Left, Right, Up, Down--Libertarian Ideas

[bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com +1-510-484-6204]

> Tim May writes:
> >In fairness to my left-leaning friends (Dave Mandl as a good example),
> >the questions in the Nolan Chart test are designed to make almost
> >anyone appear to be a libertarian.

Only if you try hard to be inclusive and get people to answer "yes";
if your spin when asking/explaining the question are "no",
you can often conclude that most people are statists and drive away all 
but the really hard-core libertarians...
I have found, though, that it's biased toward getting a reasonable spread
of answers from average-American types - it doesn't work very well
for people who have a non-mainstream agenda (giving it at a Socialist Scholars'
Conference was *very* interesting, and anarchists tend to either like or hate 
it or say "so what - you haven't asked any of the *interesting* questions!")

It's a lot more useful for getting people who haven't thought much beyond
the simplified left-right vote-like-(or against)-your-parents view
that the media and mainstream politicians seems to use to think about
what their political views imply, or whether the labels they and their
politicians have been using really match.  And if you don't like it,
you can always chuck it and let the discussion go on from there.

David Mandl writes:
> I responded the way I did to John Kreznar's post precisely because it
> looked identical to standard Republican-style leftist-baiting, which I
> unfortunately see too much of every day on the net.  John cleared this up

:-) I was surprised to see you two arguing, since you're both anarchists
or variants thereon.

As Sandy points out, for the purposes of keeping crypto legal,
people who support that can be our friends, and people who oppose it
are opportunities for education or maybe targets for pressure.

		Bill Stewart