TheAgitator.com
Students for Liberty
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010Over the weekend, I spoke at the third annual International Students for Liberty conference.
All due props to Alexander McCobin, who started this organization. I’ve spoken at two of their big conferences, a regional conference, and at several campus chapters around the country. I’m a little more impressed by these students every time I speak to them.
This year there were about 250 students in attendance from all over the country. These kids are smart, engaging, interested, and incredibly well-read. I didn’t talk to a crazy person all weekend. Better yet, the conference was surprisingly gender-balanced. Diverse, too.
I don’t think I even heard the word libertarian until about my junior year in college, and I went to large Big Ten school. It’s great to see that that’s changing. At a couple schools I’ve spoken to in the last couple years, the SFL chapter is larger than the College Republicans or College Democrats. At many, they’re more active.
It’s been encouraging and heartening not only to watch the organization grow, but to grow without making least-common-denominator appeals to the nuttier, conspiratorial fringes of libertarianism.
Almost enough to temporarily relieve me of my cynicism. Almost!
least-common-denominator appeals to the nuttier, conspiratorial fringes of libertarianism.
Would any of you guys be kind enough to tell me what some of those least-common-denominator appeals would be?
Radley: This is a great start. How are the SFL treated by the GOP/DEM clubs, or administrators?
I think people start weirding out on libertarianism over privatizing sidewalks and all public services.
I’m proud to say my 14 yo daughter knows far more about political idealogies (I’m an ‘anarcho-capitalist’ according to her) than I do. I think she has a few friends who are very bright, also…
Would any of you guys be kind enough to tell me what some of those least-common-denominator appeals would be?
Alex Jones. Birthers. Racists. Truthers.
#1:
There are a couple of movements that have some attraction to the libertarian fringe. The 9/11 “Truth” movement is one. The Obama Birther conspiracy theorists is another. The appeals of the former include base claims that the US government destroyed the World Trade Center via controlled demolition. The appeals of the latter generally include photoshopped pictures of Obama as an African witch doctor.
Do I smell some Birthers/Truthers getting ready to crawl out of the woodwork?
“Almost enough to temporarily relieve me of my cynicism. Almost!”
Not me, sad to say.
/wet blanket
At least anarchists didn’t make the “least common denominator” list.
Are there any “greatest common factor” appeals?
I will reserve judgment on these “neolibertarians” until I see how their conduct holds up when/if they gain political office.
I think you find racists of every political persuasion. I’ll have to google Alex Jones.
And I have to admit that the collapse of Bldg #7 still makes me wonder.
This is very encouraging to read. Back in college me and a couple other students looked into forming a College Libertarians chapter, but we couldn’t find a single faculty member who was interested in sponsoring us (including an allegedly “proud” libertarian in the Political Science department). The College Republicans and Democrats, though they both had lots of faculty support and received funds from the school, were stale and mainly consisted of kids who endlessly repeated the standard talking points. When I was a senior, one young “radical” founded the “Young Democratic Socialists,” which was truly juvenile in its sentiments…yet it had funds, faculty support, and 20-30 students at every meeting within a couple of weeks. Most of them joined for the social shock value.
The sad thing is, I’d say at least 75% of the student body was completely apathetic about politics and the outside world in general. Organized political groups on campus was either the same-old two-party crap or pretentious “Marxist” nonsense. Libertarians? We were invisible, and the rules about student organizations didn’t help.
So, seeing things like this makes my day a little brighter.
SJE,
I’m a recent graduate of Seton Hall University and former president of its SFL-affiliated group.
I can’t speak for other schools, but for the most part we didn’t have too many problems with administrators beyond the problems all the political groups had (it was the consensus amongst the groups Seton Hall was opposed to controversial activity by political groups in general,without any regard for ideology).
As for the other political groups (Dems, Repubs, and Young Socialists) we worked with the the D’s and R’s when we had agreement on the issue and all four groups participated in debates over various issues at least a few times a year.
