The question, of course, is the same as it has always been: how does the message of liberty reach and convince that many people? You, for example: you are under the impression that you already live in a free country. The government perpetrates a few minor inconveniences on you, but you're convinced that it's your duty to put up with them (because they were perpetrated by what you consider to be duly-elected politicians), and, within reason, with whatever other indignities the politicians invent (provided, of course, that they're your particular brand of politicians, rather than the other kind), and that in addition to your tax money, you should support the government in other ways as well--for example, cheering on government troops in combat regardless of who or why they're fighting. You already think you're a liberty advocate, and you dismiss anyone who says you're not as a nutcase. How can libertarians possibly wake up people like you?
You seem to assume quite a bit about me. Actually, it seems that you are more interested in expressing your opinion than in listening to someone else's. Most of the above has been discussed previously and you've gotten most of it wrong.
The answer, I think, is not reasoned argument, but simple naked force. Most existing liberty advocates (including me) didn't get this way because one day we decided to do a little careful research into the history and the writings of the founding fathers and the great libertarian philosophers. We got this way because we found ourselves legally coerced into or out of something, and it didn't seem fair to us. (All humans have an innate sense of what's fair and what's not, that is entirely independent of custom, law, or tradition.) So we started thinking and reading and researching about what it ought to be fair for government to be able to do, and along the way we all found horrifying, appalling things that this government and others had done not because they had any right to, but simply because nobody stopped them.
Sounds to me like you simply want to get back at the government for something that may or may not have happened to you in the past. More like revenge than the pursuit of liberty.
I think you're the same as we used to be. For me, it was Brady II in November 1998. For you, I don't know. For now, whenever the government decides to claim it has a right to something of yours--your money, your guns, your children, your land, your car, your house, your privacy, whatever--you say to yourself, "Well, okay, they're the government; I suppose they can handle it better than I can--and besides, it's free, right?" But eventually the government will get around to claiming rights and privileges from you that even you think are unfair, and you'll begin looking around and finding out that it's not right, the government can not handle it better than you can, it's not free, and that in fact the only real difference between you and the government is that you have to do what the government says, while the government can do anything it wants because it can legally kill people.
You've stated most of this before and again you assume quite a bit and again you're wrong.
I do believe that we have found one thing that we agree on though. I think that we can agree that we disagree and probably always will.
