Official Midge "I hate the USA and also Christians" Thread

[zasterguava]

I hate the US government and Christianity. Do I get a thread to? OR do y'all only single at Midge for not conforming to an overwhelming Ron Paul spunkfest.

[Ineedaride2]

The one thread dedicated to Midge, and he doesn't post in it.

I think we should talk about something that would draw him in.

Maybe the advantages of Vegemite over peanut butter as a snack spread.

[pvn]

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The one thread dedicated to Midge, and he doesn't post in it.

I think we should talk about something that would draw him in.

Maybe the advantages of Vegemite over peanut butter as a snack spread.

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Perhaps the use, of extra, commas and overuse of smileys! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[ALawPoker]

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Funny how those hardy pioneers had to rely on state organized tax district militias to protect themselves from the menacing tribes *all along the frontier*. Why didn't they voluntarily associate with others to defend themselves without government?

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I don't see what it really matters. Why do some people commit murder? I guess because they make the mistake of sacrificing long-term good for an immediate desire. It doesn't mean they were necessarily on to something. Rather than ask why people did what they did, you should be asking if they were better off for it.

In some sense forming an involuntary defense probably did help them fight off the natives, since not being able to barter for land posed such an immediate threat. Force other people to help you fight them, OK, look that worked. But now look what we have 300 years later. An oppressive government military who dances around the world making us very much less safe and costing us billions of dollars.

Government is like a nasty wart on your hand, you gotta get that [censored] by the roots or it's just gonna grow back stronger. It might be bloody, but be a man and get it over with!

Slavery "made sense" in some limited sense too. Free labor is pretty beneficial to a market. But the riddle of the universe isn't that easy to beat. Now, generations later, we still deal with the lingering consequence. There's racial tension not only in an intangible social sense but also in the affirmative action type policies that are counterintuitive to the market's prosperity. People resent being enslaved and so you should expect there is some consequence to systematically enslaving people even if it isn't slapping you in the face.

So it shouldn't be about "look what those people did" (as if that automatically justifies it), it should be about recognizing mistakes and learning from past generations' shortsightedness. It's pretty clear to me that a respect for property rights, and an emphasis away from seeing people as deriving their rights because they belong to certain groups, is the way to go. And the fact that people in the past (who were acting on way less information) didn't always realize this doesn't mean much of anything to me.

[Borodog]

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The entire western frontier was pretty much anarchic and doing just fine thank you very much.

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"entire"? You mean including the short-lived State of Franklin that cried like a baby for a more robust statist government to take them over and protect them from the depredations of the Indians? It happens that they got your state of residence to take them under their wing, but they also courted Spain. Funny how those hardy pioneers had to rely on state organized tax district militias to protect themselves from the menacing tribes *all along the frontier*. Why didn't they voluntarily associate with others to defend themselves without government? Answer equals because there weren't enough of them willing to join militias without bounty land inducements provided by the state. All those pioneers cared about was grabbing themselves a piece of land before it was all gone. Sure some of them like Daniel Boone professed not to like the "crowded" circumstances after even more settlers arrived and moved further west. But mainly they just wanted some cheap/free land.

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What is your point? Whenever there is a state handy people will court it. Duh. US businessmen asked the United States government to overthrow the government of Hawaii for them. And Nicaragua. And Honduras. And Haiti. And Cuba. And who knows how many others. Hundreds of thousands of special interest groups are responsible for the entire structure of Federal, state and local law because the come clamoring for the protection of government and its guns against competition. Duh.

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And hey talking about voluntary associations and those merchant elites, what about the Whiskey Rebellion? The merchant banker elite in Massachusetts voluntarily paid for and organized private militia to fight the voluntarily organized and tax resisting militia/rabble of the frontier. Isn't this just how warfare in AC-Land would look like?

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No? What were they resisting? Taxation by a state. Hence it isn't anything like "warfare in ACland." Duh.

And my understanding is that President of the United States of America, George Washington, declared martial law called up the state militias to put down the Whiskey Rebellion:

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George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, remembering Shays' Rebellion from just eight years before, decided to make Pennsylvania a testing ground for federal authority. Washington ordered federal marshals to serve court orders requiring the tax protesters to appear in federal district court. On August 7, 1794, Washington invoked Martial Law to summon the militias of Pennsylvania, Virginia and several states.

