AF makes a splash at Chicago literary event

For the second year in a row, visitors to Chicago’s Printers Row Lit Fest had the chance to learn about free markets, individual liberty, and limited government. Among the many Baby-Boomer communist booksellers that line the street during the annual weekend festival, AF’s Chicago leadership team stood proudly, distributing copies of F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, Leonard Reed’s “I, Pencil,” and Frederic Bastiat’s masterpiece, The Law.

In addition to chatting with passersby about current events and the philosophy of freedom, AF also offered visitors a chance to discover where they landed on the World’s Smallest Political Quiz. After taking ten questions, visitors could be placed in one of five distinct quadrants: libertarian, conservative, liberal, centrist, and statist. Although most landed in the left-liberal quadrant, many were surprised to land in the libertarian area given that they either were unfamiliar with the word or had a misunderstanding of it.

AFF-Chicago committee member John Yackley provided an overview of the results at the end of the second day of the festival. AF color-coded stickers by quiz-takers’ guesstimated ages: red is Millennials (and younger), green is Gen Xers, yellow is Baby Boomers, and blue represents members of the “Greatest Generation” (senior citizens).

Watch a video of the results here.

You’ll notice most Boomers end up in the left-liberal quadrant, while younger folk tend to be left-liberal to libertarian.

AF gathered nearly 100 email addresses at the festival and gave away dozens of copies of Hayek and Bastiat’s work to interested young people. Many books came courtesy of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, so our thanks go to them for their support.

AF expects to appear again next year at the festival to open more minds to the ideas of freedom.

For more information on AF’s Chicago chapter, join our Facebook page.