Govspeak:
I’m sure criminals will respectfully abide by that request!
better
I’m sure strong-arm robbers will respectfully abide by that request!
best
I’m sure strong-arm robbers will respectfully abide by that posted threat of official armed violence
having such a policy, posting such a sign, gives impetus to busy bodies to be on watch for any customer violating a sign. Said customers will notify staff or management in a frantic and concerned voice. Management will respond to these complaints by calling police, who often startle and then gun down unsuspecting gun owners, who are caught off guard and don’t comply to police in a manner they find suitable.
criminal (adjective)
early 15c., from Middle French criminel (11c.), from Latin criminalis “pertaining to crime,”
crime (noun)
mid-13th cent., “sinfulness,” from Old French crimne, from Latin crimen (genitive criminis) “charge, indictment, accusation; crime, fault, offense,” perhaps from cernere “to decide, to sift” (see crisis). But Klein rejects this and suggests *cri-men, which originally would have been “cry of distress” (Tucker also suggests a root in “cry” words and refers to English plaint, plaintiff, etc.). Meaning “offense punishable by law” is from late 14th cent. The Latin word is glossed in Old English by facen, also “deceit, fraud, treachery.”
– double plus fuck the PTB and the loaded phrase filled govspeak English
Bevin Chu · Top Commenter
Under free market capitalism, the owner of a property has the inalienable right to establish its “house rules.” Anyone who finds those rules intolerable, can boycott the establishment.
That said, Target is being very, very foolish to adopt such a policy.
The motive behind a “gun free zone” is of course to create an island of safety in our often violent world. Unfortunately the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Declaring Target stores “gun free zones” means that flash robbers will smack their lips, rub their hands, and say, “Easy pickings!” They will realize that if they go in to the store armed to the teeth, they will probably encounter little or no resistance.
Anyone who doubts this, wait and see. Watch for uploaded YouTube videos of flash robbers looting Target stores.
Reply · Like · Unfollow Post · 2 minutes ago
It’s well known that people say and do things in cyberspace that they wouldn’t ordinarily say or do in the face-to-face world. They loosen up, feel more uninhibited, express themselves more openly.
Researchers call this the “disinhibition effect.” Sometimes people share very personal things about themselves. They reveal secret emotions, fears, wishes. Or they show unusual acts of kindness and generosity.
Out spills rude language and harsh criticisms, anger, hatred, even threats. Or people explore the dark underworld of the internet, places they would never visit in the real world.
Disinhibition indicates an attempt to understand and explore oneself, to work through problems and find new ways of being. And sometimes, it is simply a blind catharsis, an acting out of unsavory needs and wishes without any personal growth at all.
What is it about cyberspace that loosens the psychological barriers that block the release of these inner feelings and needs? Several factors are at play. For some people, one or two of them produces the lion’s share of the disinhibition effect. In most cases, though, these factors interact with each other, supplement each other, resulting in a more complex, amplified effect.
You Don’t Know Me (dissociative anonymity)
As you move around the internet, most of the people you encounter can’t easily tell who you are. System operators and some technologically savvy, motivated users may be able to detect your e-mail or internet address, but for the most part people only know what you tell them about yourself. If you wish, you can keep your identity hidden. As the word “anonymous” indicates, you can have no name – at least not your real name.
That anonymity works wonders for the disinhibition effect. When people have the opportunity to separate their actions from their real world and identity, they feel less vulnerable about opening up. Whatever they say or do can’t be directly linked to the rest of their lives. They don’t have to own their behavior by acknowledging it within the full context of who they “really” are.
When acting out hostile feelings, the person doesn’t have to take responsibility for those actions. In fact, people might even convince themselves that those behaviors “aren’t me at all.” In psychology this is called “dissociation.”
You Can’t See Me (invisibility)
In many online environments other people cannot see you. As you browse through web sites, message boards, and even some chat rooms, people may not even know you are there at all – with the possible exception of web masters and other users who have access to software tools that can detect traffic through the site, assuming they have the inclination to keep an eye on you, one of maybe hundreds or thousands of users. Invisibility gives people the courage to go places and do things that they otherwise wouldn’t.
This power to be concealed overlaps with anonymity, because anonymity is the concealment of identity. But there are some important differences. In text communication such as e-mail, chat, blogs, and instant messaging, others may know a great deal about who you are.
However, they still can’t see or hear you – and you can’t see or hear them. Even with everyone’s identity visible, the opportunity to be physically invisible amplifies the disinhibition effect.
You don’t have to worry about how you look or sound when you say (type) something. You don’t have to worry about how others look or sound when you say something. Seeing a frown, a shaking head, a sigh, a bored expression, and many other subtle and not so subtle signs of disapproval or indifference can slam the breaks on what people are willing to express.
In psychoanalysis, the analyst sits behind the patient in order remain a physically ambiguous figure, without revealing any body language or facial expression, so that the patient has free range to discuss whatever he or she wants, without feeling inhibited by how the analyst is physically reacting.
In everyday relationships, people sometimes avert their eyes when discussing something personal and emotional. It’s easier not to look into the other’s face. Text communication offers a built-in opportunity to keep one’s eyes averted.
See You Later (asynchronicity)
In e-mail and message boards, communication is asynchronous. People don’t interact with each other in real time. Others may take minutes, hours, days, or even months to reply to something you say.
Not having to deal with someone’s immediate reaction can be disinhibiting. In real life, it would be like saying something to someone, magically suspending time before that person can reply, and then returning to the conversation when you’re willing and able to hear the response.
Immediate, real-time feedback from others tends to have a very powerful effect on the ongoing flow of how much people reveal about themselves. In e-mail and message boards, where there are delays in that feedback, people’s train of thought may progress more steadily and quickly towards deeper expressions of what they are thinking and feeling.
Some people may even experience asynchronous communication as “running away” after posting a message that is personal, emotional, or hostile. It feels safe putting it “out there” where it can be left behind. In some cases, as an online psychotherapist, aptly describes it, the person may be participating in an “emotional hit and run.”
It’s All in My Head (solipsistic introjection)
Absent face 2 face cues combined with text communication can have an interesting effect on people. Sometimes they feel that their mind has merged with the mind of the online companion.
Reading another person’s message might be experienced as a voice within one’s head, as if that person magically has been inserted or “introjected” into one’s psyche. Of course, we may not know what the other person’s voice actually sounds like, so in our head we assign a voice to that companion. In fact, consciously or unconsciously, we may even assign a visual image to what we think that person looks like and how that person behaves.
The online companion now becomes a character within our intrapsychic world, a character that is shaped partly by how the person actually presents him or herself via text communication, but also by our expectations, wishes, and needs. Because the person may even remind us of other people we know, we fill in the image of that character with memories of those other acquaintances.
As the character now becomes more elaborate and “real” within our minds, we may start to think, perhaps without being fully aware of it, that the typed-text conversation is all taking place within our heads, as if it’s a dialogue between us and this character in our imagination – even as if we are authors typing out a play or a novel.
Actually, even when it doesn’t involve online relationships, many people carry on these kinds of conversations in their imagination throughout the day. People fantasize about flirting, arguing with a boss, or very honestly confronting a friend about what they feel. In their imagination, where it’s safe, people feel free to say and do all sorts of things that they wouldn’t in reality.
At that moment, reality IS one’s imagination. Online text communication can become the psychological tapestry in which a person’s mind weaves these fantasy role plays, usually unconsciously and with considerable disinhibition. All of cyberspace is a stage and we are merely players.
When reading another’s message, it’s also possible that you “hear” that person’s words using your own voice. We may be subvocalizing as we read, thereby projecting the sound of our voice into the other person’s message. Perhaps unconsciously, it feels as if I am talking to/with myself. When we talk to ourselves, we are willing to say all sorts of things that we wouldn’t say to others!
It’s Just a Game (dissociative imagination)
If we combine solipsistic introjection with the escapability of cyberspace, we get a slightly different force that magnifies disinhibition. People may feel that the imaginary characters they “created” exist in a different space, that one’s online persona along with the online others live in an make-believe dimension, a dream world, separate and apart from the demands and responsibilities of the real world.
They split or “dissociate” online fiction from offline fact. Emily Finch, an author and criminal lawyer studying identity theft in cyberspace, has suggested that some people see their online life as a kind of game with rules and norms that don’t apply to everyday living.
Once they turn off the computer and return to their daily routine, they believe they can leave that game and their game-identity behind. Why should they be held responsible for what happens in that make-believe play world that has nothing to do with reality? After all, it isn’t that different than blasting away at your pals in a shoot-em up video game… or so some people might think, perhaps unconsciously.
Although anonymity tends to amplify dissociative imagination, dissociative imagination and dissociative anonymity usually differ in the complexity of the dissociated part of oneself. Under the influence of anonymity, the person may try to be invisible, to become a non-person, resulting in a reducing or simplifying of identity. During dissociative imagination, the self that is expressed, but split-off, tends to be more elaborate.
We’re Equals (minimizing authority)
While online a person’s status in the face-to-face world may not be known to others and it may not have as much impact as it does in the face-to-face world. If people can’t see you or your surroundings, they don’t know if you are the president of a major corporation sitting in your expensive office, or some “ordinary” person lounging around at home in front of the computer.
Even if people do know something about your offline status and power, that elevated position may have little bearing on your online presence and influence. In most cases, everyone on the internet has an equal opportunity to voice him or herself. Everyone – regardless of status, wealth, race, gender, etc. – starts off on a level playing field.
Although one’s status in the outside world ultimately may have some impact on one’s powers in cyberspace, what mostly determines your influence on others is your skill in communicating (including writing skills), your persistence, the quality of your ideas, and your technical know-how.
People are reluctant to say what they really think as they stand before an authority figure. A fear of disapproval and punishment from on high dampens the spirit. But online, in what feels like a peer relationship – with the appearances of “authority” minimized – people are much more willing to speak out or misbehave.
According to traditional Internet philosophy, everyone is an equal: Peers share ideas and resources. In fact, the net itself is engineered with no centralized control. As it grows, with a seemingly endless potential for creating new environments, many people see themselves as independent-minded explorers. This atmosphere and philosophy contribute to the minimizing of authority.
Personality Variables
The disinhibition effect is not the only factor that determines how much people open up or act out in cyberspace. The strength of underlying feelings, needs, and drive level has a big influence on how people behave. Personalities also vary greatly in the strength of defense mechanisms and tendencies towards inhibition or expression.
People with histrionic styles tend to be very open and emotional. Compulsive people are more restrained. The online disinhibition effect will interact with these personality variables, in some cases resulting in a small deviation from the person’s baseline (offline) behavior, while in other cases causing dramatic changes.
The TRUE Self?
Does the disinhibition effect release inner needs, emotions, and attributes that dwell beneath surface personality presentations? Does it reveal your “true self.” For example, a woman with repressed anger unleashes her hostility online, thereby showing others how she really feels. Or a shy man openly expresses his hidden affection for his cyberspace companion.
Some people do report being more like their true self in cyberspace. If personality is constructed in layers, with a core or true self buried beneath surface defenses and the seemingly superficial roles of everyday social interactions, then does the disinhibition effect release that true self?
This is a tempting conclusion. In fact, the very notion of a true self is tempting because it is useful in helping people articulate their experiences in how and what they express to others about themselves. The concept also works well, in a humanistic fashion, as a motivational tool in the process of self-actualization.
However, a comprehensive psychological as well as philosophical analysis reveals complexities in this thing called self that stretch far beyond this tempting notion. In an in-depth exploration of the online disinhibition effect, the idea of a true self is too ambiguous, arbitrary, and rudimentary to serve as a useful concept.
Personal and cultural values: Personal and cultural values often dictate what we consider the true and false aspects of who we are. We more readily accept as valid those attributes that we regard as positive. An unpleasant aspect of one’s personality is not really “me.” However, sexual and aggressive tendencies, as Freud noted, are basic components of personality too, as are the psychological defenses designed to control them.
Personal and cultural values may also label the usually polite persona that we present to others during everyday living as superficial or false. However, this persona is the product of years of social and psychological development. As a critical component of the ego’s construction and functioning, it is essential to interpersonal survival and no less important or true than other components of intrapsychic structure.
While online people may feel they have more opportunities to present themselves as they would like to present themselves, particularly in the carefully composed text of asynchronous communication. They may have more chances to convey thoughts and emotions that go “deeper” than the seemingly superficial persona of everyday living.
These opportunities are very valuable aspects of cyberspace, but not necessarily evidence of a more true self. What we reveal about ourselves spontaneously, often right on the surface for others to see but without our being consciously awareness of it, may be just as real and true.
Some people are not fully satisfied with their in-person relationships. Perhaps they don’t have opportunities to develop many relationships, or those that did develop turned out to be unfulfilling. In cyberspace they may find the companions they need. They feel more authentic in those online relationships, and this becomes a viable lifestyle alternative.
On the other hand, some people who need to deny or rationalize the unfulfilling quality of their in-person relationships may resort to a personal philosophy that idealizes the disinhibition effect and the notion that the true self appears online.
The inhibiting self: The concept of disinhibition may mistakenly lead us into thinking that what is disinhibited is more real or true than the part of us that inhibits. If we can just peel away repression, suppression, and other defense mechanisms, we will discover the “real” self that lies below.
Based loosely on the kind of archaeological approach to intrapsychic structure proposed by Freud, this notion suggests that the personality is constructed in layers, with more true or real features of personality existing at a deeper level.
This is a simplistic interpretation of the much more dynamic psychoanalytic model which states that the inhibitory processes of repression and defense mechanisms are components of personality no less real or important than others. Psychoanalytic clinicians believe that understanding defenses is crucial to the success of the therapy because it reveals hidden thoughts, feelings, and needs.
Why does a person repress something? Why is it being inhibited? Bypassing defenses to get to the “true” self may also bypass the opportunity to discover aspects of the inhibiting self that are just as true. When these defenses and elements of the inhibited self are worked through, remnants of them sometimes remain to serve an important function. Sometimes they evolve into productive aspects of one’s personality independent of the problematic emotions that were originally defended.
The same is true online. Some people in some online situations become disinhibited and reveal aspects of themselves. However, at the same time, they may not be not grappling with the underlying causes of that inhibition, and therefore are missing an opportunity to discover something important about themselves – something very true about themselves, but often unconscious.
If anonymity in cyberspace eases people’s anxiety so they are more comfortable to express themselves, then they also are bypassing an essential component of who they are. Important personality dynamics are embedded in that anxiety.
People who are shy in-person may thrive in cyberspace when the disinhibition effect allows them to express who they “truly” are inside. This is a wonderful opportunity for them. But why is Joe’s shyness a less true aspect of him compared to other features of his personality, especially given the fact that his shyness is a prominent feature of his day-to-day living?
If online companions, who had formed the impression Joe was outgoing, finally met him in-person, might they not conclude that Joe is “really” shy? And what makes him shy? Are there underlying psychological problems and anxieties that caused it? Is it a biologically determined temperament, as much research in developmental psychology suggests about shyness. Aren’t these possible causes of his shyness also true aspects of Joe? Here we see the arbitrary nature of the “true self” concept.
Compromise formations: Quite often when people are online and some aspect of their personality is disinhibited, some other aspect of their personality is inhibited. After all, the anonymity that contributes to online disinhibition means that the person is “without a name” – something about that person is not known.
In online communication, consciously or unconsciously, people conceal or misrepresent aspects of themselves as often as they honestly reveal aspects of themselves. Any particular media encourages some aspects of identity to be expressed while inhibiting other aspects. Something is revealed while something else is hidden. Expressions of self are compromise formations within any particular media or communication modality. In email Joe reveals for the first time to Sue that “I love you,” but his voice and body language, which in-person might reveal unwritten dimensions and even qualifications of his stated affection, are hidden.
This particular example also points to the polarities that operate within the dynamics of personality. Sometimes we act, think, or feel one way, and sometimes the opposite. We have ambivalent, sometimes opposing emotions. Online Joe says that he truly loves Sue, but in-person his voice indicates some doubt.
Face-to-face he appears angry and rejecting, but online he admits that he feels insecure and guilty. Different communication environments convey different facets of these polarities in self. Here one side appears, and there another. Neither is more true than another.
Each media allows for a particular expression of self that differs – sometimes greatly, sometimes subtly – from another media. In different media people present a different perspective of their identity. Chat, email, blogs, videocams, telephones, face-to-face conversation, and all types of communication modalities, each uniquely highlight certain aspects of self expression and personal identity, while hiding others.
The self expressed in one modality is not necessarily deeper, more real, or more authentic than another. This multiple modality framework for understanding the self-within-media bypasses the tendency to become bogged down in arbitrary arguments about the location of the true or real self.
Self Constellations Across Media
The self interacts with the environment in which it is expressed. It is not independent of that environment. If a man suppresses his aggression in life but expresses it online, both behaviors reflect important aspects of his personality that surface under different conditions. If a woman is shy in-person but outgoing online, neither self-presentation is more true than the other. Both are dimensions of who she is, each revealed within a different situational context.
Instead of thinking that personality is constructed in layers with the environment “out there” somewhere, we can conceptualize it as an intrapsyhic field containing clusters or constellations of emotion, memory, and thinking that are interconnected with certain environments.
Some constellations overlap, others are more dissociated from each other, with environmental variables influencing those levels of integration and dissociation. Personality dynamics involve the complex interactions among these various clusters within the self and in relation to the environment. An extreme version of these dynamics occur in a multiple personality disorder, in which consciousness shifts laterally from one constellation of personality formation to another, with strong dissociative barriers between those formations.
In the more “normal” person, the distinction between the formations may be less dramatic, and the dissociative barriers less intense, but the same alterations in identity expression does occur.
These ideas about self constellations extend as far back as William James’ theory of consciousness shifting from one focus to another within a field of associations. They also are consistent with contemporary theories about dissociation and the information processing of experience.
Therefore, we can think of the disinhibition effect as a person shifting to an “online” personality constellation that may be dissociated – in varying degrees, depending on the person – from the in-person constellation. Inhibiting guilt, shame, or anxiety may be features of the in-person self but not that online self. This constellations model also helps explain other online phenomena, like identity experimentation, role-playing fantasy games, multitasking projects, and other subtle shifts in personality expression as we move from one online environment to another.
In fact, a single disinhibited “online self” probably does not exist at all, but rather a collection of slightly different constellations of emotion, memory, and thinking that surface in and interact with different types of online environments. Different communication modalities enable different expressions of oneself. They allow us to see the different perspectives of that complex thing we call “identity.”
This is something to keep in mind for online psychotherapy. Using a multidimensional analysis of the various features of cyberspace, a comprehensive theory of online psychotherapy explores how the design of a computer-mediated environment allows for the inhibition, expression, and development of different aspects of a person’s identity.
Altering Self Boundary
My discussion so far rests on the assumption that almost everyone online tends to be disinhibited, even if the effect is small. However, this isn’t necessarily the case. Some people feel guarded and suspicious about cyberspace. You don’t know who people really are, or how exactly they may be reacting to you behind their typed words. You don’t realize who is watching you or what they know about you. You can’t trust everyone’s intentions. In black hole situations, you send out a message and receive no reply, for reasons not clear. Is anyone really there?
Online environments can stir uncertainty, frustration, and anxiety – even paranoia about the possible mishaps and calamities that may befall you if you venture into the wrong environment or connect with the wrong people. As a result, people sometimes proceed with hesitancy and caution.
Some vacillate between feeling disinhibited and restrained as they move in and out of the various areas of their online lifestyle. They shift up and down what we might consider a disinhibition/inhibition continuum. However, others may feel both ways simultaneously within a particular environment or relationship. For example, you reveal intimate details about yourself to someone you meet online, but you won’t give that person your phone number.
How do we explain these alternating as well as concurrent experiences of both an open and guarded self? If we focus just on online disinhibition or only on online suspiciousness, we will overlook an important underlying psychological experience that gives rise to this disinhibition/inhibition polarity. That experience is “self boundary.”
Self-boundary is the sense of what is me and what is not me. It’s the experience of a flexible perimeter marking the distinction between my personality – my thoughts, feelings, and memories – and what exists outside that perimeter, within other people.
A variety of factors contribute to self-boundary, including the awareness of having a distinct physical body, the perception via the five senses of an outside world, the feeling of a psychological distinction between what I know versus what others know about me, and the sensation of the physical/psychological self moving cohesively along a linear continuum of past, present, and future.
Life in cyberspace tends to disrupt these factors that support self-boundary. The physical body and its five senses no longer play as crucial a role as in face-to-face relationships. What others know or don’t know about me is not always clear.
The feeling of a linear past, present, and future becomes more obscure as we move back and forth through synchronous and asynchronous communication. As a result, this altered state of consciousness in cyberspace tends to shift or destabilize self-boundary.
The distinction between inner-me and outer-other is not as clear. The person shifts to what psychoanalytic theory calls “primary process thinking” in which boundaries between self and other representations become more diffuse, and thinking becomes more subjective and emotion-centered.
Within the transitional space of online communication, the psyches of self and other feel like they might be overlapping. We allow the hidden self to surface because we no longer experience it as a purely inner self; but at the same time we also sense, sometimes vaguely and sometimes distinctly, the intrusion of an unknown other into our private world, which results in suspicion, anxiety, and the need to defend our exposed and vulnerable intrapsychic territory.
No doubt, there are important individual differences in how people shift along the inhibition/disinhibition continuum. The effect of inhibition or disinhibition might be weak or strong, depending on the person and the situation. People might experience small or wide oscillations between the two polarities.
Some might be more susceptible to inhibition than to disinhibition, or vice versa. Studying what is revealed or hidden about people within the wide range of online environments can become a laboratory for understanding the subtle dynamics of the self.
I’m unsure what is to be done with thugs. The British Empire took great pains to bring them to extinction in India, and every other colony to it seems.
The American Government likewise did something similar to some Native Americans and Spaniards.
It is well and good to not BE thugs. But I for one do not advocate there being such a dominant state such that all thugs can be hunted and caged in all instances.
I would argue at a minimum, some kind of continuing consideration be given to those who would otherwise choose to be thugs. It is incorrect to put any fixed concept or institution above any individual human being who is a self owner.
If you want all in a jursidiction to forgo violence, you have to offer alternatives. Ideally, allow the violent to live with other violents. Or else you have to provide for those forced away from the violence they wish to practice on one another. By what authority does any man capture and compel another man. There is none, I would argue.
Else, you get the institutionally thuggery of America. First they came for thugs. Then other first nation people. Then plantation owners and their human property. They they stole much of the confederate property. Then “horders” of silver. They effectively stole western ranchers and farmers land by demonetizing silver.