And Radley, thanks again for speaking at Seton Hall last year, it was a fantastic event even though the attendance sadly left to be desired.
The sad thing is, I’d say at least 75% of the student body was completely apathetic about politics and the outside world in general.
I disagree. Apathy towards politics and political activism is healthy human behavior, consequences be damned.
I attended the convention at American University and had a lot of fun. Good speakers, some booze, and a surprising lack of crazies. And as Radley said, it wasn’t 90% nerdy white male.
Also had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Balko.
And I have to admit that the collapse of Bldg #7 still makes me wonder.
Here’s some info to put your mind at ease.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html?page=5#wtc7
Alex Jones. Birthers. Racists. Truthers.
It’s unfortunate that you’d label people “nutty” for the above (except racist). Each raises very good questions — it’s some in each of those categories that give the rest a bad name, kind of like the L and D and R labels. Ascribing labels, and dismissing a person based on their ascribed label, is dumb and dishonest, as it’s the same as putting your hands over your ears and screaming “lalalalalala”.
It is awesome that your daughter has so much respect for you. Hopefully, the next generation will know much more than the last few.
I used to think the same, but we cannot ignore the Fist with the guns and the taxes and the prisons and the bombs blowing up foreign lands and making new generations of enemies. All chickens come home to roost.
Except when a premise has been precisely met and logically dismissed with fact, but proponents hold to the dogma relentlessly. Then, a label can be a well-earned shortcut.
Maybe these new student libertarian groups will be able to complete the elusive task of “squaring up” the big-L Libertarian agenda, but I have my doubts.
Libertarianism has remained “fringy” because it tries to latch together the essentially unrelated concerns of ACLU-type civil libertarians (personal freedom) and CATO-type anti-taxers. Libertarianism tries to make these very different concerns part of an over-arching whole — a “freedom agenda” or whatever. But they really have little to do with one another. What is worse, in the American context, the advancement of one set of concerns is probably inextricably linked with a retreat on the other set of concerns. Whatever abstract ideological continuities there may be between the two, the ACLU and CATO are on opposite sides of the partisan divide in the United States, and neither is poised to cross over anytime soon.
History and current events demonstrate clearly enough that:
(1) it is possible to have a very civilly liberated society where people can do a they please in their personal lives without government interference, and still have a high-taxing, high-spending welfare state that makes significant transfer payments; and
(2) it is very likely that a low-tax “your-on-your-own” economic policy will coincide with a harsh, aggressive, and destructive regime of government policing and control, if only to keep in check the large cohort of subsistence-level “losers” that unfettered capitalism generates.
Libertarians commonly insinuate that TARP, farm subsidies, Food Stamps, and the War on Drugs all come out of the same evil cauldron of “Big Government,” but they don’t, and they never have. In the American two-party context, any push-back against police excesses and the “prison-industrial complex” is going to be paired with efforts to expand government health care and raise the minimum wage. Any effort to slash taxes and dump people en masse out of housing projects is going to be paired with hoo-rah-gung-ho dog-shooting SWAT wars on the dirty hippies and their marijuana clubs. That is just how the cookie crumbles in a political system that pits cultural conservatives against cultural liberals.
If the student libertarians or anyone else can disconnect these “hard-wired” trade-offs of the two-party system, they will have achieved something truly remarkable.
Whether you agree with these fringe groups or not (Truthers, Birthers, John Birch, etc), they are still not held in high regard with mainstream America. Pandering to them delegitimizes a movement whether its right or not. It’s not about being dishonest, it’s about trying to win the political game by being pragmatic.
Most people view conspiracy the same way they view Star Wars. It’s fantasy with a huge fan base of counter-culture dorks trying to escape reality. That’s the truth. I’m sorry if it sucks for some. So did episodes I, II, and III.
The primary issue is labeling a group and calling people “kooks”, “nuts” etc. It’s childish at best.
