I tend to vary politically based on issue and overall favor localized deregulated economies.

I find the general homogenization in public schools disturbing and even more so given the amount of flour and sugar shoved down our children's throats in the name of cheap lunch. I find the idea of sharing a health care plan with the large majority of people who seem to think that's OK...disturbing, but it's largely not their fault.

I also did my senior thesis in agricultural economics on the regulatory obstacles to local food, which are many, and keep us from healthy raw milk and pastured meat from small farms...while allowing large corporations free rein. Food regulation should be for situations where we can't examine things ourselves, not for small local farms.

I suggest everyone interested in local food and regulation check out Everything I Want to Do is Illegal.

I'm a right-leaning Libertarian, myself. I have noticed that there seem to be more Libertarians in the Paleo community. I think it's that both Paleos and Libertarians tend to question the status quo whilst maintaining a good grasp on reality.

I also have noticed that every single vegan and most vegetarians that I have ever known were frothing liberals.

I'm an f-ing pinko (or maybe "social democrat," with a degree in economics), not that I'm spoiling for a political debate, 'cause I'm not.

I think making generalizations of political philosophy based on how much meat I eat and how bloody I like it is just as misguided as making assumptions of what a crunchy granola eater believes.

The high profile libertarian-leaners in the paleo blog community are a serious turn-off for me. (My eyes got a few extra revolutions during the health care fiasco, but again, not spoiling for a fight.) But I'm able to keep my politics very separate from my diet and exercise, and I don't need one umbrella "philosophy of everything" to govern my entire life.

In short, is there a paleo-friendly translation for "get your chocolate out of my peanut butter?"

I'm a liberal Democrat, but I think there's a few Libertarian-leaning bloggers who get lots of attention, so that could make it seem like most paleo types are Libertarian.

Becoming paleo has actually shaken my whole view of free markets. I was a libertarian economics major in college, but after studying the food system, I don't know how anyone in their right mind could agree that pure capitalism (if that exists) is a way to govern the global market for food. Whether it even should be global is another discussion entirely.

Read Raj Patel's Value of Nothing or check out this lecture for a nice dose of his humor and brilliance on the issue. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCfuwTPCmqE

If left to the devices of profit-motivated, outside the box thinking, corporate genius when it comes to the free market food system, we get....exactly what we have today. Huge efficiencies in production in terms of dollars, huge inefficiencies in terms of environmental impact. Huge profit efficiencies for corporations, huge inefficiencies for public health, health care, and overall welfare of the nation and world.

This particular system is broken and I'm curious how Milton Friedman would respond to it.

I'm not a libertarian, but I am definitely a contrarian. I think the ability to challenge conventional wisdom in any field is extremely important. I just try and challenge every piece of information that comes my way, especially so when I sense lots of people and organisations with their own interests at heart feverishly defending a point.

I think believing the entire government nutrition scheme to be almost completely backwards would incline one to see government as incapable, incompetent, dangerous and possibly corrupt (in the case of grain lobbying influence on gov nutrition recommendations and whatnot). which are values that would probably incline one towards desiring an unpowerful government (libertarianism).

I'm a paleo-socialist. I like to cooperate with my fellow tribe members. :-)

I was a libertarian vegetarian and am now a socialist omnivore.

Since the paleo diet/lifestyle is not mainstream, the only way to learn about it is to read books and blogs. This means that the people who adopt it are intellectually curious, and probably have a contrarian bent as well. Since curious people come from all walks of life, I think that paleos would run the gamut of political persuasions. It would be interesting to test this with a poll of paleos.

Researching nutrition led me to paleo/WAP led me to sustainable farming led me to Joel Salatin led me to libertarianism. The less government involved in our lives, telling us what to eat and what we can do on our own land, the better.

My politics are social democrat. Too bad that party doesn't exist in the U.S.A. Anyway political attitudes have nothing to do with nutrition.