Then they enforced prohibition. To do so they monitored each and every transaction. And made it impossible to trade outside of their federal reserve system. This crashed the economy. And everyone was plundered and pillaged. And reduced to being eaters of free bread, and drinkers of free soup.
Then forced owners of gold to sell at below market price.
thuggery (noun)
1839, from thug + -ery. Also thugee, from the native Hindi name for the system of religious assassination practiced by the thugs.
thuggish (adj.)
“ruffianly, brutal and forceful,” 1870, from thug + -ish. Related: Thuggishly; thuggishness.
thug (noun)
1810, “member of a gang of murderers and robbers in India who strangled their victims,” from Marathi thag, thak “cheat, swindler,” Hindi thag, perhaps from Sanskrit sthaga-s “cunning, fraudulent,” from sthagayati “(he) covers, conceals,” perhaps from PIE root *(s)teg- (2) “to cover” (see stegosaurus).
The thugs roamed about the country in bands of from 10 to 100, usually in the disguise of peddlers or pilgrims, gaining the confidence of other travelers, whom they strangled, when a favorable opportunity presented itself, with a handkerchief, an unwound turban, or a noosed cord. The shedding of blood was seldom resorted to. The motive of the thugs was not so much lust of plunder as a certain religious fanaticism. The bodies of their victims were hidden in graves dug with a consecrated pickax, and of their spoil one third was devoted to the goddess Kali, whom they worshiped.
Rigorously prosecuted by the British from 1831, they were driven from existence by century’s end. Transferred sense of “ruffian, cutthroat, violent lowbrow” is from 1839.
Max Stirner proposes that most commonly accepted social institutions – including the notion of State, property as a right, natural rights in general, and the very notion of society – were mere illusions or ghosts in the mind, saying of society that “the individuals are its reality.”
Only when one realizes that all sacred truths such as law, right, morality, religion, are nothing other than artificial concepts, and not to be [automatically] obeyed, can one act freely.
To be free is to be both one’s own “creature” (in the sense of ‘creation’) and one’s own “creator” To Stirner power is the method of egoism. It is the only justified method of gaining ‘property’ [we disagree, saying that you can not use power to initiate force against another person]
Stirner wants to “abolish not only the state but also society as an institution responsible for its members.”
He advocated egoism and a form of amoralism, in which individuals would unite in ‘unions of egoists’ only when it was in their self-interest to do so.
For him, property simply comes about through might: “Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property.”[this would of course become a nightmare, when you must be on the defensive from everyone]
“What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing. I do not step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as my property, in which I respect nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my property!” [this needs some kinds of limitation of course]
Stirner considers the world and everything in it, including other persons, available to one’s taking or use without moral constraint – that rights do not exist in regard to objects and people at all.
He sees no rationality in taking the interests of others into account unless doing so furthers one’s self-interest, which he believes is the only legitimate reason for acting. He denies society as being an actual entity, calling society a “spook” and that “the individuals are its reality”
Union of egoists
Stirner’s idea of the “Union of Egoists” is understood as a non-systematic association, which Stirner proposed in contradistinction to the state. The Union is understood as a relation between egoists which is continually renewed by all parties’ support through an act of will.
The Union requires that all parties participate out of a conscious egoism. If one party silently finds themselves to be suffering, but puts up and keeps the appearance, the union has degenerated into something else. This union is not an authority above a person’s own will.
Stirner launched a radical anti-authoritarian and individualist critique of contemporary Prussian society, and modern western society. He offers an approach to human existence which depicts the self as a creative non-entity, beyond language and reality.
He proclaims that all religions and ideologies rest on empty concepts. The same holds true for society’s institutions, that claim authority over the individual, be it the state, legislation, the church, or the systems of education such as Universities.
Lange’s commentary on Stirner.
Stirner went so far as to reject all moral ideas. Everything that in any way, whether it be external force, belief, or mere idea, places itself above the individual and his caprice, Stirner rejects as a hateful limitation of himself.
This book – the extremest that we know anywhere – needed only a second positive part added. Out of the unlimited Ego I can again beget every kind of Idealism as my will and my idea. Stirner lays so much stress upon the will, in fact, that it appears as the root force of human nature.
– The only thing incompatible with Stirner, is his savage notion of one individual’s exercise of ego being utterly unbounded by any one else.
That is where we part ways.
We advocate a sort of ego maximization, by allowing all peaceful exercises of ego, but not violent ones.
It is egoism to grant to a person an unlimited right to drive as fast as he likes. To behave however he likes. To treat others who willingly do business with you or remain willingly in relationships with you however you like.
Because Stirner does not deny one’s ego the use of force of taking whatever another person has, his egotopia will not be a pleasant one, because no one restrains themselves in even the most extreme circumstances.
It is also egoism, to exercise minimal restraints, so you all can live and let live, instead of constantly being at heightened alert against your fellow men engaging in raw animal predations.
Stirner appears to be a thug. Thrasymachus rebooted (“justice is the advantage of the stronger”). He may be right, ugly reality-wise. But is he right?
The odd thing about having a conscience (and empathy) is that one tends to reflexively shy away from behaving like a predatory animal.
And that’s the rub, isn’t it?
Our polis of voluntaryism and non-aggression is predicated on people (most of them) operating at a higher ethical-moral level. They must reject violence as instinctively as most people today unconsciously embrace it. They must have developed the habit of filtering any given proposed action through the NAP.
“We need more money for schools.”
Well, ok. But are you suggesting that we each voluntarily chip in what we can afford? Or are you demanding that threats of violent reprisal be used to coerce people to hand over their rightful property?
And so on.
Until that “awakening” has occurred, the battle’s lost before it begins. But if enough people ever do awake, the battle won’t be necessary because the war will already have been won.
Eric and you said that libertarians are a peaceful and non-aggressive group?
”
Inconsistencies
June 26, 2014 at 3:20 pm
All of those in that room pry their paychecks forcefully from my labor and deserve everything thrown at them (and more).
”
Nice group of people you hang around with Eric. Eric that is why I do not want your society.
Is it possible that you cannot understand the difference between aggressive and defensive force? That there is a difference between punching someone in the nose and attempting to fend off the person trying to punch you in the nose?
You and yours have a policy of aggressive violence. We – as a matter of principle and practice – don’t start fights. Libertarians want no violence, but do claim the right to defend ourselves against violence initiated by people such as yourself.
Your force it on us – and then call us “violent”!
Your reply will be: Then just do as ordered and there will be no violence. Except of course that you’re asking (telling) us to accept the violence you visit upon us and (height of effrontery) refuse ot acknowledge the violence behind everything you stand for.
So you’ll stand by the current society that murders at least 1 million people every year on purpose, not in a momentary lapse of reason? How is that the moral high ground? How is that not the most violent system imaginable?
Here is the libertarian stance on why light travels, do you at least agree with this libertarian premises, or do you find fault with them as well?
Libertarians believe that everything, by nature of simply existing, is “moving” at the speed of light (which really has nothing to do with light). Yes, that does include your body as well.
The libertarian understanding of the universe is that the way that we perceive space and time as separate things is, to be frank, wrong. They aren’t separate: the universe is made of “spacetime,” all one word. A year and a lightyear describe different things in our day to day lives, but from a physicist’s point of view, they’re actually the exact same thing
In our day to day lives, libertarians define motion as a distance traveled over some amount of time. However, if distances and intervals of time are the exact same thing, that suddenly becomes completely meaningless. “I traveled one foot for every foot that I traveled” is an absolutely absurd statement!
The way it works is that everything in the libertarian universe travels through spacetime at some speed which I’ll call “c” for the sake of brevity. Remember, motion in spacetime is meaningless, so it makes sense that nothing could be “faster” or “slower” through spacetime than anything else. Everybody and everything travels at one foot per foot, that’s just… how it works.
Obviously, though, things do seem to have different speeds. The reason that happens is that time and space are orthogonal, which is sort of a fancy term for “at right angles to each other.” North and east, for example, are orthogonal: a libertarian can travel as far as he wants directly to the north, but it’s not going to affect where he is in terms of east/west at all.
Just like how a libertarian can travel north without traveling east, he can travel through time without it affecting where he is in space. Conversely, he can travel through space without it affecting where he is are in time.
You’re (presumably) sitting in your chair right now, which means you’re not traveling through space at all. Since you have to travel through spacetime at c (speed of light), though, a libertarian would say that means all of your motion is through time.
By the way, libertarians believe this is why time dilation happens: something that’s moving very fast relative to you is moving through space, but since they can only travel through spacetime at c, they have to be moving more slowly through time to compensate (from your point of view).
Libertarians believe light, on the other hand, doesn’t travel through time at all. The reason it doesn’t is somewhat complicated, but it has to do with the fact that it has no mass.
Something that isn’t moving that has mass can have energy: that’s what E = mc2 means to libertarians. Light has no mass, but it does have energy. If a libertarian plugs the mass of light into E=mc2, he gets 0, which makes no sense because light has energy. Hence, light can never be stationary.
Not only that, but light can never be stationary from a libertarian or other political philosophy adherent’s perspective. Since, like everything else, it travels at c through spacetime, that means all of its “spacetime speed” must be through space, and none of it is through time.
So, light travels at c. Not at all by coincidence, you’ll often hear c referred to as the “speed of light in a vacuum.” Really, though, it’s the speed which libertarians claim that everything travels at, and it happens to be the speed that light travels through space at because it has no mass.
This also covers the common question of why nothing can ever travel faster than light, and why things with mass cannot travel at the speed of light. The libertarian answer to this question is, since everything moves through spacetime at c, nothing can ever exceed it (and no, traveling backwards in time would not fix that).
Also, things with mass can always be “stationary” from someone’s perspective (like their own), so they always have to move through time at least a little bit, meaning they can never travel through space as fast as light does. They’d have to travel through spacetime faster than c to do that, which, again, libertarians insist is not possible.
The reason this particular video, which wasn’t even accompanied by much text, stirred up such a hornet’s nest, was that it challenged the Myth of Authority on a gut level in addition to a on a head trip level.
Let me share an example. Take the term “cop killer” or “cop killer bullets.”
As both cops and non-cops alike know, the term is intended to provoke moral outrage. As in “The guy is a cop killer! Take him down!” or “Shit man, the guy was using cop killer bullets!”
But this facile moral outrage is predicated on a Big Lie — the Thin Blue Line, holding the line against a tidal wave of crime.
The ugly reality, which needs no elaboration, is that the entire apparatus of government is rooted in armed robbery and extortion, better known as “taxation” and “law enforcement.”
I think this comment, the second one, is what got things rolling.
Garysco Submitted on 2014/06/26 at 12:08 am
Sorry, but this guy is a donkey. He creates the probable cause by asking for a box to put his gun in, then complains they have no reason to check him for same inside the courthouse.
It’s a sophisticated presentation of the clover case.
It is always the guy not complying with authority who is the donkey. The one who creates the probable cause, by dint of his not bowing to and remaining submissive to authority.
If you don’t agree with courthouses having absolute authority over so many minute details of your life. If you don’t like dealing with violent vindictive cops on the roads. If you don’t like being forced to paying exorbitant rent on your own property. If you don’t like enduring endless restrictions on what you can do with your own property. It’s your problem.
Your place to challenge authority is wherever authority tells you it’s permissible to do so. Your time to question authority it, is whenever authority tell you it’s appropriate to do so.
You are irrelevant. You have no standing. You are nothing. Your role is to comply and remain passive and well mannered, no matter how absolute and oppressive authority becomes.
Since most of the heat was between Gary and you, I will defer to the two of you on that particular point. Gary and you know what you were feeling better than I do.
For me the moral and ethical key is that the goonvermin courts have no moral legitimacy in the first place. It is similar to my analogy about Frenchmen in occupied Vichy France.
Since the Nazi occupation was illegitimate to begin with, and was effected at gunpoint, then any Frenchman had the right to shoot any occupying Nazi soldier any time he saw fit.
He did not need to wait for the Nazi soldier to commit any additional offenses in France, such as rape a local woman. The Nazi soldier’s complicity in the occupation already justified retaliation. No additional justification was needed.
Ditto with the goonvermin and its agents. They are already an occupation force that robs us regularly. What more is needed?
That does not mean any of us would necessary do that. Most of us here believe the pen is mightier than the sword. But it does mean we would be well within our rights to do so.
I wish he would have responded rationally to Mithrandir’s question in comment #3
Garysco,
Regardless of his status as a donkey,
Does the statute he reference require a lock box to be in the same building as the courthouse?
Comment #4 Garysco response excerpt:
“He intentionally goes to the building with his camera and an attitude to make an issue out of a “box” that should be there.
BFD in my opinion, but that is what he wants to do, so fine. I don’t know what he expected, maybe they would all jump up and install one for him right then and there”
How can the law be a BFD. This is very telling of how LEOs really think and act?
Both Garysco and clover’s responses to valid questions identical. Mocking and dismissive, nothing but contempt and ridicule for any mundane who dare even try to discuss the law with those in authority.
I’d rather there be no courthouse.
But if it must be there, then it should be the law that is in authority. Not so-called public servants of the law, who in reality, serve only themselves and never the law.
Who then say arrogantly: “Whatever you say or do is no Big Fucking Deal because I have usurped the public institutions to serve my whims, not the law. I am in authority. I am the law. This license to plunder and oppress is granted me from the highest authorities of the state. And there’s nothing you can do about it.
The issue – as you’ve laid out – is whether the authority is legitimate. And the only legitimate authority is our dominion over our own lives, not the lives of others. Or any such authority as we each individually and freely agree to defer to (such as buying into an HOA, for instance).
Otherwise, who are these people?
What gives some guy in a special costume the right to bark orders at us?
“What gives some guy in a special costume the right to bark orders at us?”
Precisely. And of course, this is not restricted to blue costumes. It also includes black costumes. The ones “judges” wear, include “Supreme Court Justices.”
When I was still under the Spell of Authority, I was intimidated by all the trappings of the “justice system.” More recently, now that I have thought through the source of natural rights from a clean mental slate, I realize what claptrap it all is.
We’ve all seen it a million times in courtroom dramas. The “judge” enters. The “clerk of the court” shouts “All rise!” If one fails to kowtow before “authoritay,” the “judge” charges you with “contempt of court.”
Did you get that? It is even a crime in our “justice system” to display feelings of resentment for one’s victimization by the goonvermin’s star chamber! One is not even entitled to one’s feelings!
The agents of the goonvermin know they need to keep the sheeple meek and terrified of them. That is why they cannot allow us to even feel contempt.
What is not supposed to be my concern! First and foremost, the Good Cause, then God’s cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humanity, of justice;
Further, the cause of my people, my prince, my fatherland; finally, even the cause of Mind, and a thousand other causes. Only my cause is never to be my concern. “Shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself!”
Let us look and see, then, how they manage their concerns — they for whose cause we are to labor, devote ourselves, and grow enthusiastic.
You are shocked by the assumption that God could be like us poor worms in furthering an alien cause as his own. “Should God take up the cause of truth if he were not himself truth?” He cares only for his cause, but, because he is all in all, therefore all is his cause! But we, we are not all in all, and our cause is altogether little and contemptible; therefore we must “serve a higher cause.” —
Now it is clear, God cares only for what is his, busies himself only with himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes; woe to all that is not well-pleasing to him. He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is — a purely egoistic cause.
How is it with mankind, whose cause we are to make our own? Is its cause that of another, and does mankind serve a higher cause? No, mankind looks only at itself, mankind will promote the interests of mankind only, mankind is its own cause.
That it may develop, it causes nations and individuals to wear themselves out in its service, and, when they have accomplished what mankind needs, it throws them on the dung-heap of history in gratitude. Is not mankind’s cause — a purely egoistic cause?
I have no need to take up each thing that wants to throw its cause on us and show that it is occupied only with itself, not with us, only with its good, not with ours. Look at the rest for yourselves. Do truth, freedom, humanity, justice, desire anything else than that you grow enthusiastic and serve them?
They all have an admirable time of it when they receive zealous homage. Just observe the nation that is defended by devoted patriots. The patriots fall in bloody battle or in the fight with hunger and want; what does the nation care for that?
By the manure of their corpses the nation comes to “its bloom”! The individuals have died “for the great cause of the nation,” and the nation sends some words of thanks after them and — has the profit of it. I call that a paying kind of egoism.
But only look at that Sultan who cares so lovingly for his people. Is he not pure unselfishness itself, and does he not hourly sacrifice himself for his people? Oh, yes, for “his people.” Just try it; show yourself not as his, but as your own; for breaking away from his egoism you will take a trip to jail.
The Sultan has set his cause on nothing but himself; he is to himself all in all, he is to himself the only one, and tolerates nobody who would dare not to be one of “his people.”
And will you not learn by these brilliant examples that the egoist gets on best? I for my part take a lesson from them, and propose, instead of further unselfishly serving those great egoists, rather to be the egoist myself.
Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You think at least the “good cause” must be my concern? What’s good, what’s bad? Why, I myself am my concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for me.
My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine, and it is not a general one, but is — unique, as I am unique.
@Garysco the clover and all his second-hander disciple clovers:
@Tor – Question 1 What in your mind should have those other people in the building do or not do to Gavin’s presence and complaints about a particular law he did not even read himself?
(I can only guess that the “should not even exist” state funded worker bees should have just looked and stared at him until he was done and left the building.)
@Tor – Question 2 Is he a clover by running for a government funded political office?
(I mean he is supporting the Statist system by asking for the job.)
My response to your questions. (IMHO there are no answers to irrational hypotheticals about the irrational religion of governmental cannibalism.)
1 The first nasty headphoned thing should be plucked from her chair by the people she has been tyrannizing and thrown out in the street. If she persists, she should be run out of town on rail and banished for life.
How dare you try to defend that piece of shit. Government worker bee? You can’t seriously think anyone here will agree that is who she is.
2 As far as Gavin is concerned. He is in a similar place as Eric was with the Corvette Clover. He is only reacting to these vampire assholes who are forcibly interposing themselves into his life. Gavin is doing what any person under their illegitimate plundering, caging, soul-raping, and flesh-eating has full right and duty to do.
Seriously, fuck you for your so-called service. And all these courthouse assholes and first responder predators as we.. It appears you’re even worse than Clover. You understand all too well how this whole farce works, yet have the gall to pretend it is legitimate for a ruling class to feed off a taxpaying class as if carnivorous human flesh-eaters are our heavenly ordained natural rulers.
May whatever violence you threaten and advocate happen to these YouTube account freelancers be visited upon you instead by all who transact as you do in destruction and violence. May this happen as well to your entire family you’ve supported through such base and inhuman behavior.
When it comes to this issue, you are a walking dead zombie who knows only taking by force and brute violence. There is no common rational ground here that I can see.
I will learn how to really live by way of voluntary trade and the free market. Should you choose to continue to living as a grinning corpse whose only moments of living come through capture and feeding off the living, then in this instance there will always be an irreconcilable difference between us.
Remember that Garysco made his living (and now his pension) from being in the total mindset of cop/enforcer, and thus his whole life experiences are from that viewpoint. This mindset is too difficult to overcome.
Like the shoe salesman who notices everyone’s shoes before any other article of their clothing, Garysco learned to focus on who might, without warning, become a bad guy in need of restraint. That is how his mind is conditioned. So that is what he has been programmed to focus on.
It is really sad. There are a great number of people who will never intend to harm another, yet we are all pre-supposed to be of the criminal persuasion.
My brother-in-law used to be a small town cop. But he has a conscience, so he quit. He went back to school to became a psychologist — because he really did want to help people in trouble.
Looks to me there’s next to no difference, in some states moreso than others I suppose, but it appears they are yoked together pulling the fraud wagon linked above.
@Inconsistencies – What is your definition violent acts? Mine is the use of physical force. To that question I would say none that I can think of. But then I left that line of work 19 years ago next month when I opened my own computer networking business and became a Microsoft partner and Certified Small Business Network Specialist (SBSC). So I may have forgotten one over time.
I’m not here to judge, Gary. I only hope you didn’t ruin many lives or collect too much loot for the slave masters, and I’m glad to hear you decided to go straight so many years ago.
You’re the one that keeps coming at me. And making up lies, which is what clovers always do. You asserted that I didn’t answer your questions.
Garysco said:
“You won’t answer with any original solution of your own, only accuse. I will leave it there.”
So now you have what you’ve asked for.
As I see it, you and others like you all deserve each other. (Unless I am mistaken that you believe Gavin deserves official violence)
It is of no value for me to forcibly insert myself into how you live your life. I am not your accuser. I might hate the principles by which you live your life if you tell us what they are, but as of now, I’m unsure what your principles are. Perhaps you don’t know yourself.
You’ve said a lot of good things here, and in many ways, you’ve shown yourself to be one of the good guys.
The solution is something you would have to willing work towards in a cooperative venture. I will not be constructing some “better way” and then finding a way of imposing it on you.
It is you who appears to be demonstrating an intent on making all who reject your plans to make a meal out of them your enemy. (Is this incorrect?) If those are your plans, then yes, I hope they fail.
In this instance, it appears you’d rather fabricate lies, keep going around in circles, than have anyone find out what you’ve been up to, and be held to account before an assembly of your peers regarding that reality.
But here is where I see a major problem for statists and minarchists. We do have states right now. We do have courts right now. We do have a “limited govermnent” that is supposedly “bound in its limits” outlined in “the constitution.”
So here is my question to you minarchists. You want a constitution; you have one. You want a “limited government,” you have one, the constitution supposedly guarantees this.
But WHAT IS BINDING about laws passed by the state and limits found in the constitution????
—-
Because it seems that we have these laws and these courts. But WHEN THE GOVERNMENT breaks the limits, breaks the law, doesn’t follow the constitution… WHAT IS THE RESULT? Are corrupt politicians and judges tried? Don’t we see the government and its employees, agents, departments and agencies BREAKING THE SACRED LAWS left and right without recourse?
So to turn this line of questioning “What makes it valid?” (In reference to the NAP or property rights.) Let me turn this line of questioning around and ask you the same about the “sacred court system” that you statists insist is necessary to HAVE JUSTICE.
In other words, “Is your sacred court REALLY SO SACRED?”
It’s interesting that Ron Paul authorizes the publishing of anarchist articles like this at his official website. It’s interesting that Ron Paul’s campaign manager was Lew Rockwell, a dyed in the wool Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist.
To me it suggests that Ron Paul is actually a “stealth anarchist” who is acting as a “mole” inside the statist system in order to bring it down from within!
