Lew Rockwell’s essay today is brilliant. Many conservatives do value property rights but don’t truly understand the nature of the state in violating those rights. Rockwell did a great job of highlighting the underlying morals that many conservatives have, and he showed how the state by nature violates these morals. More importantly, he did so without mentioning anarchism - something conservatives fear. I think this essay may be an effective essay to share with any conservative friends and family we may have. They may never see anarchism the way we do, but they may begin to see the state for what it is.
what essay? I don’t see any essay on the front page of lewrockwell.com
nevermind, I see it on mises
Sorry I didn’t post a link. It was on the Mises Daily. This is the link. After looking more closely, it looks like it is an excerpt from Speaking of Liberty - which is a collection of speeches by Lew Rockwell.
Anyway, wish me luck - I’m sending this to some of my family. Hopefully it will go over well.
Do report back on how it went 
Eh, not great, not bad. My father didn’t bother to read it, my mother did and said she agreed with most of it. She followed it up with “Is the writer one of those libertarians?” She seems somewhat receptive to libertarian thought in some areas but still holds some prejudice.
It will be a long battle, but my main goal is to make my parents receptive to Ron Paul. I don’t think it will happen in time for the primaries, and it will probably never happen. I figure I might as well try.
What’s their beef with libertarianism?
It’s what you would normally expect from people who can’t see the state for what it is. Maybe at best they think it’s a necessary evil, but I’m not so sure they think it’s evil. The weird thing is my father introduced Ayn Rand to me when I was a teenager - her novels and essays/speeches. So on the one hand he absolutely hates the looters and moochers of the world, yet at the same time he can’t envision a world without a state. I suppose it isn’t that weird that he believes this considering Ayn Rand believed that same thing. He also believes libertarianism to be hedonism. I don’t know what made him believe that.
I think one of the main issues that is really holding my parents back is Islamic terrorism. As Clayton pointed out in another thread, it’s not like these people want to just kill us - they have material wants too. Yet all we hear is how they hate us for our way of life. Like all good conservatives, my parents buy heavily into that. Naturally, their solution is to invade any country that is predominantly Muslim and kill the people in charge. As if that will solve conflicts. I’m pretty sure that if they weren’t afraid of Muslim terrorists destroying the American way of life, then they might be more open to Ron Paul.
Check out the PowerPoint in my sig. I tried to put in all the the main objections I had back in my neo-con days. Tom Woods called it “a very good presentation” on his blog, and another guy added “You made this PowerPoint? Someone linked me to it a while back and it really had a big impact on my foreign policy views. That was very good work–thanks for putting it together.”
Wow bro, I was honestly just telling someone about this PowerPoint. I agree with Woods, good presentation 