Welcome to our smaller government club, now bend down as we beat the stuffings out of you!

Paulie and Matt as ‘fun and likable’ [Room Temperature IQs and an STD rash]? I just do not get it —– as with Scientology ‘missionaries’ on a modern campus! [Is Ron L. Hubbard working at the same gasoline station as Elvis the Pelvis and Micheal Jackson ?????? Inquiring minds want to know!]

Hey, Jim, how’s that Facebook blocking thing doing, anyway?

Huh?

the 5 points are amusing to me, too. “Fun and likeable,” especially likeable, seems to be a huge stretch.

Your mileage may vary. I like to think of Matt and myself as fun and likable.

I don’t believe minarchists are clueless, I believe they have always been insincere and at heart evil. The minarchist wants a boot stomping a human face, forever. If he wants a little less government than the other statists, it is only that he wants that boot to be shined and the stomper to be polite while stomping the human face into a mess of gore.

I’m an anarchist now. But I was a minarchist in the 1990s. I don’t think that was a good description of me then. I’d answer more to Less Antman’s description in Kn@ppster blog comments:

Another reason to stay is that the minarchists in the LP include a large number who are open to the anarchist case if it is presented to them, and discussing it with them (something we have generally failed to do) is a valuable activity. I’m not willing to give up on them, since most anarchists were minarchists at one time, and most of the minarchists I’ve met in the LP are intelligent people who are relying on popular biases about the meaning of anarchy rather than the reality of market-created law and security.

Which is why the dead Dallas Accord should not just be replaced with a carbon copy, but with a renewed commitment to alliance and friendship between anarchists and minarchists that INCLUDES the right of both to internally and externally advocate for their particular brand under the auspices of the LP.

and

I don’t think minarchists are clueless: I think it is primarily a matter of having not been exposed to the extensive empirical literature. They see institutionalized aggression as a necessary evil, so they’re halfway there already: they just needed to review the “necessary” part.

Hey, Jim, how’s that Facebook blocking thing doing, anyway?

We are the anarcho-libertarians. We fly the black and blue – black for anarchism, and blue for libertarianism. It’s also a symbol of every bruise inflicted in a police beating, every bruise to our freedoms by statism, every bruise taken by every young mind from public schools, and the list goes on and on. Statism hurts, and statism kills. We can only end statism by ending the state!

Remember also what anarcho-libertarianism means.

Anarchism – the ideology around existence in a stateless society, without fiat authorities.

Libertarianism – adherance to the non-aggression principle, and a desire not to initiate force.

Put together, these things are a big part of who we are and what we desire for the future of humanity.

John Hospers also endorsed George W. Bush in 2004. I don’t think anyone would disagree that Bush is a big part of the statism problem!

So I suppose there is at least some evidence that some non-anarchist libertarians – prominent ones, no less – are a part of the problem or even a part of the cause of the problem or the machinery of the problem.

Referring to people you disagree with as “evil” and “scum” is not likely to be persuasive. And to think that limited government libertarians are the main reason we have statism and imperialism is a vast over estimate of the power of limited government libertarians.

Mr Davidson, get a life!

But I did comment on Tom Knapp’s blog. Here are those thoughts.

I don’t believe minarchists are clueless, I believe they have always been insincere and at heart evil. The minarchist wants a boot stomping a human face, forever. If he wants a little less government than the other statists, it is only that he wants that boot to be shined and the stomper to be polite while stomping the human face into a mess of gore.

The treatment of the Dallas Accord by the minarchists is indicative of their insincerity and unwillingness to actually limit the government, or even pretend to agree that government has become tyranny. They like a lot of wars, because they think there are profits in it – ask Rick Maybury why he has chaostan.com subscribers investing in defense companies.

They like a big state because they have ambition to control it. They want to seize the reins of the state, liquidate the anarchists, and have the power and glory they think are held by Democrats and Republicans. In other words, moderate libertarians are evil, statist, imperialist scum. If they are not yet corrupted by the power they seek, they really want the opportunity to have the power to become corrupt.

There is no room for moderation in the libertarian movement. There is no virtue in moderation in the defense of justice, and no vice in extremism in defense of liberty. Rather, there is only the cowardice of those not willing to take bold measures and the dishonesty of those willing to sell out the rest of us for a mess of pottage.

@58 If these monopolies are artificially backed by the force of the state, they are certainly bad. If some group in your ambiguous “share all” system monopolizes distribution and allocation mechanisms, it is no less a state for not calling itself one – the ultimate monopoly. I meant to include this point: if you create a new invention, you have a monopoly unless and until someone actually wants to compete with you and can be effective. Not all monopolies are always artificial or bad.

Ugh, when will Libertarians realize that they cannot call what they believe “anarchy.” Anarchy is a political theory that espouses a complete rejection of capitalism in all of its forms

That depends on what you mean by capitalism. See http://mises.org/story/2099#6 for disambiguation. See also Matt’s article and discussion at http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2009/07/matt-harris-libertarian-party-of-west-virginia-chairman-why-the-free-market-is-our-best-weapon-in-the-class-warfare-struggle/

and embraces a communal lifestyle in which everybody helps support everybody.

Anarchy means without rulers. By what means is everyone compelled to support everyone? Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for volunteering and cooperation. I do a lot of it myself, for example my writing here. On a very limited population basis, communes can actually work fairly well; I’ve participated in communal living myself, with varying levels of success. But cooperative models tend to work far less well when scaled up beyond the point where all participants all know each other well. What agency has the authority to decide what resources go where, and to tell people they must comply?

The same, in fairness, is true of business enterprises. No anarchist can still claim to be such and claim to possess some authority to tell another person he can’t trade his own labor or what he produces with it for what someone else does with hers. Yet, it is a far step from that simple, organic market economy to large corporations with absentee owners, noncontractual limited liability and state-ordained corporate personhood.

I’m not sure to what extent either system can – or should – survive at the scale of large enterprises or large collectives of people.

people are always exploited,

No less so by free riders and busybodies in cooperative settings.

and monopolies easily develop

If these monopolies are artificially backed by the force of the state, they are certainly bad. If some group in your ambiguous “share all” system monopolizes distribution and allocation mechanisms, it is no less a state for not calling itself one – the ultimate monopoly.

see the Gilded Age of American history

In no way analogous to a real free market, unless you consider a Khmer Rouge collective farm to be analogous to your idealized cooperative.

In addition, true anarchists reject being on any part of the political spectrum, including joining political parties.

Not necessarily. The political system is an empirical fact of life, as is the present economic system. Both of us would like to do away with both of these systems. You’ve expressed an opposition to participating in the political process in the meantime; do you also refuse to participate in the economic system and condemn all who do?

For more info on REAL anarchism, see the writings of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Proudhon’s earlier writings, or Emma Goldman.

There are many flavors of anarchism. A pretty good collection is at http://praxeology.net/anarcres.htm including Molinari, Warren, Garrison, Proudhon, Stirner, Spencer, Spooner, Tucker, Sumner, Thoreau, and many others.