Not so Independent

http://praxeology.net/unblog07-06.htm#01

Well much like Constitution Day each year I like to remind people what is we are celebrating and encourage them to read the Declaration of Independence (and the Constitution on its day).

Most ususally laugh and say whatever. They are more interested in fireworks. A definite sign of the times.

and that as a free and independent state, we have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.

However, no state may of right do any of these things, although if I read the platform correctly, RNH would not have a tax; however, I’m not sure whether I read it correctly ….it may be that it just would not have an income tax, but might still have some other form of coercive taxation.

Unfortunately, I found the explanation of why the feds would not attack RNH to be unpersuasive. They would attack because it would take away some of their power, and because other states might follow the example.

Also, would RNH initiate violence against any other company or cooperative which provides the same services as RNH within New Hampshire?

Of course, this is a fantasy, since there aren’t enough libertarians to take over NH even if they did all move there.

“Quit paying income taxes?
Quit collecting state sales tax?
Quit withholding taxes from your employees’ paychecks?”

Yes, because, y’know, tax evasion has been SO successful in turning voters against taxation and abolishing the tax system.

Oh, wait… the voters despise tax dodgers. I forgot about that.

Whoops.

Paulie

You cannot even start a revolution. How the hell would you ever get two or more people to go the same direction or follow orders? Don’t anarchists believe in the total absence of law and order? The only way one can maintain order in any military operation or militia is by enforcing order which means drastic measures for those that disobey orders they may not want to follow.

What a mental picture I have of a bunch of anarchists trying to even form a committee to discuss a revolution to dismantle all forms of government. Nothing would be accomplished because there would be no Robert’s Rules of Order to follow. Anarchists, by their very definition, would have to reject any order. How pitiful your movement is. You are no threat or danger to anyone.

Your positions are so ridiculous that I wonder why I even allowed you to piss me off in the past. Once I used my Georgia peanut brain I realized your belief is the epitome of stupidity. If I get it, so does everyone.

Julian writes: Anarchists, by their very definition, would have to reject any order. How pitiful your movement is. You are no threat or danger to anyone.

So there, Paulie. Everybody knows that anarchists all talk at once and everyone knows that you can’t have a viable movement unless you are threatening and dangerous. That is why Bush is so popular – he’s dangerous and threatening.

And everyone knows the Declaration of Independence is just a piece of paper – forget about what that old rag says about independent states. Secession must be nipped in the bud by people who are threatening and dangerous.

For Independence day I am going to pay extra sales tax on everything I buy because voters love taxes. Plus I decided to rewrite the Bill of Rights to reflect a more pragmatic approach to doing real politics.

Later, maybe I’ll go out and threaten some people.

Yes, because, y’know, tax evasion has been SO successful in turning voters against taxation and abolishing the tax system.

Convincing voters is not the only way to abolsih the tax system. I’m with Ian on that one.

Julian

American History 101 or better, elementary school lesson #3, second grade; the war for states rights or right to secession was known as (take your pick):

Civil War
War Between the States
War for States Rights
War of Northern Aggression

Most of those propaganda books call it the civil war, although logically that would mean the south wanted to take over the north, which of course it didn’t. Thus the last three suggested names would be more accurate.

Do you really believe an anarchist state is possible?

Of course not. An anarchist area is.

It seems “anarchist state” or anarchist government is an oxymoron considering anarchy is an absence of government, any type of government period.

Gold star for Julian.

I believe you are a flame baiter and cannot possibly believe or even support some of your wild ass ideas.

Wrong.

Don’t anarchists believe in the total absence of law and order?

No. I don’t equate law and order with monopoly government.

The only way one can maintain order in any military operation or militia is by enforcing order which means drastic measures for those that disobey orders they may not want to follow.

Not a problem, as long as those individuals willingly subjected themselves to those rules in the first place and are allowed to leave the organization whenever they want.

Nothing would be accomplished because there would be no Robert’s Rules of Order to follow.

Why not? If Robert’s rules were voluntarily adopted by a body in which membership is voluntary, they would be perfectly fine.

Anarchists, by their very definition, would have to reject any order.

That would be your definition, not ours.

Tom B: I fully agree with #13. Can we form this as a concensus plank in the new LP platform in 2008?

Tim,

Turn that energy into figuring out how we do right by our 2006 candidates. Nobody can change it now.