The secondary issue is summary dismissal of a group, and thus any and all data, because it doesn’t fit the answer one believes they have. That is closed minded, which is a dangerous mindset.
#16 | Danny
Mencius Moldbug at Unqualified Reservations believes the same — that in order to have personal liberty there must first be uncontested sovereignty.
The question is, how long can personal liberty survive under an all-powerful State? What prevents the State from eliminating all personal liberty?
@Danny (#16) (1) it is possible to have a very civilly liberated society where people can do a they please in their personal lives without government interference, and still have a high-taxing, high-spending welfare state that makes significant transfer payments…
You have only so many hours during which you draw breath and each and every one of them is a part of your one and only life. You work in exchange for cash, which you exchange for things you value more than your work time. When you want to rest, socialize, or play, you only get to use the hours you don’t use working, and the quality of those hours you would call your “personal life” is often greatly affected by the values you acquire working (those which are not taken from you). So, by imposing redistribution, a government steals away pieces of your life. You don’t get to “do as you please” because you have to work a second job to pay for the taxes to keep your house or you have to forgo taking that trip to see your elderly parents because you can’t afford it. I reject your faulty concept that you have a “personal life” which is separable from other parts of your life–if it’s part of your life, how could it not be personal to you!?
Even worse for you, “[h]istory and current events demonstrate” that such systems will inevitably fail. When the government engages in theft from those who produce (what you refer to with the disgusting euphemism of “transfer payments”), the victims lose the incentive to produce. To maintain a welfare state, the government has to engage in Ponzi schemes, which will result in devastating economic collapse eventually. Also, your idea that such a government will leave you alone once it gets it’s cut is pie-in-the-sky nonsense. if you look at the legislation that the Democrats have tried to pass, there are extensive, overbearing controls over our lives, whether it’s putting you in prison if you don’t buy health insurance or distorting the energy market so cooling your house or driving your car becomes painfully expensive. How much of a “personal life” can you enjoy in such circumstances? Also, Democrats are not ending the War on Drugs, so as they increase theft (“transfer payments”) they don’t allow you more freedom in your “personal life”.
@Danny (#16) (2) it is very likely that a low-tax “your-on-your-own” economic policy will coincide with a harsh, aggressive, and destructive regime of government policing and control, if only to keep in check the large cohort of subsistence-level “losers” that unfettered capitalism generates
All other factors being equal, a government which doesn’t have much money because taxes are low cannot afford to pay for police, prisons, and the infrastructure necessary to be harsh, aggressive, and destructive. Once again, “[h]istory and current events demonstrate” that the most “harsh, aggressive, and destructive” governments were and are nearly always Marxists (USSR, North Korea) who push the theft (“transfer payments”) to the extreme.
Look at examples from history where governments which tried to enact free market reforms but then became oppressive (like Mussolini). At the same time, they committed theft (“transfer payments”) in the form of tariffs, price controls, and subsidies. When events threatened their popularity, they took more drastic economic measures. In many ways, the US government’s “investment” in AIG and GM (not to mention the creation of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) are reminiscent of fascism. And, while they tax us more and spend money they don’t have (stealing from future generations), are the politicians behind these appalling activities working to improve the freedom in our “personal lives”? Nope. They’re generally doing the opposite or maintaining the status quo.
Also, I must take great exception to the last part of your #2. Free market capitalism doesn’t “generate poor” people. First, people who engage in rational exchanges of values with one another are each making their own decisions about their own lives, so there is no singular entity that is “generating” anything. You’re anthropomorphizing a set of conditions, pretending that the lack of aggressive force is a “system” of the same genus as the real system of government, in which a subset of people take part of the lives of everyone else, under the threat or use of aggressive force. Lack of the use of force is not part of the set of the methods by which people use force. It’s separate. It’s the use of reason to deal with others, not the dictate of the bureaucrat–the bureaucrat who knows that men with guns will ultimately enforce the dictates.