I am conservative/libertarian and have found in my perusing message boards, that the paleo/zero carb crowd tend to lean that way and that vegetarians tend to be leftist. Virtually all veg. message boards have a section on global warming. Not so on Paleo/ZC. Very surprised at all the leftist paleos here. There's a disconnect there. I find it odd that people who can accept fact in one aspect of life continue to cling to fantasy in another--unless it's just a matter of being uninformed. I have always been a seeker of truth and have no problem rejecting any previously held agenda or paradigm if it can be proven incorrect or false.

I'm a Conservative Republican with Libertarian leanings. A big believer in personal responsibility. Let me make my own decisions and I will deal with the consequences of those decisions, good or bad. I believe that is the essence of freedom. I didn't vote for Ron Paul in the presidential primary but I do vote for him in the congressional elections as my representative.

Yes, many paleos are pro-freedom, especially the big bloggers. Check out this list of prominent paleo-libertarians. And yes, it is definitely easier to abandon the conventional wisdom once you've already done it in economics and politics. Austro-libertarianism FTW!

While I typically hate this argument, I believe our neolithic ancestors were not of a political party nor cared about politics. They were too busy focusing on hunting, caring for families, shelter, etc. Seems I'm falling into this category more and more...

Controversial, but maybe (just a thought) paleo diet leads to clearer thought, leads to libertarianism? I've suggested, half in jest, that we'll never fix our politics until we fix our blood sugar.

I think you are on to something.

I'm a conservative Republican... but sympathetic to Libertarians. My main complaint is that they tend to throw the baby out with the bong-water, so to speak. I'm definitely down with the free markets, limited government, and individual freedom. Not so much when libertarians argue that "freedom" means all the sex and drugs you want. This comes too close to what Plato described as "the city of pigs."

I think that compared to the massive control the government has over our lives today, Abe Lincoln and James Madison are pretty "libertarian"--but without equating liberty with amoral hedonism.

I'm not interested in debating politics while looking for dietary advice, but for the record, I'm a bleeding-heart liberal treehugger. The political compass places me slightly to the left of Ghandi.

I'd say I'm a libertarian liberal, if that makes any sense: the former because much government meddling is completely unnecessary and the latter because some lack of the former often leads to complete failure of the social contract; witness Thursday's market blow-up which was completely engineered by Wall St to scare the bejesus out of the Feds and retail investors (if there are any of those left). In other words, some regulation is essential: when it comes to the economy, our health, and well-being, I want someone in charge with the power to prosecute and punish.

I don't want gov't taking over my personal responsibility, on the other hand. I can take care of myself. Going primal really reinforced the notion that we're all being lied to, to a greater or lesser extent, by those who have a vested interest in retaining power and/or wealth, and usually both.

National US food policy was ruined by Earl Butz in the early 1970s (under Nixon). Both parties earn a big FAIL on this as they both perpetuate the bloat and poison of Big Ag. USDA and FDA have both lost their way; they're supposed to protect us from bad food, but they perpetuate the food-pyramid nonsense which only benefits Big Ag and aren't interested in regulation that benefits the rest of us.

I believe the ruling class has conspired to feed us false information about nutrition, national politics and world events.

They don't care about us other than how they can exploit us for their own materialistic gain.

The push in the late 60's and early 70's to demonize saturated fat was a calculated effort by the multi-national agricultural industries and the people who profit from them to induce the population to consume ungodly amounts of cheap manufactured grains, sugars and highly processed and profitable food like substances. They knew very well such a scheme would make us morbidly obese and chronically ill. Enter Big Pharma, medicine and insurance to scoop up even more dollars at the expense of our misery.

P.S. War is a racket, JFK was not assassinated by a lone gunman, I have my doubts about the moon landings and 9/11 was an orchestrated inside job. You can take that to the bank.

I used to vote Green (for lack of a decent Canadian trout supremacist party) until they came out in support of a handgun ban in cities and in support of Canada`s firearms registry.

I suppose that if you locked up the Libertarians, Greens, anarchists, and progressives up in a room and didn't let them out until they'd hammered out a common party platform you might get something approaching my politics.