Woz: This is not my America

Interesting insight. I'm thinking you're saying that people who choose a political career are a self-selected sample of people who believe government is an effective tool.

But what if there are people who are alarmed at the growth of government power, and decide to pursue a political career because they want to make stopping it their life's work? Your line of reasoning would say -- "but such people would believe that government is ineffective, and wouldn't choose a political career as the most effective way to implement the changes they believe are needed."

The problem is that I don't buy it. I also don't buy that people who've already chosen political careers will never switch their views, if the government gets repressive enough.

Years ago, I worked for a company that sublet a room in our office to a friend of the boss's, with whom I had a number of long and wide-ranging conversations. In one of those discussions, he showed me an article he'd just read, about a then-recent survey of US high school students in which some 85% of them believed it was illegal to start a third party in the US political system.

I thought that statistic was disturbing enough, until I got to the article's main point: asking whether that was due to a failure of the American educational system, or a frighteningly subtle success of something else?

Second point: Even if your comment's true, you didn't answer the question -- is there a reason that "libertarian views have never had influence ever," or is it just a coincidence?