Anti-politics

[TackleTheWorld]

Welcome Auntie

When you begin by defining your terms we know you are way too honest to be involved politics.

[Russell Kanning]

that is true .... can you imagine guys wanting to define terms and be clear during a debate .... except bush .. he has to explain strategery

[J’raxis 270145]

When you begin by defining your terms we know you are way too honest to be involved politics.

Dunno about that... I wouldn't consider that politician who tried to define what is means to be particular honest...

[Kat Kanning]

LOL 

[MaineShark]

But 'politics' today is an obvious stinking fraud..dominated by the cho$en few 'viable Republicrat candidates' whose stinking 'ideas' have been deemed as no threat to the exi$ting, stinking Republicrat order!.. 

But if we don't support the Republicrats, then the dreaded Demoblicans will take over!

Joe

[dalebert]

Stefan is not succinct, but if you can make the time, this is a great video to watch. In it, he suggests the difficult things we really need to do to achieve personal freedom.

[youtube=425,350]0z-fhCFkISM[/youtube]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0z-fhCFkISM

He's WAY more long-winded than he needs to be but to summarize, he suggests that we must have the courage and conviction to challenge our "friends", those who believe in aggressive government, by tacking on two very crucial words: "against me". The idea is to drive the point home that they are advocating violence for beliefs. An example he gives is you're against the Iraq war while your friend is for it. Tell your friend that you don't think they should be shot for supporting the Iraq war. They should scoff at this as if it were obvious. Then ask your friend if you choose not to personally support the Iraq war by not paying taxes, do they believe you should be shot for it. Do you advocate violence "against me" in response to my beliefs? Do they advocate locking you in a prison of violence and "anal rape" for your beliefs? If they do, then accept the reality that they are not your friend. Apply the principle of social ostracism to violent people right now.

It's a powerful video.

[Insurgent]

Stefan is not succinct, but if you can make the time, this is a great video to watch. In it, he suggests the difficult things we really need to do to achieve personal freedom.

[youtube=425,350]0z-fhCFkISM[/youtube]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0z-fhCFkISM

He's WAY more long-winded than he needs to be but to summarize, he suggests that we must have the courage and conviction to challenge our "friends", those who believe in aggressive government, by tacking on two very crucial words: "against me". The idea is to drive the point home that they are advocating violence for beliefs. An example he gives is you're against the Iraq war while your friend is for it. Tell your friend that you don't think they should be shot for supporting the Iraq war. They should scoff at this as if it were obvious. Then ask your friend if you choose not to personally support the Iraq war by not paying taxes, do they believe you should be shot for it. Do you advocate violence "against me" in response to my beliefs? Do they advocate locking you in a prison of violence and "anal rape" for your beliefs? If they do, then accept the reality that they are not your friend. Apply the principle of social ostracism to violent people right now.

It's a powerful video.

This is possibly the most liberating way that I have ever heard freedom explained. It really does come down to that simple question. Since I've moved to NH, it's not so much an issue with my friends, but let's see if I have the integrity to ask it of my family...

[Vitruvian]

This is possibly the most liberating way that I have ever heard freedom explained. It really does come down to that simple question. Since I've moved to NH, it's not so much an issue with my friends, but let's see if I have the integrity to ask it of my family...

Same here.  I have only scratched the surface of this question with my parents.  I hope I have the courage to ask the rest of my family.

[Russell Kanning]

I agree in many ways ... you do find out who your friends are when they choose the thugs side against you .... but I don't know if you have to cut them out of your life. You just do realize that they are on the other side.

[dalebert]

It does kind of soften the message though, don't you think? I mean, if someone advocates violence against you for exercising your non-violent beliefs, and you just kind of hang with them... I think the idea is to make sure they know the blood is on THEIR hands. We all love to delegate the violence to someone else, politicians, police, military, but until people take personal responsibility for all the violence out there, the buck will keep getting passed and nothing will change. We'll all feel nice and cozy and moral while others do our dirty work for us.

[Russell Kanning]

It is interesting when you make it concrete and personal.

