David Nolan

David Nolan died suddenly in Tucson, Arizona on November 21, 2010, of a “stroke while driving”, just 2 days before what would have been his 67th birthday.

David Nolan is the founder of the Libertarian Party, the inventor of the Nolan Chart (the smallest political quiz that positions you on a 4-axis plane based upon your social and economic beliefs), and the candidate AmericanBuilt.us endorsed in 2010 AGAINST McCAIN for Senate in Arizona.

Nolan Chart

… sounds like what happened to Michael Badnarik, the President of the 2009 Continental Congress who was GASSED in his car causing him to be unconscious for a few days.

ig farben vs. lawyer

can also look into: John O’Neill, Barry Jennings, Aaron Russo, Beverly Eckert…

Libertarians are mourning the sudden death of David Nolan, party co-founder and author of the Nolan Chart, billed as the World’s Smallest Political Quiz.

Nolan died Sunday, apparently of a heart attack while driving near his home in Tucson, Ariz., just days short of his 67th birthday. He had just completed a campaign for U.S. Senate against Republican incumbent John McCain.

“David’s importance to the liberty movement cannot be underestimated,” said state Libertarian Party chair Barbara Howe. “His sudden death is a shock to all of us in the libertarian community. I pledge to carry on the work David helped get started.”

“I am saddened by the news of David Nolan’s death,” said LP national chair Mark Hinkle. “He not only helped found the Libertarian Party, but remained active and helped to guide our party for the last forty years.”

“David was a champion of the libertarian wing of the Libertarian Party,” said R. Lee Wrights, a Winston-Salem native and editor of the online magazineLiberty for All. “Throughout his years of activism and leadership, he never wavered in proclaiming the libertarian message without equivocation, explanation or moderation. He never once apologized for his philosophy, our philosophy… the superiority of individual rights.”

“However painful David’s death may be, his untimely passing makes me even more committed and determined to restore and preserve the vision of the Libertarian Party he and a dedicated band of visionaries first articulated in his Denver living room so many years ago,” said Wrights, a potential candidate for the 2012 Libertarian presidential nomination. “I am determined that David’s vision will never die, that the Libertarian Party will never be afraid to challenge the State and always, always defend liberty loudly, boldly and without compromise.

Nolan describes himself as having been born a libertarian, even though he was born in Washington D.C. He grew up in the Maryland suburbs, reading the science fiction of Robert Heinlein and the novels of Ayan Rand.

In the 1964 presidential campaign, as an architectural student Nolan was a founder of the M.I.T. the Students for Goldwater. The Goldwater campaign attracted nascent libertarians, since there was then no formal libertarian organizations let alone a political party. Although Goldwater lost, Nolan was active in the formation and leadership of several libertarian groups spawned by the campaign, including Young Americans for Freedom and the Young Republicans.

During Richard Nixon’s presidency, the Vietnam war, crackdowns on civil liberties and increasing restrictions on economic freedom led Nolan and other libertarians to became increasingly convinced that the Republican Party held no promise for freedom lovers. The break came when Nixon announced he was taking the nation off the gold standard and imposed a freeze on wages and prices, which Nolan denounced as “economic fascism.”

In 1971, Nolan wrote an article for a libertarian magazine entitled “The Case for a Libertarian Political Party.” Now living in Denver, he and a group of his friends began to expand on that idea and contacted libertarians around the country. On December 11, 1971 the Libertarian Party was born in Nolan’s living room.

During this same period, Nolan was working on the other accomplishment for which he is famous, the Nolan Chart.

“I kept scratching my head and wondering why people like us agreed with conservatives on a lot of things, but obviously had fundamental disagreements with conservatives on a lot of other issues,” he said “And why were there areas where we could see that liberals made sense – especially opposition to war and draft?”

Combining his architectural training and his political activism, in 1970 Nolan drew a new map of the political world that has all but replaced the old-fashioned left-right linear model. Later, Marshall Fritz, founder of the Advocates for Self-Government, refined the Nolan chart into a diamond shape to produce what the now well-known and popular World’s Smallest Political Quiz. Millions of people have taken the quiz online, it is referred to in over a dozen leading textbooks, and has been used in hundreds of classrooms around the world.

Nolan is survived by his wife Elizabeth.

Read David Nolan’s profile on Libertarianism.com.

