Ron Paul and the Singularity

[satya]

[ QUOTE ]
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Another point is that if the general public no nothing of our position I don't want their first contact with the true ideas of freedom to be a guy who wants to use taxation, the police and the threat of violence to forcefully evict hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. Sending mixed messages on a first impression is much worse than sending no message at all. Once people get the idea the Ron Paul is what all freedom loving people aspire to getting that image out of their head will be very difficult.

You went through the minarchist progression but you just said you have the propensity to argue and debate intelligently (and above all logically) about politics. If people aren't prepared to do that all I want them to hear from freedom lovers is violence is evil taxation is violence. Lets not confuse them.

[/ QUOTE ]

So, are you saying that by not voting, somehow, by osmosis maybe, JohnQPublic will tune in to your ideas? Oh or because you haven't voted in the past 2 elections that FauxNews is going to be moved to start talking about "true freedom"?

Are you hoping that over time people will catch on and just stop voting? What does this accomplish, in reality, in the physical world the majority of us lesser minds live in?

Suppose somehow you are able to sway the majority and only the far right/far left (who will never move) continue to vote? How do you convince people that your way is the right way without them seeing it in action?

Do you think that if somehow you were able to sway the majority that the establishment wouldn't see the potential for change and simply stop it with the power we've allowed them to accumulate during the years you were "acting on principle"?

I dunno if you've noticed but mainstream America (read: VOTERS) are not exactly turned on by radicalism these days - which anarchism certainly is. FauxNews is just going to tell them you support terrorism and that'll be the end of it.

We are social beings. It is human nature to follow the crowd. People are going to do, be, say, believe anything FauxNews tells them they should do, be, say and believe. Figure out how to combat that and you just may be on to something.

[Ron Paul]

Metric,

Awesome idea, but somebody I know already beat you to it.

[Nonfiction]

[ QUOTE ]
Metric,

Awesome idea, but somebody I know already beat you to it.

[/ QUOTE ]
If you elect Ron Paul we will be soon have chips in our brain wired to the internet allowing us to directly beam rickrolls into peoples minds.

[WordWhiz]

Voting is hardly consent to the social contract, as one of the original individual anarchists recognized over a century ago:

""In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot [*8] himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man takes the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot --- which is a mere substitute for a bullet --- because, as his only chance of self- preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him." (Lysander Spooner, No Treason).

Contrary to what tomdemaine says, a vote in self-defense is not consent to any form of statism.

[DVaut1]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Metric,

Awesome idea, but somebody I know already beat you to it.

[/ QUOTE ]
If you elect Ron Paul we will be soon have chips in our brain wired to the internet allowing us to directly beam rickrolls into peoples minds.

[/ QUOTE ]

A Ron Paul presidency will allow information technology to accelerate exponentially, which will likely allow us to develop some kind of time machine to make sure Rick Astley never records Never Gonna Give You Up in the first place, ensuring that we are never Rickrolled again, obviously.

As a celebration of the man who allowed all of this technology to emerge, surely our descendants will consider bringing President Paul back from the dead to pilot this time machine and assassinate Astley in the early 1980s. They may consider keeping Paul around to guide us through any space-time continuum distortions that the assassination of Astley created.

Vote Paul for 100,000 year life-spans, interplanetary tourism, and the end to Rickrolls as we know them.

[mjkidd]

[ QUOTE ]

A Ron Paul presidency will allow us to invent a time machine to make sure Rick Astley never records Never Gonna Give You Up in the first place, ensuring that we are never Rickrolled again, obviously.

[/ QUOTE ]

I do not want to live in this world.

[AlexM]

[ QUOTE ]
Voting is hardly consent to the social contract, as one of the original individual anarchists recognized over a century ago:

""In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot [*8] himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man takes the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot --- which is a mere substitute for a bullet --- because, as his only chance of self- preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him." (Lysander Spooner, No Treason).

Contrary to what tomdemaine says, a vote in self-defense is not consent to any form of statism.

[/ QUOTE ]

This very neatly sums up my views on the matter. In fact, this is so obvious to me that other anarchists who make moral arguments for not voting come off to me as making up excuses for their laziness in fighting for their freedom.

[Richard Tanner]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Nope. Haven't given up the moral high ground. You only think this because you think voting means a lot more than it really does.


[/ QUOTE ]

Just a little OT question for everyone, is there anyone that starts an argument from the postion "Well I don't have the moral highground but..."?

Also, what is the moral high ground?

Cody

[/ QUOTE ]

I can't start a new thread about this lest it get moved and you guys don't see it, but are there any answers for this? Specifically (trying to make this apply directly to politics), do you believe that governments today are acting without regards to morals or are they under the impression that what they're doing is moral.

If it's the latter, then how do we decide who has the high ground.

In another attempt to tie this directly to the recent threads, I'm asking for responses from:
Shake
Jog
PVN
Boro
Dvault

and anyone else that feels they've something to add.

Cody

[The once and future king]

Theres living forever and theres getting to have the metabolism/fitness/health of an 18 year old again.

Not sure about the former, would kill to make the latter a reality. I am that age were things are begining to creak a bit. It sux hard.

[DVaut1]

[ QUOTE ]
do you believe that governments today are acting without regards to morals or are they under the impression that what they're doing is moral.

If it's the latter, then how do we decide who has the high ground.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm asking for responses from:

Dvault

[/ QUOTE ]

For my part, I think this question is bewildering and nonsensical.

Governments don't 'act'; people do. "Governments" can't think or consider morality.

I don't know what you're asking.