Talk Elections

a sequel post to my left/right states.  I'd probably say New Hampshire is the most libertarian.   Don't know about most authoritarian though.  I guess it's hard to judge based on all you see is the states/countys labeled as red or blue.  I'd be happy to hear any input to this conversation though.

Definitely Alaska.

New Hampshire went for John Kerry, for crying out loud.

libertarian -New Hampshire

authoritarian -Alabama

New Hampshire narrowly voted in for both Bush and Kerry.  Neither election was unanimous.  In 2000 George Bush campaigned on being the "smaller government" candidate, however we know from expirience that's obviously not true.  2004 showed New Hampshire as the only state to go from voting Bush to voting Kerry.  Despite Kerry's socialised medicing plan, New Hampshirites must've thought that it would be insane to elect a someone who has expanded the federal government as far as Bush did.  Thus, "anyone but Bush"

Alabama is economically conservative.

Libertarian- New Hampshire.

Authoritarian- Mississippi.

All the states are quite authoritarian. 

But John Kerry was a much more libertarian candidate than Bush.

Libertarian and liberal are not the same thing.

Libertarian - New Hampshire

Authoritarian - West Virginia

Libertarian - Vermont
Authoritarian - Louisiana

authoritarian got Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana.  Is there some kind of trend where southern governments dislike liberty?  For what reasons are they ranked as such?

I still think West Virginia is the most, being the most populist - economically very liberal and socially very conservative. Constrictive all around.

Libertarian - New Hampshire or Nevada
Authoritarian (Populist) - West Virginia or Louisiana

West Virginia is certainly not Authoritarian. Populist, yes, but it's not really keen on too much interfering.

South Carolina is pretty libertarian, altough not modal libetarian.

Most libertarian in practice - California.

Most authoritarian in practice - Alabama, though all Bush states are quite authoritarian.

well, I've never been to California other than vacation, but don't they have some rather restrictive gun laws there?  The 2004 LP candidate Badnarik said he lived there until one year CA government passed several restrictive gun laws.  "After escaping that socialist wasteland, I moved to Austin Texas" in his bio.

According to this (http://www.soros.org/initiatives/justice/articles_publications/publications/gun_report_20000401/GunReport.pdf), California is a distant third between Massachusetts and Hawaii for level of gun control. The most pro-gun control states are, in order, Massachusetts, Hawaii, California, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, New York, Iowa, North Carolina, and Rhode Island; the most anti-gun control states are, in order, Maine, Louisiana, Alaska, Texas, Montana, Kentucky, Vermont, North Dakota, Georgia, and Arkansas.

However, I would not judge libertarianism soley based on hand gun laws. California is most definitely more liberal on social issues than on economic ones.


Let me get this straight: to escape liberalism, he moved to Austin, Texas? Interesting. ;)

I was a little surprised at that answer as well, though I haven't spent much time in WV.  I was a little surprised at some posters putting MS.  I hadn't spent much time in MS either, till recently, but have been making MS my home for about 7 months, and I can tell you that in most ways MS is the least authoritarian US state in which I have lived.  I can tell you that over the years I have spent much time in LA and it is certainly not authoritarian either.  LA (and to some extent MS and in my imagination WV as well) is the kind of place where you get stuck in a traffic jam on IH10 and get out of your car and open up a can of beer and drink it while sitting on the hood of your car with the cop in plain view.  It is also the sort of place where you can walk around with a gun and no body seems to mind.  It is also the sort of place where you can pretty much hire and fire whomever you want for whatever reason. 

I'm tempted to say the most authoritarian US states in which I've ever lived are MA and TX.  It's a hard call which.  MA seems more authoritarian on the surface (though, like MS, it has the lowest age of sexual consent at 15;  but also like MS, it has extremely strict alcohol sales laws;  some weird combination I never really figured out during the five years I lived in Boston;  I'll same the same when I leave Columbus, I'm sure.)  TX is up-front about its authoritarianism, and doesn't try to hide it from you.  Same in MA.   It was only two days into living in MA when I was pulled over by a cop for going the wrong way down a one-way street.  I can assure you, from personal experience, that cops in MS don't much give a damn about such things.  In TX, I was often pulled over for not wearing my seat belt.  Why they'd bother, is beyond me, but it reeks of authoritarianism. 

I've never lived there, but I've visited NV quite a bit, and compared to *all* the states in which I've lived, they are very uptight about marijuana.  For example, when I was about 19, I got stopped by two cops in TX with a fairly large amount of weed.  They harassed me quite a bit, as you can imagine, but in the end, let me go.  But they kept the weed.  Seriously.  The bastards.  And they didn't even give me a receipt. 

As for speeding tickets.  I can't enter Ohio without getting one.  I don't know what their problem is, but I swear, every time I get even an inch into Ohio I get pulled over for doing like 66 in a 65 or something.  I have more tickets in Ohio than any other state, and I haven't even ever lived there.  (I actually paid a few of them, though I blew off most of them.  They want my money they can come get it.  assholes.)

CA is weird too.  It's like that line in the movie "What dreams may come"  I really like CA and has, so far, been my favorite US state in which to work and play and reside.  But, so far, has also been my least favorite state in which to have to pay taxes.  I'd vote for CA as both the most authoritarian (in many many ways) and as the most libertarian (in many other ways) state, among those in which I have lived, worked, and paid taxes.

Still, authoritarian, libertarian, whatever, CA has the best weather.  Bone dry.  Never winter.  Never Summer.  Always warm.  No wonder people are willing to put up with 9+% sales tax and 10+% state income tax and very strict gun-control laws to live there.

Also, the weed in California is excellent!

After some thought, I'm leaning to MA.  Not just based on my own experiences, but on what I know of history.  Strict DWI laws, strict affirmative action, and the like, all evolved in puritan country.  I can't seriously imagine a place like Louisiana would have come up with the concept of Gun Control, strict DWI laws, racial hiring quotas, etc., without some interference by the federal government, and that federal government got its ideas from the same folks who wanted to ban alcohol in the 30s, ban slavery in the 1800s, ban guns in the 1970s, etc., etc.  It's the culture that Daniel Elazar defines as Moralistic and has, at epicenter, Boston.  Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly living in Authoritarian Leftist Amerika, at least when I was younger and didn't mind digging my car out from under the ice, but you gotta know it's where most of these Leftist Authoritarian ideas originate. 

Remember, Louisiana was the last US state to raise its legal alcohol purchase age to 21.  And it did so only after severe pressure from the federal government to raise it or face consequences in the form of reduced highway funding.  (and that, I assure you, is something Louisiana's roads cannot do without.  They're barely passable as it is!)

as for most libertarian:  well, I have never lived in any place I have considered truly libertarian, but among those US states I have lived in, I'd say Florida and California (stupid laws aside) come closest.

You know it's funny angus debating the most authoritarian states; Texas and Massachusetts.  The same states where the Republican and Democrat candidates ran from in 2004.  Both have had previous state offices (Bush being governor and Kerry being state attorney general).  Methinks the corporate candidates attribute to the authoritarianism of their states.