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Yeah. That sounds just like "warfare in ACland".

Please restrict yourself to trolling Midge in this thread and not me. You sound just as incompetent as Midge when you try to score some stupid point against a philosophy you don't comprehend (nor even try to) just because it questions your complete Faith in, Devotion to, and Worship of massive ongoing institutionalized violence.

[BluffTHIS!]

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What is your point?

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My point is that you like to bandy about historical examples with unqualified adjectives like "entire" but you really don't know dick about history beyond what you can google or wicki. Very Cyrus-like of you. And indeed your entire statement was flat wrong, because *all along the frontier* those pioneers depended on state organized militias to protect themselves from large scale Indian attacks. I suggest you google/wicki for the topic of the northwest Indian war. Indeed if you want a truer picture of voluntary no-tax anarchic life, the *Indians* offer a much better example than the white pioneers.

And yes Geo. Washington did not only call up state militia during the Whiskey Rebellion, he also personally led same into western Pennsylvania. But although you say the Massachusetts example is different than what would transpire in AC-land, it's not totally so. This is because you AC'ers like to point out that subsets of people in AC-land are free to form voluntary socialistic taxing associations. So what happens when one of those associations has a beef with others outside their own association's boundary? Two voluntarily organized private militias fighting each other, that's what.

[Borodog]

So your point is that you like to troll based on the inclusion of a single word. Fine. Strike "the entire" and include "much of the".

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This is because you AC'ers like to point out that subsets of people in AC-land are free to form voluntary socialistic taxing associations. So what happens when one of those associations has a beef with others outside their own association's boundary? Two voluntarily organized private militias fighting each other, that's what.

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DUH. Nobody ever claimed otherwise.

Honestly, I have no idea what you people think you're arguing against, because it doesn't have anything to do with what people like me are talking about. Doesn't it bother you to spend so much time raging against a position that the people you are raging at don't even hold? It's like decrying algebra because mathematicians claim 2 + 2 = 7. Uh, hello? They don't. Nobody ever claimed that private groups can't fight each other, just like nobody ever claimed that people can't murder, or rape, or steal, or defraud each other, or kill hobos and hookers, or torture animals, or molest children. That isn't the question or the claim, and you sound like an idiot when you indicate that you think it is.

[BluffTHIS!]

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So your point is that you like to troll based on the inclusion of a single word. Fine. Strike "the entire" and include "much of the".

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I made it clear above that even that isn't true. The pioneers on the frontier who according to you were leading the good anarchic existence and "doing fine thank you very much", were only doing so as long as they didn't need a state to protect them from Indian attack. Sure they might have been able to get along and transact much of daily life without government assistance or intervention, but they *never* were able to get by for long periods without government assistance for defense. Never.


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Honestly, I have no idea what you people think you're arguing against, because it doesn't have anything to do with what people like me are talking about. Doesn't it bother you to spend so much time raging against a position that the people you are raging at don't even hold?

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The reason for myself is that I actually appreciate many of the arguments of AC posters as they relate to low/small government, while not buying into absolutely no government. So I think it is important to point out ill-chosen arguments that some of you use, like your flawed historical examples, because they hurt your message. Why can't you just stick to arguing from first principles?

Now your answer to that question is probably going to be that other posters frequently opine that "AC can't work", and thus you seek to find historical examples where it has. The more relevant question is actually whether "you can get there from here", i.e. not in whether AC would work de novo, but whether there is any moderately likely probability, short of apocalyptic scenarios, where society can go from its current "statist" system to a totally AC one.

[Borodog]

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So your point is that you like to troll based on the inclusion of a single word. Fine. Strike "the entire" and include "much of the".

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I made it clear above that even that isn't true. The pioneers on the frontier who according to you were leading the good anarchic existence and "doing fine thank you very much", were only doing so as long as they didn't need a state to protect them from Indian attack. Sure they might have been able to get along and transact much of daily life without government assistance or intervention, but they *never* were able to get by for long periods without government assistance for defense. Never.

