| NOT BALLOTS /// NOT BULLETS | |
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27 Nov 2006 @ 22:23, by jobrown
http://freeamerica.ws/why-not-ballots.html /// Article posted by Bb Astrid
NOT BALLOTS
The most common strategy employed by Americans seeking more freedom is to try to reform the government through electoral politics. I consider this to be an almost complete waste of time and effort. Here are some of my reasons:
* If you don't get over 50% of the vote in an election, you get nothing. Nada. Zip. Even if your candidate does get elected, you again have to get over 50% of the vote in the legislature / Congress, or again you get nothing.
* Even if you manage to generate a lot of support and enthusiasm for your cause during an election campaign, all of your momentum dissipates in the off years between elections.
* The game is rigged against us. Our rulers use vote fraud, byzantine election regulations, and onerous ballot access requirements to suppress any serious electoral challenge.
* Any candidate you manage to get elected immediately faces strong pressure to compromise his or her principles in order to get anything accomplished. City Hall, the state Capitol, and especially Washington, D.C., are environments that are morally corrosive in the extreme, and few have the strength to withstand their corruptive forces.
* Democracy is anathema to freedom. One wag described democracy as "two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner." Socrates was put to death by democratic vote because a majority of his fellow Athenians didn't like what he taught. Minorities are forever at the mercy of the majority in any true democracy. And few notions are as morally repulsive as the idea that your neighbors have a right to strip you of your property (taxation, eminent domain) or even turn you into a slave (conscription) just because a majority of them vote in favor of it.
* Voting serves only to lend a patina of legitimacy to tyranny. People ruled by a democracy will put up with abuses they would never tolerate from a dictator, because they labor under the false beliefs that "we are the government" and that the mere fact of being allowed to vote for new rulers every few years means they are free.
* The bottom line: in all of human history, no people has ever voted themselves free.
The one case where an election campaign might be useful to freedom seekers is when the campaign is used as a platform to publicize the philosophy of freedom and the government's crimes... as long as the candidate doesn't get distracted by trying to get elected.
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[link] /// Article posted by Bb Astrid
NOT BULLETS
Perhaps the most fundamental principle of libertarian thought — more fundamental even than the Non-Agression Principle — is the principle of isonomy, or equal and uniform law. Put simply, libertarians insist on applying precisely the same legal and moral standards to governments as they would to any other collection of individuals. This inescapably leads to the conclusion that today's governments are criminal organizations. (See Spooner's No Treason No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority.) For example, libertarians see "taxation" as just a euphemism for robbery or extortion, and "conscription" as just a euphemism for kidnapping and enslavement
Some have argued that this logic gives a libertarian argument for the morality of violent revolution. To wit, if one is justified in using violence to defend oneself or one's property from a robber, or in defending oneself from a kidnapper or slaver, then one is likewise justified in using violence to defend oneself from similar criminal aggressions by the state. Since the state employ first use of violence, and the threat thereof, on a daily basis against us, it is argued that violent resistance to the state is defensive or, at worst, retaliatory in nature; it is not an initiation of violence.
Whatever the merits of this argument in theory, in practice there are grave problems with the strategy of attempting to win our freedom by violent means:
* First and most importantly, we would end up injuring and killing innocents. Yes, in theory violent resistance to tyranny is defensive violence; but do you really think it would work out so cleanly and neatly? How many bullets will miss their mark and tear away some toddler's face? After a bomb destroys an ATF, IRS, or FBI headquarters, how many of the scattered body parts lying around will belong to innocents who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?
* It could be destructive of the very ideals for which we are struggling. The libertarian ideal is to circumscribe the use of violence, or threats of its use, within much tighter bounds than currently operate: defensive use only, or possibly limited use in compelling restitution from aggressors. Yet in a violent struggle we would become accustomed to and far too comfortable with the use of violence. We would attract people who are attracted to violence. What happens after winning such a violent struggle? If the record of previous violent revolutions is any guide, we could easily end up with a new government just as bad as the old one.
* It is counterproductive. Violent action on our part will only allow the government to portray us as terrorists, thus strengthening support for the government and weakening support for our cause. Many who are currently friendly to our cause would be frightened into the arms of our enemies.
* It is suicidal under present circumstances. Yes, our forefathers successfully used violence to throw off British rule, but they worked with a very different political climate. By the time the shooting started, British rule was already widely considered to be tyrannical and illegitimate, and had already disintegrated at the local level. Furthermore, the colonists had been defying and openly disobeying British "laws" for a decade. In contrast, we live in a country where the fundamental legitimacy of the government is rarely questioned; where obedience to the "law" has been exalted to a moral mandate; and where local governments are in thrall to the Federal government.
* It focuses on the wrong problem. Our problem is not, at its root, that the government have the firepower to compel our obedience.
The real problem is the mental enslavement of America — the acceptance of the government's rule as legitimate, and the meek acquiescence to whatever demands the rulers may impose on us. The essential battleground where we must win lies in our own hearts and minds, and in those of our fellow Americans.
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Category: Articles
3 comments
28 Nov 2006 @ 16:33 by skillz : And fellow Brits
Great aritical, very well written. The more people become aware of the way the system operates the weaker the government will become. This is such a good artical i think it should be shouted from every street corner, printed in every news paper and broadcast from every tv channel. I think that a new system will bennifit even our oppressors if they become self aware. There wont be a need for bloodshed. As you say, innocent people allways suffer and if one innocent life is lost then we have failed.
29 Nov 2006 @ 03:53 by : Collateral...
Yup. Collateral damage can only mean one thing. Look up the meaning of the word ''collateral'' and see it for exactly what it is. Business! Commerce! Trade! What are all those dead, butchered, murdered, innocents collateral for?
There, of course, is another way of looking at things. No one is innocent in this world and what goes around eventually comes around.
The boobs on capitol hill don't get it. I guess they never will. Too bad they don't really listen to Rabbi Yeshua. You know... the character in their so called ''new'' testament. Testament? Ha!
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle (Allegory;)) then it is for a rich man to get into heaven."---attributed to the Hypothetical rabbi Yeshua Ben Yoseph of Natzeret (Nazereth).
Incidentally the character also has the audacity to throw the money changers (international bankers and money lenders) OUT of the temple (hint, hint -- another of those nasty allegories)!
Thanks for posting this Lady A-d. Sooner or later the truth will be known. "And there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth!"--- Yohanan Ha Tzadik ;)
29 Nov 2006 @ 09:36 by : To Re-iderate:
* Voting serves only to lend a patina of legitimacy to tyranny. People ruled by a democracy will put up with abuses they would never tolerate from a dictator, because they labor under the false beliefs that "we are the government" and that the mere fact of being allowed to vote for new rulers every few years means they are free.
* The bottom line: in all of human history, no people has ever voted themselves free.
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