Hut! Hut! Hut! Is that how it is in North Korea? I don’t think it is much different there than here. Especially when out in public. So little of our choice and time is our own.
Mostly in public we engage in Hut! Hut! Hut! because they make it so difficult to do much else. Though thankfully we are more physically comfortable and our forced to do far less of this here in the US than in North Korea.
Should we unplug from all media and stimuli. Find ourselves alone without books, websites, television, news, as we would be in North Korea, we should soon find ourselves lost and in confusion all at once.
We will not then know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise.
We are all oppressed at being men–men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man.
We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea. But enough; I don’t want to write more from “Underground.”
Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others.
Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete beastiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself.
A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn’t it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it.
He has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea- he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility… Do get up from your knees and sit down, I beg you, these posturings are false, too.
Tor, you’ve obviously stayed up at night and lost some sleep, a thing I feel I invented sometimes. I have a book, “Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?” by James J. Sheehan. He quotes much of Orwell, who in the early part of the 20th century was very much more inclined to support the “empires” and their part in the world stage at the time.
He quotes many people and compares it to what was actually happening and how so many of these people were very brainwashed to support the state at that time.
Sorta long one eh? I had a sort of head start disbelieving govt. propaganda since most of it didn’t make sense when I was in grade school and Soldier of Fortune I got to read at the barbershop didn’t jive with the MSM and I rejected religion early. Once a coach teaching civics to us freshmen in HS and told us we might educated ourselves on what was really going on in VN since we were soon to be there also. We took it seriously and not a single person in my class failed to smell the hypocrisy and hence, not one served in the military. We were just small town(very)kids, farms kids, constantly exposed to the “love it or leave it” mentality. Evidently, we did neither.
We were THE only class in our school to have that distinction of not serving. I’m thankful for someone waking me up to it and making me confront the real reasons and not just be a willing pawn.
My point is, everybody went through a long process to sniff out the rats and identify where they lived. I’ve gone through many changes in just the last ten years….to the point of probably having voted my last time. I’ve changed my views also from conversing with people on line, EPA being one of the most influential with very informed and intelligent people not to leave out eric himself.
I don’t get here often and really miss it. I’m with you in spirit though. Hold the line.
Nice Eightsouthman . I liked your quote “so many of these people were very brainwashed to support the state”. I wish someone would explain why the libertarian movement is not brainwashing? Who in their right mind with food, a car, a house and many other things would follow the libertarian movement into the vast unknown. It is pretty much like joining other people on a space ship headed to Mars. They know it looks pretty bad but they are following anyway. Life might be like hell on Mars but the brainwashed people want to follow to go to the life that could be short and miserable.
We follow principles to conclusions, Clover. You simply exist by rote – doing what you “feel” and “believe” because it “works” (for you) without considering whether it’s right – and whether what you “believe” might be wrong.
AnCaps are “Rabidly Consistent”. Not just that, we can not accept inconsistencies. It actually hurts to see an inconsistency and not call it what it is. You call it taxes, Clover. Tell me how it is not theft? You see the draft or jury “duty”, how, Clover, (I had a dog named Clover, a basset hound) is that different from slavery? You do not chase something to its final conclusion. Statist are the most inconsistent and illogical persons around. It is people like you who are too scared to ask my corporation for a project so you convince a professional thug to pass a law (It’s for the children) to force my “donation”. Get your proxy hands out of my pocket.
SirIrb you ask why taxes are not theft. If you are living in any country you have to live by the laws of that country. If you do not pay taxes that you owe because they are laws of our country then you are breaking the laws. If you buy a house where you know that there are property taxes then you are under a local “contract/law” to pay those taxes. If you do not pay you are in default of that contract. Stealing is when there are no contracts in place and you take money or goods from others that does not belong to you.
SirIrb if you do not want to live by the laws of our country then you try to change them in a non-violent way or you leave or you go to jail. You take the choice that works for you.
clover wrote: “Who in their right mind with food, a car, a house and many other things would follow the libertarian movement into the vast unknown.”
Freedom sure is scary for those who rely on government to feed them, provide transportation, house them, and provide them with loot fished from the pockets of producers! I can certainly see why you would be so apprehensive.
Inconsistencies you are somewhat right that the government feeds me, houses me and provides my transportation because without the government that we have I would not be able to drive to work without roads and bridges. I would not have water to take a shower in the morning. I would not have electricity because the government allowed power companies to go over private and public properties to get that power to me. Actually without government I might not even be here or I would be speaking German or Japanese languages. Yes you are someone right Inconsistencies that the government takes care of me. Yes I should also say that I am communicating with you right now because the government made it happen. I hope that is what you were looking for.
Clover, did you know that silence betokens consent or affirmation?
I have asked you repeatedly whether you “work” for the government. Or are employed by some sort of rent-seeking company that derives its income from government.
Your silence confirms my suspicion.
You are a tax feeding parasite. Which is why the government “works” for you, why are fed, housed and provided transportation.
If I’m wrong about this, I will apologize publicly. But first, you must demonstrate that you are not a government “worker” or tax-feeder of some other stripe.
I don’t understand how someone can know about the concept of NAP and reject it. It makes no sense to me. When I was a statist, I can honestly claim that it was so because I had not yet learned of the NAP and it’s brilliant simplicity. I can only conclude that those who know about the NAP and reject it are either mentally retarded, so unable to comprehend the concept or are morally bankrupt.
With all of Clover’s responses that I have read, I can only conclude that he is in the first group.
Inconsistencies – The problem isn’t mental retardation (I’ve known several folks that suffered from Down’s Syndrome and they were very loving people(. It is in fact, insanity. Clover and his kith and kin appear to be psychopathic or at least sociopathic. They don’t care about anyone but themselves, then they impute that character flaw to the rest of us that simply wish to be free and left alone. I fear it is that simple.
Why would a slave run away to the north? Especially if master never whipped him and treated him real good? Why did the house slave run away? It’s not like he had to pick cotton. He got to live in the big house, got to eat well, got nice clothes. Why would he run away?
Clover there’s a lot of things people want to do with their lives besides go to work and pay taxes. It’s slavery. It’s nice house-slave like slavery, but it’s still slavery. For now anyway.
You like it and that’s fine, but the problem is, it’s not sustainable unless other people lose the life they want to live in the process. Your kind does lose in a libertarian world. They lose the ability to enslave other people, by influencing the common owner, the state, to create comfortable boring lives for themselves.
It’s not sustainable even with good people running it, but because it is what it really is, it’s run by sociopaths, thieves, and others that are using it to strip mine the productive people at ever faster rates. This means the time of collapse is being moved further towards the present.
There is a fair chance if you’re under 80 years old Clover that you’ll get to see the result. Either a libertarian system developing peacefully through freeing people’s minds or a crushing totalitarian system or something totally broken with endless conflict between those wanting to impose their own governments out of the ruins.
So what is it Clover? The known train wrecks that are certainty on the present course or the libertarian unknown where we at least make an attempt a free peaceful society without coercion and slavery?
I live in “the South”. I happen to live in a rural area, very peaceful and comforting, if you don’t crave the fast-paced life of cities and larger towns.
Where I live there is a resident Mockingbird, or two, which can sing even as they are flying. (I have a hard enough time chewing gum and walking at the same time.) The mockingbird is so awesome, so compelling, with its near constant variety of calls, that as the old saying goes: “It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
Mockingbirds add to my quality of life; they are therefore, precious to me.
My opinion is that Tor is the resident mockingbird of EPAutos. He adds to my quality of comprehending the NAP and it’s practical application. He has such a variety of “calls” that there is no opportunity to be bored by his frequent “songs”.
Thank you, Eric, for hosting this blog. Thank you for the pertinence of your articles and for attracting the quality of comments posted here.
I donated $20 this month; I consider my donation to be like higher-learning tuition. I would like to be in a position to donate more. And well worth every penny.
The novel’s title comes from the hybrid birds of the same name that feature in the novels’ storyline.[7] As Publishers Weekly has stated, “the hybrid birds that are an important symbol—of hope and rebellion—throughout the books”.[8] Collins likens Katniss to a Mockingjay because both “should never have existed”.[9]
And I’ve had Mockingbirds get into it so hard they almost make you want to pull your hair out, but about that time, you have to laugh and tell them they’re doing a bang=up job. And we have a plethora of birds of all sorts so the Mockingbird is really busy, can cut quite the rut. And now we have at least 3 species of dove, all with their own song which must add a lot to the Mockingbird’s reportoire.
Again, Garysco sounds just like clover, thankfully, just in this one small subject area. Because he can’t personally imagine a free market justice system, it must just be a fantasy, and not something that can ever actually exist.
Gavin is sober as a DARE mouse. He’s working straight out of Sun Tzu’s playbook. The only way you can attack the tyrants is at the fruit checkpoints. At the courthouse receptionists.
To say Gavin’s going to escalate and become violent, is as reasonable as saying Larken Rose is going to start shooting cops. Or libertarians are going to start running over pedestrians, should we succeed in making it so there’s no specific driving laws preventing them from doing so.
As I understand it, Garysco’s saying that when cops say do X Y or Z it is a kind of game of Simon Says. The cop might shout any command at all. But because of his being part of a different set of ethics, you must comply because Simon Says.
The only proper response in this authoritarian game is to do whatever authority(Simon) says without thought or hesitation. Or face a legally justified bullet for not playing the safety game.
I doubt I agree with Gavin on any point of what constitutions and the bill of rights magically can do for us. But I’m glad someone’s out there, buying the rest of us some more time to grow and innovate our way out of this spiraling toilet bowl. http://callmegav.com/2013/11/califonia-fruit-police/
Garysco says:
“If they kill him for moving his hands to the wrong place before they know he is not an armed physical threat, well he had that right as well. Would he be wrong?”
More cloveric crap. If you just add the word Eric or BrentP in there every 6 or 7 words to those kind of arguments, it would be identical.
I’m just speculating here, but I think Garysco’s brain is wired different in just this particular subject matter. Like a hard drive sector error of Garysco’s brain. Maybe we each have these kinds of disk errors?
For our own sakes, let’s try not being so concrete bound to the facts in question. To this one guy and what he is or isn’t. Try to discuss principles if possible.
– – –
Purpose of justice –
A) Now, as it currently is
B) Under FMJ – free market justice –
1
justice Now -To enforce government laws
justice Under FMJ – To restore individuals’ damaged rights
2
Scope
Scope now – Anyone suspected of breaking a law – with victim or without
Scope Under FMJ – Only those accused of harming a victim
3
Funding
Funding now – By taxpayers, under threat of force
Funding in a FMJ – By plaintiffs, then by the losers
4
Detection
Detection now – Except for P.I.s whom only the rich can afford, detection is monopolized by government police forces all of whose members are motivated by the wish to play safe and be good bureaucrats. There being no competition, effectiveness is pathetic: in NY City, only three quarters of all murders, even, are solved by an arrest – in a good year.
detection under FMJ – Detective agencies would be retained by plaintiffs on a contingency basis with the profit motive uppermost. Inter-agency agreements would facilitate information sharing and contracts might well provide for full payment only upon the subsequent trial outcome – ensuring as far as feasible that the right perp is brought to court.
5
Apprehension
Apprehension now – accused perps are locked up and treated like scum, without recourse; police and prosecutors may lie brazenly to extract a “confession”, rights are regarded as a nuisance, evidence is routinely planted.
Apprehension FMJ – Those arrested would retain their full self-ownership rights and if treated with anything but the utmost respect would be free to sue for mistreatment – and expect to win big damages if successful – regardless of the outcome of the primary trial.
6
Trial
Trial now – Trials occur only in courts monopolized by government, which employs and therefore heavily influences the judge, the prosecutor, the defense attorney the marshals and even the janitor.
Juries are selected under government supervision, and the prosecutor spends as much stolen money as he sees fit to select one likely to favor his case. The judge controls what counsel may say, and what evidence may be seen by the jury.
The entire proceeding is a farce, especially in cases where government has an interest in the outcome. Even when it does not that outcome quite often acquits the guilty and convicts the innocent.
Trial under FMJ – Trials would be held only in courts operating competitively for profit, trading on their reputation for integrity and fairness as their prime asset. Procedures (rules of evidence, jury or not, etc) would be set by agreement between court and adversaries, with a jury trial being the default. No court would accept a case in whose outcome it had an interest – so as to preserve intact its priceless reputation for integrity. No case would reach a court except on the complaint of an actual victim, ie a person whose rights have allegedly been harmed; “victimless crimes” would therefore never appear.
7
Disposition
Disposition now – The victim, if any, is dismissed – perhaps with a word of thanks for his testimony but never with any compensation. The convicted defendant is imprisoned. All taxpayers pay for his accommodation, under threat of force. He is never rehabilitated. The lawyers do nicely, and the gullible public is told by a brainless media that “justice has been done.”
disposition under FMJ – If the defendant is found responsible he will be ordered to compensate his victim, so as to restore him to his or her former state as far as is feasible. He will also be required to pay for the costs of his detection, apprehension and trial. There are no taxpayers, nor any attempt to burden them with any costs. Every party therefore wins – except the aggressor, who loses in strict proportion to the damage he initiated.
8
Monitoring
Monitoring now – Convicts are kept in government cages, so destroying what may be left of their potential for productive living. Taxpayers are robbed of about $60 billion a year to pay for it, and a substantial staff of guards is employed in the soul-destroying work of keeping them imprisoned.
Monitoring under FMJ – Provided the compensation ordered is delivered on time, no particular restraint would be needed except in a few rare cases (serial rape or murder, for example) and so prisons as we know them would not exist. Electronic tracking (ankle bracelets) might be used, but only for the primary purpose of ensuring that restitution is made to the victim. Aggressors would therefore stay productive and have maximum incentive to pay off debts to victims and get on with normal life.
9
Reversal
Reversal of error now – “Higher” government courts review and sometimes reverse erroneous decisions; but since all such judges are also government employees this provides little protection when government was a party to the case. The US Supreme Court is not even obliged to hear appeals and in fact dismisses 95% of those presented without being heard. If reversals are ordered, there is still no compensation provided to the person wrongly convicted, even after years in a government cage. Evidence uncovered by the “Innocence Project” and others, including that of DNA, indicates that in a shockingly large minority of cases innocent people get convicted.
Reversal of error under FMJ – At every stage in the process, all involved know they are personally responsible for errors and so will tend to make many fewer. Each will be liable to the victim, if they cause an accused but innocent person to suffer.
@Tor – What in your mind should have those other people in the building do or not do to Gavin’s presence and complaints about a particular law he did not even read himself? I can only guess that the “should not even exist” state funded worker bees should have just looked and stared at him until he was done and left the building.
Is he a clover by running for a government funded political office? I mean he is supporting the Statist system by asking for the job.
If your argument is against my cloverism is that tax payer-state courthouses exist, well that is a whole different topic.
It’s not about what’s in my mind. Or whether these Founding Filmers are any better than the rest of us.
It’s about your insincerity. About your cowering behind euphemisms and political language to hide the atrocities and brutalizations you committed of your own free will.
I understand now, that when I was party to my own violations of the NAP, of robbing the unsophisticated in the court system, and that what I did was wrong. Even now I’m only one degree away from being a tax feeder myself. I help keep kids incarcerated in a roundabout way. I’m not above reproach here.
But you’re seeking to use words to make lies sound truthful and murder and human caging respectable.
It was watching this video specifically, that turned me permanently against government and towards the free market. There are many like it. This one is mine.
George Orwell:
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties.
Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.
Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called PACIFICATION.
Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called TRANSFER OF POPULATION or RECTIFICATION OF FRONTIERS.
People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called ELIMINATION OF UNRELIABLE ELEMENTS.
Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism.
He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.” Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
While freely conceding that the Soviet régime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.
The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity
You might consider doing as I have done and also develop a rational ethical standard – meaning, you’ll know not just what’s right and wrong, but why it’s right and wrong.
Some already have a religious basis for such behavior; the way of self ownership I propose involves a universal basis, not dependent on religion but on our nature as human beings. Everyone wants to hold himself in high respect, and I believe what I’m discussing provides one a sound basis for doing so.
Yours and Clover’s religion of government is not a system that allows you to hold yourself in high respect. No torrent of invectives, nor obfuscation from your keyboards will change that.
You need not adopt anything I propose. But you truly would benefit from developing your own sound and stable basis for acting rationally, and for living and cooperating with others in this world.
Garysco asked, “What in your mind should have those other people in the building do or not do to Gavin’s presence and complaints about a particular law he did not even read himself? I can only guess that the “should not even exist” state funded worker bees should have just looked and stared at him until he was done and left the building.”
The key phrase runs along the lines of, ‘ What have those other people in the building do or not do.’
Back in The Day, no one had to enter into the local courthouse through metal detection gates while emptying out their pockets and removing their belts under the the watchful eye of a Centurion.
When things “changed” after 9/11, those people asked to guard the entrance should have quit their jobs in protest, or something like that. But no, they went along, to get along.
The question isn’t “What should they do”.
The question is, “What have they done, and, what are they doing”?
Do you think this fella doing the filming would have even had an audience in 1970 or 1980?
Why?
Asking, “Should the state funded worker bees just looked and stared at him until he was done and left the building.” is a lot like saying, “Should the Nazi concentration camp guards just looked at the inmates and stared at them until they left”? Or, “Should the East German guards at The Wall have just looked at the inmates and stared at them until they left”?
The guards in the courthouse are much like the unitedstate RE’ The Wall
Helot is correct. I expressed the same point in slightly different terms with my holdup men in a store analogy.
The holdup men holding guns on the store clerks and store customers are the moral counterparts of the goons and vermin who unilaterally “founded a government” then proceeded to demand obedience and money from anyone with the misfortune to be in their vicinity.
Sovereign individuals have the inalienable natural right to flatly reject the “order” unilaterally established by these goons and vermin.
The initial violation of the NAP was by “The Government.” Any subsequent refusal to knuckle under is plain and simple self-defense. No question about it.
I realize this hardline take on moral legitimacy may be psychologically disorienting, even emotionally unsettling.
But it is 100% consistent with an Objectivist (revisionist Objectivist, or properly understood Objectivism) understanding of right and wrong.
Speaking for myself, I used to have a very different feeling level experience of libertarian ideology. When I was still a champion of “constitutionalism and the rule of law,” I very likely would have taken the same stance you just did against Eric, Tor, and helot.
But in recent years, my feeling levels have begun to catch up with my intellectual level understanding of libertarian ethics and morality.
Before I was closer to a Lockean. Now I am closer to a Stirnerite.
I’m at a loss, Bevin. The ‘Self’ is nothing? I was just this evening ‘forced’ to watch a chick-flick film, ‘Wall Flower’, or something like that. A character in the film was told by his co-ed prison (high school) instructor, “I will either call you __’his name’_ or, I will call you ‘nothing’.”
The student was referred to as, ‘Nothing’ throughout most of the rest of the film.
I’ll have to read more to understand. [Great! Read more, as if I haven’t read enough? …Page freaking two:]
“Stirner argues that the concept of the self is something impossible to fully comprehend; a so-called ‘creative nothing’ he described as an “end-point of language”.” …
Interesting. I asked Tor 2 questions that he refuses to answer, only insult and tell me how to think. I see here everything but an answer to 2 concrete questions.
No offense intended, but we all have personal opinions and philosophies of could’a, would’a, should’a that make great conversation and a potential for learning something new. But they have little value if not useful in answering practical nuts & bolts questions in the real world.
Who is most like the bull you shouldn’t grab by the horns?
I’d say the guys who’ve raised a million dollars in slush funds, just for this one minor mafia position.
Doc Hastings is probably the type of ruthless bull you don’t want to get caught in the ring with, if you’ve done him any kind of wrong or rubbed him the wrong way.
Cops are at most mere janitors and garbagemen with guns. Irrelevant municipal flunkies really. They might get a few scraps, but they never ride the gravy train. They’re permitted to terrorize who ever the made men tell them they’re free to terrorize.
Ghetto proles, druggies, immigrants, sovereigns, deadbeat dads, those kinds of guys. They’re not their own men in the least. That’s for sure.
Seim is a foot soldier in a rival gang, new wise guys trying to move into the established incumbents gang turf. I wish him the best of luck, maybe he might even slow down the machine once in a while.
US Congressional candidate Gavin Seim (callmegav.com) has an encounter when he asks for the State mandated method of securing his weapon at Grant County Courthouse in Ephrata WA
– – –
Seim is also the fruit checkpoint refusal guy. This has over a half million views. He might have a bright future, if he’s not really running for office. If he’s instead showing individuals how to stand up to tyrants, how to be self owners. In that case, good for him, keep it up Gavin! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlxJHMRzsvM
@Tor – Cops Rough Up Seim for Suspicion of LEGAL Gun!
19,204 views. 336 upvotes, 65 downvotes.
Not exactly a statement full of details of the actual event, but well enough written to garner support.
Why does this donkey keep picking piss-ant fights over piss-ant events he creates? Not exactly founding father material. IMHO.
Seim, Please go and get a real issue to run your GoPro on, not just running your mouth at a fruit inspector or a courthouse receptionist, then standing back and filming the results.
That is how the free market works, there’s no avoiding it. He has 7,055 followers of his YouTube channel, so there’s a market signal for you.
I’ll take his mouth over anything you hear on C-Span any day. Which one of those are better than Gavin? Is it because they have nice suits, law degrees, and a title of authority? It seems there are still a lot of Royalists among us. Vermin and vermin admirers.
Bad mouthing a duly deputized fruit inspector? Perish the thought. How does one even type such a thing? My bafflement grows even more baffleified.
Founding fathers were the lowest of the low, at least when acting in the founding capacity. Even a homeless transient with a cardboard begging sign is only after voluntary contributions.
You get how ghetto kids are dumb for wanting to kill for a pair of shoes. But are blind to adults wanting to kill millions for a nameplate and tin horn political title.
Your sequitirs aren’t sequiting like they should.
I’m not familiar with pissant as a modifier. I also never understood what Gordon Ramsey accomplishes by calling everyone in his kitchen a “donkey.”
I guess we all have our vulnerabilities. I don’t like being told I’m crazy, or that my writings make no sense. So I’ll just have to assume pissant and donkey are quite wounding to some people.
piss·ant [pis-ant] Show IPA
noun
1.
Slang: Vulgar. a person or thing of no value or consequence; a despicable person or thing.
2.
Obsolete . an ant.
adjective
3.
Slang: Vulgar. insignificant or worthless.
Also, piss-ant.