When people have the freedom to make their own choices, the majority improve their lives, as compared to people who must live according to the choices of bureaucrats. Go look at a Marxist state and you’ll see something which “generates” poverty. Look at HUD dwellers in the US and you’ll see people who would have to work their asses off to make more than they get paid not to work. The incentives are put in place to perpetuate poverty.
Without a government check, how many of those people would decide that working at McDonald’s wasn’t worth their time?
@Danny (#16) Libertarians commonly insinuate that TARP, farm subsidies, Food Stamps, and the War on Drugs all come out of the same evil cauldron of “Big Government,” but they don’t, and they never have.
The massive scope of the destruction caused by such programs could never be possible without a massive government. Every single one of those things you mention are characteristically symptomatic of a large, centralized government. The very existence of the behemoth means that no matter if Team Coke or Team Pepsi has more votes, the monster will feed on the lives of people in proportion to the size of its gullet.
I’m going to give myself a migraine if I try to unravel any more of the nonsense you wrote. It’s bizarre that you make such patently false claims.
Steve, ehh … good luck with all that.
http://www.theatlasphere.com/columns/100213-stossel-road-serfdom.php
FTA:
“According to the Tax Foundation, 60 percent of the population now gets more in government benefits than it pays in taxes. What does it say about a society in which more than half the people live at the expense of the rest? Worse, the dependent class is growing. The 60 percent will soon be 70 percent.”
The above is one of the main reasons why society WILL collapse unless we turn this ship of state around and make it, again, a Constitutional Republic. The 40% (soon to be 30%) of the people who are supporting the other 60% (soon to be 70%), cannot maintain the burden for much longer. Surely that is obvious, to everyone. isn’t it?
Intended to add that we are in a situation where both economic freedom and personal freedom are under attack — proof that Danny is wrong and Steve is correct.
@Danny (#21) Steve, ehh … good luck with all that.
Would that luck were authentic, and directed to the goal of liberty for all individuals to live their lives on their own terms, so long as they minded their own business.
I’d love to have back all the years in which I allowed my thoughts to be constrained by “conventional wisdom” That “common sense” was inculcated into me. It portrays any iconoclastic notions as “nutty” or fool hearty, whether they be genuine crackpots or simply people with reasonable skepticism who don’t buy the fallacies of appeals to authority, popularity, tradition, consequence, etc..
Your arguments take as axiomatic the false dichotomy of red/blue, left/right, Coke/Pepsi. Many of us are not part of any of those groups. We’re not fooled by the Quixotic notion that one can vote oneself out catastrophically flawed government institutions and practices, when voting lead us to this point in the first place.
You speak of the parties, the divide, and the “inevitable” results of fighting that fight. You’re a bit mixed up in your analysis (such as your absurd assertion that freedom “produces poor” people), but you are right that individualists, such as libertarians, who look to government to fix the problems empower the very groups which further deprive us of liberty.
You completely overlook the choice of not giving consent to those in government by voting. Even if you vote for the LP or more principled Republicans like Ron Paul, you’ve implicitly agreed that the candidate who gets the most votes, no matter how horrible, then has the moral authority to take from the lives of others–including those of us who do not vote and do not presume to grant them authority over your life which we, as individuals, never had (without your permission), and thus can never grant to a proxy.
See http://www.isil.org/resources/philosophy-of-liberty-english.swf
Simply put, reason is the only ethical way to persuade people to do things you want. Initiating force is unethical. Respecting the freedom and rights of others is the only ethical way to live your life.
I’d never lock you in a cage for not guying life insurance you don’t want and don’t need. Nor would I force the gas station to charge you double in the name of saving the environment from the alleged catastrophic global warming (which in recent days has finally been given scrutiny enough to debunk the most egregious frauds).
