Yesterday was the New York City Lexington Ave Street Fair. The Manhattan Libertarian Party had a booth setup to distribute libertarian information, promote our candidates, and perform the normal operation politically homeless things like asking people to take the World’s Smallest Political Quiz and argue with those passing by about using force to get your way. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred.

• I was told by an Iranian Jew that we (non-Muslims) need to actively attack Muslims because otherwise they will take over the world. When I said you can’t generalize like that and you can’t hold the son responsible for the father’s doings he agreed but then went on to tell me that when you look at their society, them collectively, you can and must.
• A French tourist became very interested in what we were advocating. It was obvious he was no in agreement with the more extreme aspects of government removal from our lives but he was courteous. He said we would be considered very very radical in France and “libertarians” in France would be more along the line of small government Republicans.
• One older gentleman got hostel with Isaiah Matos for being against the war in Iraq. “They are keeping us safe!” “I hope you don’t get elected!”
• A young man from NJ who had never heard of the libertarian movement nor even Ron Paul became very interested in what we were doing. I explained the LP, the Ron Paul Revolution, the FSP, wasted vote fallacies, etc.
• A current US soldier who was a Ron Paul supporter. He confirmed that Paul does indeed have a large following in the military.
• Just before I left I got into a 20-30 minute argument with a woman. After eventually stating I was against all coercive measures used by those who call themselves government including all forms of taxation she went nuts. She refused to let me finish a thought and would say she didn’t want to talk any further but would. She claimed all I wanted was to not pay taxes. Insinuating that I wanted to leech off others. When I said: “No, I don’t want to be forced to pay for services I don’t want by the threat of violence.” She asked how is government violent. Isaiah quickly pointed out the war but when I tried to show her what happens when I refuse to pay taxes she acted dumb. “I don’t know what happens when you don’t pay property taxes. I rent.” When I went to continue she said she was leaving… but didn’t. Eventually she told us to just leave if we don’t like it. I asked her whether Washington, Jefferson and the other Founders should have just left. She tells us that they fought the revolution only because they were not represented in taxation and that they had setup a democracy so if 51% of the people want something the other 49% are screwed. That’s just how it is. The former being entirely simplistic and the latter being outright wrong I tried to tell her to read Common Sense and other works by Paine and that we had a constitutional democratic republic, not a democracy. She told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. She at one point noticed our support for gun ownership. After I explained to her that gun prohibition is about as effective as drug prohibition and that at worst the data is inconclusive and at best shows that higher gun ownership by non-criminals leads to less crime such as in Florida in the late 80’s early 90’s she scoffed saying she had lived in Florida so she knew better then I did and when she said she’d have to look it all up she refused to accept any sources. She also wasn’t very receptive to XYZs gun advocacy. She even brought up the so very stereotyped: “What about the roads?” She again refused to let me tell her about private communities and roads which exist now.

So I left flustered. Worse then arguing with people who won’t accept truths is when they won’t even let you provide them.

Since we had so many people manning the booth I decided to just hand out pamphlets to people walking by. I noticed many were drawn to the tax cut pamphlet.

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