Origin:
1655–65, in sense “ant”; piss + ant, probably orig. on the model of pismire
Was it really all that great, the way everyone tensed up and tried to “act cool” because you were nearby in a uniform?
Seems sort of sad, being the projectionist in a neo-concentration camp.
You’re still out riding fences, open the gate and come inside with us regular folks. You desperados and desperado hunters are two faces of the same lonely people, the way I see it.
From what you said earlier, it seems some fine things have been laid on your table. You ain’t gettin no younger.
I never mean to mock you, I did go thru a vicious attack phase early on, but that was before I knew what a good man you already are, and what a better one you could be still.
Oughten you better let some mundane girl love you, before its too late? Just a lyric to consider or disregard as you wish.
@Tor – Gordon Ramsey stole it from me. I have been using the “synonym for” longer.
Go watch his fruit inspector video. Another case of gorilla chest pounding while atop the Empire State Building. Much ado about nothing. But “he showed ’em who’s boss” after he was down the road a few miles. Pffft.
I get it. He is a cult of personality with a YouTube press pass around his neck. Like I said before, not founding father material.
“Pissant is an epithet for an inconsequential, irrelevant, or worthless person, especially one who is irritating or contemptible out of proportion to his or her perceived significance.”
post scriptum – While on that note, lets not make his unanswerable rant to a receptionist about a box she has no control over, a private security guard who asked him to leave, and a very informative “tongue-lashing” of common prol on video taping freedom into something it isn’t.
We could ask Bevin how many Chinese or Russian equivalent type of these videos in Standard Mandarin dialect one can reach via Baidu.
Do you think this is allowed anywhere in Muslim majority countries? Try finding one narrated in Arabic, on the Yamli Arabic search engine. Both Hebrew and Arabic are descendants of the language Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. Guess the Jeez is not so influential in the lands of his birth, huh.
Why does so much of the world routinely kill, cage, or re-educate such an insignificant GoPro guy?
Serious humorless nations not on the cusp of being frog-marched out of their homes by Pantsuit Polly to start work on the National Honey Do List like we just might be. Hmmm.
So pissant is another word for mundane then. Okay.
And cult of personality is anyone who idolizes long dead cadavers he reverently calls: founders. Check.
IC below gets it. Belling the cat, in even an obscure way, is still a victory. Screw everyone who lives via that courtcathouse and destroy markets and freedom while serving as whores for authority.
I’m wondering what it must be like, hugging it out with Barack, and Kissing Killary?
Though far more lucid and genial, you seem of the same mind and in the same cohort as clover when it comes to this domain.
This Gavin guy is a nobody scofflaw, and if someone duly authorized decides to gun him down in the name of public safety, well that’s the system we’ve inherited from our brave and wise UFZF’s – our Undying Founding Zombie Fathers. Check?
Sorry, but this guy is a donkey. He creates the probable cause by asking for a box to put his gun in, then complains they have no reason to check him for same inside the courthouse.
Does the statute he reference require a lock box to be in the same building as the courthouse?
If yes, then there should have been a place to secure the gun in the same building as the courthouse.
I can understand why the LEO wanted to search him, even though he did not state that he had a gun. The way he was speaking caused me to think he did have a gun.
@Mith – Here is how I see the video. He intentionally goes to the building with his camera and an attitude to make an issue out of a “box” that should be there. BFD in my opinion, but that is what he wants to do, so fine. I don’t know what he expected, maybe they would all jump up and install one for him right then and there? He made his point to the receptionist, then makes a donkey out of himself to the guy on the bench and the security guard, all about a missing GUN locker. IMHO from experience, a courthouse has some very angry upset people there daily. Many in family court, where lots of shootings and stabbings have taken place in the courtroom and hallway. So guns and knives have been verboten for many years.
When the guard calls the cops about an unruly guy who is giving him trouble about a GUN issue in the building he gets all indignant about the response. What did he think was going to happen? In other words, acting like an angry jerk, he took the issue beyond a “box” that should have been in the lobby and then complained about his rights being violated. Gun locker rebel without a cause.
His attitude did not help his position. The receptionist and the LEOs were probably not the people to belabor his point regarding the missing lock box (assuming it should have been there by statute).
The decision makers for the town should be where to direct his complaints or a court to argue against the town for failing to follow the statute.
Given the current state, he is fortunate in not receiving worse treatment.
I actually read the statute. Yes it did say “the local legislative authority shall provide either a stationary locked box sufficient in size for pistols and key to a weapon owner for weapon storage, or shall designate an official to receive weapons for safekeeping”.
The thing the guy missed reading is number 1 and after “(1) It is unlawful for any person to enter the following places when he or she knowingly possesses or knowingly has under his or her control a weapon:” Not having a lock box does not override number 1. There was a clearly posted sign to not have weapons.
Yes Eric if we get enough of his kind in office we would have a bad nation. Thankfully there are only a handful of you people that would vote for a jerk like that.
Yes Eric I could care less if you think we should have guns in a courthouse or in my local restaurant. It is a bad thing. It is like carrying a ball bat in a public place with the saying on it “I am going to hurt some people.”
Since there has not been any public gunfights in my area ever, why should you now need to carry weapons that threaten people. Yes Eric carrying a gun in public threatens people. Is your right to carry more important than a family not feeling safe going into a restaurant when you are there? I do understand the libertarian views more all the time. You want to go back and live in the wild west times where there were not roads but paths. There were no bridges instead they needed boats to cross a larger river. Eric I and hundreds of millions of people do not want to go back to those times. Why would you want to?
Clover – We already have plenty of your kind in office. And we already have a bad country. Maybe it’s time to try something different? Your assertion about the ‘statutory prohibition’ on carrying a weapon in “the following places” does not override the Second Amendment. What made the cops really uncomfortable (and almost always does) is when Seim asked them about their oaths of office. The one cop came right out and admitted he didn’t care about it. A man whose word is no good – a proven liar by his own admission – swaggering around with a gun, lording it over the people that pay his salary; nice. The other cop refused to discuss his oath, saying that it was a game. Do you think it might be that he knew he’d already violated it? The ugly truth of the matter those cops oaths meant nothing to them when it came right down to it, whether you like that fact or not.
You see Clover, you’re all for “obeying the law” until it comes to the Supreme Law of the Land. Ever heard of “The Supremacy Clause” Clover? Read up on it. Your precious federal courts have been relying on it to tell the States what to do since 1796 (Ware v. Hylton). As recently as 1957 the Supreme Court even ruled that the Constitution (which inconveniently for you and your ilk includes the Bill of Rights) even supersedes international treaties ratified by the senate (see Reid v. Covert).
If virtually everyone in any courthouse were armed you’d have a lot less trouble than the kind Garysco brought up. Someone who was really bent on killing his ex or settling a score could easily walk in calmly, distract Officer Oathless, drop him before he could even respond, then move on to his next intended victim. It would “only” take minutes for the other cops to arrive (as you saw) when seconds count. But with just 30% of the general public in that courthouse armed, the response would be almost immediate. Hence, the likelihood of that sort of thing happening to begin with would be very low. The asinine thing was, they knew if Seim was really intent on doing harm he wouldn’t have walked in there asking about a lock box. He would have walked in shooting. What the cops did was harassment in an effort to get him to shut up and go away. They wanted to go back to their routine; how dare a lowly tax-payer interrupt them and ask them – law enforcement officers – if they knew the law? Which they didn’t.
Ever hear of a mass shooting in a gun shop? How about at a gun show? No Clover, mass shootings occur at “gun free” zones that post their “safety” policy on the door, like schools, theatres and malls. Of course if we let average citizens carry in courthouses the judges and lawyers would have to be a little careful who they screwed, now wouldn’t they? And “we” can’t have that. But you don’t comprehend any of this do you Clover? You think that everyone is just like you; lacking self-control. So “guns” scare you unless they’re in the hands of trained professionals, right? And no matter how many well documented instances of police misconduct due to their lack of self-control and outright lawlessness we show you, you still can’t see the light…because you don’t want to.
Boothe, Clover and those of the same ilk do not care about obeying the law, they care about obeying authority. That’s why they don’t concern themselves with laws that limit government and get in the way of their good ideas. They believe in the rule of man over man. To them it’s always that they don’t have the right people running things. They just don’t have enough power. They just couldn’t go far enough. If they just got the right people the powerful government would create utopia.
When clovers say ‘obey the law’, they mean ‘authority’.
“Clover and those of the same ilk do not care about obeying the law, they care about obeying authority. That’s why they don’t concern themselves with laws that limit government and get in the way of their good ideas. ”
Good point! Glad you underscored it.
For example, clover says “The law is the law, dammit!”
But what is the highest law in the land? Isn’t it the Constitution? Isn’t it the Second Amendment?
So what happened all of a sudden for all of clover’s veneration for the law? Poof!
Speed limits and lane discipline is another area where the clovers’ demand that everyone “Obey the law!” is really not about the law, but rather about enforcing obedience.
Many clovers have no qualms about speeding up well past the posted limit in order to “punish” anyone who would pass them when they are already driving at the limit.
Clearly it’s all about forcing others to obey, not about “respecting rules made for everyone’s safety.”
BrentP – I well know and concur. Clover is sooooo smart that he should be making all the critical decisions for the rest of us (not). Oh I understand his mindset probably as well as you do. But it never hurts to remind these “law & order” types just what the supreme law here in the states really is. It just chaps their asses when we do it; hence the “we’re gonna change it!” frantic response it has evoked from “Sir Clover” in past posts (by the way Clover, good luck with that). Because even though his real god is “authoritay”, he still has to live with the actual legalism of the written law. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as forcing statists to confront the written law (even though I was never party to it) and see them experience the cognitive dissonance it brings on. So I try to do it as often as I can. 😉
On the other hand, a free man ought to be able to carry a weapon with him – and not be assaulted on suspicion of same. The video is educational in the sense that it starkly shows who gets to carry guns (not us) and who does. And what those who do think about those who don’t.
The guy was very clearly non-violent. The response was over-the-top, as is typical of the hut! hut! hut! set.
@Eric – I disagree. HE initiated the confrontation. I get no sense from the video that his “packing a gun” had any problem until he made it one. Pull the bull’s tail and you will get the horns.
But – as I see it – the point he was trying to make (that a free man has a right to carry a gun without being assaulted because Authoritay is “uncomfortable”) was valid.
It’s like asserting one’s rights during a traffic stop. Cops will see it as “confrontational” – and it will likely increase your odds of being jacked with. But who’s in the right?
The expectation seems to be we’re supposed to be meek, defer to Authoritay. Which I get, as a practical consideration.
But, should we?
Who are these people?
As I see it, we ought to be free to tell ’em to fuck off – and they ought to be powerless to do a damn thing about it. These costumed creeps are not peace officers. They’re just “law enforcement” goons looking to enforce laws; that is, to confect “crime” in the absence of any victim.
Eric you say that you have the right to do anything you dang well please to a policeman and they are supposed to take it. So are you telling us because a man has a badge on that he has no rights that another individual has? Explain that one Eric. Why if a man has a badge on that your kind has the right to take a swing at them or as in Larkin’s speech you have a right to kill them.
So Eric, you liked how Gavin handled himself? What if a policeman stopped you and acted like Gavin did towards you. Would you thank them? I understand libertarians like you Eric. You do not have the same standards for all people and you are proud of it.
History of force
Eric back thousands of years ago they said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. You have changed that to a bullet through the head for an eye and a bullet through the head for a tooth and a bullet through the head for a traffic ticket. Your ideas as libertarians is not equal force but death for anything even close to force.
Eric that is exactly why i do not want your kind having guns in public and exactly why a family would not want to go out to eat in a restaurant when you were there and why restaurants then do not want you in there with guns. Eric it is not government that is stopping you from having guns in public but the private companies and stores that are starting to block your kind. The government is supposed to support the majority of the people’s interests. The vast majority do not want your kind around in public. It is not the government but the people that are speaking.
Gavin neither had nor attempted to use official state power against the cop. He didn’t “do” anything to them. They could have ignored him; they were free to walk away.
Am I free to ignore your black-clad, buzz-cut, mirror sunglass-wearing heroes? MayI simply walk away if I find them annoying?
Eric Gavin was acting like a jerk to a secretary. Tell me Eric what you would say if a policeman acted like that toward a secretary? Eric you said the policeman could have just walked away. Yes Eric and so could Gavin. The ONLY reason he was there was so the idiot libertarians who watched his film would be proud of him. Eric I am not proud of jerks who act like that around secretaries. Tell me again Eric would you like policemen to act like that when you talk to them? It is a very easy question for most people.
Acting like a jerk (accepting your argument for the sake of discussion) is annoying, perhaps. But it’s not physical assault, now is it?
But when one of your “heroic” law enforcers comes along, assault is exactly what he does. You are not free to ignore him, or to walk away. If you do, the “hero” will physically assault you. If you attempt to defend yourself, he may even kill you. And the law will see this as ok.
Speaking of “acting like a jerk,” how about this quote from a motorcycle cop, posted at policeone.com, a LEO watering hole.
2. Approach
As a professional car stopper (read: motor officer) with eight years on two wheels under my belt, I have one simple technique that has allowed me to surprise occupants of a vehicle time and time again. Whilst they gander out the driver’s side waiting for me to sidle up — I sidle a lot… it’s kinda my schtick — I suddenly appear on the passenger side.
The closer it gets to Halloween, the more tempting it is to lean close to the window and yell “Boo!” to see the reaction and get a quick laugh.
I understand Eric. If you get stopped by the police in your view you can just walk or drive away. If he tries to stop you then you and your friends pull out your gun and shoot them. That is not what the laws states but since when did you ever follow any laws.
Always with the distortions and lies; or is it just that you’re not smart enough to follow a simple conversation?
I pointed out that all the guy in the video did was talk. Annoying, perhaps. But no physical threats manifested or even implied. The people being talked to were free to ignore the guy, or just walk away. I pointed these facts out – and contrasted them with the realities of interacting with a cop. You can’t ignore the bastard, much less walk away. Because he will physically assault you.
That’s the difference, you got-damned imbecile.
And it’s you – not I – who continues to bring up shooting people.
1. “Eric it is not government that is stopping you from having guns in public but the private companies and stores that are starting to block your kind.”
and
2. “The government is supposed to support the majority of the people’s interests. The vast majority do not want your kind around in public. It is not the government but the people that are speaking.”
Re: 1. Under market anarchism, as everyone here has made clear as crystal, ad nauseum, property owners would establish house rules. Market anarchists have no problem with that whatsoever. In fact, it’s what we’ve been pushing for!
R: 2. Here is where clover’s Big Lie becomes obvious. Clover equates “the majority” with “the people.” In other words, some people are not “the people.” Namely, “the minority,” who disagreed with “the majority.”
Clover can’t get it through his thick head that outnumbering others means nothing to market anarchists! Merely belonging to a larger mob does not confer additional rights that one did not have by oneself.
Clover can’t seem to grasp the notion that everyone has the right to be left alone to live in peace. Even if they are in the minority or totally alone. That one should not have to be part of the biggest mob to be safe from aggression.
Clover doesn’t realize that this market anarchist principle protects even him when he is outnumbered and in the minority, or god forbid, alone.
Ain’t that the truth: Clover equates “the majority” with “the people.” In other words, some people are not “the people.” Namely, “the minority,” who disagreed with “the majority.”
The notion put forth in the novel and the film, ‘Animal Farm’ just flies right on over atop his/her/its head, Whooshh!
You know, the more I debate mainstream statists, the more I realize how utterly hollow their rationalizations for monopoly state power are.
When a judge, who is a loyal member of the crime family known as “The Government” whitewashes the actions of a LEO, who is a loyal member of the same crime family, what other “ruling” can we expect?
It’s a miracle the crime family was able to keep up the appearance of “liberty and justice for all” as long as it did.
Since 9/11 however, “everything has changed.” Not substantively. The monopolistic state was always a rigged game. But the scam is now out in the open. The crime family members aren’t even bothering to conceal it.
It’s a case of “We write the laws. We interpret the laws. We enforce the laws. So shut up the fuck up and sit down!”
“He definitely pushed their buttons. I agree. But… the point he was trying to make… was valid.”
Absolutely right!
Gandhi: The function of a civil resistance is to provoke response and we will continue to provoke until they respond or change the law. They are not in control; we are.
Gandhi: I, for one, have never advocated passive anything. We must never sumbit to such laws. And I think our resistance must be *active* and provocative!
Gandhi: What you cannot do is accept injustice… You must make the injustice visible, and be prepared to die like a soldier to do so.
Eric in your world where there are no laws I would think most would not have a problem with someone smashing his face in if you told him not to bring in weapons and he did. In your world if someone acted like a jerk someone would just take a ball bat to his head. Anything goes in your society. In this case maybe your world would be better.
For the umpteenth time, “the law” (in a Libertarian society) is: No first-use of violence. “Anything” does not “go.”
Can you possibly get that through your pea-brain?
You – and I – have the absolute right to be left in peace do live our lives as we each see fit . . . provided we don’t aggress against others and so long as we cause harm to others.
It’s such a simple, logic thing. But you not only can’t comprehend it. You have to resort to embarrassingly obvious lies to disparage it.
Again: We (Libertarians) want nothing – materially – from you. Just leave us be. We will not take your stuff, nor ask that others take it on our behalf. We will never threaten to harm you physically – or actually harm you – except in defensive response, should you attempt to impose your will on us, or forcibly take our stuff.
How about you, Clover?
No.
You and yours can’t imagine world without violence – deliberate, institutionalized violence. To get what you want. To force others to pay for it.
You can use euphemisms, you can talk all day about the great stuff you have. The fact is you’re nothing but a thug. A cowardly thug.
Some day soon, I hope you get the opportunity to deal with those you victimize on more equal terms – without your army of Clovers backing you up.
What part of the “Non-Aggression Principle” or “NAP” don’t you get???
Non=no
Aggression=first use of force, aka “initiation of force”
Non-aggression= NO first use of force. NO initiation of force.
Force under the NAP is only permissible in response to someone else first using force. You are minding your own business. Some thug suddenly attacks you. The thug could be anybody. A mugger. A costumed member of the goonvermin with a badge on his shirt. It makes no difference. If he initiates force, you are permitted to use force in defensive response against him.
How many times must this be explained to you??? Just how dense are you???
Bevin I have been reading and watching videos of your idea of non-aggression. What I have seen of Libertarians second use of force is that your libertarian friends claims that looking at you cross eyed is a form of force so you now have the authority to kill the person. As Larkin said if a cop gives you a ticket or whatever that is an example of force so you can kill them. Bevin I live in a non-aggressive way. I do not have guns on me, I do not threaten a bloodbath, I do not have guns stockpiled and tell stories of the joy I would have if many cops were killed. Bevin road rage would be OK in a libertarian society because if someone drove too slowly in front of you that would be your example of force so you now have the option to get your gun out and shoot them. Bevin from everything I have seen libertarians are far far from a non-aggressive people. When you do not set any limits whatsoever for what you call first force you are not a non-aggressive group of people.
Eric if Bevin or Larkin do not defend aggressive violence then why do they post videos bringing a call to arms to start killing and in Bevin’s case to post those videos as something that he backs and supports. Eric I have seen dozens of videos and articles where libertarians say they want to kill police or in your case you say it is OK to take the first swing at them just because they are there.
He can’t seem to get it through his head that “governments” are not something holier than thou that must be obeyed. Sovereign individuals owe “governments” nothing. Zip. Nada.
Clover has never bothered to think through about how “governments” came into being in the first place, what they are beneath their outer trappings, and why they cannot possibly have any special status that individuals do not.
Clover doesn’t seem to realize that “The Government” he’s familiar with is nothing more than a club that some strangers got together and founded. These strangers, who are no different that you or I, made up a bunch of club rules and established club dues.
So far, no problem.
But then they suddenly began claiming that everyone living inside a line they drew on their club map, was automatically a member of their club whether they wanted to be or not, and had to obey their club rules and pay club dues, whether they wanted to or not.
That is all “The Government” is. Nothing more, nothing less. That is how all conventional monopolistic governments were created.
The fact that they print up a bunch of “official” looking engraved stationery, build some white marble buildings for their offices, design some snappy looking uniforms for their enforcers, means nothing.
It certainly does not mean they have mysteriously acquired the right to order you about or demand money from you.
Bevin the type of society we have is working for me. Is it not working for you? Are you homeless, starving or being beaten? Bevin there are countries that are closer to what you are looking for and those people would give their first born to be able to live here. Maybe you can switch places with them and move. Bevin if I do not like where I am living I would not continuously complain about it when I knew I could not change it. I would move to where I felt would be a better place. Do you want to continuously keep complaining or are you going to do something to change your life?
But – and think on this – we won’t force you to do anything. You’d be free to live in peace in our Libertarian society. Own your land, live your life. With one qualification: You wouldn’t be free to prey on others, as you do today.
And that’s what you cant abide. The horrid (to you) notion of not being able to force others to pay your bills, or do as you order them to do.
Yes Eric if it becomes your libertarian society that you want I would gladly leave. Pretty much any country would be better than your third world society. The problem is that I and millions of others would not want your world so the only chance you will get your world is to start world war 3 and by the sounds of it with your call to arms and war with guys like Larkin it very well might happen.
Has it ever occurred to you, Clover, that this country (that is, the people who comprise it) was more prosperous when it was more free? That as it has become less free – thanks to your kind – it has become less and less prosperous? And more and more violent?
And, again: You refuse to deny you’re a government “worker” …
“Bevin if I do not like where I am living I would not continuously complain about it when I knew I could not change it. ”
Eric took the words right out of my mouth!
We can change it, and we are determined to do so. We will change the current system, which is based on legalized robbery, to one based on mutual respect and voluntary exchange.
When that happens, you will be the one who can either “love it or leave it.”
Eric you say that our country is less prosperous than it used to be. Eric I am far richer in both possessions and money than my grandparents were. So are everyone else in my family. There is less poverty today than there was in the 1600s, the 1700s, the 1800s and the 1900s. There are more millionaires and billionaires than ever before. Eric you may say that you live in poverty but you talk about that great property you have, multiple motorcycles, your antique car collection and multiple trucks. You also have roads and bridges to drive on. I may be missing something but you sound like you are far from poverty.
Your prosperity isn’t the issue, Clover. Well, it may be for you – in the same was that a mugger’s prosperity is the main thing as far as he’s concerned.
But this discussion is about rights – not what you’ve got. Hitler had lots of stuff, too. And while you may not be a mass murderer, in principle, you and Der Fuhrer have a great deal in common. You both live by violence, taking things from other people.