[dysurian]

I agree in many ways ... you do find out who your friends are when they choose the thugs side against you .... but I don't know if you have to cut them out of your life. You just do realize that they are on the other side.

I feel ya' here, but I think there's something else important in what Stefan has to say in his podcasts and videos. If our minarchist friends won't back down from their positions there are two possibilities. One is that they openly or secretly do want to be able to use force of violence to get what they want out of us and others. If this is the case, they're dangerous, and not worth associating with. Anybody who genuinely wants me imprisoned or shot for what I believe in has no place in my good graces. The other (far more likely) possibility is that they do not want to advocate the use of force, but simply can't see a way around its use for certain things. These people are more interested in non-aggression because of its efficiency and usefulness, while I'd say most of us anarchist types take it to it's logical conclusion as a moral theory. They just need to be helped to the logical conclusions of the theory. Morality isn't a tool to get society to look how you want it to, and I think that's the minarchist's hope. Unfortunately, that's the same methodology every government throughout history has used to confuse and conflate people's rational understanding of morality.

As a side note, Stefan also mentions a number of interesting arguments we can make to minarchists to "bring them over to the light side." This is in his podcast number 256 - Blaming the Citizens for the State. He makes the basic argument that if you think you can take down a powerful, entrenched, self-perpetuating leviathan like the US government from "working inside the system," that maybe you should start a little smaller first. If you can successfully infiltrate the mafia and convince them to stop being so damned violent and manage to take them down from the inside, then maybe you have a shot at the state, which will be about a million times harder than the mafia. Point is, you're never going to even get anywhere with the mafia.

This is what eventually (and very recently) turned me away from support of Ron Paul. I had been cornered into realizing that even if he was elected, that it would just be me imposing Ron Paul on people who may or may not want him. I was satisfied with this possibility, as long as promoting the Ron Paul campaign was also helping promote liberty in general. What I didn't think of until hearing freedomain radio podcast number 256 is that since government is like the mafia, the government would deal with Ron Paul like any violent Don would. If elected (or possibly even before elected) they would rub him out. Initially this seemed like a far-fetched idea to me, but there is so much on the line for so many people in government. So much power, so much money, so much to be had that anybody threatening it in any real way would be killed and the machine would just roll on a little faster toward police state so a "hiccup" like that didn't happen again. I came to realize that if that happened my support of Ron Paul for president (through writing, donations, word of mouth, buying shirts for relatives...everything) would implicate me. If he is harmed in any way there is a small portion of responsibility that falls in a direct line on my shoulders for helping thrust him up into the blades that chop him to bits. This possibility has had more of an effect on me than any other reasoning for or against supporting Ron Paul for president. My support of him really can put blood on my hands, even if he won't be the one using aggressive force, because it quite literally could be his blood.

It's scary to think of how easy it can be to commit or participate in violence if you're not EXTREMELY careful. I know for my part that I'll feel just terrible if anything bad happens to Ron because of my part in supporting his campaign.

[John Edward Mercier]

I still don't comprehend people as expressing themselves as anarchists, then only seeing voluntary order as the lone possible outcome. Its like suggesting the square root of one is one... but the answer is incomplete.

[Lloyd Danforth]

I agree in many ways ... you do find out who your friends are when they choose the thugs side against you .... but I don't know if you have to cut them out of your life. You just do realize that they are on the other side.

I feel ya' here, but I think there's something else important in what Stefan has to say in his podcasts and videos. If our minarchist friends won't back down from their positions there are two possibilities. One is that they openly or secretly do want to be able to use force of violence to get what they want out of us and others. If this is the case, they're dangerous, and not worth associating with. Anybody who genuinely wants me imprisoned or shot for what I believe in has no place in my good graces. The other (far more likely) possibility is that they do not want to advocate the use of force, but simply can't see a way around its use for certain things. These people are more interested in non-aggression because of its efficiency and usefulness, while I'd say most of us anarchist types take it to it's logical conclusion as a moral theory. They just need to be helped to the logical conclusions of the theory. Morality isn't a tool to get society to look how you want it to, and I think that's the minarchist's hope. Unfortunately, that's the same methodology every government throughout history has used to confuse and conflate people's rational understanding of morality.