Windy & Steve proceed on the dubious assumption thatt taxation is theft from the particular individual from whom the tax is collected, but that is too simple. Much – probably most – taxation is “passed on” in whole or in part as part of the cost of doing business. That is why your reciept from WalMart separately itemizes a “sales tax” (really a “buy tax”). And so it is when landlords set rents, lawyers and doctors set fees, plumbers set hourly rates, contractors make bids, etc. The cost of taxation is factored into most every price. Whenever we raise taxes on the other guy, we raise prices on ourselves. Thus, it makes little sense to speak of those who pay taxes and those who don’t, or to sanctimoniously divide the self-sufficient from the dependent. Even if you collect an EITC every year, so long as you buy or trade with taxpayers, you pay taxes in the functional sense. In other words, whether or not you “pay taxes,” you must pay FOR taxes.
@Dan (#25) …the dubious assumption thatt taxation is theft…
Suppose I decided that you, Dan, should pay me $50 a month to put seasonal and holiday decorations on the front of your home. I decided that it was in your best interest to comply with my demands. Not only did I not consult you or even care that your own judgment was that you didn’t want this, I was willing to threaten you and even use force to make you participate in my home decoration “service”.
What would you do? Call the cops, of course. You’d want me arrested for theft, trespassing, burglary, extortion, assault, or any number of infractions. And, most rational people would agree that I had no right to do that to you. I had no moral authority.
Suppose I hire a big guy to be my “enforcer”? Does that change things? No, since I had no authority to grant to my proxy. That becomes racketeering, too. Rational people hate this sort of thing from mafia thugs, for good reason.
But wait! I spoke with a few of your neighbors and 50 out of 80 thought it was a good idea for me to do this for everyone on your street. Nobody actually talked to you, though, because you were away for the day. You never signed any contract (e.g., homeowners’ association) that specified any such thing. We just decided that it was in “everyone’s best interest” to do this, and we ignored the protests or silence of the minority. Their own value judgments about their own homes were discarded. Does that change things? No, because none of the 50 have any moral authority to make you participate, so as a group, the sum total moral authority is fifty times zero, which is zero (50 * 0 = 0).
Taxes are just the same thing, writ large. Whether it’s me, 50 neighbors on your street, or 100,000,000 American voters, the product will always be zero. Which means it is wrong to threaten or use force against you for something you don’t want and don’t need. If you don’t want to pay for things like foreign invasions, torture of prisoners, the War on Drugs, the salary of Sheriff Arpaio, Murtha airport–things you decide are of no value or of negative value to you–then getting together and presuming to grant authority with a ballot doesn’t change the moral equation. 100,000,000 * 0 = 0.
See Spooner, Garrison, Thoreau, et al. for more details, if you’re going to resort to citing the Constitution or “social contract” or other such nonsense.
@Dan (#25) Much – probably most – taxation is “passed on” in whole or in part as part of the cost of doing business. That is why your reciept from WalMart separately itemizes a “sales tax” (really a “buy tax”). And so it is when landlords set rents, lawyers and doctors set fees, plumbers set hourly rates, contractors make bids, etc. The cost of taxation is factored into most every price.
If Wal-Mart decides to spend billions to improve the quality of their buildings, then spends billions more to advertise their improvements as a way of attracting new customers, they will naturally decide to raise their prices, since their cost of doing business went up. If a tornado destroys vital corporate offices, and it costs them a fortune to recover, they’ll raise prices to compensate. Those are costs of business based upon their decisions (as owners) or on natural phenomenon beyond anyone’s control. Their ownership, by definition, includes the moral authority to make these decisions.
As a corollary, people who consider shopping at Wal-Mart are completely free to go there or not go there and completely free to decide whether to buy a particular item. They have the moral authority to decide if they want their time and money to be used in exchanges with Wal-Mart.
Taxes and government interference in the free market, on the other hand, are not the same thing. You’re trying to equivocate on the term “cost of business” ignoring the context of the things to be compared–context which provides the essential moral characteristics which differentiate the situations. Government involves one group of people presuming to have the moral authority to decide what’s in the “best interest” of Wal-Mart owners and Wal-Mart customers.