“Eric I am far richer in both possessions and money than my grandparents were. ”
He “just doesn’t get it.” He doesn’t realize that the increased wealth is a result of technological advances. He doesn’t realize that without goonvermin leeching off ordinary citizens, ALL of that increased wealth would have wound up in ordinary citizens’ pockets.
Instead the goonvermin skimmed most of it off the top. Ordinary people are somewhat better off than they were before, due to the technological advances. But they are far less well off than they would be if they hadn’t been ripped off by the goonvermin.
Clover, being part of those who receive the “wealth transfers” does not object.
But what he doesn’t realize, is that a completely free market would have generated so much more wealth, that EVEN goonvermin parasites like him would be better off even than he is today.
The now cliched anecdote about the scorpion and the frog crossing the river comes to mind.
Even the kleptocratic global elites would be better off under a genuine free market. They would be even richer than they are now, from their ill-gotten gains.
Alas they are like the scorpion. It’s in their sociopathic nature to sting others, even when objectively it hurts themselves as well.
Classic scene from “The Great Escape” with James Coburn.
Remember my analogy with the Nazi occupation of Vichy France? This is what I’m talking about.
LEOs aren’t “just there,” innocently munching donuts at Winchells. They were already brutal aggressors, charged with collecting protection money, euphemistically known as “taxes.”
Morally speaking, they can hardly complain if their victims fight back at a time and place of their choosing.
“Eric I am far richer in both possessions and money than my grandparents were. ”
Every one of your manufactured possessions, thank an engineer or some one doing the same tasks as one. For it is engineers who figure out how to make things cheaper year over year so more and more people can live better for less labor. No thanks to you and the rest of your ungrateful kind.
For your money thank the younger generations and generations unborn who have been robbed through monetary polices that pull the future’s wealth into today.
Brent you are a joke. You call yourself an engineer. Tell us what you have designed lately? A title means nothing to me when you never do anything. What you do a trained monkey could do.
Clover, I realize that it is reflexive of you to resort to insult when you’re intellectually cornered. There’s no way in hell I am going to give you a clue where I work now.
But what I’ve designed lately takes out cost and weight. That’s what many engineers do everyday. Reducing cost and weight.
This is why you can afford a better level of living, that and you’re benefiting from Chinese and third world labor and a cheap credit. Now of course government is largely responsible for the last two, but even without the last two you’d still live better thanks to engineers who make products cheaper and better. It’s the natural deflation that bankers steal part of, all of, or more. Some industries beat inflation, others hold tight, some lose. But inflation gives you the cheap labor of other countries so it evens out, for you.
So what about death by government then, clover? There were 169 million murdered by governments in the 20th century. There’s even a word for it, democide. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM
Tell us what does it feel like, being a democidal maniac?. Is there ever a democide you feel bad about? Tell us, how many deaths were caused by libertarians today? We know 4,636 people were murdered by government today. One of the government’s own universities tells us this is so.
Only a delusion murderous psychopath would concern himself with reading statutes and proclamations of such an assemblage of butchers.
It’s worse than studying Ted Bundy’s code of ethics by far. 20 times worse to be exact.
Even if you were right, and we’re all heartless criminals, which we’re not. Even then, your government is 20 times more prolific in amassing its human corpse body count than are all the criminals of the world combined. It boggles the mind really, assuming you even have a mind.
Democide includes three main forms of government inflicted death.
Democide: The murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.
Genocide: among other things, the killing of people by a government because of their indelible group membership (race, ethnicity, religion, language).
Politicide: the murder of any person or people by a government because of their politics or for political purposes.
Mass Murder: the indiscriminate killing of any person or people by a government.
That said, sovereign individuals do not forfeit their natural rights merely because they acted like jerks.
Let us not forget that the goonvermin has no justification for existing in the first place. No sovereign individual who asserts his natural rights ought to be blamed for doing so.
This remains true even when it is obvious to everyone that the goonvermin will crack down on him. That foreknowledge does not make him wrong, objectively speaking, and the state right.
@Bevin – HE chose the “no guns allowed” courthouse to make his point, and HE was the one acting out. Not just with “authority” but he was verbally challenging the guy on the bench. Both together was a bad decision on his part. Not knowing for sure he was there to discuss sovereign gun rights and gun locker building codes the security guard asked him to leave. When he refused is when it escalated. Maybe HE thought his beliefs trumped authority, but he did it in a stupid location (for his purposes) and in a irrational confrontational demeanor. I still am in the dark as to what expected those people to do about his “box” complaint.
Ok OK. If you think it is a good idea to have everyone possess loaded guns in the “by its nature emotionally argumentative” courthouse in 2014 America I respectfully disagree. They are not allowed inside jails by anyone as well, and for some logical reasons. Maybe in cowboy barroom courts where all were equal and in plain view (if it really happened that way).
My issue is not the gun possession, but his taunting authority hoping to get it on video. At that he succeeded. That is much different then a violation of his rights peaceably walking down the street, or walking into the same building. Which he originally did without interference. He violated the NAP. The cops just responded to the perceived threat.
Not everyone. Just those free men who wish to carry. Why not? Isn’t it an inherently Cloveritic argument to presume that I (for example) will go nuts and start shooting the place up? Isn’t this exactly the argument used by Clovers to pass laws forbidding CC in restaurants that serve alcohol, disarming people who’ve never done a blessed thing to anyone?
I admire the guy for taunting authoritay. Jeering/mocking authoritay is precisely what’s needed. To dissipate the halo of “respect” and deference.
I also disagree that he violated the NAP. He didn’t threaten anyone with violence – did he? Maybe I missed it.
The fact that he made them “uncomfortable” – no question – even that he may have violated “the law” – fair enough – is not the same thing as violating the NAP….
The mindset that must be challenged is that it’s acceptable to restrict anyone’s liberty absent that person having caused a tangible harm to others (or clearly intending to, such as pointing a weapon in someone’s direction or announcing his intention to attack, etc.)
This business of “no guns in court” is exactly of a piece with “no guns at school” – or any other place. It means you are forced to become a potential victim, having been disarmed. If a person is bent on shooting up the court, he will do so. Just as they shoot up schools, restaurants and other “gun free zones.”
To me the key is that the leviathan state never had the right to exist to begin with. Its very existence is funded by armed robbery and extortion.
Therefore no sovereign individual can be faulted, at least not from a natural rights perspective, for “defying authoritay.”
Over the past several years, my experience of libertarianism has changed. It has deepened. Specifically, I have become increasingly aware at the gut level, just how many statist institutions I took for granted as “normal.”
For example, if I happen to catch a segment of a lawyer show or film on TV, and watch a scene in which some “legal minds” are arguing learnedly about “malum in se” vs. “malum prohibitum,” I am no longer impressed.
I now realize that I was formerly under the Spell of Authoritay, and the Latinate legalism were nothing more than some jungle witch doctor’s mumbo jumbo to keep the natives in awe and in line.
The spell must be maintained through fear. Hence the “contempt of court” charge for anyone for whom the spell appears to be wearing off.
I’m not saying I’m not afraid of them. I’m just as afraid of them as I am of a mugger who has the drop on me. I know they have power. But that is not the same as imagining that they have any right to “govern” me.
Well unfortunately humans have not progressed to the point of a society living together without some rules. Call it authority if you will. I don’t think that every rule descends to cloverism.
Lets go to the point where the cop enters and approaches him. Was it irrational for the cop to think he was acting out of the ordinary, and likely possessed a firearm in an area surrounded by innocents?
If I verbally threaten to kick your ass, blow up your house while you sleep, or similar threat, have I violated NAP? Or must you wait until I knock you down or take destructive action?
If he succeeds at getting elected, or wants to make his case to the people to remove the courthouse ban, or all bans, well more power to him. But until that day, and with the number of actual deadly assaults inside certain buildings where people go to resolve disputes and determine criminal guilt, we will have to make due with not acting like a donkey to prove a minor point.
But Gary, did the guy threaten anyone? I didn’t see him do that. He challenged the statute – or rather, the interpretation of “law.” And – I agree – he did so in a way that was probably intended to annoy the cop. Or which did annoy him, regardless of the guy’s intent.
But – unless I missed something – he didn’t do anything physically aggressive.
Did he?
I see this as of a piece with Clover feeling “threatened” by Mere Mundanes merely being armed at restaurants and schools, etc. Not because they’ve fingered their weapons while getting in someone’s face. But merely because they are armed. “Someone” might doooo something! Therefore (says Clover) everyone must be treated as having presumptively “done something.”
Same thing here.
Except this guy wasn’t even carrying – and said so, openly.
An anacap society would most emphatically have rules. Rules as opposed to laws, as currently defined.
I suspect that some PDAs (Private Defense Agencies) would have stricter rules than we have today, in at least some areas of life.
But that would be okay! Why? Because there would have been genuine “consent of the governed.” There would have been a genuine “social contract” binding on those who agreed to it voluntarily.
A PDA counterpart to today’s goonvermin court might well impose a “no guns” rule. If it did, I would not object, providing it was something I agreed to contractually in advance.
As always, we must remember, that “Anarchy is NOT chaos. Government, on the other hand, is disorder.”
I for one, want anarchy because I want a more orderly society. I know that sounds funny. But that is only because the CW is so completely wrong.
Under a market anarchist society, with private road systems, we would have near perfect lane discipline. No more slowpokes in the left lane. No more moving roadblocks.
How do I know this?
Because I know that people do not like to put up with things that do not work in their lives. They try to find solutions. They do not stop until they have found them.
The reason the problem with road hogs persists, is that they are legally prevented from finding solutions because the road systems are “public.”
So do not fear “too much anarchy.” Fear “too little anarchy.”
@Eric – “But – unless I missed something – he didn’t do anything physically aggressive.
Did he?
I see this as of a piece with Clover feeling “threatened” by Mere Mundanes merely being armed at restaurants and schools, etc”
Fair enough debate on the morality and legality of the states existence in the first place, but we are not operating in a theoretical or philosophical vacuum.
And they did not shoot or kill him.
Lets not confuse cloverific feelings with situational perceptions of those involved. Replay the 911 phone call information that the officials were working with. Why was the call placed, and by whom? I don’t see that on par with me sitting in Denny’s drinking my coffee and a gun on my hip scaring clover in his booth nearby.
Re: schools & courts. Not a fair comparison. Courts are known to have armed enforcers around all the time, and the potential for deadly violence by its visitors and defendants is proven orders of magnitude greater. Schools are just state sanctioned free fire zones.
No, but they did assault him. They physically restrained him – then subjected him to a forcible “pat down.”
If I did the same to you, what would you call it? So how come these guys in funny outfits get to do it – and it’s “ok” (“legal”)?
And if he had “resisted” – that is, defended himself against those physically assaulting him – what do you suppose the result would have been?
We’ve got to get beyond this conditioned reflex that some people have special rights – or have the right to infringe upon other people’s rights – by dint of “authority.”
I disagree that it’s not a fair comparison (in re schools, etc.). In the first place, the same principle is at issue: Do I have the right to defend myself or not? And – put another way – do armed strangers have the right to forcibly disarm me, even though I am behaving peacefully and haven’t done any harm to anyone, nor given any legitimate reason to suspect such intent? Is the mere fact that I am armed sufficient reason? Because I “might” – and because my being armed (as such) alarms others?
Remember: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
No exceptions.
Finally: I’d rather not rely on the good offices of “officers” – who no doubt value their skins more than I value mine. And who may not be better shots than I am, for that matter. There is something craven and unmanly about relying on other men in special outfits to defend you.
Ultimately, we are responsible for our own defense – which is why the right to self-defense is so important to defend.
@Eric – How would you handle violent crazy or irrationals that have not yet taken a life, but pose the appearance of going in that direction. If not “patting down” or some other temporary restraint to make a determination for the benefit of others around him then what? Say so what, he has done nothing yet and …..
This guy was neither crazy nor irrational. Not in my opinion. He was perhaps annoying – but that is another thing.
He did not brandish a weapon (in fact, he clearly stated he did not have one). He made no threatening gestures – or even comments. His argument was not irrational. He was being pedantic, but – again – that is not irrational. Certainly, not “threatening.”
I think it’s unfair – because inaccurate – to equate this guy’s arguing (not yelling, not screaming; no violence threatened) with “crazy” and “irrational.”
We have to be very careful, I’d suggest, about going down that road.
Never forget: Clover thinks we’re all “crazy” and “irrational” – and would have us locked up, possibly killed. Certainly, he’d have our guns taken away.
I get your point about the how. For example, one can assert one’s right to free speech by shouting a string of obscenities, or one can do so in a more “dignified” manner.
You and I might as a matter of personal preference choose the latter.
But that does not impact the underlying reality. The sovereign individual does have inalienable rights. As market anarchists know from analyzing the logical basis for natural rights, the state has no right to exist in the first place.
Therefore it has no right to tell any sovereign individual what it may or may not do, good taste or not.
Again, nobody will argue that from a realpolitik perspective, the dissident knew full well that he would probably be hassled for what he did. But that does not change the underlying fundamentals.
From a natural rights perspective, the dissident was justified. The state, and the “court” was not, because it was illegitimate to begin with.
Let me suggest an example. A bunch of holdup men have clerks and customers in a store held at gunpoint, and are robbing them. One customer decides to give them lip, and even starts to make moves that make the holdup men suspicious.
Obviously the customer is risking death or at serious injury. He is being foolhardy. But is he in the wrong? No he is not.
@Bevin – The guy making the video is taking the same risks (with the armed police present) and has the same options doesn’t he? If they kill him for moving his hands to the wrong place before they know he is not an armed physical threat, well he had that right as well. Would he be wrong?
I really enjoy reading your posts, Garysco. It’s a shame really.
But at the end of the day, it appears you are just a nicer more scenic road to serfdom. Your arguments when it comes to justice have only irrational fear and wild what ifs. And violent innuendos and lashing out at the messengers trying to reason with you. Just like Clover.
“If they kill him for moving his hands to the wrong place.” Why would that ever be required?
Here in Vegas high end casinos, there are millionaires, billionaires, celebrities all over the place. And millions in assets, jewelry. VIPs of every stripe.
Yet everyone is free to put their hands wherever they want. Signs in Nevada do not have the force of law, except in Govt buildings. No one will be able to stop you from having a gun within a few feet of VIPs.
CCW permits from 16 states are recognized in NV. Generally, you can do as you like, as long as you wear decent clothes and spend a few bucks in a casino. Literally anything you can imagine sometimes occurs.
Even if you were to pull your gun out, you would find yourself rapidly tackled. And quickly removed from the public areas.
No howling screeching monkeys shooting holes into everything that moves with no abstract reasoning or finesse whatsoever.
Now once they get you to a back room or adjacent maintenance building, who knows what casino security might do to you? They have to be smart about things though, because they don’t have the state behind them.
See, casinos are thousands of times safer than govt buildings, because they are free market. Because everyone working there has an incentive to do right.
And everyone visiting there has the potential to do what they wish to do. Why not finagle a free drink or two. Cruise for a working girl. Find someone to bum a cigarette and 5 bucks from?
No one is under that much strain. There are still some options on the table. No one barking orders at anyone. Norms are enforced by security, but on the down low. With ear pieces, such that customers don’t even know something dangerous was developing near them.
@Tor, brother, please see the light. Bevin made a scenario up of someone not exactly acting in their own long term interests, but being right. I made a comparison of the same person in a different scenario, but being right. Why does that brand me as a Statist?
No government, no authority over me and you? Yes, in a world that does not exist. In the mean time why postulate over what cannot be, and say it is all bad? I would guess even cavemen had a hard time getting along. I sure do know the American Indian tribes did not do too well at it. I am all about workable solutions, like tear up the big books and reboot a tiny amount of rules. Moses only had 10 for a whole nation (well except for all the Kosher stuff).
I hear you, Gary – but at the same time, I think it’s critical we acknowledge (and defend) principles while making the best of a bad situation.
I’ve mentioned this before, but:
I’d be ecstatic if, somehow, the country could be rewound to circa 1980 (better yet, 1960) in terms of “leave us alone” individual autonomy. I agree one ought not to let the perfect become the enemy of the good. At the same time, I will never concede an inch regarding principles. Not in terms of defending them. Perhaps not physically. I understand that’s not realistic in every situation. But I will never give ground in terms of arguing the point. Never will I grant the legitimacy of another person’s doing me violence (or threatening to do me violence) in order to compel my submission or take my stuff.
A holdup man robbing a store who shoots a hostage because the hostage made a “threatening move” cannot claim “self-defense.”
Even out goonvermin “justice system” would argue this way.
But here’s the irony. From a strict NAP perspective, agents of the goonvermin, including judges and cops, are morally equivalent to the holdup man robbing a store.
As voluntaryists know full well, the agents of the goonvermin are in fact committing violent crimes, or are accessories to violent crimes whenever they “perform their official duties.” This includes providing the muscle for tax collection.
Therefore their victims, the taxpayers, including gun owners, are merely defending their rights any time they refuse to obey the goonvermin’s “authoritay.”
The goonvermin agents are therefore in no position to claim “self defense,” any more than the holdup man was in the example I cited.
Does that mean one will necessarily confront goonvermin agents on this? Not necessarily. But if sovereign individuals did, they would not be in the wrong.
@ Eric
“At the same time, I will never concede an inch regarding principles.”
So I have jury “duty” on the 7th. I have a speech prepared to try to get me out of this slave-wage “duty”. Not to mention I am buying another house and need to be at the inspection 2 days later and I dont want to get snared into a long and drawn out deliberation (and it will be if I am there).
As far as not conceding and inch, the best I have so far is to say, during jury selection, “If I am to decide the guilt or innocence of a Malum Prohibita case I will try to nullify; if that does not work I will hang it.” You think this will get me kicked out of the court room. Or should I go in-depth about how the whole thing is a sham?
Sirlrb – If you refuse to take their oath (or affirmation) because you can’t participate in their corrupt system in good conscience, that should do it as well. Now, I don’t know if they can hold a potential juror in contempt legally, but I wouldn’t put it past them to do it anyway if you piss them off. But I expect they will probably at least make you stay there all day even if you’re not “selected”, like they did with my wife. I, on the other hand, have been trying to get on a jury and believe I can make an affirmation based on literal truth. But I think “they” know who I am and so far have cancelled both summons they’ve sent me. Hmmm. I don’t think “they” want to get FIJA’d.
Thanks, Boothe
I think as soon as they hear malum prohibita and nullification they will give me an armed escort home. They dislike persons with legal knowledge on their juries. And I will not take an oath. For me it is Theological.
Thanks again,
SI
“I’d be ecstatic if, somehow, the country could be rewound to circa 1980 (better yet, 1960) in terms of “leave us alone” individual autonomy.”
Eric, I agree completely. I remember 1960 quite well. Of course there were problems and bullshit of the day to deal with, but nothing like we face today. Back then we did not have a pervasive surveillance state, it was much more possible for a freedom-minded person to “disappear” him or herself off the grid if so desired. Back then we had real silver coin in circulation (one would just spend the stuff in the stores like it was nothing unusual), and even paper money still had some backing behind it.
If there were such a thing as a time machine, I’d get on board in a heartbeat to get back to that world.
Even 1990 was a Libertopia compared with the situation now.
Imagine it: Cops needed a warrant to filch through your mail or tap your phone. Your “health care” was your business. (As a young guy in those days, I rationally chose to not buy “health insurance” because as a young guy, I did not need it. This saved me thousands of dollars without which I probably would never have been able to save up the down payment on my first house.)
You were not forced to let a stranger paw your person to board an airplane.
If you talked about the “Homeland” circa 1990, people would have looked at you funny.
More than anything else – and there are other factors, of course – I will burn with eternal enmity toward The Chimp and his Rethuglicans for creating the current situation with their vile imbecilities about “evildoers” and “terrism.” That inbred monkey-faced son of a bitch poured gasoline on the fire – knowingly did it – and deliberately gave free reign to people’s worst fears and basest instincts. He did so for calculated political effect. The man was not only a sociopath, he sociopathed America.
“I remember 1960 quite well. Of course there were problems and bullshit of the day to deal with, but nothing like we face today. ”
Indeed. I was in high school during the early to mid 60s. I belonged to the high school rifle club. I used to bring my .22 bolt action target rifle with me on the school bus once a week.
Imagine trying to do that today!
Today school kids are arrested for drawing a picture of a gun, or making a shooting gesture with their fingers.
Bevin they call what you have and spout out is brainwashing.
In a recently published study, the scientists say they found that when people saw fewer positive posts on their feeds, they produced fewer positive posts and instead wrote more negative posts. On the flip side, when scientists reduced the number of negative posts on a person’s newsfeed, those individuals became more positive themselves.
“Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness,” study authors Adam Kramer, Jamie Guillory, and Jeffrey Hancock write. “We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues.”
Clover, you’re functionally illiterate (as demonstrated by your incoherent, grammatically jumbled posts), a deliberate liar (as demonstrated by such statements as “Libertarians want an anything goes society,” which you know perfectly well is not true – my having carefully explained the “do no harm” ethics adhered to by Libertarians) and someone who is just not very bright. A simpleton.
On top of that, you’re a coward, physically and otherwise. Someone who won’t even use his (her?) real name, or fess up as to what he/she does for living.
No wonder you must resort to childish insults and clumsy lies in lieu of rational arguments!
To influence us by getting his negative libertarian posts included in this site’s feed.
Maybe(tho doubtful) it would be tempting to go onto the War and Prison Builders Saving & Loan Forum and post something promoting self ownership & NAP ideas just to see if they have any salient effect.
But to behave as clover has, and post over and over thousands of times, with never any effect?
I’m at a loss to understand the purpose of doing this. Inoperable traumatic brain injury is the only reason I can come up with.
Maybe a full size pickup with a Ron Paul sticker ran clover off the road and he hit the windshield.
To this day he remains mentally frozen at that point in time and is unable to recover, thus his lifelong animosity towards all libertarians who painfully remind him of what he has been reduced to and by whom.
I’ve seen his videos. He’s a little preachy. I applaud what he’s doing, but less words and less you, please. His videos remind me of a show on Animal Planet called “Big Cat Diaries”. I like to watch it while I and the kids are getting ready in the morning. The flaw in the show is that about 30% of the program consists of actual big cats in the wild. The other 70% is the camera pointed at the face of the narrator, droning on about the wildlife he’s supposed to be filming.
Eric we agree that Gavin acted like a jerk. A person that I would never vote for. How about you? Gavin acted like a 2 year old brat. I know you would know nothing about that but it is pretty much like Gavin acted like.
