David Nolan

David Fraser Nolan (; November 23, 1943 – November 21, 2010 ) was an American activist and politician. He was one of the founders of the Libertarian Party of the United States, having hosted the meeting in 1971 at which the Party was founded. Nolan subsequently served the party in a number of roles including National Committee Chair, editor of the party newsletter, Chair of the By-laws Committee, Chair of the Judicial Committee, and Chair of the Platform Committee.

David Fraser Nolan is also known as the inventor of the Nolan Chart, an attempt to improve on the left versus right political taxonomy by separating the issues of economic freedom and social freedom and presenting them on a two-dimensional plane instead of the traditional line. Decades after its introduction, it continues to be popular, with millions of copies having been distributed, including by the group Advocates for Self-Government as the "World's Smallest Political Quiz".

Early life and education Nolan was born on November 23, 1943, in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Maryland. During high school, he was influenced by Ayn Rand's objectivism and Robert A. Heinlein's libertarianism. He enrolled at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating with a BS in political science in 1965. While at MIT, he helped in founding M.I.T. Students for Goldwater in 1964, promoting the Republican presidential candidacy of Senator Barry Goldwater.

Nolan believed that in August 1971, President Richard Nixon's imposition of wage and price controls and closing the foreign gold window along with his belief that the Vietnam War was both ill-considered and illegal, 4.7% of the total.

In the last few years of his life, especially after much of the Libertarian Party's platform was deleted in an organized "no confidence" effort by "reformers" in 2006, Nolan was sharply critical of the direction the party had taken, accusing party leaders of abandoning its radical roots and being "absorbed with minutia" and too focused on winning elections. "They're afraid to say anything that might scare people, because that might keep people from voting for them," he told Lew Rockwell in a December 2008 radio interview. "It's become a very timid organization in the last six or eight years."

In 2009, Nolan publicly endorsed the Free State Project, an attempt to move 20,000 Libertarians to New Hampshire to experience "Liberty in their Lifetimes".

Nolan died of a stroke in Tucson, Arizona, on November 21, 2010.