Well, I decided to give the Libertarian Party of Chicago another try (now that we're safely past the election). I had been very involved in the LPC back in 1999 and 2000 and into 2001 ... however 9/11 really split the local Party ... as the fundamental world views of the two sides of the LP could find little common ground. Generally speaking, there are two types of people who join the LP (aside from the hard-core foil-hat contingency), folks like me who had been life-long Republicans who finally got to the point where they could no longer stomach the "theocracy thrust" of the Xtian right within the GOP, and folks who had been life-long Democrats who finally rejected the blatant Socialism of the DNC. About half the party was totally against a strong response (sliding into the M.E.O.W. "bend over and take it" policy of Jimmy Carter), and half of us wanted to get all Starship Troopers on Islam. Of course, the hard-core anti-tax folks were totally against letting the government spend the sort of money that it's currenty pissing out in Iraq, and so were dead set against any sort of armed response.
Anyway, I ended up going to the monthly meeting tonight, which turned out to be the "Annual Meeting", so I was able to fork over some membership dues and vote (I rather cleverly avoided getting nominated as an officer). It was nice to be sitting in a roomful of Libertarians again, although I think only one of the folks there had been in the Party when I left. At the end of the meeting, they did an "introduction" thing and everybody gave a snapshot (or a dissertation, in some cases) of who they were and how they got to be Libertarian ... it's interesting to see how many people actually enjoyed reading Ayn Rand (I made it about 15% of the way through Atlas Shrugged, and it's been sitting there for a long while!).
Amazingly, the LPC made almost half of its 2005 fund raising goal tonight, between the dues collected there and a challenge that one member made (he put a bunch of cash on the table and said that he'd give that if the rest of us would match it, which we did plus a few bucks). I made the mistake of noting that there still were LPC Cafe Press stores out there ... now I need to go back and spruce up those and maybe add some new swag!
