By the end of 2008 I was what would be considered a Conservative Libertarian. I had been intrigued by the work of Ayn Rand as it was brought up quite frequently and I decided to read some of her work. I started with Anthem and finished that in about 3 hours. I enjoyed it so I decided to read Atlas Shrugged. After I read AS I was a Minarchist who supported a flat tax because I considered it to be voluntary (Don’t ask me how, maybe I was just being intellectually dishonest, I really don’t know). That argument was torn down by an Anarcho-Capitalist on a political forum on a college football message board I frequent. By that time I was frequenting mises.org daily reading all of the blogs. I had turned into a voluntary minarchist (In the Randian sense), but only because I couldn’t break down the barriers in my head that were built up by years of statist education. Around the beginning of December of 2009 I finally broke down those barriers and considered myself a Anarcho-Capitalist.
I was a run of the mill republican/neo-libertarian, but then I noticed that freedom seemed to coincide with wealth and that the maximization of freedom would provide the best environment for wealth creation. That led me down a path to liberty.
Where do you get this?
“YouTube or it didn’t happen!”
We aren’t together anymore but she is an amazing intellectual.
Her name was Liberty… and she was smoking in the non-smoking section. I knew this dame was trouble the moment I laid eyes on her.
“Her name was Liberty… and she was smoking in the non-smoking section.”
She would never do that, she has the utmost respect for property rights.
I believe he’s talking in metaphor, where smoking in the non-smoking section means questioning authority.
I know what he was referring, my response was to explain her adherance to the Libertarian philosophy. So unless this is a governmentally coerced non-smoking section, she would never disobey its rules. In fact, she is a smoker and never lets a butt hit the ground in order to respect property rights.
But seriously can we talk about anything else?
I was going to let imaginations fill in the blank & not be a Sir Buzz Killington, but yes, the “non-smoking section” could very well be public “property” “owned” by the state.
However, the later statement “… i knew she was trouble the moment I laid eyes her.” also implies reverence & acknowledgement that the person viewing Liberty respects property rights & sees the smoking in the non-smoking section (in a possibly privately owned establishment) as trouble.
</metaphor explanation>
Yes, it was very casablanca and i respected that.
Oh, I know who she is.
I suppose it all started with becoming politically aware. Sometime in the seventh grade or eigth grade I read Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984. I came away from those books with a deep seated dislike of communism, so I thought if I don’t like communism I should become that which opposed it. Which at the time seemed to be Conseratism. So, I did that for a while and was active in my local young Republicans chapter, this all changed near the end of the 2004 election.
It was here, that I decided on a whim to research the minor political parties on the ballot. I went through, Nader’s page which struck me as socialist, the Greens(socialist), the Libertarians whom at the time I thought where crazy(who could want to legalize drugs?) then I stumbled upon the Constitution Party. It was here I saw some of the shortcomings of the Bush administration and first heard some questions raised about how the GOP had betrayed its principles etc.
After this, I stumbled upon Pat Buchanan and paleo-conservatism which I aligned myself with. Here, I came to question the logic of war for the first time, as up till that point I had been an ardent interentionist. From Buchanan and Paleo-Conseratism I eentually stumbled to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and that stuck with me though I would hae called myself more of a libertarian conservative then an Objectivist. Heck, at the time I participated in my High school’s JROTC and had a debate in one of our meetings on how ‘selfishness’ is good.
From there, came the Ron Paul campaign which I got involved in and it furthered my libertarian leanings to a pronounced ideology. I then stumbled on Mises.org through that and Austrian economics and the rest is really history.
No really this goes against what Rothbard wrote.
Hence, while the abolitionist will accept a gradual step in the right direction if that is all that he can achieve, he always accepts it grudgingly, as merely a first step toward a goal which he always keeps blazingly clear. The abolitionist is a “button pusher” who would blister his thumb pushing a button that would abolish the State immediately, if such a button existed. But the abolitionist also knows that alas, such a button does not exist, and that he will take a bit of the loaf if necessary – while always preferring the whole loaf if he can achieve it.
Abolition of the state today is preferable to the abolition tomorrow.
I was liberal as a kid, but then my family started a business. I read a quote once, “A conservative is a liberal who’s gotten mugged by reality”. I would say that holds doubly true for libertarians.
The Rev
I don’t know if I was “awoken” so much as “pointed in the right direction”. I always questioned things as I grew up. I worked through high school and paid attention to business news and politics–just as I do today. I would ask my parents and teachers questions like, “Why should I have to pay taxes for things I don’t use? Or benefits I don’t receive?” My parents were much more forgiving than some of my teachers and encouraged my brother and I to question and learn. (As a side note, I spent 13 years in catholic schools, K through 12. I consider myself out on parole. The only thing I remember from those priests and nuns is that 1 + 1 = I love Jesus!)
After high school, I worked for nearly 7 years. I kept asking questions and continued looking for answers… and learned more. I fell upon libertarian literature and found that my thoughts and beliefs were closely related. After deciding on going to college, I would ask questions of my teachers. I majored in political science and economics because these were the fields that interested me. I completed my Associate’s degree then went on to a four-year school. I was still libertarian, but it wasn’t until I was in a four-year college that I was introduced to Austrian Economics. One professor in particular set me on the path to “heterodox economic thought”, and I am forever in her debt. She encouraged me to read, and even assigned topics in her class that allowed me to express my views and use the knowledge I acquired instead of blindly regurgitating textbook mumbo-jumbo.
I am still learning.
No really this goes against what Rothbard wrote.
Didn’t Rothbard also believe that anarchism required an underlying change in ethics in society?
At one point i realized it was really unfair for 100% to have to do what 51% wants.
It begun when I read K. Popper’s Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, a great piece of epistemology that illustrates how human knowledge is enlarged via a process of trial and error through falsification and the greater philosophical conclusions that can be drawn from that - Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies was also a great read. A greater emphasis on Hayek, and how tradition plays a great role in the problem of knowledge in society because it reflects a process of falsification as individuals, with the knowledge that they have, learn that certain behavior is more likely to fulfill their desires and adopt the advantageous behavior while abandoning the disadvantegeous. By this time, I discovered that the entire philosophical roots of the Rothbardian orthodoxy was chilldish, and dangerous - rather than being based on piecemeal changes to society (as Popper had emphasized as being the best policies in The Open Society ), it was based on suddenly changing society in order to fit their a priori vision of society (see Rockwell’s “30 Day Plan” on the Mises Blog). That was the problem, thanks to Hayek and Popper, I now fully understood the limits of human comprehension (thanks both to Hayek’s problem of knowledge and Popper’s epistemology )and that the Rothbardian paradigm hubristically raised their own reason above the evolution of society. Furthermore, I realized that the Rothbardian view of the mainstream was a mere strawman, and that its libertarian populism was largely based on a gnostic vision of hidden knowledge that the mainstream simply haven’t woken up to yet, or rejected due to their own villanous motives. So, I woke up from being woken up.
Yes, but he never stated that introduction of anarchy should wait until the appropriate culture emerged.
I really feel like I woke up in October 2008 after the passage of TARP. I was flabbergasted, espcially at the number of (supposedly “free market”) Republicans who voted for it. I could not find a satisfactory explanation in mainstream economics as to why this was necessary or a good idea. Then I discovered AE, which almost immediately demystified government intervention into the economy. Suddenly, everything made sense. After that it only took a few short months of reading until I had completely transitioned from neocon to ancap.