Liberty Activists and Authoritarian Statists Call WKBK’s “Talkback” 2008-11-29

They were particularly bad today.

If anyone needs to grow up Fred does. He seems to prefer ad hominem attacks to actual discussion.

It's funny how Fred always comes back to "they need a leader", but the whole point of the liberty movement is to get rid of involuntary "leaders". Mark can't possibly represent the entirety of the movement, nor could he decide what's best for it.

"Authoritarians" is your label for people who disagree with you. The reality is that you are a minority view in Keene and in NH and if anything you are overrepresented on this radio show.

You haven't won any hearts and minds, as far as I can see, and instead of ridiculing Fred and some of the callers you might want to consider if they are representative of the population at large. 20,000 people (if you make that mark) aren't going to accomplish much if they don't win over the 1.25 million people who are here and not terribly upset with our local and state governance. It has occurred to me from time to time "why did these people come here if everything is so bad". I haven't voiced it because it it's more emotional than rational and I don't like to deal in that sphere.

And Fred is right about the fact that most of you will mellow out over time. It's happened in every generation thus far.

As for winning over 1.25 million. Given most people go along to get along that number is heavily inflated. Did abolitionists need to explicitly convince every man, woman and child that slavery was immoral? Or did MLK Jr. get everyone to lose their bigoted ways? Did Gandhi's marches included the entire populous of India or the Revolutionary War fought by every farmer and smith? Or did it take all of Britian to reduce the monarchs power to a merely symbolic role or get the Magna Carta or Bill of Rights enacted?

If FSP members moved into town government positions do you believe the average resident will be smashing in their front doors if they removed rubbish ordnances or reduced taxes by substituting random services with market solutions or lowered barriers to starting a business or making home improvements?

I think you are all using "statist" in a broader context than its understood meaning, "The practice or doctrine of giving a centralized government control over economic planning and policy."

Of course the current trend of our national government is "statist", but I don't think it applies to couches and such at the local or state level.

As for "authoritarian" here are definitions on the web:

1 : of, relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority

2 : of, relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people

I tend to think that the second definition is the more common one, associated with such governments as China, Iran, North Korea, Vietnam, Pinochet's Chile and Franco's Spain.

So I don't think that the label "authoritarian statist" is properly applied to people like me or Fred who simply acknowledge a role for government based on laws passed by majority rule.

As for the business of mellowing out, I write from my own experience as much as anything.

All well and good Curt, but please point me to where I can see the legitimacy in majority rule. Those who contract and agree amongst themselves are incumbent to obey such "laws"; those who disagree are not subject to another's will by virtue of their smaller numbers. Majority rule is a nicer way of saying mob rule. People like me weren't even BORN when things like marijuana laws were passed, so how I can be expected to blindly yield to the assertions that I am a bane to society?

The only person who can properly put my life into perspective and make rational judgments of my well-being now and in the future is me. What is meant by "authoritarian statist" are those who wish to have some power with which to enforce their morality on others, the fiction of the state being that tool; understand that a weapon is a tool used on someone against their will. The term is used to describe (admittedly loosely if you are a stickler for definitions) people who identify as a group foremost rather than an autonomous individual who spontaneously interacts with other individuals – each man an island, or some such. You may also describe something as being green or yellow, when they might actually be teal or goldenrod- perceptions and definitions rarely reflect.

By having a group identity first, those people look upon outsiders or "deviants" as some sort of wrinkle to be pressed out. However, the remedy they propose is immoral – negative reinforcement of "proper conduct." I can only speak for myself (though I catch myself falling into the collectivist parlance I so revile) when I say that any punishment should fit the crime, and only after there is a definite crime to point to. Smoking pot in my apartment and painting my porch plaid are not crimes but deviations from accepted and reinforced social norms. Can any rational person say that government exists to enforce a certain set of aesthetic and behavioral preferences?

Simply being alive is a fluke, biological life itself an unlikely and risky prospect. Humans are lucky to be where they are WITHOUT government, and to have it acting as their babysitter keeping them from sticking pennies in the light socket robs them of the opportunity to learn from mistakes. If a man cannot learn that dishonesty, violence, indolence, incompetence, aimlessness and arrogance are guaranteed to bring about his misery, then he deserves whatever life he has wrought for himself.

I advocate personal responsibility and all its trappings and benefits – those we call authoritarian statists want to absolve men of their own culpability and somehow make the victim all of society. Did the attacks in Mambai harm you? Turn off the TV – has your physical reality been altered? The main enemy I and I suppose other liberty activists are fighting is the notion that those who rest in seats of power are omnipotent by default and that their particular world view is the vision all men must follow.

I live in a city that has an extortion funded "trolley". There is huge public outcry against it every time it comes up for a vote, yet somehow it gets railroaded through every time. I live, work and shop within a few blocks of this trolley's path, but it has yet to be useful or convenient. It mostly only gets used by college students, who already get university subsidized bus passes. It's just another excuse to steal money, which in my opinion just lowers the "quality of life" of productive individuals. Also, for some strange reason, our trolleys keep running people over.