Did you mean to pose this in this thread? It doesn’t seem to fit.

What are *you* gonna do to make the 2006 elections better?

Not vote.

I’m on my 5 day maintennce dose of chemo nd it’s kicking my ass. :(

My wishes on a full and speedy recovery.

“Give me liberty or give me death” run through the LRC pragmatist patrol would become “Give me liberty… uh… PRETTY PLEASE?”

When less than 1% of Americans even VOTE for liberty, how many would actually fight for it?

*sigh* Stuart, bear in mind that sarcasm is not always recognized in speech, much less in text. Too many Libertarians would read that and rush out screaming about the statist conspiracy to destroy the LP through its tool, the LRC…

Seriously, man, it’s not the horror you’re acting like it is.

I don’t think it’s a horror.

A) It removes the false hope that real liberty can be achieved through a political party.

B) By making the LP into, basically, a redundant, retarded, inbred cousin of the NSGOP, it helps to split the Republikkkan vote.

So, my best wishes to the LRC, the RLC, and all other rearangements of those three letters.

(2) It makes anti-tax activists in general look like nothing more than tax dodgers.,/i>

(3) It doesn’t call attention to the unjust tax law, but instead to the person trying to evade it.

It does both (if done publically).

test

Chris: I deny the concept of “personal independence”. Liberty must be for all, else it is for none.

The only way to win “personal independence” is to amass enough personal power to place yourself above the law. Otherwise you are dependent on your neighbors to recognize your continued right to exist; you are dependent upon the courts to recognize your rights to contract, to property, and to the profit of your own labor; you are dependent upon the army and police forces to stop those who would take your rights, your property and your life from you. If you are wise you will do everything you can to defend yourself, but the average person does not have the capacity to defend his or her freedom by himself or herself. Numbers will tell.

I do not seek personal independence. I seek personal FREEDOM- for myself and every other American- by participating in the political process and getting people who represent my views elected to office. Only that can produce lasting change.

… well I just had my Independence moment. Thank god in the land of the free, if you live in GA you are not free to celebrate your freedom with fireworks. Unless you don’t care because you have independence. The neighbors are eating their hearts out right now. Gutless bitches.

Chris: How well would you do in a market where EVERYBODY lied cheerfully to your face, breaking contracts at a whim, secure in the knowledge that there were no consequences- that you would be forced to come back to them for more business?

How long would you last against organized bands of thieves, or worse bandit gangs or even foreign raiders?

What happens when your neighbors decide, as a group, that they want you gone by any means necessary?

These things happen today, right now, in places around the world- in places where the government is either inactive or impotent to prevent them. In those places freedom belongs only to the strong- the tyrants, the gangs, the militias, the terrorists, the criminals.

You, on the other hand, live in a country where you are free to tell everyone else to piss off. This is not due to your own action, your own power, your own strength. It’s due to a government strong enough to defend individual freedom. Our job is to restrict it to that task alone.

Part of the decline in the term “Independence Day” is probably because “July 4th” is easier to say and spell – and we’ve become a stupid and lazy people.

Also, the Will Smith movie.

And then in general the media has decided that we’re a multicultural society, our history and traditions are mostly racist and evil… and therefore all holidays should have the meaning sucked out and replaced with a delicious cream filling.

Christmas presents, Candy hearts, Green beer, Easter eggs, Fireworks, Spooky masks, and big Turkey Dinners. In fact I’ve heard so many people call Thanksgiving “Turkey Day” in the last few years that I want to punch someone. It’s not a holiday to celebrate the Turkey!

Ian, I watched my local news last night, and was also disappointed in how they kept saying “Fourth of July”, “July 4th”, but not “Independence Day”!

Oh, and Ian, if Kris decides to attempt a raid on my home, would you mind coming over with some guns and few of your anarchist friends to give me a hand in defending it? I shouldn’t have much trouble fighting him off myself, but I’d appreciate the help. I’ll pay you with beer or we can work out some other agreement.

Ian: Selfishness must be restrained.

I think Randianism and Objectivism is/are bullshit because they believe that the combination of selfishness and enlightened self-interest will create utopia.

I see it thus: perfect selfishness says, “Anything that makes me better off is moral. If I make a mutually advantageous exchange with this other person, we both come out ahead. However, if there were a way to take everything he has without any consequences, I’d come out even further ahead. Therefore, if I can steal the other person’s property without consequence, I shall certainly do so- and I shall do whatever is required to ensure there ARE no consequences.”

