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David McElroy

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Why not join the LP? You can’t fight the state by becoming the state

By David McElroy · August 20, 2011

What’s the difference between a libertarian and an anarchist? About 10 years.

It’s an old joke — and there are variations of it — but there’s some truth to it, because it’s a story that I’ve heard a number of times. In fact, it’s my story, too.

Most of us who’ve completely give up on the state started out in one of the mainstream political parties and then converted to the Libertarian Party, because we concluded that smaller government made sense and that there should be no distinction between economic and personal liberty. Republicans talk a good game about economic freedom, but they want to control your personal life. Democrats mostly talk a good game about personal (social) freedom, but they want to control your economic life. We see the contradiction of either of those positions, so we begin advocating the libertarian ideal of small government and freedom in all areas. For many of us, though, there’s a further step.

If you oppose government control on philosophical grounds, you soon run up against the issue of whether any form of the state can be morally justified. For many of us, we’ve reluctantly had to come to the conclusion that the state is immoral. Not just a “big state.” It applies to any state that claims the power to rule over the people and property that happens to fall within a certain geographical area — unless those people are there by their own choice and if they have other realistic choices.

If you live in the United States and aren’t happy with the direction of the country, you have a choice. You’re free to leave. There’s no Berlin Wall keeping us in. But we don’t have choices yet, because the idea of the nation-state still controls pretty much every square inch of this Earth. That might be changing.

If you don’t want to leave your current city or state, you still have no realistic choices. Some people, of course, turn to the Libertarian Party as their best solution. I did. I got involved and became a state vice chair, but I quickly realized that the party was never going to be successful for three reasons: First, the people attracted to libertarian ideas tend to be very bright people who can win debate contests, but aren’t necessarily good at the boring (and non-intellectual) work of running campaigns. Second, most people just plain don’t like our ideas and aren’t open to being persuaded. There’s no way to sugarcoat this. Regardless of their rhetoric at times, the vast majority like having someone “in charge.” Third, the rules of the U.S. political system are such that there’s no room for a third party to gain strength except in extremely rare circumstances (which I don’t see now).

After I gave up on the Libertarian Party as untenable, I moved back to working in the Republican Party, hoping to make ideas about individual freedom more acceptable there. Yes, there is indeed a core of people among Republicans who are really libertarians, but they’re far too few to change the party. It’s not going to happen.

After that, I entered a phase when I wished for political change, but didn’t see it as realistic. Eventually, though, it hit me. Opposing the state is a moral issue. You don’t fight an evil by asking it to be less evil. And you certainly don’t fight the state by becoming the state, which is what any political strategy entails. I finally had to accept that the state itself is the problem, not just the people at its controls. The state itself has to go before something new can develop that allows the kind of diversity of life that many of us would like.

Voting for people to “represent” you or rule over you is sort of like plantation slaves putting a lot of time and effort into campaigns and voting for which overseer they prefer. It’s true that one or the other of the candidates for overseer might be a bit more lenient with the whip, but you’re still a slave. The only person whose lead you want to follow is someone who will help you find a way (or a place) where you can walk away or say, “No, I’m not obeying you,” and nothing happens.

I don’t have any problem with leadership. I appreciate people who take leadership in helping to move people away from the state, but I can’t follow a leader (such as Ron Paul) whose vision includes a future where we’re still slaves of the state. It’s true that Paul (or whoever the Libertarian Party nominates next year) would be a much better overseer than the rest of the thugs, but if you buy into the notion that he has the right to rule you and spend your money, you don’t have a logical reason for saying that someone else can’t rule after him. You’re still a slave to the state.

The Founding Fathers of this nation-state started out with a faith in some basic principles, some of which were still radical for their day. They believed that power came from “the people” and that everyone had natural rights — as long as you weren’t black or female or a few other things. But they were very forward-thinking as compared to what had gone before them, so I’m not going to criticize them for not going far enough. What I’m going to say is that they expressed faith in liberty, but they set up a religion that didn’t match their faith. In the Declaration of Independence, they pronounced their faith in liberty. In the Constitution, they set up their religion — and kept the power to rule.

Marketing consultant Seth Godin discusses the difference between faith and religion — various kinds of religions — this way:

“Religion works great when it amplifies faith. That’s why human beings invented religion. It’s why we have spiritual religions and cultural religions and corporate religions. Religion gives our faith a little support when it needs it, and it makes it easy for your peers to encourage you to embrace your faith. Religion at its best is a sort of mantra, a subtle but consistent reminder that belief is OK and that faith is the way to get where you’re going. The reason we need to talk about this, though, is that often religion does just the opposite. Religion at its worst reinforces the status quo, often at the expense of our faith.”

The religion that the Founding Fathers set up is today’s U.S. government. It never fully embraced the faith that the founders claimed to have in liberty. They were unable or unwilling to actually put liberty into practice. As a result, the religion they started has become nothing but a sham — an empty shell that still goes through many of the rituals they established, but which has rejected the faith of liberty.

And that’s the core of the problem. We don’t need the state to control 90 percent of our lives or 50 percent of our lives or even 10 percent of our lives. We need the state to take its guns and its control and go away, so we can break down into groups living under different rules — as each group sees fit. No reform of the American state will allow that. It would just be another “one size fits all” solution that would degenerate back into what we have today — or worse. We need to reject the American religion, but embrace — in its full and complete form — the faith that many of those founders eloquently wrote about.

I love my many friends who are working in the Libertarian Party or in Ron Paul’s campaign. I’m not trying to talk them out of what they’re doing, because each of us has to do what seems morally right to him. And I certainly understand their arguments for what they’re doing, because I’ve made those arguments before. It’s just that I can’t in good conscience make either of those two choices anymore, because neither of them lead to the end of the state religion and an embrace of our professed faith in freedom.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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