@Dan (#25) Whenever we raise taxes on the other guy, we raise prices on ourselves. Thus, it makes little sense to speak of those who pay taxes and those who don’t, or to sanctimoniously divide the self-sufficient from the dependent.
You’re ignoring a whole slew of things. If each person has an equivalent role in working, purchasing, paying taxes, and using government services, a tax system which gave no special preferences for any demographic group or industry might end up being a zero-sum condition. And, if 100% of the people agreed with the political system, there would be no problem with moral authority.
However, the American political system is about as different as your Ivory Tower as it could be. Team Coke and Team Pepsi target classes, demographic groups, industries, districts, etc. for tax breaks or tax hikes. They struggle back and forth, making a big drama about it all. They tug at your heart strings mentioning individuals by name who are stuck in a particular dilemma. They demonize the other side to get people riled up so they’ll vote. Not that the politicians carry through necessarily. They break their promises, make symbolic gestures which amount to nothing, pass massive bills with no transparency (stealthily putting in earmarks and unadvertised outrages). So, the government involvement in the market grows to epic proportions, with Byzantine rules and regulations, and each individual is affected differently. Union members in GM get a sweetheart deal, while private investors have the value of their stock cut to a fraction by government fiat.
Your assertion that it all balances out is ignorant and frankly obnoxiously dishonest.
As for the “self-sufficient” and “dependent”, you may not like for people to use such terms (or terms like “producers” and “non-producers”), but facts are facts. If you take from Peter and give to Paul, Peter has a net loss. And, given the lack of moral authority (assuming Peter doesn’t want to pay Paul), it is essential for any rational, ethical person to contrast the two, to make proper and informed moral judgments.
To further compound the mess, when you pay Paul, you give him an incentive not to produce. Without such an incentive, he is likely to get a job and produce. That creates a net increase in GDP. If most people have more money, it’s more likely that they’ll decide to spend some of their additional income to help people who are truly victims of circumstances, like the disabled or disaster survivors.
(For the record, “Dan” is “Danny,” too)
I sympathize with Steve’s uncompromising principles as stated, and I see no need to assail the theory, simplified as it is and must be for purposes of the forum. The practicalities are what they are, as Steve himself must realize, and there is no need for me to belabor them on the 27th comment to this thread.
My only caveat is that Steve’s pat notion of “producers” “non-producers” and GDP cannot be accepted. Not every act of “production” is “productive,” and not every increase in GDP is an increase to human welfare. For instance, there is a strong case to be made that nuisance jobs like telemarketer and door-to-door salesman would be better replaced by welfare idleness, or makework public jobs like park sexton. That is a legitimate choice for the voting public to make.
Also, driving people into the low end of the work force drives up competition for wages, thus driving down wages. The public can make a legitimate calculation that it would rather keep a segment of the labor force in reserve, rather than maximize competition at the subsistence-end of the labor market by driving every surplus worker into the scramble for current employment.
Steve, of course, sees nothing but illegitimate coercion in such choices by the voting public, but coercion has to start somewhere unless and until we decide there is no “property” and that any hand can grab any food within reach in response to hunger, any person can occupy any near shelter in response to cold, and no one has enforceable priority to such goods. If there is going to be coercion in support of ownership and property, there is legitimately going to be coercion in support of other socially cognizable prerogatives.
Steve may think he has the “philosopher’s stone” (Objectivism?) that infallibly sorts out legitimate from illegitimate claims to coercive government support — ballot box be damned — but if so, he is deluded. We all share the same lived-in environment, and there are many competing claims to the available goods. No Euclidean proof establishes the supremacy of one above all others. The messy business of democracy is unavoidable.
@Danny (#27) I sympathize with Steve’s uncompromising principles as stated, and I see no need to assail the theory, simplified as it is and must be for purposes of the forum. The practicalities are what they are, as Steve himself must realize…
I don’t understand how something can be called a “principle” if it is not “uncompromising”. Maybe a “rule of thumb”, a “suggestion”, a “good idea”, but not a principle.