There was no lock box at the location. Is that enough to act like a 2 year old brat for? Is it enough for libertarians to go to war over? According to the law non is even needed if there is a cop to take the gun for safe keeping. There definitely was a cop there.
Eric if there was ever courts in your ideal world you would not allow guns either. After the first dozen shootings the guns would be taken away. The first time a divorce went wrong or a killer needed to be helped out with the help of his 20 friends in the courtroom carrying their automatic weapons.
The man’s being a “jerk” (in your opinion, not mine; don’t presume to speak for me) is a non sequitur, Clover. Do you know what non “sequitur means”? It means, does not follow.
The question at hand is whether it’s acceptable to physically assault someone who annoys you.
It isn’t.
You can ignore the person, or just walk away.
Which – as I’ve pointed out – you cannot do when the “jerk” annoying you is one of the state’s costumed enforcers. Not without risking a physical assault.
“Eric if there was ever courts in your ideal world you would not allow guns either.”
Illiterate buffoon.
That aside, I am not the one in the business of allowing other people to do – or not do – anything.
PS: Ever stop to wonder, you galloping imbecile, why it is that you never hear about a mass shooting at a gun range? Why “gun crime” is axiomatically lower in areas where there are fewer laws prohibiting ordinary citizens from carrying guns both openly and concealed on their person?
Anyone else interested in attempting to correct this imbecile? I’m done.
Eric the reason there are few shootings at a gun range is because they are there for target practice. They had a purpose and it was not to protect themselves or to go and kill someone. Tell me why you would carry a gun into a restaurant or a store or in a movie theater when there has never been a shooting before? What is your purpose?
Eric would you agree that there are some really bad people out there? If you say you do not have the right to tell others what to do then your option is to wait until many are dead and then say “Maybe we should stop them from killing more?”. Eric in this place in the video was a courtroom and there are some really bad people that go there. In fact there are more bad people that go there than anywhere in our country. You think it is smart to allow guns to be carried by all of these bad people? Yes there are few mass shootings at a gun range but you want to try your hardest to get some mass shootings at courtrooms. Explain why that is a good thing? Our supreme court says it is a bad thing. Are you smarter than our supreme court?
Eric the reason that there are mass shootings is because of mental problems, someone brain washed by libertarians would fit that bill. At a gun range it would not satisfy such a person as in a public place where you can kill kids or adults you are mad at. Just like the two guys that blew up a building a few years ago. They had their target because the building was owned by the government. They get more satisfaction when killing people they are brainwashed to believe that need to be killed. Timothy McVeigh was a libertarian. One of your so called non-aggressive fellow libertarians. Eric, Libertarians are the most dangerous group of people in the United States. What are they going to be like if you have no laws any more? It will be like the gang wars in Mexico.
When are you going to start telling the truth and stop saying lies that you are a non-aggressive group of people?
Once again, Clover – non sequitur. It does not follow.
I tire of attempting to communicate with someone who is either deliberately evasive or simply unintelligent. In the latter case, I don’t blame you since it would unfair to criticize you for something you can’t help.
Regardless, there’s no point to it.
You are unwilling or unable to follow a simple line of reasoning. Example: The man in the video may have been a “jerk” (in your eyes) for arguing (politely, mind) with the bureaucrat and cop. But he in no way threatened them physically, either overtly or implied. Yet they did in fact physically assault him. The discussion at hand was whether it is acceptable to violently assault people who’ve not been aggressively violent themselves.
You are incapable of having such a discussion. Because you will not discuss the $%#!! issue at hand!
Then, you segue into galloping imbecilities about Libertarians being “brainwashed” (apparently, because they use their minds to think logically and conceptually, extrapolating from principles to particulars as opposed to the rote/reflexive reactions of people such as yourself) and then, as is your style, attempt (clumsily) to smear them by claiming ethical consanguinity with Timothy McVeigh.
I’d be pleased to have an intelligent discussion on the merits of any given topic, Clover. But you’re an imbecile, by birth or as a result of how you were raised; perhaps both. There is no more point in attempting to have an intelligent discussion with you than there is in arguing with a cinder block or a goose.
Eric if you actually believe that “they did in fact physically assault him” and as such you believe as a libertarian that you then have the right to kill the person that assaulted you then we will have a bloodbath in our country. Even Gavin did not say he was physically assaulted. Eric your libertarian members have severe mental problems and that includes you.
There was a citizen of our country that noticed within the 30 seconds that Gavin was looking for a confrontation. Eric if you are asking for a confrontation then I would think you would not be surprised to get a confrontation. Gavin continued to film multiple citizens including kids without their permission and distributed that video. Where are the rights and freedoms of the people to not be part of Gavin’s advertisement and to be filmed with a guy that is insane?
Eric Gavin cost the people of our country 100s of dollars to promote himself as being a jerk. He talks about the people needing to be treated with respect. He respected no one.
Gavin talks about liberty. Tell me what liberty is being violated for not having a lock box in one particular building? Eric that is insane saying that is a violation of his liberties.
Govspeak:
I’m sure criminals will respectfully abide by that request!
better
I’m sure strong-arm robbers will respectfully abide by that request!
best
I’m sure strong-arm robbers will respectfully abide by that posted threat of official armed violence
having such a policy, posting such a sign, gives impetus to busy bodies to be on watch for any customer violating a sign. Said customers will notify staff or management in a frantic and concerned voice. Management will respond to these complaints by calling police, who often startle and then gun down unsuspecting gun owners, who are caught off guard and don’t comply to police in a manner they find suitable.
criminal (adjective)
early 15c., from Middle French criminel (11c.), from Latin criminalis “pertaining to crime,”
crime (noun)
mid-13th cent., “sinfulness,” from Old French crimne, from Latin crimen (genitive criminis) “charge, indictment, accusation; crime, fault, offense,” perhaps from cernere “to decide, to sift” (see crisis). But Klein rejects this and suggests *cri-men, which originally would have been “cry of distress” (Tucker also suggests a root in “cry” words and refers to English plaint, plaintiff, etc.). Meaning “offense punishable by law” is from late 14th cent. The Latin word is glossed in Old English by facen, also “deceit, fraud, treachery.”
– double plus fuck the PTB and the loaded phrase filled govspeak English
Target Stores: starting today we respectfully request that guests not bring firearms to Target – even in communities where it is permitted by law.
Target Sucks
Data theft at Target
Why the f…
Target dog
I’m sure criminals will respectfully abide by that request!
Dear Tor, Eric,
I left a comment at the Target store site:
Bevin Chu · Top Commenter
Under free market capitalism, the owner of a property has the inalienable right to establish its “house rules.” Anyone who finds those rules intolerable, can boycott the establishment.
That said, Target is being very, very foolish to adopt such a policy.
The motive behind a “gun free zone” is of course to create an island of safety in our often violent world. Unfortunately the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Declaring Target stores “gun free zones” means that flash robbers will smack their lips, rub their hands, and say, “Easy pickings!” They will realize that if they go in to the store armed to the teeth, they will probably encounter little or no resistance.
Anyone who doubts this, wait and see. Watch for uploaded YouTube videos of flash robbers looting Target stores.
Reply · Like · Unfollow Post · 2 minutes ago
It’s well known that people say and do things in cyberspace that they wouldn’t ordinarily say or do in the face-to-face world. They loosen up, feel more uninhibited, express themselves more openly.
Researchers call this the “disinhibition effect.” Sometimes people share very personal things about themselves. They reveal secret emotions, fears, wishes. Or they show unusual acts of kindness and generosity.
Out spills rude language and harsh criticisms, anger, hatred, even threats. Or people explore the dark underworld of the internet, places they would never visit in the real world.
Disinhibition indicates an attempt to understand and explore oneself, to work through problems and find new ways of being. And sometimes, it is simply a blind catharsis, an acting out of unsavory needs and wishes without any personal growth at all.
What is it about cyberspace that loosens the psychological barriers that block the release of these inner feelings and needs? Several factors are at play. For some people, one or two of them produces the lion’s share of the disinhibition effect. In most cases, though, these factors interact with each other, supplement each other, resulting in a more complex, amplified effect.
You Don’t Know Me (dissociative anonymity)
As you move around the internet, most of the people you encounter can’t easily tell who you are. System operators and some technologically savvy, motivated users may be able to detect your e-mail or internet address, but for the most part people only know what you tell them about yourself. If you wish, you can keep your identity hidden. As the word “anonymous” indicates, you can have no name – at least not your real name.
That anonymity works wonders for the disinhibition effect. When people have the opportunity to separate their actions from their real world and identity, they feel less vulnerable about opening up. Whatever they say or do can’t be directly linked to the rest of their lives. They don’t have to own their behavior by acknowledging it within the full context of who they “really” are.
When acting out hostile feelings, the person doesn’t have to take responsibility for those actions. In fact, people might even convince themselves that those behaviors “aren’t me at all.” In psychology this is called “dissociation.”
You Can’t See Me (invisibility)
In many online environments other people cannot see you. As you browse through web sites, message boards, and even some chat rooms, people may not even know you are there at all – with the possible exception of web masters and other users who have access to software tools that can detect traffic through the site, assuming they have the inclination to keep an eye on you, one of maybe hundreds or thousands of users. Invisibility gives people the courage to go places and do things that they otherwise wouldn’t.
This power to be concealed overlaps with anonymity, because anonymity is the concealment of identity. But there are some important differences. In text communication such as e-mail, chat, blogs, and instant messaging, others may know a great deal about who you are.
However, they still can’t see or hear you – and you can’t see or hear them. Even with everyone’s identity visible, the opportunity to be physically invisible amplifies the disinhibition effect.
You don’t have to worry about how you look or sound when you say (type) something. You don’t have to worry about how others look or sound when you say something. Seeing a frown, a shaking head, a sigh, a bored expression, and many other subtle and not so subtle signs of disapproval or indifference can slam the breaks on what people are willing to express.
In psychoanalysis, the analyst sits behind the patient in order remain a physically ambiguous figure, without revealing any body language or facial expression, so that the patient has free range to discuss whatever he or she wants, without feeling inhibited by how the analyst is physically reacting.
In everyday relationships, people sometimes avert their eyes when discussing something personal and emotional. It’s easier not to look into the other’s face. Text communication offers a built-in opportunity to keep one’s eyes averted.
See You Later (asynchronicity)
In e-mail and message boards, communication is asynchronous. People don’t interact with each other in real time. Others may take minutes, hours, days, or even months to reply to something you say.
Not having to deal with someone’s immediate reaction can be disinhibiting. In real life, it would be like saying something to someone, magically suspending time before that person can reply, and then returning to the conversation when you’re willing and able to hear the response.
Immediate, real-time feedback from others tends to have a very powerful effect on the ongoing flow of how much people reveal about themselves. In e-mail and message boards, where there are delays in that feedback, people’s train of thought may progress more steadily and quickly towards deeper expressions of what they are thinking and feeling.
Some people may even experience asynchronous communication as “running away” after posting a message that is personal, emotional, or hostile. It feels safe putting it “out there” where it can be left behind. In some cases, as an online psychotherapist, aptly describes it, the person may be participating in an “emotional hit and run.”
It’s All in My Head (solipsistic introjection)
Absent face 2 face cues combined with text communication can have an interesting effect on people. Sometimes they feel that their mind has merged with the mind of the online companion.
Reading another person’s message might be experienced as a voice within one’s head, as if that person magically has been inserted or “introjected” into one’s psyche. Of course, we may not know what the other person’s voice actually sounds like, so in our head we assign a voice to that companion. In fact, consciously or unconsciously, we may even assign a visual image to what we think that person looks like and how that person behaves.
The online companion now becomes a character within our intrapsychic world, a character that is shaped partly by how the person actually presents him or herself via text communication, but also by our expectations, wishes, and needs. Because the person may even remind us of other people we know, we fill in the image of that character with memories of those other acquaintances.
As the character now becomes more elaborate and “real” within our minds, we may start to think, perhaps without being fully aware of it, that the typed-text conversation is all taking place within our heads, as if it’s a dialogue between us and this character in our imagination – even as if we are authors typing out a play or a novel.
Actually, even when it doesn’t involve online relationships, many people carry on these kinds of conversations in their imagination throughout the day. People fantasize about flirting, arguing with a boss, or very honestly confronting a friend about what they feel. In their imagination, where it’s safe, people feel free to say and do all sorts of things that they wouldn’t in reality.
At that moment, reality IS one’s imagination. Online text communication can become the psychological tapestry in which a person’s mind weaves these fantasy role plays, usually unconsciously and with considerable disinhibition. All of cyberspace is a stage and we are merely players.
When reading another’s message, it’s also possible that you “hear” that person’s words using your own voice. We may be subvocalizing as we read, thereby projecting the sound of our voice into the other person’s message. Perhaps unconsciously, it feels as if I am talking to/with myself. When we talk to ourselves, we are willing to say all sorts of things that we wouldn’t say to others!
It’s Just a Game (dissociative imagination)
If we combine solipsistic introjection with the escapability of cyberspace, we get a slightly different force that magnifies disinhibition. People may feel that the imaginary characters they “created” exist in a different space, that one’s online persona along with the online others live in an make-believe dimension, a dream world, separate and apart from the demands and responsibilities of the real world.
They split or “dissociate” online fiction from offline fact. Emily Finch, an author and criminal lawyer studying identity theft in cyberspace, has suggested that some people see their online life as a kind of game with rules and norms that don’t apply to everyday living.
Once they turn off the computer and return to their daily routine, they believe they can leave that game and their game-identity behind. Why should they be held responsible for what happens in that make-believe play world that has nothing to do with reality? After all, it isn’t that different than blasting away at your pals in a shoot-em up video game… or so some people might think, perhaps unconsciously.
Although anonymity tends to amplify dissociative imagination, dissociative imagination and dissociative anonymity usually differ in the complexity of the dissociated part of oneself. Under the influence of anonymity, the person may try to be invisible, to become a non-person, resulting in a reducing or simplifying of identity. During dissociative imagination, the self that is expressed, but split-off, tends to be more elaborate.
We’re Equals (minimizing authority)
While online a person’s status in the face-to-face world may not be known to others and it may not have as much impact as it does in the face-to-face world. If people can’t see you or your surroundings, they don’t know if you are the president of a major corporation sitting in your expensive office, or some “ordinary” person lounging around at home in front of the computer.
Even if people do know something about your offline status and power, that elevated position may have little bearing on your online presence and influence. In most cases, everyone on the internet has an equal opportunity to voice him or herself. Everyone – regardless of status, wealth, race, gender, etc. – starts off on a level playing field.
Although one’s status in the outside world ultimately may have some impact on one’s powers in cyberspace, what mostly determines your influence on others is your skill in communicating (including writing skills), your persistence, the quality of your ideas, and your technical know-how.
People are reluctant to say what they really think as they stand before an authority figure. A fear of disapproval and punishment from on high dampens the spirit. But online, in what feels like a peer relationship – with the appearances of “authority” minimized – people are much more willing to speak out or misbehave.
According to traditional Internet philosophy, everyone is an equal: Peers share ideas and resources. In fact, the net itself is engineered with no centralized control. As it grows, with a seemingly endless potential for creating new environments, many people see themselves as independent-minded explorers. This atmosphere and philosophy contribute to the minimizing of authority.
Personality Variables
The disinhibition effect is not the only factor that determines how much people open up or act out in cyberspace. The strength of underlying feelings, needs, and drive level has a big influence on how people behave. Personalities also vary greatly in the strength of defense mechanisms and tendencies towards inhibition or expression.
People with histrionic styles tend to be very open and emotional. Compulsive people are more restrained. The online disinhibition effect will interact with these personality variables, in some cases resulting in a small deviation from the person’s baseline (offline) behavior, while in other cases causing dramatic changes.
The TRUE Self?
Does the disinhibition effect release inner needs, emotions, and attributes that dwell beneath surface personality presentations? Does it reveal your “true self.” For example, a woman with repressed anger unleashes her hostility online, thereby showing others how she really feels. Or a shy man openly expresses his hidden affection for his cyberspace companion.
Some people do report being more like their true self in cyberspace. If personality is constructed in layers, with a core or true self buried beneath surface defenses and the seemingly superficial roles of everyday social interactions, then does the disinhibition effect release that true self?
This is a tempting conclusion. In fact, the very notion of a true self is tempting because it is useful in helping people articulate their experiences in how and what they express to others about themselves. The concept also works well, in a humanistic fashion, as a motivational tool in the process of self-actualization.
However, a comprehensive psychological as well as philosophical analysis reveals complexities in this thing called self that stretch far beyond this tempting notion. In an in-depth exploration of the online disinhibition effect, the idea of a true self is too ambiguous, arbitrary, and rudimentary to serve as a useful concept.
Personal and cultural values: Personal and cultural values often dictate what we consider the true and false aspects of who we are. We more readily accept as valid those attributes that we regard as positive. An unpleasant aspect of one’s personality is not really “me.” However, sexual and aggressive tendencies, as Freud noted, are basic components of personality too, as are the psychological defenses designed to control them.
Personal and cultural values may also label the usually polite persona that we present to others during everyday living as superficial or false. However, this persona is the product of years of social and psychological development. As a critical component of the ego’s construction and functioning, it is essential to interpersonal survival and no less important or true than other components of intrapsychic structure.
While online people may feel they have more opportunities to present themselves as they would like to present themselves, particularly in the carefully composed text of asynchronous communication. They may have more chances to convey thoughts and emotions that go “deeper” than the seemingly superficial persona of everyday living.
These opportunities are very valuable aspects of cyberspace, but not necessarily evidence of a more true self. What we reveal about ourselves spontaneously, often right on the surface for others to see but without our being consciously awareness of it, may be just as real and true.
Some people are not fully satisfied with their in-person relationships. Perhaps they don’t have opportunities to develop many relationships, or those that did develop turned out to be unfulfilling. In cyberspace they may find the companions they need. They feel more authentic in those online relationships, and this becomes a viable lifestyle alternative.
On the other hand, some people who need to deny or rationalize the unfulfilling quality of their in-person relationships may resort to a personal philosophy that idealizes the disinhibition effect and the notion that the true self appears online.
The inhibiting self: The concept of disinhibition may mistakenly lead us into thinking that what is disinhibited is more real or true than the part of us that inhibits. If we can just peel away repression, suppression, and other defense mechanisms, we will discover the “real” self that lies below.
Based loosely on the kind of archaeological approach to intrapsychic structure proposed by Freud, this notion suggests that the personality is constructed in layers, with more true or real features of personality existing at a deeper level.
This is a simplistic interpretation of the much more dynamic psychoanalytic model which states that the inhibitory processes of repression and defense mechanisms are components of personality no less real or important than others. Psychoanalytic clinicians believe that understanding defenses is crucial to the success of the therapy because it reveals hidden thoughts, feelings, and needs.
Why does a person repress something? Why is it being inhibited? Bypassing defenses to get to the “true” self may also bypass the opportunity to discover aspects of the inhibiting self that are just as true. When these defenses and elements of the inhibited self are worked through, remnants of them sometimes remain to serve an important function. Sometimes they evolve into productive aspects of one’s personality independent of the problematic emotions that were originally defended.
The same is true online. Some people in some online situations become disinhibited and reveal aspects of themselves. However, at the same time, they may not be not grappling with the underlying causes of that inhibition, and therefore are missing an opportunity to discover something important about themselves – something very true about themselves, but often unconscious.
If anonymity in cyberspace eases people’s anxiety so they are more comfortable to express themselves, then they also are bypassing an essential component of who they are. Important personality dynamics are embedded in that anxiety.
People who are shy in-person may thrive in cyberspace when the disinhibition effect allows them to express who they “truly” are inside. This is a wonderful opportunity for them. But why is Joe’s shyness a less true aspect of him compared to other features of his personality, especially given the fact that his shyness is a prominent feature of his day-to-day living?
If online companions, who had formed the impression Joe was outgoing, finally met him in-person, might they not conclude that Joe is “really” shy? And what makes him shy? Are there underlying psychological problems and anxieties that caused it? Is it a biologically determined temperament, as much research in developmental psychology suggests about shyness. Aren’t these possible causes of his shyness also true aspects of Joe? Here we see the arbitrary nature of the “true self” concept.
Compromise formations: Quite often when people are online and some aspect of their personality is disinhibited, some other aspect of their personality is inhibited. After all, the anonymity that contributes to online disinhibition means that the person is “without a name” – something about that person is not known.
In online communication, consciously or unconsciously, people conceal or misrepresent aspects of themselves as often as they honestly reveal aspects of themselves. Any particular media encourages some aspects of identity to be expressed while inhibiting other aspects. Something is revealed while something else is hidden. Expressions of self are compromise formations within any particular media or communication modality. In email Joe reveals for the first time to Sue that “I love you,” but his voice and body language, which in-person might reveal unwritten dimensions and even qualifications of his stated affection, are hidden.
This particular example also points to the polarities that operate within the dynamics of personality. Sometimes we act, think, or feel one way, and sometimes the opposite. We have ambivalent, sometimes opposing emotions. Online Joe says that he truly loves Sue, but in-person his voice indicates some doubt.
Face-to-face he appears angry and rejecting, but online he admits that he feels insecure and guilty. Different communication environments convey different facets of these polarities in self. Here one side appears, and there another. Neither is more true than another.
Each media allows for a particular expression of self that differs – sometimes greatly, sometimes subtly – from another media. In different media people present a different perspective of their identity. Chat, email, blogs, videocams, telephones, face-to-face conversation, and all types of communication modalities, each uniquely highlight certain aspects of self expression and personal identity, while hiding others.
The self expressed in one modality is not necessarily deeper, more real, or more authentic than another. This multiple modality framework for understanding the self-within-media bypasses the tendency to become bogged down in arbitrary arguments about the location of the true or real self.
Self Constellations Across Media
The self interacts with the environment in which it is expressed. It is not independent of that environment. If a man suppresses his aggression in life but expresses it online, both behaviors reflect important aspects of his personality that surface under different conditions. If a woman is shy in-person but outgoing online, neither self-presentation is more true than the other. Both are dimensions of who she is, each revealed within a different situational context.
Instead of thinking that personality is constructed in layers with the environment “out there” somewhere, we can conceptualize it as an intrapsyhic field containing clusters or constellations of emotion, memory, and thinking that are interconnected with certain environments.
Some constellations overlap, others are more dissociated from each other, with environmental variables influencing those levels of integration and dissociation. Personality dynamics involve the complex interactions among these various clusters within the self and in relation to the environment. An extreme version of these dynamics occur in a multiple personality disorder, in which consciousness shifts laterally from one constellation of personality formation to another, with strong dissociative barriers between those formations.
