No Treason

I don’t know how original this is, but I recently realized that in order to have the right to freedom, or the right to exercise free will, by definition removes the possibility of the right to coerce.

Sometimes statists or people unaware of a deeper philosophical argument will propose a strawman such as,

“But under anarchy, anyone could hurt anyone, and steal from anyone, and it would be chaos and we need a government to keep people from causing harm!”

Now on it’s face, involuntary government survives on ideology but acts through coercion. So the argument that government can stop coercion is false because it’s only tool is coercion.

But take two anarchists, in the absence of a government. If they maintain the right to sovereignty, that neither has an involuntary obligation to the other, then that principle or premise, removes any rational justification for coercion because they would be undermining the very premise they claim allows them to act in the first place.

Now certainly, some anarchist could be a hypocrite or only an anarchist because no one recognizes his authority, and he has given allegiance to no one. A statist without a state. And he could use coercion on another stateless person, but to do so, he would have to reject his right to his freedom.

Freedom is no endorsement of coercion anymore than coercion is an endorsement of freedom (lifeboat scenarios).  Life boat scenarios are frequently emotive appeals to do an end run around the non-aggression principle.

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I have been listening to Webster Tarpley on the Alex Jones show for some time.  Tarpley is a very clever disinfo agent, who uses large amounts of doublethink to unbalance the listener.  Infowars has some great guests, but the show has really tanked in the last 6 months.

Now why Alex Jones has Tarpley on Infowars and continues to pump him up is beyond me.  Tarpley is the opposite of Ron Paul and Chuck Baldwin.  On economics, law, history and social policy, Tarpley is basically an ideological neocon.  Webster is as far from a Libertarian as Obama is, just in a different direction.

Continue reading Are Alex Jones and Webster Tarpley Disinfo Agents?

Another rambling, indirect, wasteful performance today by Ron Paul.  He gets 5 minutes to question Geithner, and should have asked him about his comments to the CFR regarding the dollar, or any of the hundred other pressing issues of the day, but instead he has another ad lib ramble about innocent until proven guilty, which Geithner easily evades without saying anything meaningful.

I don’t even know why Lew Rockwell links to this stuff, because Ron has been off a lot more than he has been on lately.  Would it kill him to make a forceful prepared statement Daniel Hannan style?

The other day, Paul defended his style of questioning, I think it was on Glen Beck.  That wasn’t convincing either.  We can all get all of the Ron Paul opinion time we want on the ‘net.  He has published books, he has his Texas Straight talk, he gives speeches on the house floor, he’s on TV a couple times a week.

But when he gets a few minutes to challenge those in power, he turns into an ideologue and a wallflower and it is immensely frustrating.

Bill Anderson on the LRC blog writes,

Lew, as I watch that video, it dawns on me that Ron Paul might as well be speaking Ancient Greek to Geithner (emphasis mine). Most people in Washington have no clue as to what he means about delegation of powers, or what we have called the “Non-delegation Clause” of the U.S. Constitution.

And that is the point.  Because Ron chooses not to properly prepare and goes off on esoteric tangents, he comes off as speaking in Greek, and the clever bureaucrats play dumb and can avoid answering him.  Ron is not speaking to a friendly audience where he can deliver the same lines and stories over and over, but he’s there as an investigator and an interrogator.

I appreciate everything Ron Paul has exposed me to, and his personal sacrifices to further liberty, but it’s not hard to see how a guy can be punchless in the Congress for so long, when he just can’t ask a few direct questions, and insists upon going on and on about abstract moral and ethical issues that don’t even relate to the hearings.

What a wasted opportunity.  And opportunities are so few they can’t be squandered so carelessly.

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I did it.

Comment #29 on this blog post.

In response to this comment,

Give Him a Break

Everyone is blowing the stupid special olympics comment out of control. It is very easy for the media to ruin any interview by only showing the bad little bits and pieces of it. If anyone actually watched the interview and developed their own opinion on it rather than being spoon fed an opinion from the media im sure that the public would think that the interview was relatively succesful. Now a days you have to be so careful what you say or else some organization will be breathing down your neck. I think everone should focus on how he is trying to help our nation as opposed to constantly trying to find the flaws. As Obama said last night, we need to stop trying to point the finger and instead try and solve the problem that we we are currently faced with.

I wrote

Yeah give Obama a break

Obama deserves a fair break just like all of the Afghan children his predator missile drones murder each week.

It’s not fair to judge Obama by how he did on a talk show. The hallmark of any great American president is how many brown people they can kill in foreign countries to increase the profits of the military industrial complex.

My comment on Obama and how he deserves a break for being a great killer but a lousy talk show guest.