Gene Healy: Libertarians on the shrink's couch

We libertarians tend to think of ourselves as a tiny, embattled sect, ignored when we’re not reviled. Lately, though — with Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” shooting up the Amazon charts and Tea Partiers with “Don’t Tread on Me” flags storming Capitol Hill — there’s increasing interest in figuring out how this strange tribe thinks.

A team of social psychologists, including the University of Virginia’s Jonathan Haidt, provides some of the most detailed answers yet, putting libertarians on the couch in a new study, “Understanding Libertarian Morality.”