Are you kidding me?

Apparently, that show and its host are not interested in debate, because that is just about as dishonorable a debate as I've ever seen.

There is a "need", therefor a right… ok, I guess to a non-randian, that's reasonable.

I can understand growing weary of what is apparently a frequent argument brought up by Ian, but, "Fred" is it?, starts right in on the ad hominem. I recognize that Ian's statements sound extreme, but the logical result of the practice in question reducing to "nonviolent citizens thrown in jail" is *not* an exaggeration, while claims of anarchy, save them from themselves, etc, *are* lazy exaggerations for popular effect which do not logically follow.

To say that Ian is for anarchy from just that conversation (perhaps he does, but it doesn't seem that way) is a leap too far; a government which does nothing but stands ready to take action against the initiators of force and prosecutes fraud does *something* and would thus, exist, and would preclude the appelation "anarchy".

Fred is clearly just showing off to the crowd with this hyperbole.

"…come here…and now you want to change all of it." Well, you see, you choose from the best of all options, from the people or community in this case LEAST under the influence of the STATE (read govt) and that place where you're most likely to make a difference. The accusation of wanting to change "all of it", again, is hyperbole, and clearly the change will be LESS of "it" *in keene* than any other place.

What's the alternative – ….it's illegal. well the alternative is legal, i guess…

"What if it ultimately leads to harm against someone else?" What if makeing a substance illegal creates a criminal underground market in which, typically, *actual criminals* are likely to gravitate as it artifically raises the price and makes such crimes more lucritive, and further, disagreements must be settled through some sort of taking the law into one's own hands because in these matters the courts are not the most intellegent route of redress. (ps, I've never smoked anything) As in the broken window falacy, you're not taking into account the negative effects of such prohibition.

We have rules and laws. Yep, and quite a few people use this intellectually lazy truism and don't bother to question who made the laws. Reminds me of hitchhiker. "Well, you've *got* to build bypasses!"

Addictions to Video games? how about your video game kept you up all night and so you're on 0 sleep, ability impaired, and you wreck your car into a schoolbus. Sounds like we need a videogame nanny, because it could happen. The problem here is it only takes a single crisis to have the public in "action" mode.

And in his glorious closing it was "oh, you'll grow up some day." What a pathetic flurry of ad hominem and celebration of dubious victory.

The government is you.

A misunderstanding of the nature and 'benevolence' of democracy on par with most.

Freestaters moving to NH to save them all? Here we have more sarcastic rhetoric, a level of commentary I'd expect from teenagers and college kids and Colbert fans. Maybe he'll improve with time. (He deserved that one.)

I should not listen to this shit anymore, I just getting steaming mad.

Pensive,

I have to admit that I just focus on local and state issues because I can can speak more knowledgeably and effectively at that level. That doesn't mean I'm not knowledgeable about the abuses that our government has committed in our name. I never understood how we could hang German government officials for "waging aggressive war" when we had done the same against Mexico only 100 years earlier. I don't mean to excuse all the other crimes. For some reason I googled the "Phillipine War" (a/k/a the "Phillipine Rebellion" recently, and learned more about savage repression and hoodwinking of the American public about it.

In the future I hope the frequency of this sort of thing will be lessened by people being able to get information from a lot of different sources, not just the government or newspaper chains.

If you advocate centralized control you are authoritarian. It doesn't matter if it's a democracy, a republic, or an oligarchy. The very fact you advocate any control over another human by force or the threat of force makes you authoritarian to some degree. If you are a libertarian anarchist sitting at the top of the Nolan chart… everyone else who's not their with you is authoritarian and statist. There are differences in degrees but history clearly shows that it is a downward slope and therefore those who do prefer liberty must be nearly as worried as a rubbish ordinance as Real ID.

Allowing the majority, which it really wasn't, decide to jail people for having anything on their own property which does not damage another's is authoritarian. The fact that you or anyone else would give pass to laws which are counter to freedom is little more then an appeal to authority. Fred does both. He excuses violence for the sake of the majority and his argument ends.

were created under government compulsion.

Most of what I've ever read shows that government took over after the creation and forced them to expand or regulated prices. Subways, electrical, rail, telegraph and phone. They were created by individuals and when the government folks decided it was a good thing they stepped in. We can't forget that in many cases the companies asked for the regulation because it gave them monopoly status but that's besides the point at hand. Government did not foster nor create those "common goods." The common good is dealt through voluntary interactions in the market which show the true demand for goods and services. It's an economic truism. Government interference at any level is by its nature a diversion of funds and a misallocation of resources. You speak of majority decisions… the market provides that to a degree without all the nasty guns at people's backs.

Sorry, but majority rule is not “authoritarian”. Nor is it advocacy of centralized control.

How does a majority rule? Does it not have to exert power over the minority? If the majority chooses not to exert power over a non-aggressive minority they aren't ruling. To have majority rule you must have authoritarian beliefs.