“Rational self-interest” leaves no room whatever for empathy or respect for other people. It is the reason that anarchy fails- because when one government dies or collapses, selfish people create a new one which allows them to do as they like, without consequences. As a protector of liberty, it fails miserably.

Chris: I don’t want to purge the LP of anarchists. I want to get the LP out of anarchist control.

People have talked for years about the metaphor of the Liberty Train- how you don’t have to want to go to the last stop, so long as you want to ride -part- of the way. I’m one of those partway riders- I want smaller, more restrained government and greater freedom and respect for individual rights. It is BECAUSE I want to preserve those individual rights that I abhor anarchy and oppose anarchists.

Now, for the first time in a long time, it’s the purists who have to ask themselves: do we ride this train if it doesn’t go all the way to Anarchy Station, or do we threaten to walk if we’re not allowed to be the engineer?

I own guns because I don’t put perfect faith in government- ha! I don’t put much faith in ANYBODY or ANYTHING. I don’t pretend, though, that I could resist a group of determined attackers by myself. I’d go down swinging, but I’d go down.

Chris: The government helps you by making it much, MUCH harder for organized gangs to run free. The system we have produces corrupt cops, abuses of freedom, long and torturous judicial tangles, and of course taxes… but it manages to put a lot of people away for being thieves, murderers, rapists, etc. It makes it highly unlikely that a bandit gang or pirate raiding band will ever attack your home.

Put it another way: government is another word for the rules by which the biggest gang around protects its members, slaps them down for breaking the rules, and keeps other gangs from wiping it out. If you eliminate the government we have, a new gang will come along and make new rules and make a new government… and those new rules, that new goverment, probably won’t be so nice as what we have now.

We may not be happy with the government we have, but it serves a purpose… and those who seek its destruction take an awful gamble on what comes after.

Chris: As you’ve probably guessed, gangs are jealous and defend their territory and perogatives with extreme prejudice.

There’s only one thing they’re harder on than rival upstart gangs, and that’s people who try to live without a gang.

Give you an example: a handful of anarcho-capitalists with a lot of money claimed a coral reef in the south Pacific and shipped over and dumped enough sand and rock to turn the underwater reef into an above-water island. This done, they declared themselves an independent nation.

Within a month the king of a local island nation sent troops over and annexed the new island. The anarcho-capitalists cried foul, but in vain. They ended up lucky: all they lost was millions of dollars. Nobody got shot or killed.

For a more recent and practical example, I point you to “JustUs Township,” Montana.

Don’t rebel unless you either have nothing left to lose, or are damned sure you can make your rebellion successful.

> “Huamn beings are almost never unselfish, frequently unethical, nearly never enlightened, and absolutely never rational- this is why communism degenerated into tyranny…”

Funny, I kinda thought communism IS tyranny because it requires people to sacrifice everything for the self-appointed leaders of the people. It didn’t “degenerate” because humans aren’t good enough for it to work.

Your argument boils down to: Thugs exist. They create gangs. Therfore, we must have our own gang of thugs to protect us from the other thugs. That, in essence, is what government is and what its foundations are based off of. I’m not an anarchist because I believe the natural tendency of humans is to form such little gangs and attempt to legitimize them by calling them governments. But because I recognize that they exist, does not mean that I must recognize their legitimacy.

That’s why I continue to live in America. As far as thug gangs go, the US government is not that bad. I’d still prefer to live out from under the boot, though. And I’m still going to do whatever I can to limit thug-gang’s power over me while flying under their radar.

“A government’s legitimacy or lack thereof has no effect whatever on its ability to govern.”

Sure it does.

The government can pass any law that it wants. That doesn’t mean that I have to obey it if I don’t find it legitimate. They can bring their guns to bear, but if enough people agree with me, then they’ll be facing off against more than just my gun.

We may loose, but they will have failed to govern us.

“Government” is a rhetorical tool used to confer legitimacy. They’re all just armed gangs. They use the concept of government to persuade people that they have a legitimate claim to govern your life.

I am the only one who governs my life. Your gang may attempt to rule me through force, but only I will decide whether to obey or not to obey. Only I will decide if I will attempt to flee, stand and fight, or hand over my milk money.