Good bye, Dave Nolan

I managed to do a blog for Orange Punch and an edit for the Register, but it has been difficult coming to terms with the death of Dave Nolan, founder of the Libertarian Party. Dave and his wife Elizabeth lived in Orange County for most of the 1990s, through 2006 or so I guess, and I got to know him a bit better as a person than as a personage. We even tried a radio talk show together, and while we thought we had a pretty good show going, it didn't catch on quickly enough for it not to be a money-losing proposition. Burt we each learned a fair amount about how the other thought. David was plenty smart -- you don't get a degree from MIT if you're not -- and an unusually principled hard-core libertarian. Yet when looking at the real world he was a realist, hardly ever seeking the ideological answer to a question (Lord, I get tired of some of our Orange Punch blog commenters who are so cocksure their pat ideological attitude means there's no need for further discussion) or being content with an easy answer. That's probably one of the reasons why we got along although I never joined the LP and remain a non-voter to the core.

I suppose that to some people Dave might have seemed a little remote, and outwardly he wasn't necessarily one of the warmest of human beings. But he was crazy about Elizabeth and passionate about liberty, and deep down a lot more warm-and-fuzzy than he let on. In founding the LP and devising/publicizing the Nolan Chart he made signal contributions to the cause of liberty. He will be sorely missed, byt many more people than I, but I will miss him greatly.