And to look at it historically… this country was not founded on majority rule because the creators of the government knew it leads to tyranny by that majority. You're welcome to show me any government let alone democracys which stayed relatively stable or shrank in their control over people's lives. H.H. Hoppe in fact has an argument that monarchies are better for freedom vs democracies. Just as its reasonable for most to use "socialist" to mean "state socialism" which is authoritarian… it is reasonable to use "democracy" to mean road to authoritarianism. And as I mentioned… any level of belief that aggression should be used to get your fellow man to do as you please is authoritarian from the libertarian anarchist perspective. It doesn't matter if the authority is restricting only the right to keep old couches on your lawn or something like North Korea. If you advocate some authority (dictator or majority of voters) has power over others by force… you are authoritarian. It is the case by definition. Fred and those callers made appeals to authority as reasons for the legitimacy of things. Therefore, authoritarians.

Mr. Springer seems to assume that individuals could not effectively "build railroads, power line ROWs, gas lines, etc" without government cohersion. I disagree. Walter Block has discussed how private individuals could do these things without government intervention. Here are two lectures by Walter Block on the subject:

Roads, Education, and Waterways: The Case Against Public Services[2008]
http://mises.org:88/1_HMC_Block

Privatization: Roads, Eminent Domain[2004]
http://mises.org/multimedia/mp3/MU2004/Block3.mp3

Comment by RWW

It seems that “mellowing out” is being used as a euphemism for abandoning principle. Personally, I, like Ian, have only gotten more principled over the years. I’m all grown up with a wife and two children, and I am as unmellow as they come.

–

- I mellowed out plenty over time. I've become more in tune with the ideas of peace, freedom, and a 100% voluntary society (thank you very much, Ian & crew). I had libertarian ideals since I was a kid, just was fooled into thinking that gov't gave me anything the free market couldn't do better & without force.

I'm 47 and have 3 grandchildren. I hope to "mellow out" even more as I get older.

With Liberty,

Dan Steward

To Bile,

Sorry if you feel I am talking down to you, not my intent.

To Brent,

I played the second mp3 re private roads and find most of it to be preposterous.

All,

I think the use of "authoritarian" to label those who support mainstream views is inaccurate and pejorative.

I'd be happy to be labeled a "status-quoist"

Curt, to assume ignorance of one's own condition comes across as arrogant. To make comments appealing to age comes across as arrogant.

Again about using authoritarian… would it have been inaccurate for a German or Italian classical liberal to call Nazies or Italian fascists authoritarian in the 30's simply because they were mainstream?

I won't argue that it's not used pejoratively. It is. Authoritarianism is a contemptible ideology.

Bile wrote:

Again about using authoritarian… would it have been inaccurate for a German or Italian classical liberal to call Nazies or Italian fascists authoritarian in the 30’s simply because they were mainstream?

The difference between there and then and here and now is that Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were authoritarian governments and "mainstream" views were authoritarian.

The biggest PR problem the Free-Staters have is that there is nobody doing PR for them.

I believe that a full time paid activist (w/lots of volunteers to back him/her up) is needed for each of the following towns in NH: Keene, Nashua, Concord, & Manchester just for starters. The smaller towns & those up in northern area of the state could add such activists later on.

This paid activist "director" should be in charge of training activists, directing "activist theater" to educate people & make it fun, as well as community outreach & public relations.

Paying these people would be plenty easy if enough Free-Staters could chip in to a general fund. The added benefit would be that more Free-Staters would come to NH and have even more to chip in to the fund.

25 Free-Staters donating @ $20 a week each, would have amassed a total of $500 a week for funds toward staffing the position.

I'd do the job for $500 a week, especially if there were an apartment or equally suitable housing provided as part of the gig. I'm looking to leave the slave pit of SW Indiana for Keene or Nashua in the spring anyway.

I'm an idea man & I come up with good stuff all the time, I just can't do anything here because I don't have the kind of people there are already (and more it seems moving there all the time) in NH.

With Liberty,

Dan Steward

Curt said: In most cases the government delegated its right of eminent domain to private companies to build railroads

When it comes to railroads, I might appreciate the benefits that were gained by the government giving land to rail companies so they could cross the country, but that doesn't mean I approve of the American government virtually eliminating a race of people and stealing their land just so goods could travel freely from one coast to another. I am married to a Native American and have a native American brother-in-law who might take issue with your assertion that the government has done a lot on their behalf by allocating land to the rail companies.

I can't figure out how to listen to talkback. Do they stream on the internet, have a podcast, or is it just over the radio in Keene?

YO!, CURT! Don't single out the white european barbarian invader English. The *FROGS* & *SPICS*(french & spanish) did their dirty work to the North & South of Turtle Island, respectively. *THAT'S* *REALLY* why england let the Colonials "win" the "Revolutionary War". Had England expended the necessary resources to *DEFEAT IN COMBAT* the Colonials, it would have weakened their position in the tri-lateral balance of power, and we native Americans might now be parlez-vousing francaise, or say, hobbling espaniola. N'est pas, mon ami? *grin*…~e~…

Awaken my friends, statism is dying.

Here is a fascinating take on it all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P772Eb63qIY&e