That is not to say that a principle must be unyielding to other principles, in a given context. There are conflicts of rights, for example, in which a rational person needs to decide priorities, based upon “extenuating circumstances”.
I don’t know how many times I have seen people argue that principles are good “in theory” but in the “real world” blah blah blah. Inevitably, those advocating a “practical” “real world” abandonment of a so-called principle try to justify their argument by one logical fallacy or another, usually the Appeal to Consequences. Oftentimes, they dismiss rational principles as “too simple” or engage in ad hominem attacks on the person applying reason to the situation, suggesting this person wants the bad consequences to happen.
I know plenty of writers have done a better, more thorough job of presenting these arguments than I do here, obviously. Whole bookcases can be filled with them. However, I see no reason why the moral principles which apply to political matters need to be more complicated than I have presented.
I take it as axiomatic that You own your own life, from which I derive most of the principles I apply to political arguments.
If you argue that some part of each citizen’s life is owned by the collective, then we are at odds and I can only hope that I can persuade you to critically analyze your arguments to discover the faults. If you won’t listen or can’t be persuaded to accept this premise, we will never agree.
With that in mind, I’d like to point out just a few things from your last comment which stuck out. The Collectivist Fallacy is the use of singular nouns to refer to groups of individuals, implying that each individual agrees or derives the same benefit or loss. Since every individual owns his or her own life, which includes the mind and the ability to make individual choices and value judgments, it is false to assert that, without evidence of 100% agreement, the whole group does something, thinks something, feels something, etc.. When you use the phrases “human welfare”, “choice for the voting public to make”, “[t]he public can make a legitimate calculation that it would rather”, “socially cognizable prerogatives”, “choices by the voting public”, “until we decide”, you are implicitly making the false assertion that 100% of “we” or “the public” has the same values. When you assert that a specific thing is for the common good, you imply that it is good for all, which in the case of politics, is obviously and clearly utterly false.
Whenever I see an argument that a given proposition would be beneficial or harmful, I always ask “to whom?” Ask that question whenever you see such an argument and you’ll recognize the Collectivist Fallacy and see right through the argument.
Is that “simple”? Sure. But only because these complex arguments are a house of cards balancing atop a single point of failure. If the premise is shown to be false, one need not worry about the whole house of cards, because it will collapse with a simple counter-argument.
As for your insult that these “simple” principles derived from self-evident, rational arguments are “delusional”, that’s a typical ad hominem. I spent a good part of my life arguing against these principles before I made an honest, and painful, realization that the individualist principles were the very opposite of delusion. Becoming an atheist was, for me, a similar experience. When I have the time and energy, I can deftly knock down collectivist or religious arguments all day long. I won’t say that collectivists or believers are all delusional (some obviously are). They are misguided, as I was. Many people I respect and love are also misguided, unfortunately. I’m not smug or pretentious about that state of affairs, but very saddened and frustrated. I’m sure Copernicus and Darwin had to have been disheartened by the irrational resistance to their ideas (not that I’m comparable to those who made such discoveries–I merely benefit from their work).
One last thing, you refer to “coercion” on the mater of property. But you fail to contrast coercion by aggressive force or fraud with coercion by rational argument or defensive use of force. If I spend my time and energy creating values (and harm no one in the process), my threatening the mugger with defensive force is coercion, but not the same thing as the mugger threatening me with aggressive force. My threat to walk away if you don’t lower your price on the building I want to buy from you is coercive, but it is an argument by reason. When the government condemns your property, gives you a check, and demands you vacate that building, that’s aggressive coercion backed by the threat of force. You need to stop trying to equate the two.
[...] and more, as illustrated by what Radley Balko, one of the speakers on the Civil Liberties panel, posted on his blog, The Agitator: I’m a little more impressed by these students every time I speak to [...]
