Don't Tread On Me, Bruh
So I want to talk today about religion and politics.
Haha, I break all the rules bitches.
Besides, what do I have to lose at this point?
I have been transforming over the last 10 years. I came out of high school bright eyed and bushy tailed. I was going to become a speech writer or lobbyist. Those were solid, high paying jobs, and I had loved government and speech and debate in high school. I was still leaving the police option open, but I done fucked up my grades in high school, so that's why the FBI dream dissipated.
So I studied political science. I learned so much, and was so excited about policy and politics. I worked for John McCain's presidential campaign, and that wasn't too awful, but getting into local politics literally drained my soul of everything I had. I was once again in a position where I was the only female, and it was hard. No one took me seriously, or if I did get noticed, it wasn't for my knowledge.
I ran for precinct committeeman and beat out a 30-year incumbent by just a few votes. That was a huge victory for me, but things only got worse the further down the rabbit hole I went. I began to detest politics and the fighting and the pissing contests, and by the 2012 election, I voted for Romney but no longer with a Republican heart.
I have been lost for the last few years. My hubs is a very left-leaning liberal, and I had always been a right-leaning Republican, that is, until I actually really became one.
I don't agree with a lot of the platform though, it is too intrusive.
This video is all about how I don't know exactly what I am, but that I think everyone should be for a party that leaves you the fuck alone.
That's pretty much it, hahaha
Hope you are all having a stupendous Saturday. Sorry for my Drake joke, @kevinli, I have been feeling SALTAY lately.
Love you all!
- Beth
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I became a libertarian in college when I took an economics class and an ethics class that both spoke of Ayn Rand. That was like 20 years ago. I still believed in government for roads, military and all that. Recently about 4 years ago the rabbit hole swallowed me. Went full fledged anarchist, in principle. Still realistic though, so if all the government did is build roads I can live with that.
War is the only thing I really focus on now though. It sickens me the idea that my kids can be sent by force to die in Syria if the government decided to have a draft again. With the way things are going I can see that happening, so I speak out for that.
I totally resonate with that. I think full on anarchy wouldn't be very pretty though, and I am not entirely sure what it would accomplish. I think we give humans too much credit in some ways. We want them to be inherently good and reason that if the government was out of the picture, everything would be better.
I definitely think war is just a profit machine and you're right, it is sickening.
I am right there with you, that’s why I say in principle I am full on anarchy, but people are people, and demand to be ruled over, and to rule. They are both good and bad at the same time, so you never know how full on anarchy would work out. It would probably eventually revert to something similar to what we have now, biggish governments, that demand a little more and then a little more, till finally the people rebel, and change their rulers.
Anarchy means "no rulers". As such it's synonymous with the popular idea of equal human rights and fully compatible with equality under law. Every real crime is an instance of some people subjugating/ruling others on a small scale. Most current governments supposedly exist to support and defend equal rights, but end up incoherently mixing large scale organized crime into those efforts and putting some above the law as it applies to others.
Since the word 'anarchy' literally means the absence of rulers and subjugation, and crime/victimization is always an act of rule, a truly "full on anarchist society" would by definition be a perfectly peaceful and crime free utopia. It's perfectly reasonable to be concerned that people aiming at that sort of ideal may fail and make things worse instead of better, but I don't see how the goal itself can be rejected. Being an anarchist just means opposing all subjugation consistently as long as any of it exists. Anything other than anarchy means rejecting equal rights and defending some particular acts of subjugation as appropriate.
Of course it's unrealistic. None of us really expect all crime and oppression to cease in the foreseeable future. That doesn't mean we should support or defend any particular instances of it or any particular perpetrators of it.
Labels are a means for control. It's why "abracadabra" and various magical incantations are used. But we don't think of the real origins of the power of labels such as left and right, democrat and republican...
In the book of Genesis 1:25-26 Adam gives names to all the animals so that he can have dominion over them. You know who didn't have a name? God. When asked, the closest we came was YHVH. The lack of vowels renders the name impotent for man to have control over God.
This is why I reject all political labels because governments do the same thing. Once they can label you, you have lost your own power. So if you want to claim your own power for yourself, never give your political position. You can't accurately do so anyway without compromising it.
