Wanna Take a Personality Test?

Jefferson is my homeboySince we’re obviously on the political quiz kick this week, I wanted to share an experience in real life libertarian advocacy.

Last night I went out drinking with some friends here in West Cleveland, and I took a few of the Peirce for Ohio Governor promotional cards with me (my apologies for not having a photo, but needless to say it’s very professional). On one side is the World’s Smallest Political Quiz, and on the other is some, well… marketing propaganda for the Peirce campaign. I had a stack of about 40 with me when I left the house, I came back with zero.

The best part, I didn’t have to push it but on a few people, and they suddenly became viral marketers. All around the bar where we were, people were suddenly lighting up over this novel little quiz (and even though it’s obviously skewed, the general consensus was that the issues raised were timely if anything).

The crowning moment though, was when I went back to the bar counter at one point to get more drinks for our group, and… I shit you not… here’s what someone asked me: “Hey have you taken this quiz? This is fucking great!”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: liberty is already pop-culture, forget left and right… we need to brand ourselves as the party that stands up and says: “You suck, government.”

[photo from Bureaucrash store]

Update: a suggestion for The Advocates… start taking names and scores of everyone and putting them in a database for people to spread this to all their friends and to see where major celebrities rank, this was something that was asked quite often.

posted Feb 4th, 2006 by vforvandyke
  • ianbernard

    > we need to brand ourselves as the party that
    > stands up and says: “You suck, government.”

    I like it. “Vote Libertarian, because government sucks!”. Too bad the party is overrun with LINOs and unprincipled people who still have pet issues they want the govt involved in, or have issues they think we should avoid, like the War on Drugs.

    Politics sucks.

  • disinter

    I did something similar at work before the 2004 election. I handed a few out and before I knew it, everyone was talking about it and was wanting to take the quiz. Most had never heard of Libertarian which was great.

    They have a full-pager that is good for this stuff:

    http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz/quiz-pdf.pdf

  • http://www.lonelynomore.net Roberta

    That was fun. Some chick picked someone up with one of those cards. It’s a conversation piece.

  • vforvandyke

    I’ve started changing the wording I use to advance sane drug policy, stating that regardless how you look at the situation, we are taxing society for drugs. It’s a matter of whether we want to tax everyone to put users and dealers away or we want to tax just those who partake in them, similar to the alcohol industry.

    The drug war is a wedge issue for libertarians to use to differentiate ourselves, we should just acknowledge that it occurs and offer an alternative way to curb abuse, similar to alcoholism.

  • rickrajter

    Don’t forget the 5 easy ways to spread liberty using their quiz
    http://www.theadvocates.org/library/five-lazy-ways.html

    Short, simple, non-confrontational, cheap

    You can’t have it any better.

  • vforvandyke

    100 for $6? Dang, I can do that in a night if I really tried. On the other hand, I did get a couple of free shots from people who thought this was totally cool.

    Hey, who said libertarianism was just for economics nerds?

  • Nishat

    Last night was great. I was able to partake in some political promotion with the all famous and intellectually stimulating star Stephen VanDyke!! We all had a blast informing our peers in the bar about the quiz. I had so much fun enlightening everyone on the truth of life>>>>>The Libertarian Truth!!!

  • disinter
  • http://ericsundwall.com Eric Sundwall

    Can you register as LP in OH ? I once had a group of Danes square dancing one summer night in Christiana, but chalked it up to an excellent fiddle player, 9% beer, cheap hashish and the end of the cold war. I’ll take the disgruntled pipe fitter that I registered LP Friday afternoon or the food guy on Wed. afternoon. The pitch was simple, less gov’t and legalize drugs. It started with, are you registered and do you vote ? Having one on the dotted line let’s the party see them, a dozen half in the bag just makes a nice party.

  • http://au.geocities.com/lev_lafayette Lev Lafayette

    Bill Pierce’s commitment to individual freedom and public funding through site value rents provides an intelligent, logical and proven alternative which we watch with optimism and interest. Well done on being part of the process!

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