FAILING THE ECLECTIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST. Sasha Castel has posted what I would call a Libertarian Purity Test. Most of the hot buttons are there, from gun ownership to abortion.

It's a great service and has inspired interesting comments. Let me share with you an internal response of my own that, were I actually responding to the quiz, I have a hunch I'd supress for a reason I'll explain later:

While I could give quick agreement to the first five items (yeah, even the guns), on the issue of education I am torn. I want to say yes to an uninfringed right to "educate my children according to my personal values." (I assume everyone does that anyway -- in most cases, with beatings and drunken mockery.) But part of me also feels that a public school system is a good idea, as a means of promulgating the minimal socialization and life skills necessary to keep us from turning into Lord of the Flies West, and that such a system cannot survive without a certain small but real amount of coercion. (Face it -- if school were optional, do you doubt that school attendance would drop to levels that would make the system unsustainable?)

Now, we could argue that point for hours, but I want to focus here on my own reaction. In my heart of hearts I wanted to get all the answers "right." And that's not such a bad thing. Like most people -- really -- I want Certain Inalienable Rights not only for myself, but for others -- everyone else, in fact -- because I understand that my own would not be safe without theirs.

Yet I find myself pulling back on that one issue. And I'm a little ashamed to admit it. Why? Because, let's face it, it's cool to be a libertarian -- so cool that even the guys at NRO pretend to swing that way (especially their resident frat-boy -- except, of course, when he's pretending to be contrarian-authoritarian). Maximum freedom is much more exciting and attractive than the sober, somber, on-the-other-hand-ism of the sort drearily embodied by most Presidential candidates.

Now, I'm going to fade to black on this shot of my hand hesitating over the levers next to Question Six, because what I think doesn't matter so much (no applause, please) as the instinct I described. Is it that I'm afraid of freedom (quick "YES!" from the LP guys), or is it that I'm afraid of purity?

Yes, purity. Let's say it's 1793. We're in France. We took the Tennis Court Oath. So we're old-school and totally down with the Revolution. We have watched with pleasure as all traces of the old tyranny are obliterated -- even the unfortunate but necessary regicide. In for a penny, in for a pound, we say -- no half measures for us. Then they start whispering against our friends. Next it's their heads on the blocks. Next, maybe ours...

This is not a fantasy against liberty, or even against the French Revolution, but against absolutism and its inevitable companion: momentum. What was the big difference between the French Revolution and ours? (Don't say "Frenchmen," please.) I think it was that we had a lot more pushback going against us -- and I don't mean the Redcoats. I mean we appreciated the old order (good, British order!), and the institutions they gave us (and largely maintained afterwards). But we also appreciated liberty, and decided with not a little sadness that circumstances demanded we sue for it, so we had to back away from some of our own best instincts in order to inaugurate a revolution. This made us, in a weird way, circumspect about our new prize of liberty -- whereas the French, bless them, went apeshit.

I'm not suggesting Nick Gillespie and Jacob Sullum will cheerfully wade through bloody gutters come the Revolution. I just mean that something about the Libertarian trip makes me nervous. It's not so much a politics as a creed, of the all-or-nothing sort -- You want the right to anal sex? Well, then you must not interfere with my right to charge dying Africans for water!

In general I think going "all the way" is a great thing on a personal level and a disastrous thing on a political level. But who knows: maybe you know a Messiah somewhere whose program will fix everything if I only follow Him to the ends of the earth. By all means write and let me know.