This is the full video of my “Live Free Or Dance” trial. For those unfamiliar, This summer I was caged for having a dance party in Keene Central Common. Now I face 2.5 years behind bars unless I can convince a Jury to let me be free. As always, I am looking for constructive criticism from law-loving types. To see copies of all the papers on my defendant’s table, visit LiveFreeOrDance.com/Court.
The video is 3.5 hours, so if you’d like to skip around, it may be helpful to use this previous post as a guide to what happens when.
If you are the victim of state aggression and charged with a victimless crime, I urge you to NOT take the plea deal. Learn why I refuse and why you should too by clicking below:
Many individuals around the world have learned that only by interacting peacefully can we achieve a more harmonious, prosperous, healthy, fair and tolerant society, that our lives on this planet can be far better. People universally oppose acts of aggression, theft, and fraud when committed by individuals. We accept the principle that the initiation of physical force against others is illegitimate, immoral, and may rightly be defended against. For the most part, we also insist that organizations of individuals, such as corporations, also abide by this natural tenet.
When it comes to state aggression, however, especially that wrought by democratic governments, the perspective for many can change. Individuals too often excuse the state when it harms innocent individuals. This may be because they feel powerless to effect change or uninformed, preferring to defer to those more knowledgeable. They may possess cultivated feelings of nationalism and exceptionalism; expectations of benevolence and altruism in state officials; fears of attack, fostered by interventionist propaganda and complicit mainstream media; yearnings for conformity; or just a willingness to harm, burden or restrict others, in the expectation of benefit to ends and causes they themselves consider to be good ones. Thus, when our governments act as aggressors rather than protectors of human rights, many individuals remain silent.
So begins the the forward to Why Peace, an over 600-page compilation of pro-peace essays edited by Marc Guttman, a book he he says:
Working in Democratic politics can do strange things to libertarians. Part of the job is selling libertarian economics to hardcore liberals– and that’s a daunting task. Perhaps impossible. It led me to re-evaluate major aspects of my libertarianism (Liberals support x. Libertarians oppose x. But is libertarian philosophy really opposed to x?) and take a much closer look at liberal ideas.
When I started, I was already skeptical of some core libertarian arguments, due to my near-obsession with academic economics. My work with liberalism opened the floodgates. Eventually I was forced to admit that I was probably wrong in advocating free market anarchism and adopted a position awkwardly in between liberalism and libertarianism.
Since then I’ve struggled to find a way to describe my views. “Left-libertarian” was an obvious candidate, but it seems that most people using the term are anarchists, and I’m not nearly that radical. Taking a cue from Will Wilkinson, I started to use “liberaltarian“. But, in many cases, people simply interpreted that as “libertarian”, defeating the purpose.
For a while, if asked, I would just shake my head and laugh nervously. Finally I gave up and called myself a liberal.
Even the most totalitarian regimes ultimately rest on granted authority. Misdeeds must be hidden or legitimacy erodes. Censorship, propaganda, purposeful omissions and blatant lies fuel the Statist Quo.
Enter the free flow of information.
Case in point, the How to Make a Wicking Bed Garden instructional sheet. Days after being created by @BrknSdwlkFrm (great work!) it was being distributed in NYC and translated into Arabic to be disseminated on the streets of Egypt.
The video, by YouTube.com/StormCloudsGathering, presents a principled, consistent, strike-the-root message: It’s not text or orders but individuals that are responsible for actions.