On the matter of the intensive conditioning of the public by government to recoil from conspiracy charges which inculpate it (while at the same time accepting the mendacious, anti-veridical and self-serving conspiracy theories the government promulgates), the following passage by Prof. Murray N. Rothbard is quite edifying:
“”
It is also important for the State to inculcate in its subjects an aversion to any “conspiracy theory of history”; for a search for “conspiracies” means a search for motives and an attribution of responsibility for historical misdeeds. If, however, any tyranny imposed by the State, or venality, or aggressive war, was caused not by the State rulers but by mysterious and arcane “social forces,” or by the imperfect state of the world or, if in some way, everyone was responsible (“We Are All Murderers,” proclaims one slogan), then there is no point to the people becoming indignant or rising up against such misdeeds. Furthermore, an attack on “conspiracy theories” means that the subjects will become more gullible in believing the “general welfare” reasons that are always put forth by the State for engaging in any of its despotic actions. A “conspiracy theory” can unsettle the system by causing the public to doubt the State’s ideological propaganda.
“”
(From Prof. Murray N. Rothbard, “The Anatomy of the State,” Rampart Journal of Individualist Thought, Summer 1965, pp. 1-24. Reprinted in a collection of some of Rothbard’s articles, Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays [Washington, D.C.: Libertarian Review Press, 1974].)
The inherent, unchangeable nature of government is colossal conspiracy. Recall that a conspiracy is simply when two or more people take part in a plan which involves doing something improper to others (of which plan may or may not be kept secret, i.e., secrecy is not a necessary component for actions to be a conspiracy). The mere fact that governments set for themselves double-standards is alone quite enough to logically demonstrate that governments themselves consider their own actions improper (i.e., if their same actions which they do to others were to be done to them). Thus, the conclusion that government itself is the largest conspiracy to ever exist or that could ever exist is logically unavoidable.
Since obviously more than one person was involved in planning the 9/11 attacks, then by definition the U.S. government’s mendacious, self-serving, anti-historical, anti-physical law, anti-factual, and provably false official fairy tale is a conspiracy theory, as the U.S. government is putting forth a theory concerning the 9/11 attacks which involves a conspiracy.
Furthermore, conspiracies are ubiquitous (witness all the laws on the books against conspiracy, and how many people are routinely charged under said laws), and the most egregious perpetrators of murderously brutal conspiracies are governments upon their own innocent citizens. More than six times the amount of noncombatants have been systematically murdered for purely ideological reasons by their own governments within the past century than were killed in that same time-span from wars. From 1900 to 1923, various Turkish regimes murdered from 3.5 million to over 4.3 million of its own Armenians, Greeks, Nestorians, and other Christians. The Soviet government murdered over 61 million of its own noncombatant subjects. The communist Chinese government murdered over 76 million of it own subjects. And Germany murdered some 16 million of it own subjects in the past century. And that’s only a sampling of governments mass-murdering their own noncombatant subjects within the past century. (The preceding figures are from Prof. Rudolph Joseph Rummel’s University of Hawaii website.)
All totaled, neither the private-sector crime which government is largely responsible for promoting and causing or even the wars committed by governments upon the subjects of other governments come anywhere close to the crimes government is directly responsible for committing against its own citizens–certainly not in amount of numbers. Without a doubt, the most dangerous presence to ever exist throughout history has always been the people’s very own government. (This is also historically true for the U.S. govermment, as no group has killed more U.S. citizens than the U.S. government. Viz., the Civil War; etc.)
Not only were all of these government mass-slaughters conspiracies–massive conspiracies, at that–but they were conspiracies of which the 9/11 attacks are quite piddling by comparison.
Moreover, terrorism is the health of the state (indeed, government is itself a logical subset of terrorism, and the word terrorism originally referred exclusively to government actions: i.e., the Reign of Terror in France against critics of the state, which was done according to the law–and later on the word terrorism was used to refer to other governments), which is why so many governments throughout history have manufactured duplicitous terrorism in which to serve as a pretext in order to usurp ever more power and control.