Non-Violent Communication And The Promotion Of Liberty

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The other day I came across an interview with Adam Kokesh on the Tom Woods show (an oldie) where he was discussing his Freedom book, his time behind bars, and his journey with researching and practicing non-violent communication, and more.

Hearing Kokesh utter the phrase “non-violent communication” was the first time that I had heard the expression used and being a lover of peace and non-violence, I naturally wanted to know more.

For lovers of liberty, they tend to respect, promote, and embrace the natural right of free speech as a person's personal choice to make over what they want to say; so some might wonder what importance there would be to adapt one's speech in order to appeal to others or to not offend other people around them. I was interested to learn about Kokesh's experience with non-violent communication because I have enjoyed watching him debate with and talk to various statists on his Youtube channel and I respect that he is able to have seemingly polite interactions with them.

The development of the concept of non-violent communication is credited to Marshall Rosenberg who was an American psychologist. Non-violent communication is supposed to be an approach that can be utilized that will help people be able to exchange information that is necessary in order to resolve conflicts and disputes in a peaceful manner. By spending the time to listen to the needs and issues of others, we can better assess how to arrive at a peaceful and voluntary solution. Rosenberg has said that certain ways of communicating will tend to alienate people from experiencing compassion and therefore prevent them from embracing you or your message.

Nonviolent communication rests on the notion that all human beings have the capacity for compassion and that they only will resort to violence or behavior that harms others when they do not recognize any more effective strategies for meeting needs. In effect, initiating violence is a defeat of intelligent faculty and all lovers of liberty by definition seek to resolve issues in a peaceful and voluntary way. Embracing nonviolent communication could be a tool that could help us to awake even more individuals to see how freedom could benefit them directly.

I think a statist is much more likely to re-think or reevaluate things if they are approached with the message of liberty in a non-threatening manner. There can be value in trying to be more mindful of how we interact with statists, especially if we are attempting to win them over to the cause of liberty.

On the other hand, sometimes it's necessary and valuable to rattle people out of their cages. There were many times that Ron Paul would speak and get booed but he didn't let that stop him from promoting the message of liberty. He might've offended some folks with what he was saying, but some things need to be said regardless of how upset it might make others. During such a time of deceit, we can't expect that true messages of liberty will be perpetually cheered-for and celebrated by the masses.

Non-violent communication suggests that we use language and communication approaches that don't imply moralistic judgements or wrongdoing, because that can immediately turn a person off and toward the negative. But sometimes there just isn't a feel-good way to relay the fact to people that taxation actually is extortion.

Perhaps the answer is in finding a happy medium.