survey of Americans (Some Guy)
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