The random political thoughts thread (Part Deux)

[Alex]

Read the first paragraph and that is the slant. They simply define freedom along Libertarian lines. By that definition I imagine much of the results will not be a surprise (though I am interested in seeing how they evaluate the relative restriction on freedom created by seatbelt laws vs. animal cruelty laws vs. mandatory education laws vs. drug criminlization vs. etc.).

A lot of people would disagree with that definition though. Say by considering it an important "personal freedom" to not worry that you'll die from a gangrenous ingrown toenail because you don't have access to insurance or quality emergency care and that this is a much more important freedom (while the study would consider it a restriction on freedom) than the freedom to set up a target shooting practice range in your urban back yard.

The opening paragraph (which is in the Newsmax article as the last paragraph long after most readers will stop paying attention):

This paper presents the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres. We develop and justify our ratings and aggregation procedure on explicitly normative criteria, defining individual freedom as the ability to dispose of one's own life, liberty, and justly acquired property however one sees fit, so long as one does not coercively infringe on another individual's ability to do the same.

So I'd say simply presenting the results as an objective measure of "freedom" is misleading. It is, perhaps, an objective measure of Libertarianism across the states (which isn't even necessarily a point of view that "conservatives" agree with).