As a side note, Stefan also mentions a number of interesting arguments we can make to minarchists to "bring them over to the light side." This is in his podcast number 256 - Blaming the Citizens for the State. He makes the basic argument that if you think you can take down a powerful, entrenched, self-perpetuating leviathan like the US government from "working inside the system," that maybe you should start a little smaller first. If you can successfully infiltrate the mafia and convince them to stop being so damned violent and manage to take them down from the inside, then maybe you have a shot at the state, which will be about a million times harder than the mafia. Point is, you're never going to even get anywhere with the mafia.

This is what eventually (and very recently) turned me away from support of Ron Paul. I had been cornered into realizing that even if he was elected, that it would just be me imposing Ron Paul on people who may or may not want him. I was satisfied with this possibility, as long as promoting the Ron Paul campaign was also helping promote liberty in general. What I didn't think of until hearing freedomain radio podcast number 256 is that since government is like the mafia, the government would deal with Ron Paul like any violent Don would. If elected (or possibly even before elected) they would rub him out. Initially this seemed like a far-fetched idea to me, but there is so much on the line for so many people in government. So much power, so much money, so much to be had that anybody threatening it in any real way would be killed and the machine would just roll on a little faster toward police state so a "hiccup" like that didn't happen again. I came to realize that if that happened my support of Ron Paul for president (through writing, donations, word of mouth, buying shirts for relatives...everything) would implicate me. If he is harmed in any way there is a small portion of responsibility that falls in a direct line on my shoulders for helping thrust him up into the blades that chop him to bits. This possibility has had more of an effect on me than any other reasoning for or against supporting Ron Paul for president. My support of him really can put blood on my hands, even if he won't be the one using aggressive force, because it quite literally could be his blood.

It's scary to think of how easy it can be to commit or participate in violence if you're not EXTREMELY careful. I know for my part that I'll feel just terrible if anything bad happens to Ron because of my part in supporting his campaign.

If you're supporting RP aren't you one of the guys in sentence two(and, possibly, sentence three) of your first paragraph?

[dysurian]

If you're supporting RP aren't you one of the guys in sentence two(and, possibly, sentence three) of your first paragraph?

I was to a certain extent, but I'm no longer supporting RP (sentence 1 of paragraph 3 in my post). I had been supporting Ron Paul from a basically exploitative position of "it's good exposure for the liberty movement in general." I was willing to ignore that I'd have to vote a man into power over others, as long as it meant millions of people heard about the philosophy of freedom. That is, I was willing to ignore that until I realized that his campaign is either doomed to fail, or doomed to get him killed.

I still don't comprehend people as expressing themselves as anarchists, then only seeing voluntary order as the lone possible outcome. Its like suggesting the square root of one is one... but the answer is incomplete.

For my part, the reason I think this way is because voluntary interaction is the only moral interaction. Non-initiation of force isn't just another "position" like "drugs 'r' bad" or "social programs are good." It's not positional, but fully rational and can be argued as a system of ethics from first principals. Here's an article on Lew Rockwell explaining how basic libertarian-style ethics are arrived at from first principals and reason alone. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/molyneux7.html It's by Stefan Molyneux...I hate to keep using him as an example, because it doesn't really matter who says it as long as it's verifiable as true, but his examples are just so clear, in my opinion.

You can't force freedom on anybody, otherwise they won't realize it's freedom. They'll just think it's another "position" and might discard it tomorrow just as easily as they discarded their current position as a socialist or neo-con. In addition to that, forcing freedom on other people would be a contradiction, and I consider it damaging to my integrity. This isn't to say that I want to ride off on some moral high horse every time someone disagrees with me, but I'm certainly not going to betray my principals because to do so, I would have to lie to myself, and people lying to themselves is what got us in this whole big mess (f-ed up government, f-ed up families, f-ed up human interactions) in the first place.