Libertarian Club Unites Leftists And Rightists

People who change political affiliations as regularly as GM changes car models might consider the Radical Libertarian Alliance (RLA), a new version of an old club, which met yesterday afternoon.

The RLA- the tentative name of a two-year-old study group in libertarian philosophy- hopes to unite followers of Ayn Rand and supporters of Noam Chomsky under a libertarian banner.

The 35 students who attended yesterday's meeting were mostly freshmen and included members of SDS and YAF.

Commenting on the diverse constituency of the group, Mark Frazier '74, chairman of the meeting, said, "It'll go wherever the individuals in it decide to make their part of it go. They are a group of libertarians on the Left and Right who are going to be working in ways they choose to further the values they have."

Dean Ahmed '70 spoke at yesterday's meeting on Left and Right variations of libertarianism. In the discussion that followed, students debated the relative advantages of revolutionary and nonrevolutionary tactics, and the problems of a coalition of the Left and Right.

Do Your Thing

After the discussion, students interested in tax resistance, free schools, the media, and other subjects arranged to meet in separate groups.

Previously called the Harvard-Radcliffe Association for Rational individualism, the group for the past two years has consisted largely of ten graduate students studying libertarian philosophy, especially Ayn Rand's.

Like the Society for Individual Liberty (SIL- a split-off from YAF-RLA will include anarchists, objectivists, and other libertarians. SIL does not have a local Harvard chapter.