I could see your idea in motion if people got up, and told the Republicans to take a hike in relation to their hijacking of the tea parties.
Oh, I agree. That is why I mentioned the freestateproject.org as maybe being the only real option. It is also why I mentioned getting a 100 or so of my fellow “neighbors” to stop paying property taxes. It is pretty easy for the government to take down an individual.
As an aside, I was talking to my next door neighbor yesterday. He put up one of those Don’t Tread On Me flags. I mentioned to him we may need to stop paying taxes. He said he was just about to that point. Look at all the tax protesters at these tax rallies. Now, just imagine if instead of just asking the government to stop taxing them so much, they instead told the government they were going to stop paying. That would be millions of people that would stop paying. And that would make a difference. Begging the masters to be good will not. And I hope soon people will wake up and see that this is what needs to happen if they want real change.
The problem is not numbers but how to organize. The Jews couldn’t figure it out while literally walking into gas chambers .
I believe you may acutally have millions. You don’t need anarcho-caps, there are plenty of mini-archists who would also stop paying their taxes if they knew their neighbor wouldn’t back out in the last minute. Organization is the problem. Always was and always will be. It’s why you don’t need an armed guard for every prisoner.
Well it seems like that free state project has the right idea. The site has no political affiliations though. What if a bunch of minarchists move there and take over after we’ve established. Or maybe I just need to read up more on the project. Thanks for the link Spideynw.
Look around… Look at the contemporary “temples” of democratic “freedom”!
I used the example of “God” because people believe in government as in God himself!
How are you going to eradicate such a faith???
By proclaiming the need of abstaining from making sacrifices to their God???
They will stone you to death… You will be like a satanist to them…
I’d say that many centuries of silent, yet determined effort are necessary.
In reality there is no such thing as “government without consent of the governed”!
Maybe it is not a joyful and enthusiastic consent, maybe it is only a coerced resignation.
Nonetheless…
Let’s try to be as free as we can in the most attractive and successful manner we can!
I think this is the only way for the liberty of mankind…
Governments always collapse. Our government will collapse also. The problem is that new ones keep propping up. The problem with the freestate project is that it is, from the start, promoting a government. What exactly is the point?
I would venture to say that the Free State Project is an exercise in minarchism. Not to say it isn’t commendable, but if you think it’s about seceding and divorcing New Hampshire from the rest of the United States, you’ll be in for some sore disappointment.
You should also check out freetalklive.com and freekeene.com as well then. A lot of voluntaryists are actually moving to Keene, NH, and committing civil disobedience. Today, one of them called the Keene Police and advised them that he was not showing up to jail tonight as ordered. They fined him $100 for digging on public property, and since he refused to pay, they told him he needs to go to jail for two days.
The “minarchists” can show up, and the more the better, because they are very close to being voluntaryists. If someone takes the libertarian philosophy to its ultimate conclusion, government without consent of the governed is unacceptable. Meaning I think most of them will become voluntaryists.
I think it is now morphing into the freeindividualproject myself. And that is my point.
Unfounded fear-mongoring. The activists in Keene, NH are not being “stoned to death”.
You have to be ready to fight, but you also have to be prepared to fight.
If you resist alone, they will come after you. Who will defend you then?
Without much warning, tens of thousands came down upon Washington this weekend on chartered buses. If you could mobilize this many people in your defense, then you would have freedom.
The FSP is about flooding a community with alien immigrants in order to seize the power of government away from the locals. It is not going to earn a good reputation.
It’s already experiencing this problem from a roundtable @ FSP earlier this year.
No, I haven’t tried it. Consider the fact that most people have never even been exposed to these ideas. You expect them to be open to this? I’m speaking strictly from personal experience here. Over the past 1-1.5 years, in real life, I have met one minarchist…and that’s it. People don’t want to think of this stuff. Hell, I couldn’t even convince anyone all through grad school.
if history taught us anything is that idealistic dreams never succeed.
You don’t get it. I don’t need to have a defense of 10,000 people. I just need 100 families in a neighborhood willing to stop obeying. That’s it.
And if history has taught us anything, it is that civil disobedience, with enough people, works.
No, it is about getting 20,000 like-minded people to move to a geographic area. People who are pro-free market. What people do once they get there is up to them. Some are going about it through politics (which will fail) and others are trying civil disobedience (which has already gotten results). Those practicing civil disobedience have already earned the right to film in the courtroom, after just a few months. Where else can you go in the country and film in the courtroom?
Is filming in the courtroom a fundamental freedom now?
Stranger, filming in the courtroom is a tiny capitulation in the grand scheme of things, but it could be a sort of camel’s nose under the tent. It also gives a standard for comparison:
Spidey, about how many people did it take to get the right to film in a courtroom, in a jurisdictional area of what population size in the course of that few months? How many people do you think it would have taken to get a measure on the ballot for the right to film in a courtroom, spread the word and get it passed in that same jurisdiction? How long a period would that have taken, and with what total time investment per person?
If these questions can be answered, it seems the efficiency of ballot box vs. civil disobedience (per person, per unit time) can be quantified, at least for this particular case. The unquantifiable factor would be the risk involved. What were the risks to the disobeyers (the likely legal penalties and estimated odds of punishment), including the enforcement-thwarting effect of getting a group of size X to disobey simultaneously?
If we can work out, for example, that civil disobedience in this case was 20 times as efficient as normal political action per man hour, and that the risks were marginal, this could serve as an example for other movements in other areas. Then newly-emboldened groups of this kind could seek larger concessions, likely with much increased participation.