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There were vast areas with little or no government presence for decades. Most of the current US for long stretches at one time or other. There was law and social order and enforcement of contract. There were property rights and the social division of labor and peaceful trade and exchange. All the things that people like you claim could not exist. If people clammored for anything from government, it was for the same reasons that people always do so (you know the reasons I already stated and you snipped?), so that they could externalize the costs onto others.

Not to mention that the "Indian attacks" were almost entirely caused by government troops forcing the natives ever westward, or later, the government's genocidal Indian wars at the behest of the government subsidized railroad companies.

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Honestly, I have no idea what you people think you're arguing against, because it doesn't have anything to do with what people like me are talking about. Doesn't it bother you to spend so much time raging against a position that the people you are raging at don't even hold?

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The reason for myself is that I actually appreciate many of the arguments of AC posters as they relate to low/small government, while not buying into absolutely no government.

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What you mean to say is that you have a preconceived notion, cannot defend it, so resort to misconstruing the position of the opposition. I can't recall you ever saying that you "appreciate" a small government argument. All I recall you ever doing is attacking strawmen. Like in this thread. Or ignoring the arguments and calling people lesbian-hating anti-semitic self-loathing Jews or some such crap.

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So I think it is important to point out ill-chosen arguments that some of you use, like your flawed historical examples, because they hurt your message. Why can't you just stick to arguing from first principles?

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They aren't "ill-chosen arguments" or "flawed historical examples." They are simply arguments and examples that you refuse to bother to try to understand. You would know this if you would EVER JUST BOTHER TO READ the citations that are linked for you. Like this one, which you won't read, either:

"The West during this time often is perceived as a place of great chaos, with little respect for property or life. Our research indicates that this was not the case; property rights were protected and civil order prevailed. Private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which property was protected and conflicts were resolved. These agencies often did not qualify as governments because they did not have a legal monopoly on "keeping order." They soon discovered that "warfare" was a costly way of resolving disputes and lower cost methods of settlement (arbitration, courts, etc.) resulted."

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Now your answer to that question is probably going to be that other posters frequently opine that "AC can't work", and thus you seek to find historical examples where it has. The more relevant question is actually whether "you can get there from here", i.e. not in whether AC would work de novo, but whether there is any moderately likely probability, short of apocalyptic scenarios, where society can go from its current "statist" system to a totally AC one.

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I love it when people presume to decide which arguments are important and which aren't. Statists like yourself spend endless keystrokes telling us how social order and property rights couldn't exist in the absence of a state, and then when people point out that it not only could but has (and still does), you squall about how that wasn't really what you meant, what you really meant is that those people still wanted government to do something for them so that they wouldn't have to pay for it themselves, which is a great big DUH. As long as people believe in the necessity of a ruling class of violent criminals, people will try to get that class to do for them what they don't want to pay for themselves. Or you squall about how their Iron Age culture was finally conquered after 700 years of occupation by the most technologically advanced state in the world. Or whatever the new dodge is.

You are a much better troll than MidGe, though. You make me much angrier. Congratulations.

[BluffTHIS!]

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There were vast areas with little or no government presence for decades. Most of the current US for long stretches at one time or other. There was law and social order and enforcement of contract. There were property rights and the social division of labor and peaceful trade and exchange. All the things that people like you claim could not exist. If people clammored for anything from government, it was for the same reasons that people always do so (you know the reasons I already stated and you snipped?), so that they could externalize the costs onto others.

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Sure some relatively small number of white pioneers lived in areas for decades among the Indians fairly peacefully. And in fact the State of Franklin I mentioned was formed by the Watauga Association which rented a certain amount of land from the Indians for so many years. But when a faction of those Indians didn't want to keep up that arrangement and wanted the whites out, then suddenly of course those settlers wanted a statist government. However I doubt that they had any notion of "externalizing" the costs of their own defense upon others.

So the bottom line is that small numbers of white settlers lived among/around the Indians without white government until even more whites entered the area, angering the Indians, with the results the whites then wanted government. So you haven't actually proven that supposedly AC-like areas were able long term to manage self-defense without either forming a taxing government of their own, or requesting an existing such government take them under their collective umbrella.


