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RE: An Argument For Stefan Molyneux
Your arguments are well and clearly stated. However, you're ignoring the issue of strategy that Stefan repeatedly referenced in his debate with Adam Kokesh. Your arguments will be useless in a nation that becomes beholden to votes dependent upon big government and you can't simply wish away that government. You need to win over a majority of the voting base in regards to private property rights and small government before you can address the issue of enforcing a national border. Europe stands as an example. As applied to the issue of initiation of force, a national border i.e. the U.S. border with Mexico is self-defense against those who would vote to have the U.S. government initiate force on their behalf.
I respect your opinion, and I would never dream of supporting violence against you because of your opinion. Do you afford me the same respect? Do I have the freedom to disagree with you? (because I do, for various reasons) But, do you afford me the respect to withhold my economic consent, so I can use my hard earned money to pursue the means of protecting my own property rights the way I think is best, without you imposing your will on me? Can I disagree with you on strategy without a gun to my head forcing me to pay for your strategy?
What do these borders surround anyway? A geographical area over which the US government has a monopoly on the use of violence? A tax farm that sucks the vitality out of it's human livestock? You want to protect that? You want to build a wall around that? And you want to participate in the same system that puts a gun to your head and takes money out of your wallet to pay for a welfare state and all the things you disagree with? You think that's the tool that's going to solve the problem? Come on man.
Immigrants are going to come over and violate or property rights and vote for the government to force us to pay for things we don't want, so your idea is to vote for the government to force other people to pay for things they don't want and violate their property rights? What kind of logic is that?
I would never dream of supporting violence against you for your opinion, but please allow me the same respect. If you want national borders enforced, write a check. $20 billion a year is the upkeep of national borders. Or get together with a group of like-minded people to buy up land and enforce borders around your own property, but please, please don't support violence against me if I don't want a bill for it too. Please don't support me getting thrown in jail if I don't write a check for it too. Please allow me the dignity and the freedom to pursue what I think is right, and just, and virtuous, and protect my own property in the way I see fit. Please allow me the freedom to disagree.
Playing the victim undercuts the quality of your argument. If you have a magic wand that will abolish the welfare state, please wave it. I'll be eternally grateful. If you don't have such a wand, as I suspect you don't, please do me the courtesy of refraining from the implication that I am putting a gun to your head when I am in fact attempting to dispel the mob that's yelling to have the trigger pulled.
In no way have I affected or plan to usurp your ability to disagree with me. Jumping to that sort of woe is me rhetoric is cheap and unbecoming of someone who would defend their individual rights. You barely addressed the merits of my counter-argument and, even so, smothered your own counter in poor conflation and passive-aggressive detritus.
Unless you plan to go to war, which you seem to rightly abhor, you'll have to argue and vote the Welfare State away and until that comes to pass you'll need a border to prevent foreign ideologies from conquering your own. You will not be able to do that in any successful manner if the membership of your ideology is outnumbered and thereby outvoted. Pulling the victim card is the same bull shit that's used to import votes that would have you jailed or killed for your views on government. It's shameful that you would stoop to such a tactic when you clearly have the ability to form an effective argument. It would seem, however, you lack the balls to fight for your ideology and such a lacking characteristic is what's allowed the government to grow to its current state of power. In your words: Come on man! Can't you see that living in your fantasy is what's enabled the government to perpetrate its violence to the degree that it has? You can't simply wish the problem away. You have to MAKE it go away. You have to DO something to manifest the intention and meaning behind your argument.
My argument will remain, until compelling evidence to the contrary is provided, that compelling the financial interests that the U.S. government is beholden to in a direction that will lead away from the initiation of force and to personal property rights is the most effective way to manifest the intentions you espouse. If you don't pay taxes, the government can jail you. Is that morally wrong? Yes. However, morality will not stop you from being jailed. Taxation must be dealt with at the source and you can only do that through voting or war. As I detest war, I choose to vote.
Instead of wallowing in your victimization, perhaps you could take your talents which are clear enough in your writing and work towards convincing people to dismantle the welfare state so that your ideal existence can actually exist to a sustainable degree. Doesn't that sound more productive than being a passive aggressive little bitch?
For the record: My appreciation for your article is unaltered. I enjoyed disagreeing with you. Keep it up! Just don't play the victim
I disagree with the logic that we need to violate people's property rights in order to protect people's property rights. I disagree with the tax farm, and I disagree with the violence inherent in the nation-state. I therefore do not wish to protect it by compelling everyone within it to pay for the enforcement of borders around it.
It is much harder to get rid of statist solutions to social problems, then it is to add a new statist solution to social problems, even if those social problems are themselves caused by previous statist solutions.
I think we both agree on this fact. The difference is, you use it argue that our only viable solution to our current social problem is another statist solution, whereas I use it to argue that another statist solution only perpetuates the increase of statism as it too will be more difficult to get rid of once in place.
If I am against the existence of a geographical area which gives a group of people a monopoly on violence and gives it's tax livestock the ability to vote for different ways to use it's violence monopoly to fund various programs, then it follows that I am not going to support another statist program, and especially not one designed to build a wall around the tax farm I don't think should exist.
My stance entails the end of Nation-States, which is unimaginable to most, but it is the only ethical path forward, and so I think it is inevitable. I think we get there only be refusing to participate in the current violence based system. I don't think we can use the violence based system to solve the problems it is causing.
I, therefore, would like to ask you to please afford me the respect of not being forced to pay for your government program. I would like the freedom to spend my money on ways of protecting my property and rights that I find to be right, true, just, and virtuous.
Please do not support violence against me if I don't want to fund your opinion. That's all I'm asking.