Reject the 'Anarchist' Voters

[TomCollins]

Neilsio is the Moorobot of Anarchism- turning more and more people towards statism.

[mosdef]

[ QUOTE ]
preventing an action from being performed != forcing an action to be performed

[/ QUOTE ]

You're talking in the reference of your morality though.

For example, someone thinks that taking your food and giving it to someone else is moral. He moves to take your food. How are you going to "prevent" his taking your food with taking an action of your own? If in his morality his action is legitimate and your action is not, you are doing the initiation of illegitimate action (from his point of view). Sure, he initiated the illegimtate action from your point of view, but you can't win the morality argument without doing so in the context of your own morality only.

[Nielsio]

This thread has become quite unreadable because of all the different variants of ad hominems being thrown around. When people do that, they want the other person to be really offended and to return the favour in various ways. However, I will not do that. On the contrary, I will move forward with intellectual curiosity.


The question that people have seem to boil down to the following:

"But if we are to have any type of effect against the state, and if it is not through political means, then how?"


And by phrasing the question that way, I've already started to structure the type of thinking required here. And this is actually a very interesting core issue in regards to anarchism vs statism.


I'll answer the question directly:

Voting and democracy is a tool of the state. It's a brilliant invention that has evolved from the state and is used in endless ways that people have no idea of, but at the end of the day it suits the people who profit from the state and who exist because of the state magnificently. One way of understanding the democracy scam is by understanding that it creates class conflict. Pvn has talked about this many times. He points out that people have a very hard time thinking about their own property and values, but that they almost always tend to think about values as unilateral things that must exist throughout society. For example: my opinion is that drugs are bad, therefore drugs should be illegal for everyone.

But to come back to anarchist thought: the state exists in the way it does because people believe in it. What anarchists want is not to destroy the state in one big swoop. They understand that pursuing such a goal would be fundamentally moot and more practically, impossible. And even if it were to happen (Russia bankrupts), then really, do we find true freedom of association and true respect for property rights? No, not at all.

Statism is a disease, more specifically: belief in the virtue of the mightiest maffia is a disease. That is what anarchists want people to wake up to. Until they wake up to it, they will defend its virtue to the point of death (cue: the woman in that Michael Moore movie who raised her entire family for the military and even told her son that he should go after he didn't want to go to Iraq).
So what we find is that freedom, true freedom and respect for property rights, is something that can only come about through an evolution of *thought*. The path to freedom really is an information war. And that's the reason we are winning it. Because I am communicating with you on the other side of the world, and there is no one controlling what I can put out or what you can read.

So how does this relate to Ron Paul and voting?

If you want freedom, then there is but one way and that is the information war. If people wake up, then the state is doomed. The state is doomed because its existence depends on belief in the state. When they can no longer get people to believe, then their means of existence is broken, kaput, over, finished.

When using the tools of the state to achieve freedom, then there is but one way in how one should use it: use the tools of the state to further the dis-beliefe in the state.

And *that's* where the tricky part is. Because people tend to get behind the political tool (democracy) when they think it favours their goals. They will start to strenghten their belief in the tool because they think it will work. And that's dangerous.

Luckily, Ron Paul has on many occasions said that he is actually running against everything the current system stands for. He keeps pointing out that he doesn't want power over people, but that he wants to destroy that power.

I don't support Ron Paul, I do support certain things that he says: for example when he says "how would you feel if China would have military bases all over the United States?". Do you see? He's using moral arguments (argument from consistency). And those are great arguments, and those are what are going to expose the utter system of violence (and might makes right) that the state is. So, in terms of getting those ideas out there, I fully support him.

[pvn]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
preventing an action from being performed != forcing an action to be performed

[/ QUOTE ]

You're talking in the reference of your morality though.

For example, someone thinks that taking your food and giving it to someone else is moral. He moves to take your food. How are you going to "prevent" his taking your food with taking an action of your own? If in his morality his action is legitimate and your action is not, you are doing the initiation of illegitimate action (from his point of view). Sure, he initiated the illegimtate action from your point of view, but you can't win the morality argument without doing so in the context of your own morality only.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wrong. When two parties with opposing moralities collide, the *only* way to resolve the collision and initiate a *morally consistent* interaction is for the two parties to mutually agree. The only other alternative resulting in interaction is for one party's morality to be violently imposed upon the other party (regardless of whether the party imposing has a moral system that says this is allowed!).

If they both chose to not interact, then nobody's morality is violated.

[TomCollins]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
preventing an action from being performed != forcing an action to be performed

[/ QUOTE ]

You're talking in the reference of your morality though.

For example, someone thinks that taking your food and giving it to someone else is moral. He moves to take your food. How are you going to "prevent" his taking your food with taking an action of your own? If in his morality his action is legitimate and your action is not, you are doing the initiation of illegitimate action (from his point of view). Sure, he initiated the illegimtate action from your point of view, but you can't win the morality argument without doing so in the context of your own morality only.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wrong. When two parties with opposing moralities collide, the *only* way to resolve the collision and initiate a *morally consistent* interaction is for the two parties to mutually agree. The only other alternative resulting in interaction is for one party's morality to be violently imposed upon the other party (regardless of whether the party imposing has a moral system that says this is allowed!).

If they both chose to not interact, then nobody's morality is violated.

[/ QUOTE ]

I believe I have the right to rape your wife. I rape her. You try to stop me. We don't agree. You shoot me in the head.

Doesn't seem like its the only way.

[Kaj]

[ QUOTE ]
Statism is a disease,...

[/ QUOTE ]

Yawn.

[bkholdem]

Do the rest of you have as much fun as I do reading/discussing moral conflicts and uncertainties?

[Case Closed]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Statism is a disease,...

[/ QUOTE ]

Yawn.

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess one could classify me as a statist who empathizes with what anarchists say. But this type of rhetoric just does not make any sense to me. All it does is turn people away from some quality ideas that anarchists have.

[samsonite2100]

OP sounds like an excerpt from some bad Soviet-era communist agitprop--"we must kill the running dog imperialist swine."

[Richard Tanner]

[ QUOTE ]
All it does is turn people away from some quality ideas that anarchists have.

[/ QUOTE ]

No doubt, treating positions without respect (when they haven't been proven wrong) reeks of fear that they may be right. Also, it would seem to show that you have little faith in your own beliefs.

That said, you'd be kidding yourself it you didn't think that ACers here and on the interwebs didn't by and large turn many off because of their general attitude. It's a mean game, this politics.

Cody