I hear some of you call me libertarian, but you're all wrong. Just because a couple of attributes of one group happen to fit, doesn't mean I will fit all of them. The same is the case for everyone else. Nobody will be in complete agreement with everything on a platform unless you surrender to the label.
So don't do that. I've spent the last several years deliberately going against the standard political divisions. That's the only way to really clarify your thinking and maintain your own power.
Great advice! It's easier to live that way anyway! :)
Labels are just words, and they're useful for communicating your thoughts and beliefs to other people. Refusing to share your ideas may be an effective way to defend yourself from having your ideas challenged, but challenging each other is how we grow and improve. Labels and language are imperfect, so we should be aware that we're unlikely to perfectly understand other's positions, but that's no reason not to make the effort with all available tools.
I think you partially misunderstood what I was saying. When I say don't give your political position, I mean primarily on paper with authority (nobody else really cares except in petty ways). I started thinking like this around 2004 when republicans started redrawing the district lines to try to rig the vote outcome by delegate so I lied and said I was republican (I wasn't really any party). The interesting result of this is somehow that registration tailed me after I left NY in 2006 and lived in Nevada, then I came back to NY in 2013 but an entirely different place a county removed that should have had no clue what I was registered as. Seems that some were desperate to beef up the voter roles.
The habit that I've formed over the past few years is to redefine what I am in a way that other people don't understand politically. Voluntarism works for now, but as soon as that word gets misused by authority, that label will be gone and I'll "be" something else. It's not hard to do, just reemphasize something else which always works because labels are inherently misleading anyway and can never be completely inclusive of what you are.
Thanks for the explanation, that makes much more sense. It's certainly dangerous to be objectified by those who see themselves as authorities, and labeling is a tool they can use to ease that objectification. I wouldn't say that labels are inherently misleading, but I agree that it's important to recognize their limitations and not view them as an exhaustive explanation of everything another human is.
Lets put it in another way that Robert Schmidt might say (He's the translator of Greek and high ranking scholar I worked with as a programmer)... It's hard to get a 100% semantic field match between words. Many languages have words that just don't translate into English, while some words might have some of the meaning and would be synonyms. While their semantic fields will overlap, they are not a perfect match because their auxiliary meanings don't match. This is what I'm trying to get across.
Agreed and well put. The objective is what is important, not the term used to define the path to it.
This is one reason I stick to my objectives. I state them. My objective is to further individual liberty. As long as someone is doing the same, they are automatically a friend. The labels used to define such a person change. The objective never does.
Freedom
Deal with it....
Hahahaha. Fabulous.
Where did this all go?
On my own part, I used to be super-excited about anything politic when I was much younger, but now, I don't want anything that has to do with politics. I consider it a dirty game. I pray someone comes and change my mindset with good reasons.
Wishing you lovely Saturday @bethwheatcraft
It went down the tubes for the same reason as you. Dirty, dirty, dirty. Plus, it's just not what I thought it was going to be. So disappointing...
Great post. Welcome to the LMTFA party, I'll let you figure out what that is haha! Do you follow @adamkokesh ?
Haha, an abbreviation! Yay! I saw Kokesh on Molyneux and wasn't terribly impressed...
First impressions can be misleading. Stefan Molyneux is great too! I should search him here.
Molyneux doesn't make any original content on here, he just posts the YouTube links. He could make so much more money if he formatted his videos for Dtube, but alas, maybe one day. Kokesh seems to be heavy on the drama to me, but maybe I am mistaken. As you said impressions can be misleading!
hello,please follow back
Curated for #informationwar (by @wakeupnd)
Relevance: Sharing the truth.
I think the comment you made about complete upheaval not being the best option is really interesting.
I typically describe myself as a pragmatist. Philosophically I'm pretty radical libertarian, but in practice... the road to extreme freedom is dripping in blood. In practice, I favor incremental change in regulations.
It's better to let the power structure collapse under its own weight and then have libertarianism be the solution than it is to dismantle it and have people respond to the upheaval and perceive increased government control as the solution.