Secrets of Libertarian Persuasion
This book was written by Michael Cloud a motivational speaker and speech writer who ran for the senate seat against John Kerry in 2006 and managed to garner 20% of the vote. He writes a column for the liberator online and made some tapes on political persuasion in the late 80’s.
He’s says he reads 100 books per year, since he slowed down, and its proved with his many book recommendations in the book, he uses this knowledge to effectively show how to increase your chances of converting people to libertarianism.
Some things he recommends:
• Pick people who are likely to listen to you. If you pick die hard liberals or religious conservatives it’s unlikely you can convert them, instead pick an independent or someone who you know well.
• Don’t get in people’s face, no one’s likes this and it usually hurts your chances.
• Use comparative arguments: if you can’t convince someone that drugs should be legalized have them tell you why they think guns should be and use their own arguments with drugs, etc.
• Talk the same way, he knows salesmen who have tripled their commissions by simply using the same volume, speed and pitch of the person to whom their talking.
• Finally, a lot of debates about libertarianism end with, “…but there’s no way that would ever be able to happen!” Cloud recommends two things for this: What if and the magic button. He recommends you say, but what if it could happen or what if you had a magic button that could make it happen? When people are forced to agree with you under these terms they break-down and tend to agree with libertarianism.
These (explained much better) and more are available in the book, plus when you buy it from the above link you support The Advocates which has been spreading the word for thirty years.
How Capitalism Saved America
The author, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, is a columnist for LewRockwell.com and his written a few books before, including two arguing that Lincoln was one of our worst
presidents
and an upcoming book
arguing Alexander Hamilton was bad (Amazon link). This books was actually endorsed by Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell and, Larry Kudlow.DiLorenzo goes over many time periods I American history and shows how Capitalism helped America or the opposite (either Mercantilism, Socialism or New Dealers, all are the same pretty much) hurt America, some things he goes over are:
• When the Pilgrims came they all worked for the collective and they were starving, Sir Thomas Dale came over and started private property where each colonist had to work for his own food and the colonists were prosperous almost immediately.
• The Americans who started the Revolution were for liberty (or capitalism as we would call it today) and were against the mercantilism run by England’s parliament (which is pretty much the same as socialism).
• ‘Robber Barons’ in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s were supposedly greedy, but they actually created jobs for millions of Americans and drove the prices of every day goods down.
• Anti-Trust laws are always bad, and there has literally never been a case where anti-trust helped ordinary citizens and wasn’t pushed through by the competition or special interest groups.
• It is common knowledge that Herbert Hoover’s Laissez Faire economic policies caused the Great Depression. However, it is a fact that Hoover’s response to a recession with more government caused the depression, and Franklin Roosevelt’s socialist policies kept the unemployment rate high and the economy in the dumps for twenty years.
In addition to the above DiLorenzo explains Capitalism, explores the never-ending war on it and shows hoe price controls caused the 70’s energy crisis. The book is a great addition to any bookshelf, in history and economics, but be aware that DiLorenzo tends to write with anger and sarcasm at some points, which made me weary after reading more than 3-4 chapters in a row.
I finished The Fountainhead last week, so that review is coming up next, please visit our Book Store,/a> for more book, music and movie recommendations.
Roark is a soon to be college student who has gotten by this summer by reading books as much as possible.
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