1. Be open, friendly and courteous in presenting your ideas. Avoid any taint of fanaticism or infallibility. Just because other people disagree with you, don’t put them down as stupid or evil. Libertarian ideas are radical and shocking when first encountered. It takes most people some time to digest them.

2. Is a friend studying a specific subject – political science, economics, psychology? Recommend a book giving a libertarian perspective on… [editor's note: not finished]

3. If you have read a favorable review of a libertarian book, especially if in a professional journal, have copies xeroxed and distribute them to friends who might be interested in the review professionally.

4. Write a letter a week to some newspaper giving a libertarian viewpoint on some public issue. It will usually be published if short, topical and clearly not “cranky”. Keep it practical and to the point.

5. College libraries usually respond to faculty requests for new acquisitions. Regularly request libertarian titles, if you are on the faculty, or ask a friendly faculty member to do so, if you are a student.

6. Have you been assigned a term paper? Choose a topic that will allow you to read in libertarian sources, and develop a libertarian analysis of the topic.

7. Many libertarian books are now available in paperback editions. Give your local bookstore a list of titles and suggest he stock them. To encourage him, give him the publisher’s catalogue.

8. Remember Libertarians don’t have all the answers! You can learn by listening to others.

9. Most colleges have literary societies. If so inclined, join the society. You can then participate in its discussions, play a role in selecting guest speakers, and even contribute poems, short stories and critical reviews to its journal. Literary people are usually very sensitive to the need for true liberty and are a good audience for libertarian ideas.

10. In many colleges, the newspaper is not fully utilized by the student body. Editors are usually short of copy and welcome contributions of material. Send a review of your favorite libertarian book or movie or play. Do an analysis of some local problem from a libertarian perspective. Better yet, join the staff. You are bound to be promoted over a four year period.

11. Have you found a few sympathetic souls who are interested in further study of libertarian ideas? Form a campus study club. Work up a guest speakers’ program and apply for student activity funds.

12. Have you ever recommended a book to your teacher? Why not? He doesn’t hesitate to recommend them to you! Tell him you would like to discuss it with him after he has read it. Flattery will get you everywhere!

13. The trustees of most colleges usually read the student newspaper. Any strongly worded criticism is likely to catch their attention – and cause questions to be asked. If the economics department excludes free-market texts from its reading lists, ask why? Remember the national furor created in the Fifties by Bill Buckley’s God and Man at Yale?

14. A libertarian is not a book burner or witch hunter. But he is certainly entitled to know why a political science department ignores individualist anarchism in courses on political theory. Or Austrian economics in courses on economic theory. Or the contributions of Tucker, Warren, Spooner, Nock and Chodorov to American intellectual history. A letter of inquiry to the professor or department involved could change things.

15. Does your student government have a referendum procedure? Make imaginative use of it to spread libertarian ideas. Call for the abolition of the ROTC or compulsory student activity fees.

16. Is your college bookstore a local monopoly with high monopolistic prices? Open up a student cooperative bookstore; or sponsor a free-market used book exchange. And explain why you are doing it!

17. Is your college supposedly a “private institution”? Check it out. The likelihood is that it enjoys some government privilege or subsidy. And what price does it pay for this governmental support? Does it have its books audited by the State? Is it required to submit reports to the HEW on the number of women and ethnic minority members on its faculty? Do its courses and readings have to be submitted for State inspection? Are its records, or your personal records, open to inspection by government agencies? Prepare a report on the parameters of “freedom” at your college or university.

18. Who rules your university? Prepare a detailed report on the trustees and officers of your university. The corporate, governmental and personal relationships are frequently very interesting. At one local center of learning that we know, two trustees were forced to resign when a rather intiniate business and personal relationship between them, the local sheriff and the “Mafia” was revealed as part of a student researched obituary notice in the campus paper. Elsewhere the trustees were involved in conflicts of interest in awarding construction contracts.

19. Do you know what is college policy, and practice, regarding student academic and medical records? Who has access, what is recorded, how long are the records kept? This is especially important if medical or psychological records are kept on students, as rather damaging information may appear in government records at a later time. Some schools in the Sixties kept records of campus political activities also. A civil libertarian might attract support by focusing on this issue.

20. Prepare alternate reading lists for required courses. Distribute them to all “captive” audiences.

21. Student “leaders” are frequently power freaks and even outright grafters. Quietly keep track of their votes, attendance at official meetings, and the number and costs of “official excursions”. A voter profile of the “Big Men” on campus might provide some laughs at the next student election.

22. Buy a subscription to your favorite libertarian journal and give a free subscription as a gift to your local library.

23. Buy and display libertarian posters. They are always an excellent way to start a political conversation.

24. Get yourself a libertarian calendar and celebrate libertarian anniversaries. Hold a birthday party for Max Stirner (Oct. 25) Or Ludwig von Mises (Sept. 29) and give your guests some literature by the guest of honor. On election eve, Nov. 5, 1973, Britons will be celebrating Guy Fawkes failure to blow up Parliament in 1606. We could at least honor him for trying! Or what about a beer blast on Dec. 5 – the day Prohibition ended in 1933. On Dec. 16, 1973 we ought to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

25. Does your college have a film society? If so, ask them to show films which would serve as a stimulus for discussion of libertarian viewpoints. If not, why don’t you form a film group and use it for libertarian purposes.

26. Many colleges have student-run lecture series, often with large sums to finance guests speakers. Try to get involved with the speakers bureau and promote the invitation of a libertarian guest lecturer.

27. If a guest lecturer is distinctly anti-libertarian, a socialist or behavioralist, for instance, study his published opinions beforehand, and prepare questions for him that will reveal the implications of his errors to the audience.

28. Try to establish a libertarian literature table or reading room on campus or nearby. Even if a student is not immediately receptive to your ideas, you will have made a personal contact that could in time mature into further conversation and thought.

29. Every season there is some issue that seems to arise and receive wide public discussion - the environmental crisis, the crisis of the family, crime, drugs, Watergate. Plan a public debate on the issue, with a libertarian among the speakers, and libertarian pamphlets available for distribution. Have a series of discussions. Many young people were initially attracted to libertarian ideas by a wide distribution of our ideas on the draft.