Far easier to run and lose, impossible to win. You can’t seriously believe that the rulers will just give you their power.
I wasn’t talking about any office of importance.
It may be easier to run, not easier to win. Besides, I’m talking about voting with bullets, not ballots.
Self-defense is not coercion. And there is no way we would lose. I think Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq are testament to what a rebel guerrilla force can accomplish. Now imagine a well trained and well armed rebel force.
Of course you don’t know how it would work. You’re investing all of your energy into fighting and resisting the idea, none into trying to find solutions. Sure, we could buy off the warlords. We could also crush them economically. It’s frustrating trying to discuss this with you, because your thinking is geared towards failure, and your vision is terribly narrow. To quote a phrase, “there is more than one way to skin a cat”
I’d rather fight and lose than resign myself to living on my knees. YMMV.
Perhaps it is wishful thinking to be free. Perhaps we are all destined to be slaves forever, with a boot stepping on our faces for eternity. I’d like to believe otherwise. If that is fantasy, then I am guilty of being a dreamer.
Exactly, and you just wouldn’t have the support of the locals.
It’s nothing to do with that, we’re not faced with a choice between moving to Africa now or not ever doing anything.
Why not?
No, there are many other choices. But moving to Africa is not necessarily the wrong choice, and staying in America is not necessarily the right choice. What seems to be the issues here are (1) max gets frustrated that people who criticize him and the LC don’t have a plan of their own (at least that they will discuss publicly) and (2) it seems to be easier to attack the guy with an idea and the idea, whether it is good or bad, than to propose a different strategy.
If you don’t like Africa, or you don’t want to leave America, or you don’t think the LC will work, that’s perfectly fine. I’m not 100% sure it will work either. But if you don’t like that idea, then please share your ideas for change and liberty with the group, because attacking one idea at a time without putting back in, is going to leave us as a think tank or forum bereft of interesting talking points and is discouraging for other people to come forth with their ideas.
God forbid we criticise bad ideas.
The world is full of critics. Is it so much to ask that people add some value by putting back in, instead of only taking out?
Removing bad ideas is “putting something in” by itself.
Do you have a different plan than the LC approach Giles? If so, what is it?
True. I don’t think libertarians are committed to really oppose the state. I’m loosely talking about libertarians in the West, not to people in this forum…
I asked about your plan. Not Nitro’s opinion on networks.
In the OP I outline one possible idea for a strategy towards liberty.
This “liberty student” is a troll. Some people are not interested finding the truth or learning what is right or wrong, they are only interested in winning the argument, and ending the discussion ASAP. Such individuals usually have low self-esteem, as their esteem is linked to the result of winning rather than the discovery new things. Apparently learning something new to them means admitting they don’t know everything… they prefer to look ridiculous, like having an discussion with a hard-core socialist, than admitting their logic is plain nonsense.
Don’t be silly, as much as I disagree with LS frequently to call him a troll is somewhat of a stretch.
Cheers Giles, although he does have a point. I do sometimes argue with hardcore socialists. [:D]
when we wake up. when we breath. when eat and drink and drive and work and talk and play. it is always there as a question mark. i’m not saying its the biggest question mark such as “what do i want to do with the rest of my life?”, “how do i love the other people in my life?”, no i am not saying it is all that. no, no.
but sure, sometimes it sleeps and sometimes its stirs. at times it is strong, and at times it is even overwhelming. it has been in here since we found out, when ever it was that that happened. when we wondered, and when we looked into it, and when we researched it to find out for ourselves if it was really all true - i mean, could it really be?
how ever it happened that we found out, we found out. it doesn’t matter whether it happened twenty five years ago or twenty five days ago or twenty five hours ago.
ok, so now its up here. but it is also down in here. up here i am aware of it mentally/intellectually as a fret, as a dilemma, as an unsettled insecurity. thats how it is up here in the brain, the mental construct, the thought pattern.
but after it got up here, it also came down here. in here it is a tenseness, a constriction, a nervousness. oh well, so thats cool, thats fine; it is as it is. and its as if it seams to be saying that even your physical body knows THIS IS WRONG ! so yes, your body is smart. it is very smart indeed. and yes your mind is smart, and of course it is also a part of that body.
the question is in the form: AM I CONSENTING? IS THIS VULUNTARY? MUST I LEAVE? CAN I SAY? AM I RESPONSIBLE? TO WHAT DEGREE? AM I CONDONING THIS?
well there you have it. the english version, that is, of the thought form. there is of course a japanese version and a swedish version, etc. etc.
so what is the answer? is there an answer? how would i even know if i was right? these are very distressing thoughts indeed.
how does my body interpret all this? the mind and body are indivisable - it is one you. so just how does it feel? if you want to find out, find out. if you don’t, don’t. either way is fine. but if you do inquire you will sense it as an uneasiness, a tenseness, an unsettling distress. but hey, we can use that to wake up, we can observe it, we can notice it.
so here we are. you, me, all of us. and there are probably over a million of us in just america alone. probably three million of us, or more, over the entire planet. and who knows, maybe many more. we are actually everywhere now. in small numbers yes, sure, very small statistically. but we are everywhere. and every day thousands more join us. soon maybe tens of thousands daily - who knows we’ll just have to wait and see.
let us agree to use any internal physical distress we ever feel to make us conscious. let it percolate up into our minds, not the questions our masters have us asking, but the THE question …
how i am to be? not later, but right now! how am to be? not do, not make, not read, not say, but just to be. it’s kind of funny in a sense that what the whole human-domestication machinery has attempted to suppress may just be what drives it out into the daylight. FREEDOM !
jim miller
liberty study group p.s. if you see fit, kindly take a moment to rate this post for others. peace.
I’ll give you a hint, the only reason those insurgencies were even a little viable is because ‘total war’ went out of fashion. The goal was to win hearts and minds and not to squash all resistance to the central governments.
The rebel forces weren’t very successful in occupied Europe for what reason exactly? Could be because the Nazis would roll into a town and kill a large percentage of the population in order to quell the uprising.
Which model do you think a warlord will follow, total war or Geneva Convention lawful warfare?
The other ‘solution’ floating around can’t even be mentioned without attracting venom from it’s opponents.
Options for the LC aren’t discussed openly here while agorist ideas can’t be discussed due to certain people wanting to prove above all else that it isn’t a viable strategy for taking down the Leviathan. Not that they have a flawed plan, mind you, but that the whole idea is bunk to begin with.
That and the lefties claim agorism as their crown jewel and there is a whole lot of left-right secular infighting going on other than opposition to agorism proper.
That’s a good point, I don’t mean to bash the LC I’ve moved on from that, but in order to be taken seriously the LC would have be adhere to the NAP, whereas the warlords simply wouldn’t.
Stop paying taxes then.