In this special edition of the Reality Report Gary Franchi is joined by Michael Badnarik the elected president of the CC2009 Continental Congress. Do not miss this powerful interview.

Michael J. Badnarik was the Libertarian Party nominee for President of the United States in the 2004 elections, and placed fourth in the race, behind independent candidate Ralph Nader.

Dr. Paul has the cure for America’s ills By Eric S Margolis / Washington

Republican Congressman Ron Paul became a hero to many Americans last year when he ran for president against the political establishment.  The 11-term Texas congressman is the most respected and admired American politician around the world after Barack Obama.

Representative Paul is a vocal critic of America’s foreign wars; he sits on the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Dr Paul invited me to Washington to address his weekly luncheon in his office on Capitol Hill on the intensifying wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  A group of independent-minded Republican congressmen attended.

During last year’s presidential race, I called Paul, “the only candidate who is telling Americans the truth about foreign affairs”.  I came to respect and admire Paul’s courage, honesty, and refusal to accept special interest money.

Speaking of today’s US Congress, Dr Paul observes: “Special interests have replaced the concern the Founders had for the general welfare.”

In fact, Representative Paul has been a model of the legislators envisaged by America’s founding fathers: men of high moral standards and intellect dedicated to the nation’s wellbeing.

He reminds me in many ways of the fiercely upright senators of the early Roman Republic.  The Roman Senate served as the model for the United States Senate.

Paul, a physician, used to deliver babies on Mondays and Saturdays while serving in office.

The 74-year-old doctor from Texas electrified young Americans with his grassroots campaign, providing voters a real alternative to the Republicans and Democratic establishment which often appears to be one party with two factions.

Paul’s clear, cool voice challenged all the government and media propaganda about Afghanistan and Iraq. Dr Paul is also waging a  determined battle against the runaway spending and soaring national debt being promoted by the Obama White House and Congressional Democrats.

Paul and his fellow libertarian Republicans advocate individual rights, strict adherence to the US Constitution, limited government, and free enterprise. They oppose   American global domination, “nation-building”, and all foreign wars not waged in the direct defence of American territory.

Paul opposes US involvement in other nation’s internal affairs.  As anti-Iranian hysteria gripped the nation last month, Paul was the only House member who voted against a bill condemning Iran for its recent election.  That’s real courage.

“There is no area in which Republicans have further strayed from our traditions than in foreign affairs,” writes Paul. He dismisses claims by pro-Israel neoconservatives that “we have to either fight them over there or over here” as a “false choice”. America has no business policing the world.  US foreign policy is undermining America’s national security, says Dr Paul.

Only Congress, he insists, has the right to declare war, not the president.  Congress cravenly abandoned this right during the buildup to the Iraq War that was fuelled by the Bush administration’s shameless lies and  war-mongering by the US media.

Dr Paul’s amiable manner and lack of the bloated self-importance that so typifies Washington bigwigs conceals a very keen intellect and depth of knowledge.  He also has one of the capital’s sharpest foreign affairs staff chiefs, Daniel McAdams.  It is a relief to find key decision-makers in Washington who actually understand the outside world.

As I talked with Dr Paul, it occurred to me that he and his fellow libertarians are the potent remedy that the dreadfully sick Republican Party so desperately needs. Paul’s Liberty Caucus will hopefully form the core around which a vigorous, new party grows that addresses America’s real needs.

President George Bush and the neocons almost destroyed the Republican Party, as this columnist predicted before the  2003 invasion of Iraq.  What’s left of the Republicans has become a rump dominated by Christian religious fundamentalists, Southerners, and war-loving neoconservatives. No longer a place for a moderate, New York Republican like myself.

Republicans have also been suffering a series of lurid sex scandals that have made its members look both extremely hypocritical and awfully stupid.  Meanwhile, extreme right-wingers like the odious Rush Limbaugh and former speaker Newt Gingrich are vying to become the party’s voice.

Dr Paul and his fellow libertarians offer Republicans and Americans a real alternative to the dumbed-down Republicans and to the wildly spending Democrats whose expanded Afghanistan war and reckless economic policies are leading the nation into growing danger.

2009/03/11: Secret State Police MIAC Report:
Ron Paul Stickers, Bob Barr, Chuck Baldwin,
Gadsden Flag, Libertarians are Terrorists?