In the more “normal” person, the distinction between the formations may be less dramatic, and the dissociative barriers less intense, but the same alterations in identity expression does occur.
These ideas about self constellations extend as far back as William James’ theory of consciousness shifting from one focus to another within a field of associations. They also are consistent with contemporary theories about dissociation and the information processing of experience.
Therefore, we can think of the disinhibition effect as a person shifting to an “online” personality constellation that may be dissociated – in varying degrees, depending on the person – from the in-person constellation. Inhibiting guilt, shame, or anxiety may be features of the in-person self but not that online self. This constellations model also helps explain other online phenomena, like identity experimentation, role-playing fantasy games, multitasking projects, and other subtle shifts in personality expression as we move from one online environment to another.
In fact, a single disinhibited “online self” probably does not exist at all, but rather a collection of slightly different constellations of emotion, memory, and thinking that surface in and interact with different types of online environments. Different communication modalities enable different expressions of oneself. They allow us to see the different perspectives of that complex thing we call “identity.”
This is something to keep in mind for online psychotherapy. Using a multidimensional analysis of the various features of cyberspace, a comprehensive theory of online psychotherapy explores how the design of a computer-mediated environment allows for the inhibition, expression, and development of different aspects of a person’s identity.
Altering Self Boundary
My discussion so far rests on the assumption that almost everyone online tends to be disinhibited, even if the effect is small. However, this isn’t necessarily the case. Some people feel guarded and suspicious about cyberspace. You don’t know who people really are, or how exactly they may be reacting to you behind their typed words. You don’t realize who is watching you or what they know about you. You can’t trust everyone’s intentions. In black hole situations, you send out a message and receive no reply, for reasons not clear. Is anyone really there?
Online environments can stir uncertainty, frustration, and anxiety – even paranoia about the possible mishaps and calamities that may befall you if you venture into the wrong environment or connect with the wrong people. As a result, people sometimes proceed with hesitancy and caution.
Some vacillate between feeling disinhibited and restrained as they move in and out of the various areas of their online lifestyle. They shift up and down what we might consider a disinhibition/inhibition continuum. However, others may feel both ways simultaneously within a particular environment or relationship. For example, you reveal intimate details about yourself to someone you meet online, but you won’t give that person your phone number.
How do we explain these alternating as well as concurrent experiences of both an open and guarded self? If we focus just on online disinhibition or only on online suspiciousness, we will overlook an important underlying psychological experience that gives rise to this disinhibition/inhibition polarity. That experience is “self boundary.”
Self-boundary is the sense of what is me and what is not me. It’s the experience of a flexible perimeter marking the distinction between my personality – my thoughts, feelings, and memories – and what exists outside that perimeter, within other people.
A variety of factors contribute to self-boundary, including the awareness of having a distinct physical body, the perception via the five senses of an outside world, the feeling of a psychological distinction between what I know versus what others know about me, and the sensation of the physical/psychological self moving cohesively along a linear continuum of past, present, and future.
Life in cyberspace tends to disrupt these factors that support self-boundary. The physical body and its five senses no longer play as crucial a role as in face-to-face relationships. What others know or don’t know about me is not always clear.
The feeling of a linear past, present, and future becomes more obscure as we move back and forth through synchronous and asynchronous communication. As a result, this altered state of consciousness in cyberspace tends to shift or destabilize self-boundary.
The distinction between inner-me and outer-other is not as clear. The person shifts to what psychoanalytic theory calls “primary process thinking” in which boundaries between self and other representations become more diffuse, and thinking becomes more subjective and emotion-centered.
Within the transitional space of online communication, the psyches of self and other feel like they might be overlapping. We allow the hidden self to surface because we no longer experience it as a purely inner self; but at the same time we also sense, sometimes vaguely and sometimes distinctly, the intrusion of an unknown other into our private world, which results in suspicion, anxiety, and the need to defend our exposed and vulnerable intrapsychic territory.
No doubt, there are important individual differences in how people shift along the inhibition/disinhibition continuum. The effect of inhibition or disinhibition might be weak or strong, depending on the person and the situation. People might experience small or wide oscillations between the two polarities.
Some might be more susceptible to inhibition than to disinhibition, or vice versa. Studying what is revealed or hidden about people within the wide range of online environments can become a laboratory for understanding the subtle dynamics of the self.
I’m unsure what is to be done with thugs. The British Empire took great pains to bring them to extinction in India, and every other colony to it seems.
The American Government likewise did something similar to some Native Americans and Spaniards.
It is well and good to not BE thugs. But I for one do not advocate there being such a dominant state such that all thugs can be hunted and caged in all instances.
I would argue at a minimum, some kind of continuing consideration be given to those who would otherwise choose to be thugs. It is incorrect to put any fixed concept or institution above any individual human being who is a self owner.
If you want all in a jursidiction to forgo violence, you have to offer alternatives. Ideally, allow the violent to live with other violents. Or else you have to provide for those forced away from the violence they wish to practice on one another. By what authority does any man capture and compel another man. There is none, I would argue.
Else, you get the institutionally thuggery of America. First they came for thugs. Then other first nation people. Then plantation owners and their human property. They they stole much of the confederate property. Then “horders” of silver. They effectively stole western ranchers and farmers land by demonetizing silver.
Then they enforced prohibition. To do so they monitored each and every transaction. And made it impossible to trade outside of their federal reserve system. This crashed the economy. And everyone was plundered and pillaged. And reduced to being eaters of free bread, and drinkers of free soup.
Then forced owners of gold to sell at below market price.
thuggery (noun)
1839, from thug + -ery. Also thugee, from the native Hindi name for the system of religious assassination practiced by the thugs.
thuggish (adj.)
“ruffianly, brutal and forceful,” 1870, from thug + -ish. Related: Thuggishly; thuggishness.
thug (noun)
1810, “member of a gang of murderers and robbers in India who strangled their victims,” from Marathi thag, thak “cheat, swindler,” Hindi thag, perhaps from Sanskrit sthaga-s “cunning, fraudulent,” from sthagayati “(he) covers, conceals,” perhaps from PIE root *(s)teg- (2) “to cover” (see stegosaurus).
The thugs roamed about the country in bands of from 10 to 100, usually in the disguise of peddlers or pilgrims, gaining the confidence of other travelers, whom they strangled, when a favorable opportunity presented itself, with a handkerchief, an unwound turban, or a noosed cord. The shedding of blood was seldom resorted to. The motive of the thugs was not so much lust of plunder as a certain religious fanaticism. The bodies of their victims were hidden in graves dug with a consecrated pickax, and of their spoil one third was devoted to the goddess Kali, whom they worshiped.
Rigorously prosecuted by the British from 1831, they were driven from existence by century’s end. Transferred sense of “ruffian, cutthroat, violent lowbrow” is from 1839.
Max Stirner proposes that most commonly accepted social institutions – including the notion of State, property as a right, natural rights in general, and the very notion of society – were mere illusions or ghosts in the mind, saying of society that “the individuals are its reality.”
Only when one realizes that all sacred truths such as law, right, morality, religion, are nothing other than artificial concepts, and not to be [automatically] obeyed, can one act freely.
To be free is to be both one’s own “creature” (in the sense of ‘creation’) and one’s own “creator” To Stirner power is the method of egoism. It is the only justified method of gaining ‘property’ [we disagree, saying that you can not use power to initiate force against another person]
Stirner wants to “abolish not only the state but also society as an institution responsible for its members.”
He advocated egoism and a form of amoralism, in which individuals would unite in ‘unions of egoists’ only when it was in their self-interest to do so.
For him, property simply comes about through might: “Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property.”[this would of course become a nightmare, when you must be on the defensive from everyone]
“What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing. I do not step shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as my property, in which I respect nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my property!” [this needs some kinds of limitation of course]
Stirner considers the world and everything in it, including other persons, available to one’s taking or use without moral constraint – that rights do not exist in regard to objects and people at all.
He sees no rationality in taking the interests of others into account unless doing so furthers one’s self-interest, which he believes is the only legitimate reason for acting. He denies society as being an actual entity, calling society a “spook” and that “the individuals are its reality”
Union of egoists
Stirner’s idea of the “Union of Egoists” is understood as a non-systematic association, which Stirner proposed in contradistinction to the state. The Union is understood as a relation between egoists which is continually renewed by all parties’ support through an act of will.
The Union requires that all parties participate out of a conscious egoism. If one party silently finds themselves to be suffering, but puts up and keeps the appearance, the union has degenerated into something else. This union is not an authority above a person’s own will.
Stirner launched a radical anti-authoritarian and individualist critique of contemporary Prussian society, and modern western society. He offers an approach to human existence which depicts the self as a creative non-entity, beyond language and reality.
He proclaims that all religions and ideologies rest on empty concepts. The same holds true for society’s institutions, that claim authority over the individual, be it the state, legislation, the church, or the systems of education such as Universities.
Lange’s commentary on Stirner.
Stirner went so far as to reject all moral ideas. Everything that in any way, whether it be external force, belief, or mere idea, places itself above the individual and his caprice, Stirner rejects as a hateful limitation of himself.
This book – the extremest that we know anywhere – needed only a second positive part added. Out of the unlimited Ego I can again beget every kind of Idealism as my will and my idea. Stirner lays so much stress upon the will, in fact, that it appears as the root force of human nature.
– The only thing incompatible with Stirner, is his savage notion of one individual’s exercise of ego being utterly unbounded by any one else.
That is where we part ways.
We advocate a sort of ego maximization, by allowing all peaceful exercises of ego, but not violent ones.
It is egoism to grant to a person an unlimited right to drive as fast as he likes. To behave however he likes. To treat others who willingly do business with you or remain willingly in relationships with you however you like.
Because Stirner does not deny one’s ego the use of force of taking whatever another person has, his egotopia will not be a pleasant one, because no one restrains themselves in even the most extreme circumstances.
It is also egoism, to exercise minimal restraints, so you all can live and let live, instead of constantly being at heightened alert against your fellow men engaging in raw animal predations.
Hi Tor,
Stirner appears to be a thug. Thrasymachus rebooted (“justice is the advantage of the stronger”). He may be right, ugly reality-wise. But is he right?
The odd thing about having a conscience (and empathy) is that one tends to reflexively shy away from behaving like a predatory animal.
And that’s the rub, isn’t it?
Our polis of voluntaryism and non-aggression is predicated on people (most of them) operating at a higher ethical-moral level. They must reject violence as instinctively as most people today unconsciously embrace it. They must have developed the habit of filtering any given proposed action through the NAP.
“We need more money for schools.”
Well, ok. But are you suggesting that we each voluntarily chip in what we can afford? Or are you demanding that threats of violent reprisal be used to coerce people to hand over their rightful property?
And so on.
Until that “awakening” has occurred, the battle’s lost before it begins. But if enough people ever do awake, the battle won’t be necessary because the war will already have been won.
Eric and you said that libertarians are a peaceful and non-aggressive group?
”
Inconsistencies
June 26, 2014 at 3:20 pm
All of those in that room pry their paychecks forcefully from my labor and deserve everything thrown at them (and more).
”
Nice group of people you hang around with Eric. Eric that is why I do not want your society.
Clover… really?
Is it possible that you cannot understand the difference between aggressive and defensive force? That there is a difference between punching someone in the nose and attempting to fend off the person trying to punch you in the nose?
You and yours have a policy of aggressive violence. We – as a matter of principle and practice – don’t start fights. Libertarians want no violence, but do claim the right to defend ourselves against violence initiated by people such as yourself.
Your force it on us – and then call us “violent”!
Your reply will be: Then just do as ordered and there will be no violence. Except of course that you’re asking (telling) us to accept the violence you visit upon us and (height of effrontery) refuse ot acknowledge the violence behind everything you stand for.
Eric, you may have hit upon something. They can’t tell the difference.
This may be why self-defense is punished in the schools the same as aggressive violence.
A man has every right to fend off robbers. Do you disagree?
Clover,
A man has every right to fend off robbers. Do you disagree?
So you’ll stand by the current society that murders at least 1 million people every year on purpose, not in a momentary lapse of reason? How is that the moral high ground? How is that not the most violent system imaginable?
Here is the libertarian stance on why light travels, do you at least agree with this libertarian premises, or do you find fault with them as well?
Libertarians believe that everything, by nature of simply existing, is “moving” at the speed of light (which really has nothing to do with light). Yes, that does include your body as well.
The libertarian understanding of the universe is that the way that we perceive space and time as separate things is, to be frank, wrong. They aren’t separate: the universe is made of “spacetime,” all one word. A year and a lightyear describe different things in our day to day lives, but from a physicist’s point of view, they’re actually the exact same thing
In our day to day lives, libertarians define motion as a distance traveled over some amount of time. However, if distances and intervals of time are the exact same thing, that suddenly becomes completely meaningless. “I traveled one foot for every foot that I traveled” is an absolutely absurd statement!
The way it works is that everything in the libertarian universe travels through spacetime at some speed which I’ll call “c” for the sake of brevity. Remember, motion in spacetime is meaningless, so it makes sense that nothing could be “faster” or “slower” through spacetime than anything else. Everybody and everything travels at one foot per foot, that’s just… how it works.
Obviously, though, things do seem to have different speeds. The reason that happens is that time and space are orthogonal, which is sort of a fancy term for “at right angles to each other.” North and east, for example, are orthogonal: a libertarian can travel as far as he wants directly to the north, but it’s not going to affect where he is in terms of east/west at all.
Just like how a libertarian can travel north without traveling east, he can travel through time without it affecting where he is in space. Conversely, he can travel through space without it affecting where he is are in time.
You’re (presumably) sitting in your chair right now, which means you’re not traveling through space at all. Since you have to travel through spacetime at c (speed of light), though, a libertarian would say that means all of your motion is through time.
By the way, libertarians believe this is why time dilation happens: something that’s moving very fast relative to you is moving through space, but since they can only travel through spacetime at c, they have to be moving more slowly through time to compensate (from your point of view).
Libertarians believe light, on the other hand, doesn’t travel through time at all. The reason it doesn’t is somewhat complicated, but it has to do with the fact that it has no mass.
Something that isn’t moving that has mass can have energy: that’s what E = mc2 means to libertarians. Light has no mass, but it does have energy. If a libertarian plugs the mass of light into E=mc2, he gets 0, which makes no sense because light has energy. Hence, light can never be stationary.
Not only that, but light can never be stationary from a libertarian or other political philosophy adherent’s perspective. Since, like everything else, it travels at c through spacetime, that means all of its “spacetime speed” must be through space, and none of it is through time.
So, light travels at c. Not at all by coincidence, you’ll often hear c referred to as the “speed of light in a vacuum.” Really, though, it’s the speed which libertarians claim that everything travels at, and it happens to be the speed that light travels through space at because it has no mass.
This also covers the common question of why nothing can ever travel faster than light, and why things with mass cannot travel at the speed of light. The libertarian answer to this question is, since everything moves through spacetime at c, nothing can ever exceed it (and no, traveling backwards in time would not fix that).
Also, things with mass can always be “stationary” from someone’s perspective (like their own), so they always have to move through time at least a little bit, meaning they can never travel through space as fast as light does. They’d have to travel through spacetime faster than c to do that, which, again, libertarians insist is not possible.
The question is… If some libertarian mass were to have the gall to actually travel faster than the speed of light, would it be subject to fines?
Dear Tor,
Thanks for the primer on Stirner.
I never delved very deeply into Stirner. I agreed with his firm rejection of authority based on a few quotes of his.
But I never realized he also advocated Social Darwinism and Devil take the hindmost.
Some thoughts:
The reason this particular video, which wasn’t even accompanied by much text, stirred up such a hornet’s nest, was that it challenged the Myth of Authority on a gut level in addition to a on a head trip level.
Let me share an example. Take the term “cop killer” or “cop killer bullets.”
As both cops and non-cops alike know, the term is intended to provoke moral outrage. As in “The guy is a cop killer! Take him down!” or “Shit man, the guy was using cop killer bullets!”
But this facile moral outrage is predicated on a Big Lie — the Thin Blue Line, holding the line against a tidal wave of crime.
The ugly reality, which needs no elaboration, is that the entire apparatus of government is rooted in armed robbery and extortion, better known as “taxation” and “law enforcement.”
I think this comment, the second one, is what got things rolling.
Garysco Submitted on 2014/06/26 at 12:08 am
Sorry, but this guy is a donkey. He creates the probable cause by asking for a box to put his gun in, then complains they have no reason to check him for same inside the courthouse.
It’s a sophisticated presentation of the clover case.
It is always the guy not complying with authority who is the donkey. The one who creates the probable cause, by dint of his not bowing to and remaining submissive to authority.
If you don’t agree with courthouses having absolute authority over so many minute details of your life. If you don’t like dealing with violent vindictive cops on the roads. If you don’t like being forced to paying exorbitant rent on your own property. If you don’t like enduring endless restrictions on what you can do with your own property. It’s your problem.
Your place to challenge authority is wherever authority tells you it’s permissible to do so. Your time to question authority it, is whenever authority tell you it’s appropriate to do so.
You are irrelevant. You have no standing. You are nothing. Your role is to comply and remain passive and well mannered, no matter how absolute and oppressive authority becomes.
Dear Tor,
Since most of the heat was between Gary and you, I will defer to the two of you on that particular point. Gary and you know what you were feeling better than I do.
For me the moral and ethical key is that the goonvermin courts have no moral legitimacy in the first place. It is similar to my analogy about Frenchmen in occupied Vichy France.
Since the Nazi occupation was illegitimate to begin with, and was effected at gunpoint, then any Frenchman had the right to shoot any occupying Nazi soldier any time he saw fit.
He did not need to wait for the Nazi soldier to commit any additional offenses in France, such as rape a local woman. The Nazi soldier’s complicity in the occupation already justified retaliation. No additional justification was needed.
Ditto with the goonvermin and its agents. They are already an occupation force that robs us regularly. What more is needed?
That does not mean any of us would necessary do that. Most of us here believe the pen is mightier than the sword. But it does mean we would be well within our rights to do so.
I wish he would have responded rationally to Mithrandir’s question in comment #3
Garysco,
Regardless of his status as a donkey,
Does the statute he reference require a lock box to be in the same building as the courthouse?
Comment #4 Garysco response excerpt:
“He intentionally goes to the building with his camera and an attitude to make an issue out of a “box” that should be there.
BFD in my opinion, but that is what he wants to do, so fine. I don’t know what he expected, maybe they would all jump up and install one for him right then and there”
How can the law be a BFD. This is very telling of how LEOs really think and act?
Both Garysco and clover’s responses to valid questions identical. Mocking and dismissive, nothing but contempt and ridicule for any mundane who dare even try to discuss the law with those in authority.
I’d rather there be no courthouse.
But if it must be there, then it should be the law that is in authority. Not so-called public servants of the law, who in reality, serve only themselves and never the law.
Who then say arrogantly: “Whatever you say or do is no Big Fucking Deal because I have usurped the public institutions to serve my whims, not the law. I am in authority. I am the law. This license to plunder and oppress is granted me from the highest authorities of the state. And there’s nothing you can do about it.
Dear Tor,
I suspect many minarchists are still having trouble getting over that final, critical, psychological hurdle.
The bright side of it though, is that when a critical mass FEEL, in addition to THINK in hardline voluntaryist terms, the state will be kaput.
The number of young millennials who have set up individualist anarchist channels on YouTube is astonishing. We are gaining ground.
I agree, Tor.
The issue – as you’ve laid out – is whether the authority is legitimate. And the only legitimate authority is our dominion over our own lives, not the lives of others. Or any such authority as we each individually and freely agree to defer to (such as buying into an HOA, for instance).
Otherwise, who are these people?
What gives some guy in a special costume the right to bark orders at us?
Dear Eric, Tor,
“What gives some guy in a special costume the right to bark orders at us?”
Precisely. And of course, this is not restricted to blue costumes. It also includes black costumes. The ones “judges” wear, include “Supreme Court Justices.”
When I was still under the Spell of Authority, I was intimidated by all the trappings of the “justice system.” More recently, now that I have thought through the source of natural rights from a clean mental slate, I realize what claptrap it all is.
We’ve all seen it a million times in courtroom dramas. The “judge” enters. The “clerk of the court” shouts “All rise!” If one fails to kowtow before “authoritay,” the “judge” charges you with “contempt of court.”
Did you get that? It is even a crime in our “justice system” to display feelings of resentment for one’s victimization by the goonvermin’s star chamber! One is not even entitled to one’s feelings!
The agents of the goonvermin know they need to keep the sheeple meek and terrified of them. That is why they cannot allow us to even feel contempt.
All Things Are Nothing To Me
What is not supposed to be my concern! First and foremost, the Good Cause, then God’s cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humanity, of justice;
Further, the cause of my people, my prince, my fatherland; finally, even the cause of Mind, and a thousand other causes. Only my cause is never to be my concern. “Shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself!”
Let us look and see, then, how they manage their concerns — they for whose cause we are to labor, devote ourselves, and grow enthusiastic.
You are shocked by the assumption that God could be like us poor worms in furthering an alien cause as his own. “Should God take up the cause of truth if he were not himself truth?” He cares only for his cause, but, because he is all in all, therefore all is his cause! But we, we are not all in all, and our cause is altogether little and contemptible; therefore we must “serve a higher cause.” —
Now it is clear, God cares only for what is his, busies himself only with himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes; woe to all that is not well-pleasing to him. He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is — a purely egoistic cause.
How is it with mankind, whose cause we are to make our own? Is its cause that of another, and does mankind serve a higher cause? No, mankind looks only at itself, mankind will promote the interests of mankind only, mankind is its own cause.
That it may develop, it causes nations and individuals to wear themselves out in its service, and, when they have accomplished what mankind needs, it throws them on the dung-heap of history in gratitude. Is not mankind’s cause — a purely egoistic cause?
I have no need to take up each thing that wants to throw its cause on us and show that it is occupied only with itself, not with us, only with its good, not with ours. Look at the rest for yourselves. Do truth, freedom, humanity, justice, desire anything else than that you grow enthusiastic and serve them?
They all have an admirable time of it when they receive zealous homage. Just observe the nation that is defended by devoted patriots. The patriots fall in bloody battle or in the fight with hunger and want; what does the nation care for that?
By the manure of their corpses the nation comes to “its bloom”! The individuals have died “for the great cause of the nation,” and the nation sends some words of thanks after them and — has the profit of it. I call that a paying kind of egoism.
