A reader writes:

"Anthony, I very much enjoyed ['Reaching Out to the Left'] and could relate to it. I came from the right, even having been a John Bircher in the mid 70's through early 80's until Reagan opened my eyes about the nature of gov't and party politics. However, I still maintained demons (blind spots as you politely called them) for many years until along came one George W. Bush. Although my last vote republican or democrat for President was Reagan in 1980' I still held out some illusional hope that the so-called conservatives would gain the day and so forth and so on and we'd return to 1787' so to speak. I now realize 1787' wasn't such a good year afterall.

"Bush 2 killed that ideal once and for all and as such my demons become more and more exorcised and thus I grew more and more anti-state moving towards an 18th century classical liberal tradition and even for the first time in my life became truly antiwar in the non-agression principle tradition with much thanks to LRC and AntiWar.com for giving me the tools to understand these ideals. And many of you pieces played a role as well. . . .

"As such, in talking with people about various issues, I tend to find so-called liberals more open to discussion verses so-called conservatives of political/social ideas from the classical liberal perspective so your comments just re-enforced what I've already been observing. The Non Aggression principle for me has been a great point of opening the door because it establishes me separate from the perceived view of libertarians as being rightwingers who want to smoke dope and chase whores!

"Your thoughts on this issue seem to confirm similar things I've heard from Justin Raimondo at Antiwar to some of the folks over at Counterpunch as well as other lesser known sites. Even LRC promotes the idea of a transpartisanism when it comes to issues of statist control and power and your piece again confirms this.

"Obama's betrayal of the true left should open more and more doors for broader discussions of an anti-statist nature and your ideas literally bullseye this very growing fact. Thanks for speaking on it and keep up the voice because from where I stand, it's dead on the money."