Success!

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You’ve heard the sayings: “Success attracts success.” “Nothing succeeds like success.”

They’re true. People are attracted to success! They are impressed and intrigued by it, they respect it, and they want to be identified with it. Success is exciting and fun — and catching.

This is as true for political movements as it is for sports teams, soft drinks, viral videos, and rock and roll bands.

To attract people to libertarianism, and to stimulate them to look closer at the ideas of liberty, be sure to share libertarian success stories and positive news about the libertarian movement.

Here are three examples of how to do this.

• An April 2015 YouGov survey found that a whopping one-in-five Americans under thirty now describe themselves as libertarians. That is an astounding increase in just the past few years.
  Drop something like this into your conversation: “And libertarian ideas are rapidly gaining acceptance. In fact, fully 20% of Americans under thirty now describe themselves as libertarians.”
  Your listeners probably had no idea libertarianism was so popular!
• Point out that the last three Republican presidential primaries have featured libertarian or libertarian-leaning candidates, each making strong libertarian points. They included a U.S. Congressman (Ron Paul, in 2008 and 2012), a popular two-term governor (Gary Johnson in 2012, former governor of New Mexico, who went on to become the Libertarian Party presidential candidate and win the largest-ever total for an LP candidate), and in the current primaries a high-profile U.S. Senator (Rand Paul, dubbed “The most interesting man in politics” by TIME magazine for his libertarian-ish proposals). That’s mainstream, real-world political success.
• Point out, when appropriate, that lots of famous people are libertarians. Share the star-power of such world-famous names as Vince Vaughn, Clint Eastwood, Penn and Teller, Drew Carey, Dave Barry, John Stossel, Judge Andrew Napolitano, and many others.
  This instantly validates libertarianism as something that’s cool, respectable, and safely non-fringey.

Again, these are just examples. Keep your eyes open for others. And when you find them, share them whenever you can. Trumpet libertarian successes.

Of course, this is not an intellectual argument for liberty. And it’s not a way to convince someone to become a libertarian.

But it might well make someone take libertarianism more seriously, more respectfully — and help them think of it as something worth looking into further.

And that is… success!