Friday, November 27, 2015

FB Post

A strange argument I've often seen statists resort to--usually when they run out of anything else to say--is proclaiming that it's not that simple, and there are gray areas, and you shouldn't think that YOUR opinion is right and everyone else is wrong. Really this is just muddying the waters in order to cloud PRINCIPLES that they don't have any real response to. For example, in the last hour, in three unrelated discussions with three different statists in three different places, I saw variations on, "You just think that anyone who doesn't agree with you is wrong and immoral!"
Yes, as a matter of fact, on the issue of violence, I do. I am a voluntaryist. That means that I think that all human interaction should be peaceful, non-violent, consensual, voluntary. Anyone who is NOT a voluntaryist--i.e., anyone who "disagrees" with me on that point--is, by definition, an "INvoluntaryist." And that's bad. Because "involuntary" means aggressive violence.
That is not a "false dichotomy." It is a true dichotomy. If there are two terms, and "Term B" is defined as everything which is NOT "Term A," then you ARE one of those things. For example, if you advocate something that is decidedly NOT "anarchistic" ("anarchism" meaning opposing the existence of a ruling class), then you are a statist (someone who advocates a ruling class). If you don't like that truism, that's your problem. Logic isn't going to stop existing just so you can feel better about what you condone. Muddying the waters, talking about "opinions," and whining about people being "judgmental" or "extreme" will also not make your position more rational or moral, nor will it make TRUE dichotomies disappear.
-LR

Saturday, November 14, 2015

Paris

I'm the first one to admit that in the grand scheme, I really don't know anything. But here's the way I see it:
An incident such as just transpired in Paris has several elements to be scrutinized: motivation (such as, say, adherence to a violent ideology), facilitation (such as, say, how the killers were funded and/or armed), and provocation (such as, say, blowback, or retaliation to western foreign policy).
This list is by no means exhaustive; there are likely others, many others, but these are predominantly what I'm seeing discussed around the web.
But there's another, crucial element that I'm not seeing discussed so much, which is that of "enabling". The others I've mentioned above factor into the *launch* of such an attack, but *enabling* is what determines the *success* of the attack, once it is launched.
And what enabled the success of that attack—just as in many of the mass killings here in the US—was the people's ability (and right) to defend themselves being surrendered (forcibly or voluntarily) to the state, which is, in truth, entirely incapable of defending them.
So regardless of the *cause* or *reason* for the attack, the bottom line is, the *success* of the attack is attributed to one thing, and one thing only: a disarmed populace.
So we can debate the rest until we're all blue in the face, but until we establish (or return to) free societies—which would also be, by definition, armed societies—attacks such as these will continue, largely unabated.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Perspective

As a former statist, there are many ridiculous parts of the authoritarian dogma that I'm embarrassed I ever accepted. One is the idea that a "country" needs "leaders." Think what that implies. In your day-to-day life, you interact with all sorts of other individuals. And that's all "society" is: the collective name for lots of INDIVIDUALS. But for some inexplicable reason, we're taught to believe that one huge, arbitrarily chosen assortment of individuals (the "citizens" of one human livestock farm--I mean, "country") need some control freaks acting as intermediaries in order to interact with a different arbitrarily chosen assortment of individuals (the "citizens" of some other human livestock farm--I mean, "country"). Because gee, how could I and some random person in the middle of China possibly leave each other alone if we didn't each have a gang of narcissistic sociopaths claiming to "represent" us? Oh, wait a minute. That's exactly how and why pretty much ALL wars happen: because different gangs of power-happy psychos pit their pawns against each other in violent conflict, while claiming to "represent" subsets of humanity. One more example of how "government" is a problem posing as its own solution.

- h/t LR