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April 18, 2006

The Infectious Meme for Liberty

Ten percent of Americans are self-described libertarians according to the Pew Research organization’s latest polling data. I am not sure if this is good or bad however; I had often felt in the days after the terror attacks in 2001 that the American people didn’t want liberty any more, but instead wanted revenge and more "security".

Of course the State gives them neither, but perhaps the "security moms" and such are now remembering that being heavily taxed, spied upon, regulated, and swarmed over by Leviathan’s minions at all levels doesn’t really make one more "secure", eh?

The Hammer of Truth blog transposes the Pew data onto the famous Nolan Chart of political preference (and arrives at the 10% figure by the way), meaning that those 1 in 10 who prefer liberty are "libertarians". And these folks should not be confused with Libertarian Party supporters or voters though, and so the LP bigshots shouldn’t get their hopes up just yet.

My interpretation of this data, if it’s true, is that we still have a long way to go. In America’s heavily gerrymandered two-party electoral system the best these libertarian leaning types can do if they vote is to help the lesser-of-the-two-evil statist party’s candidates win election in a few close races. Some would consider this outcome progress I suppose. But that’s about it as I see it.

However what this data does show is that the memes for self-reliance and liberty haven’t been wholly eradicated by seventy some years of educational and political social engineering schemes by the State though either. I haven’t felt this optimistic since I saw V for Vendetta a few nights ago and the audience applauded at the end.

Posted by Ali Massoud at April 18, 2006 10:14 AM

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