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Not to mention that the "Indian attacks" were almost entirely caused by government troops forcing the natives ever westward

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See above and you've got the cart before the horse, including for later prairie areas and railroads. First the white settlers move into Indian areas. Then even more settlers come. Then the Indians attack and THEN come the government soldiers.


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What you mean to say is that you have a preconceived notion, cannot defend it, so resort to misconstruing the position of the opposition. I can't recall you ever saying that you "appreciate" a small government argument. All I recall you ever doing is attacking strawmen. Like in this thread. Or ignoring the arguments and calling people lesbian-hating anti-semitic self-loathing Jews or some such crap.

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Although I do like to poke fun, I am serious most of the time in this forum when I choose to debate a subject at length. And even though I favor somewhat socialistic government, since I also believe that pure socialism can't work I instead support a mixed type of government that we have now. The small government part comes in for me not so much in government not taxing and deciding what to spend those taxes on, but rather that government should prefer to use private competitive contractors for most such things rather than creating the army of government employees that use their votes to keep themselves in a level of economic affluence above what many Americans can get in the private sector. Government employees are a leech upon society and the government should act only as a general contractor who farms out sub-contracts to private corporations and individuals.

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So I think it is important to point out ill-chosen arguments that some of you use, like your flawed historical examples, because they hurt your message. Why can't you just stick to arguing from first principles?
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They aren't "ill-chosen arguments" or "flawed historical examples." They are simply arguments and examples that you refuse to bother to try to understand. You would know this if you would EVER JUST BOTHER TO READ the citations that are linked for you. Like this one, which you won't read, either:

"The West during this time often is perceived as a place of great chaos, with little respect for property or life. Our research indicates that this was not the case; property rights were protected and civil order prevailed. Private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which property was protected and conflicts were resolved. These agencies often did not qualify as governments because they did not have a legal monopoly on "keeping order." They soon discovered that "warfare" was a costly way of resolving disputes and lower cost methods of settlement (arbitration, courts, etc.) resulted."

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Here's a clue: I actually read history books and journals, including original writings of historic individuals, and don't need it sifted through the sieve of some external organization or person's philosophy.

If you would read such books yourself you would see that the above quote is a very simplistic rendering. The "west" as in "frontier" was a constantly westwardly moving area and only existed in any once specific swath for a few decades, until again, even more settlers came and demanded government.

You suck at history why don't you just give it up?


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I love it when people presume to decide which arguments are important and which aren't. Statists like yourself spend endless keystrokes telling us how social order and property rights couldn't exist in the absence of a state, and then when people point out that it not only could but has (and still does), you squall about how that wasn't really what you meant, what you really meant is that those people still wanted government to do something for them so that they wouldn't have to pay for it themselves, which is a great big DUH. As long as people believe in the necessity of a ruling class of violent criminals, people will try to get that class to do for them what they don't want to pay for themselves. Or you squall about how their Iron Age culture was finally conquered after 700 years of occupation by the most technologically advanced state in the world. Or whatever the new dodge is.

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And I love it how you lump all who question either AC itself, or specific arguments for it like you have been giving here, into one category so that you can dismiss the most relevant criticisms, especially when they show up your own intellectual laziness and lack of historical knowledge. I bow to your knowledge of science, but you don't know jack about history.


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You are a much better troll than MidGe, though. You make me much angrier. Congratulations.

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Anyone who disagrees with you or has the temerity to point out flawed arguments you might make in discrete instances is obviously a troll. Got it.

You know every political group or society has its fringe elements. And while that doesn't mean the mainstream of any such group or philosophy is adhering to a rational philosophy logically derived from valid first principles, it does mean that each such group has adherents who themselves buy into principles and arguments that the majority of their cohorts don't. And while a lot of posters here might say all AC supporters are fringe kooks, I don't. However it is clear that many are such and while you're not out there as far as Nielso, you are aren't nearly as adept at making cogent arguments for AC as other AC posters. And the reason is clear - EMOTION.