Said Better, Elsewhere.

Instapundit links to a discussion at Hit and Run about Libertarians (big "L") and why they don't achieve much as a party. The pertinent quote, from a comment to the post:

The fact is, libertarians aren't generally joiners. Yet to influence people, you have to go to their meetings, bring a snack, raise funds for them, and listen to their ideas before they'll listen to yours. Politics is about people, after all, and people don't often think in policy paper terms. If you want to change minds you have to engage others in a positive way.

At the Gunblogger Rendezvous I was discussing this topic with Joe Huffman and paraphrased one of my favorite quotes. When I got back to Tucson, I dug it up and emailed it to him. He made it his "quote of the day" for that day. Here it is, again:

"It stands to reason that self-righteous, inflexible, single-minded, authoritarian true believers are politically organized. Open-minded, flexible, complex, ambiguous, anti-authoritarian people would just as soon be left to mind their own fucking business." -- R.U. Sirius in How To Mutate and Take Over The World