Comments on: Libertarian Party Anarchist Caucus

By: lordmetroid

lordmetroid — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:25:11 +0000

I can sign under on these five keypoints.

By: paulie

paulie — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 11:47:29 +0000

No, really, honestly, I hope you and Milnes get all the psych meds you need. It doesn’t matter whether you believe me.

By: Donald Raymond Lake

Donald Raymond Lake — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 03:20:27 +0000

paulie: no you don’t! You and Matt and _____ and _____ and ______ can’t be full time Kinder garten play mates and then successfully fake sincerity. Thoughtfulness, once you can crank that sucker out at the drop of a hat, you’ve got it made!

By: paulie

paulie — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:02:36 +0000

Don, there’s a lot of things you don’t get, but that’s OK. We think you should get better care….we really do.

By: Donald Raymond Lake

Donald Raymond Lake — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:53:01 +0000

robert capozzi : you need to realize that the Libertarian activists credo is ‘follow me folks, I am right behind you!’

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!]

By: paulie

paulie — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:47:04 +0000

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

Huh?

By: paulie

paulie — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:38:35 +0000

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.

By: paulie

paulie — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:34:42 +0000

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.

Most minarchists in the party at least recognize the irony of thinking the best way to protect free market capitalism is with a socialist monopoly, and are open to persuasion. Usually, their objection to anarchy is “pragmatic,” either believing some institutionalized aggression is necessary or believing the public can never be persuaded to support a complete free market, including law and security. Pragmatic arguments can sway them.

Most, for instance, are unaware that the bulk of laws they respect in the US today were developed under anarchy, including the commercial code that was developed voluntarily by merchants in Europe when international trade had no protection from governments, and the common law that emerged as customary rules of conduct backed by reciprocal agreements, restitution, and the threat of ostracism in pre-Norman England. The laws they hate were all created by government officials, not to mention the complete perversion of justice that substitutes fines paid to the state for restitution to the victim.

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.

By: Michael Seebeck

Michael Seebeck — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 06:10:03 +0000

Gene B, Jim Davidson’s post is not a joke. He really is that much of a bipolar lunatic.

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

By: mdh

mdh — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 03:28:47 +0000

The LPAC advocates a big-tent Libertarian Party and a state-neutral platform. We believe the only way to achieve this goal is through direct action in a similar fashion as the minarchist faction has perpetrated against us over the past decades. Thus, we plan to promote the Libertarian Party as explicitly anarchist, and to advocate internally for explicitly anti-state language. Equal and opposite pressure seems the only way to drive things back to the sane middle ground.

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.

By: mdh

mdh — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 03:20:49 +0000

It could be said that Bob Barr is a part of the reason we have extreme statism. He was an elected Republican who voted for a lot of that, after all…?

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.

By: Gene Berkman

Gene Berkman — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:22:05 +0000

Just to be evenhanded, let me say this: If Mr Davidson’s post is a joke, it is in very poor taste.

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!

By: Robert Capozzi

Robert Capozzi — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 22:12:28 +0000

pc 54, the 5 points are amusing to me, too. “Fun and likeable,” especially likeable, seems to be a huge stretch.

By: Peter Orvetti

Peter Orvetti — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:17:49 +0000

Thank you for that honest and detailed response.

By: Jim Davidson

Jim Davidson — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:58:31 +0000

Peter Orvetti, I didn’t comment on your Liberty for All post because I couldn’t find a way to post there. (Apparently, “for all” is something of a false claim. lol)

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.