Radley, I missed Brit Hume–but I hear if you tell him he’s pretty he’s like putty in your hands.

I admit I skimmed through your text, so if this is just an issue of me missing something, then don’t bother to answer.

Interesting (if murky) articles. I do have a comment or two…

Despite your arguments, all of the articles you linked to throughout this comment section have said pretty much the same thing:

Rational Evangelism Won’t Work: “So how can we win this game? / We can’t.”

The Problem Of Political Irrationality: “It’s fruitless to attempt to persuade most people to use better judgment …. It was always too late for a political solution …. [It] cannot be addressed by political means.”

The Revolution Will Be All Business: “Forget movements.”

Economic Secession: “So forget persuasion and implement economic privacy.”

In all of them, you seem to state that “this is what needs to be done” without actually stating how to do it. You obviously don’t like Radley’s soft-touch, career-keeping approach; you don’t favor trying to pursuade people with rational arguments and political movements; and you don’t seem to think very highly of the public (I admit I have my doubts as well…) adopting it without stemming their choices.

However, you say we need to (paraphrased): “implement economic privacy,” “start a new game,” and “introduce agencies which can reap rewards for protecting individuals from the penalties of government.” Yet you offer no actual way to do this, it’s all in a sort of vacuum discussion. How do we implement economic privacy? What agencies are you talking about? And what kind of business would “enable their clients to defect from government without penalty”? It all seems to be spoken in this aggressive, assertory prose without actual solutions present, only the middle-point in something that never began. Perhaps I’m simply misreading what you’re trying to get across, but the points seem a little lost to me.

John
narphonax.com/blog

“I read what you linked, but found no solution presented to the dilemma.

Just what is your game?”

See The Revolution Will Be All Business and Economic Secession.

How does paying taxes make me a hypocrite? I don’t tell anyone they should prefer jail to paying ransom.

Just what is your game?

Or does talking about it contribute to its defeat?

Yes… like Fight Club.

The first rule of Fight Club is YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB!

No, the important thing to remember is that JTK still chooses to pay taxes. That is, he is a hypocrite.

Believe it or not, my primary concern here is for Radley. Another policy wonk (…ah, how to phrase this?) seasoning the soup isn’t even worthy of comment, except for the fact that this particular one is capable of doing so much better.

“I assume that you’d like to persuade others to your point of view, but your methods yield an opposite outcome.”

I’m not interested in persuading the masses of anything. I explain why in Rational Evangelism Won’t Work and The Problem Of Political Irrationality.

My methods are working fine, I’m just not playing what you think is the only game in town. I’m narrowcasting for a handful of individuals capable of grasping just how fruitless a pursuit that is. Because they have better things to do.

If forty years’ history of abject failure at pansy-nibbling around the edges of principles hasn’t refuted this sort of ridiculous nonsense, then nothing will.

I read your No Treason post on this subject, and I’m having trouble determining your motivation. I assume that you’d like to persuade others to your point of view, but your methods yield an opposite outcome.

If you’re simply trying to win a “most anti-state” contest that’s fine, I’ll send you a little ribbon, but understand that you haven’t really gained anything.

Liberty is lost and gained a fragment at a time, and whether we like it or not, liberty yields when we demand all or nothing.

I just saw Radley Balko on Fox News saying he was “frightened” to see that Republicans think that exercising control over the food you put in your mouth was a

Please keep this in mind as you go through your day…

= :)