[quote=“Isaac “Izzy” Marmolejo”]
the ''chains’are already broken through and the gorilla is doing whatever it pleases…
[/quote]
But the vast majority of people still believe it’s there, for the most part, protecting them. You have a much easier time (i.e. are much more effective) at getting them to see the behavior and convincing them of a need to put the chains back in place, before you’ll convince them to get rid of the gorilla entirely. To think otherwise is just as naive as communist ideology.
In just the same way statists would never be able to take away all freedoms at once, anarchists are never going to convince the masses to give up all their government at once. And simply digging your feet in the ground and saying nothing other than “the state is illegitimate and should be abolished”, is never going to get you anywhere. Going around saying things like “there is no such thing as a president” may be great for making yourself feel intellectually superior and masturbating in your own little corner of self-righteousness and sophistication, but it does nothing other than confuse people and turn them completely off to anything you have to say (not to mention possibly make them resent you personally, whether they should or not.) And of course, whether you care is another matter entirely…but most of us would actually prefer to live in a less statist world, and the key to having that happen is more people agreeing with our philosophy…not in how many people you can use as a scoreboard for your own personal debate tally.
Simply speaking a language they understand and are comfortable with, to pique their curiousity and get them to open to new ideas is not being “non-libertarian”. It’s a matter of effective persuasion, and even if your ultimate goal is to have someone ultimately be convinced that the state is illegitimate and/or unnecessary, there is nothing wrong with helping to bring them to that point by simply saying—
“Hey look, you believe power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, right? You don’t believe totalitarianism and absolute power is a good thing, right? So you believe there should be limits on government, don’t you? Well, here’s a set of rules that do just that…they limit the government. That’s their entire purpose. It’s called the Constitution. It was written and ratified for a reason…and you agree these kinds of rules are necessary, don’t you? You’re not going to say the 1st amendment is useless, are you? Great. So is it so crazy to simply suggest that we actually enforce these rules that put a check on government power?”
It’s a linear process. Very few people can get from A to D without having to go through B and C. I don’t understand how people can be so unforgiving of individuals who simply haven’t gotten there yet. They obviously haven’t had the education most of us here have. And what’s so ironic is that so many of these people with almost no patience for anyone who doesn’t voice 100% anarchy 100% of the time, had to go through the exact same journey that they are effectively seeming to refuse others. How quickly we forget what it was like to be ignorant of liberty, and how impossibly difficult it was to imagine a stateless society.
Ron Paul has done more to push the world closer to a stateless existence than likely anyone here ever will, and he didn’t do that by walking around pissing people off or implying how stupid they were for thinking there was a legitimate role for government. (And just because he doesn’t do that doesn’t mean he’s ignorant and thinks there is one…it means he’s wise enough to know that’s not how you reach people.) There is nothing wrong or inconsistent with simply saying (and getting people to come around to the idea) that we should enforce the restraints we are already supposed to have on government, before you start talking at everyone about abolishing government.
Watch any broadcast in which he is interviewed and listen to the questions he gets asked and the reactions he gets from his answers. And people argue he’s not libertarian enough? He’s had a difficult enough time over the last three decades just getting people to accept the idea that the government shouldn’t be able to do whatever it wants. And people around here are saying he’s not anarchist enough. And again, the ironic thing is, a large number (if not the majority) of these people who berate him for basically being a Constitutionalist pussy owe their own current insight and knowledge to him in one way or another.
I’m not saying no one should ever talk about anarchist ideas or write about how statelessness would or could work and share those things with others. Obviously the more of that the better. The point is there is a time and way in which to present those things that is much more effective than others. And to belittle someone like Paul, and to suggest that he’s not libertarian just because he doesn’t advance liberty the way you personally think it should be done, is just pompous and actually quite rude.
And I’ll tell you what. Let’s have Ron Paul keep doing what he’s doing, and you keep doing whatever the hell you’re doing, and we’ll just see who’s responsible for more people being persuaded to voluntarism over the next 5 years.
:EDIT:
Case in point: directly above.
