In the last half-dozen years, the growing and expanding libertarian movement has evolved into an infrastructure of groups, organizations, periodicals, and institutions, each performing different and vital functions that contribute to the overall goal. This appendix provides an annotated outline of these groups and institutions.

1. The Libertarian Party
1516P Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20005

And so we have it: a body of truth, sound in theory and capable of application to our political problems — the new libertarianism. But now that we have the truth, how can we achieve victory? We face the great strategic problem of all “radical” creeds throughout history: How can we get from here to there, from our current State-ridden and imperfect world to the great goal of liberty?

All right, we are to have education through both theory and a movement. But what then should be the content of that education? Every “radical” creed has been subjected to the charge of being “utopian,” and the libertarian movement is no exception. Some libertarians themselves maintain that we should not frighten people off by being “too radical,” and that therefore the full libertarian ideology and program should be kept hidden from view.

All libertarians, of whatever faction or persuasion, lay great stress on education, on convincing an ever-larger number of people to become libertarians, and hopefully, highly dedicated ones. The problem, however, is that the great bulk of libertarians hold a very simplistic view of the role and scope of such education. They do not, in short, even attempt to answer the question: After education, what? What then? What happens after X number of people are convinced? And how many need to be convinced to press on to the next stage? Everyone? A majority? Many people?

But education is the current strategic problem for the foreseeable and indefinite future. An important strategic question is who: If we cannot hope to convert our rulers in substantial numbers, who are the most likely prospects for conversion? which social, occupational, economic, or ethnic classes?

Having set forth the libertarian creed and how it applies to vital current problems, and having sketched which groups in society that creed can be expected to attract and at what times, we must now assess the future prospects for liberty. In particular, we must examine the firm and growing conviction of the present author not only that libertarianism will triumph eventually and in the long run, but also that it will emerge victorious in a remarkably short period of time. For I am convinced that the dark night of tyranny is ending, and that a new dawn of liberty is now at hand.

Many libertarians are uncomfortable with foreign policy matters and prefer to spend their energies either on fundamental questions of libertarian theory or on such “domestic” concerns as the free market or privatizing postal service or garbage disposal. Yet an attack on war or a warlike foreign policy is of crucial importance to libertarians. There are two important reasons. One has become a cliche, but is all too true nevertheless: the overriding importance of preventing a nuclear holocaust.

In a previous chapter, we have already dealt with the problem of national defense, abstracting from the question of whether the Russians are really hell-bent upon a military attack upon the United States. Since World War II, American military and foreign policy, at least rhetorically, has been based upon the assumption of a looming threat of Russian attack — an assumption that has managed to gain public approval for global American intervention and for scores of billions in military expenditures. But how realistic, how well grounded, is this assumption?