But only look at that Sultan who cares so lovingly for his people. Is he not pure unselfishness itself, and does he not hourly sacrifice himself for his people? Oh, yes, for “his people.” Just try it; show yourself not as his, but as your own; for breaking away from his egoism you will take a trip to jail.
The Sultan has set his cause on nothing but himself; he is to himself all in all, he is to himself the only one, and tolerates nobody who would dare not to be one of “his people.”
And will you not learn by these brilliant examples that the egoist gets on best? I for my part take a lesson from them, and propose, instead of further unselfishly serving those great egoists, rather to be the egoist myself.
Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You think at least the “good cause” must be my concern? What’s good, what’s bad? Why, I myself am my concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for me.
My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine, and it is not a general one, but is — unique, as I am unique.
Nothing is more to me than myself!
Anarchist library – The Ego and his own – Max Stirner
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-stirner-the-ego-and-his-own?print
@Garysco the clover and all his second-hander disciple clovers:
@Tor – Question 1 What in your mind should have those other people in the building do or not do to Gavin’s presence and complaints about a particular law he did not even read himself?
(I can only guess that the “should not even exist” state funded worker bees should have just looked and stared at him until he was done and left the building.)
@Tor – Question 2 Is he a clover by running for a government funded political office?
(I mean he is supporting the Statist system by asking for the job.)
My response to your questions. (IMHO there are no answers to irrational hypotheticals about the irrational religion of governmental cannibalism.)
1 The first nasty headphoned thing should be plucked from her chair by the people she has been tyrannizing and thrown out in the street. If she persists, she should be run out of town on rail and banished for life.
How dare you try to defend that piece of shit. Government worker bee? You can’t seriously think anyone here will agree that is who she is.
2 As far as Gavin is concerned. He is in a similar place as Eric was with the Corvette Clover. He is only reacting to these vampire assholes who are forcibly interposing themselves into his life. Gavin is doing what any person under their illegitimate plundering, caging, soul-raping, and flesh-eating has full right and duty to do.
Seriously, fuck you for your so-called service. And all these courthouse assholes and first responder predators as we.. It appears you’re even worse than Clover. You understand all too well how this whole farce works, yet have the gall to pretend it is legitimate for a ruling class to feed off a taxpaying class as if carnivorous human flesh-eaters are our heavenly ordained natural rulers.
May whatever violence you threaten and advocate happen to these YouTube account freelancers be visited upon you instead by all who transact as you do in destruction and violence. May this happen as well to your entire family you’ve supported through such base and inhuman behavior.
When it comes to this issue, you are a walking dead zombie who knows only taking by force and brute violence. There is no common rational ground here that I can see.
I will learn how to really live by way of voluntary trade and the free market. Should you choose to continue to living as a grinning corpse whose only moments of living come through capture and feeding off the living, then in this instance there will always be an irreconcilable difference between us.
Remember that Garysco made his living (and now his pension) from being in the total mindset of cop/enforcer, and thus his whole life experiences are from that viewpoint. This mindset is too difficult to overcome.
Like the shoe salesman who notices everyone’s shoes before any other article of their clothing, Garysco learned to focus on who might, without warning, become a bad guy in need of restraint. That is how his mind is conditioned. So that is what he has been programmed to focus on.
It is really sad. There are a great number of people who will never intend to harm another, yet we are all pre-supposed to be of the criminal persuasion.
My brother-in-law used to be a small town cop. But he has a conscience, so he quit. He went back to school to became a psychologist — because he really did want to help people in trouble.
I’m not sure if being a psychologist is any better. It might even be worse?
Psychiatry Fraud (20)
Hi Helot,
Yeah, I have to wonder about the “shrink” profession.
He is not a psychiatrist — but a psychologist.
There is a difference.
Looks to me there’s next to no difference, in some states moreso than others I suppose, but it appears they are yoked together pulling the fraud wagon linked above.
Contrast with psychiatrist
Rock on Tor. Now that you have your hate on wear it with pride.
Hi Garysco,
Do you feel any remorse for the violent acts of aggression you perpetrated on people during your career as a LEO?
@Inconsistencies – What is your definition violent acts? Mine is the use of physical force. To that question I would say none that I can think of. But then I left that line of work 19 years ago next month when I opened my own computer networking business and became a Microsoft partner and Certified Small Business Network Specialist (SBSC). So I may have forgotten one over time.
I’m not here to judge, Gary. I only hope you didn’t ruin many lives or collect too much loot for the slave masters, and I’m glad to hear you decided to go straight so many years ago.
You’re the one that keeps coming at me. And making up lies, which is what clovers always do. You asserted that I didn’t answer your questions.
Garysco said:
“You won’t answer with any original solution of your own, only accuse. I will leave it there.”
So now you have what you’ve asked for.
As I see it, you and others like you all deserve each other. (Unless I am mistaken that you believe Gavin deserves official violence)
It is of no value for me to forcibly insert myself into how you live your life. I am not your accuser. I might hate the principles by which you live your life if you tell us what they are, but as of now, I’m unsure what your principles are. Perhaps you don’t know yourself.
You’ve said a lot of good things here, and in many ways, you’ve shown yourself to be one of the good guys.
The solution is something you would have to willing work towards in a cooperative venture. I will not be constructing some “better way” and then finding a way of imposing it on you.
It is you who appears to be demonstrating an intent on making all who reject your plans to make a meal out of them your enemy. (Is this incorrect?) If those are your plans, then yes, I hope they fail.
In this instance, it appears you’d rather fabricate lies, keep going around in circles, than have anyone find out what you’ve been up to, and be held to account before an assembly of your peers regarding that reality.
Dear Gary,
Here’s an interesting article at the Daily Paul, that just happens to bear on the issue of courts and whether they have “legitimacy.”
http://www.dailypaul.com/320648/what-makes-law-legitimate-a-question-from-an-anarchist-posed-to-the-minarchist
Excerpt:
But here is where I see a major problem for statists and minarchists. We do have states right now. We do have courts right now. We do have a “limited govermnent” that is supposedly “bound in its limits” outlined in “the constitution.”
So here is my question to you minarchists. You want a constitution; you have one. You want a “limited government,” you have one, the constitution supposedly guarantees this.
But WHAT IS BINDING about laws passed by the state and limits found in the constitution????
—-
Because it seems that we have these laws and these courts. But WHEN THE GOVERNMENT breaks the limits, breaks the law, doesn’t follow the constitution… WHAT IS THE RESULT? Are corrupt politicians and judges tried? Don’t we see the government and its employees, agents, departments and agencies BREAKING THE SACRED LAWS left and right without recourse?
So to turn this line of questioning “What makes it valid?” (In reference to the NAP or property rights.) Let me turn this line of questioning around and ask you the same about the “sacred court system” that you statists insist is necessary to HAVE JUSTICE.
In other words, “Is your sacred court REALLY SO SACRED?”
It’s interesting that Ron Paul authorizes the publishing of anarchist articles like this at his official website. It’s interesting that Ron Paul’s campaign manager was Lew Rockwell, a dyed in the wool Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist.
To me it suggests that Ron Paul is actually a “stealth anarchist” who is acting as a “mole” inside the statist system in order to bring it down from within!
Hut! Hut! Hut! Is that how it is in North Korea? I don’t think it is much different there than here. Especially when out in public. So little of our choice and time is our own.
Mostly in public we engage in Hut! Hut! Hut! because they make it so difficult to do much else. Though thankfully we are more physically comfortable and our forced to do far less of this here in the US than in North Korea.
Should we unplug from all media and stimuli. Find ourselves alone without books, websites, television, news, as we would be in North Korea, we should soon find ourselves lost and in confusion all at once.
We will not then know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise.
We are all oppressed at being men–men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man.
We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea. But enough; I don’t want to write more from “Underground.”
Notes from the Underground – F. Dostoyevsky
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/600/600-h/600-h.htm#chap0210
Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others.
Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete beastiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself.
A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn’t it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it.
He has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea- he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility… Do get up from your knees and sit down, I beg you, these posturings are false, too.
Tor, you’ve obviously stayed up at night and lost some sleep, a thing I feel I invented sometimes. I have a book, “Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?” by James J. Sheehan. He quotes much of Orwell, who in the early part of the 20th century was very much more inclined to support the “empires” and their part in the world stage at the time.
He quotes many people and compares it to what was actually happening and how so many of these people were very brainwashed to support the state at that time.
You say “A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense.”,a quote I read just today in WhoWhatWhy. There are some great quotes about lying in this piece. Here’s the link, http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001u_yFdNLH8PiuMp4V7M32bp5MKoIDFBK8j_YWbRMP_9N8zlSpSVmulzniA-Vg0Kj7dnYT6wFwZ87K6VYbwkoUu6t0tZE2yikFdd9nZU-SE13wixdhza9UurppjdgEjQHRgk9Epi7xBr7HqiolE0fDHzyJ8YJoU2fYnUBKxnZlYiA0uzaAeaLaKJbSoHRc9gN9GWuatuTTqgowB3Ubmi75DlwmGl7R1kYYR5UiOVeifXRcwAndsuCnKDJ0xhe7_V1K&c=Dux4vu3b5RhpL-Ar0WO8abAkft7NMwhqsh6NQJuV7kgObUeSvmi3Dg==&ch=sKNqal3FBTVNXjWp0fBL6-v03IgeGaQZeNDo9Y3BnbAJ03y4iYQB7Q==
Sorta long one eh? I had a sort of head start disbelieving govt. propaganda since most of it didn’t make sense when I was in grade school and Soldier of Fortune I got to read at the barbershop didn’t jive with the MSM and I rejected religion early. Once a coach teaching civics to us freshmen in HS and told us we might educated ourselves on what was really going on in VN since we were soon to be there also. We took it seriously and not a single person in my class failed to smell the hypocrisy and hence, not one served in the military. We were just small town(very)kids, farms kids, constantly exposed to the “love it or leave it” mentality. Evidently, we did neither.
We were THE only class in our school to have that distinction of not serving. I’m thankful for someone waking me up to it and making me confront the real reasons and not just be a willing pawn.
My point is, everybody went through a long process to sniff out the rats and identify where they lived. I’ve gone through many changes in just the last ten years….to the point of probably having voted my last time. I’ve changed my views also from conversing with people on line, EPA being one of the most influential with very informed and intelligent people not to leave out eric himself.
I don’t get here often and really miss it. I’m with you in spirit though. Hold the line.
We follow principles to conclusions, Clover. You simply exist by rote – doing what you “feel” and “believe” because it “works” (for you) without considering whether it’s right – and whether what you “believe” might be wrong.
Dear Eric,
Sometimes I almost feel guilty demolishing clover’s “arguments.”
It’s so easy it’s almost unsportsmanlike. Like shooting fish in a barrel.
AnCaps are “Rabidly Consistent”. Not just that, we can not accept inconsistencies. It actually hurts to see an inconsistency and not call it what it is. You call it taxes, Clover. Tell me how it is not theft? You see the draft or jury “duty”, how, Clover, (I had a dog named Clover, a basset hound) is that different from slavery? You do not chase something to its final conclusion. Statist are the most inconsistent and illogical persons around. It is people like you who are too scared to ask my corporation for a project so you convince a professional thug to pass a law (It’s for the children) to force my “donation”. Get your proxy hands out of my pocket.
SirIrb you ask why taxes are not theft. If you are living in any country you have to live by the laws of that country. If you do not pay taxes that you owe because they are laws of our country then you are breaking the laws. If you buy a house where you know that there are property taxes then you are under a local “contract/law” to pay those taxes. If you do not pay you are in default of that contract. Stealing is when there are no contracts in place and you take money or goods from others that does not belong to you.
SirIrb if you do not want to live by the laws of our country then you try to change them in a non-violent way or you leave or you go to jail. You take the choice that works for you.
clover wrote: “Who in their right mind with food, a car, a house and many other things would follow the libertarian movement into the vast unknown.”
Freedom sure is scary for those who rely on government to feed them, provide transportation, house them, and provide them with loot fished from the pockets of producers! I can certainly see why you would be so apprehensive.
Clover, did you know that silence betokens consent or affirmation?
I have asked you repeatedly whether you “work” for the government. Or are employed by some sort of rent-seeking company that derives its income from government.
Your silence confirms my suspicion.
You are a tax feeding parasite. Which is why the government “works” for you, why are fed, housed and provided transportation.
If I’m wrong about this, I will apologize publicly. But first, you must demonstrate that you are not a government “worker” or tax-feeder of some other stripe.
I don’t understand how someone can know about the concept of NAP and reject it. It makes no sense to me. When I was a statist, I can honestly claim that it was so because I had not yet learned of the NAP and it’s brilliant simplicity. I can only conclude that those who know about the NAP and reject it are either mentally retarded, so unable to comprehend the concept or are morally bankrupt.
With all of Clover’s responses that I have read, I can only conclude that he is in the first group.
Inconsistencies – The problem isn’t mental retardation (I’ve known several folks that suffered from Down’s Syndrome and they were very loving people(. It is in fact, insanity. Clover and his kith and kin appear to be psychopathic or at least sociopathic. They don’t care about anyone but themselves, then they impute that character flaw to the rest of us that simply wish to be free and left alone. I fear it is that simple.
Boothe, that’s exactly what I meant by mentally retarded (incapable of mentally processing information).
Mentally or morally broken… To me those are the only explanations for the rejection of the NAP.
Why would a slave run away to the north? Especially if master never whipped him and treated him real good? Why did the house slave run away? It’s not like he had to pick cotton. He got to live in the big house, got to eat well, got nice clothes. Why would he run away?
Clover there’s a lot of things people want to do with their lives besides go to work and pay taxes. It’s slavery. It’s nice house-slave like slavery, but it’s still slavery. For now anyway.
You like it and that’s fine, but the problem is, it’s not sustainable unless other people lose the life they want to live in the process. Your kind does lose in a libertarian world. They lose the ability to enslave other people, by influencing the common owner, the state, to create comfortable boring lives for themselves.
It’s not sustainable even with good people running it, but because it is what it really is, it’s run by sociopaths, thieves, and others that are using it to strip mine the productive people at ever faster rates. This means the time of collapse is being moved further towards the present.
There is a fair chance if you’re under 80 years old Clover that you’ll get to see the result. Either a libertarian system developing peacefully through freeing people’s minds or a crushing totalitarian system or something totally broken with endless conflict between those wanting to impose their own governments out of the ruins.
So what is it Clover? The known train wrecks that are certainty on the present course or the libertarian unknown where we at least make an attempt a free peaceful society without coercion and slavery?
I live in “the South”. I happen to live in a rural area, very peaceful and comforting, if you don’t crave the fast-paced life of cities and larger towns.
Where I live there is a resident Mockingbird, or two, which can sing even as they are flying. (I have a hard enough time chewing gum and walking at the same time.) The mockingbird is so awesome, so compelling, with its near constant variety of calls, that as the old saying goes: “It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
Mockingbirds add to my quality of life; they are therefore, precious to me.
My opinion is that Tor is the resident mockingbird of EPAutos. He adds to my quality of comprehending the NAP and it’s practical application. He has such a variety of “calls” that there is no opportunity to be bored by his frequent “songs”.
Thank you, Eric, for hosting this blog. Thank you for the pertinence of your articles and for attracting the quality of comments posted here.
I donated $20 this month; I consider my donation to be like higher-learning tuition. I would like to be in a position to donate more. And well worth every penny.
Thanks Linda; by performing free market actions such as these, anything becomes possible.
northern mockingbird sings
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMpe34Aign4
my fave? the mourning dove coo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oNljd7R1f8
mockingbird song serenade
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNNX3f3_svo
Dear Linda, Tor,
Did they look anything like this?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cc/Mockingjay.JPG
The novel’s title comes from the hybrid birds of the same name that feature in the novels’ storyline.[7] As Publishers Weekly has stated, “the hybrid birds that are an important symbol—of hope and rebellion—throughout the books”.[8] Collins likens Katniss to a Mockingjay because both “should never have existed”.[9]
And I’ve had Mockingbirds get into it so hard they almost make you want to pull your hair out, but about that time, you have to laugh and tell them they’re doing a bang=up job. And we have a plethora of birds of all sorts so the Mockingbird is really busy, can cut quite the rut. And now we have at least 3 species of dove, all with their own song which must add a lot to the Mockingbird’s reportoire.
Thanks, Linda!
And I’ll second what you wrote about Tor. I look forward to his posts, too!
Again, Garysco sounds just like clover, thankfully, just in this one small subject area. Because he can’t personally imagine a free market justice system, it must just be a fantasy, and not something that can ever actually exist.
Gavin is sober as a DARE mouse. He’s working straight out of Sun Tzu’s playbook. The only way you can attack the tyrants is at the fruit checkpoints. At the courthouse receptionists.
To say Gavin’s going to escalate and become violent, is as reasonable as saying Larken Rose is going to start shooting cops. Or libertarians are going to start running over pedestrians, should we succeed in making it so there’s no specific driving laws preventing them from doing so.
As I understand it, Garysco’s saying that when cops say do X Y or Z it is a kind of game of Simon Says. The cop might shout any command at all. But because of his being part of a different set of ethics, you must comply because Simon Says.
The only proper response in this authoritarian game is to do whatever authority(Simon) says without thought or hesitation. Or face a legally justified bullet for not playing the safety game.
I doubt I agree with Gavin on any point of what constitutions and the bill of rights magically can do for us. But I’m glad someone’s out there, buying the rest of us some more time to grow and innovate our way out of this spiraling toilet bowl.
http://callmegav.com/2013/11/califonia-fruit-police/
Garysco says:
“If they kill him for moving his hands to the wrong place before they know he is not an armed physical threat, well he had that right as well. Would he be wrong?”
More cloveric crap. If you just add the word Eric or BrentP in there every 6 or 7 words to those kind of arguments, it would be identical.
I’m just speculating here, but I think Garysco’s brain is wired different in just this particular subject matter. Like a hard drive sector error of Garysco’s brain. Maybe we each have these kinds of disk errors?
For our own sakes, let’s try not being so concrete bound to the facts in question. To this one guy and what he is or isn’t. Try to discuss principles if possible.
– – –
Purpose of justice –
A) Now, as it currently is
B) Under FMJ – free market justice –
1
justice Now -To enforce government laws
justice Under FMJ – To restore individuals’ damaged rights
2
Scope
Scope now – Anyone suspected of breaking a law – with victim or without
Scope Under FMJ – Only those accused of harming a victim
3
Funding
Funding now – By taxpayers, under threat of force
Funding in a FMJ – By plaintiffs, then by the losers
4
Detection
Detection now – Except for P.I.s whom only the rich can afford, detection is monopolized by government police forces all of whose members are motivated by the wish to play safe and be good bureaucrats. There being no competition, effectiveness is pathetic: in NY City, only three quarters of all murders, even, are solved by an arrest – in a good year.
detection under FMJ – Detective agencies would be retained by plaintiffs on a contingency basis with the profit motive uppermost. Inter-agency agreements would facilitate information sharing and contracts might well provide for full payment only upon the subsequent trial outcome – ensuring as far as feasible that the right perp is brought to court.
5
Apprehension
Apprehension now – accused perps are locked up and treated like scum, without recourse; police and prosecutors may lie brazenly to extract a “confession”, rights are regarded as a nuisance, evidence is routinely planted.
Apprehension FMJ – Those arrested would retain their full self-ownership rights and if treated with anything but the utmost respect would be free to sue for mistreatment – and expect to win big damages if successful – regardless of the outcome of the primary trial.
6
Trial
Trial now – Trials occur only in courts monopolized by government, which employs and therefore heavily influences the judge, the prosecutor, the defense attorney the marshals and even the janitor.
Juries are selected under government supervision, and the prosecutor spends as much stolen money as he sees fit to select one likely to favor his case. The judge controls what counsel may say, and what evidence may be seen by the jury.
The entire proceeding is a farce, especially in cases where government has an interest in the outcome. Even when it does not that outcome quite often acquits the guilty and convicts the innocent.
Trial under FMJ – Trials would be held only in courts operating competitively for profit, trading on their reputation for integrity and fairness as their prime asset. Procedures (rules of evidence, jury or not, etc) would be set by agreement between court and adversaries, with a jury trial being the default. No court would accept a case in whose outcome it had an interest – so as to preserve intact its priceless reputation for integrity. No case would reach a court except on the complaint of an actual victim, ie a person whose rights have allegedly been harmed; “victimless crimes” would therefore never appear.
7
Disposition
Disposition now – The victim, if any, is dismissed – perhaps with a word of thanks for his testimony but never with any compensation. The convicted defendant is imprisoned. All taxpayers pay for his accommodation, under threat of force. He is never rehabilitated. The lawyers do nicely, and the gullible public is told by a brainless media that “justice has been done.”
disposition under FMJ – If the defendant is found responsible he will be ordered to compensate his victim, so as to restore him to his or her former state as far as is feasible. He will also be required to pay for the costs of his detection, apprehension and trial. There are no taxpayers, nor any attempt to burden them with any costs. Every party therefore wins – except the aggressor, who loses in strict proportion to the damage he initiated.
8
Monitoring
Monitoring now – Convicts are kept in government cages, so destroying what may be left of their potential for productive living. Taxpayers are robbed of about $60 billion a year to pay for it, and a substantial staff of guards is employed in the soul-destroying work of keeping them imprisoned.
Monitoring under FMJ – Provided the compensation ordered is delivered on time, no particular restraint would be needed except in a few rare cases (serial rape or murder, for example) and so prisons as we know them would not exist. Electronic tracking (ankle bracelets) might be used, but only for the primary purpose of ensuring that restitution is made to the victim. Aggressors would therefore stay productive and have maximum incentive to pay off debts to victims and get on with normal life.
9
Reversal
Reversal of error now – “Higher” government courts review and sometimes reverse erroneous decisions; but since all such judges are also government employees this provides little protection when government was a party to the case. The US Supreme Court is not even obliged to hear appeals and in fact dismisses 95% of those presented without being heard. If reversals are ordered, there is still no compensation provided to the person wrongly convicted, even after years in a government cage. Evidence uncovered by the “Innocence Project” and others, including that of DNA, indicates that in a shockingly large minority of cases innocent people get convicted.
Reversal of error under FMJ – At every stage in the process, all involved know they are personally responsible for errors and so will tend to make many fewer. Each will be liable to the victim, if they cause an accused but innocent person to suffer.
@Tor – What in your mind should have those other people in the building do or not do to Gavin’s presence and complaints about a particular law he did not even read himself? I can only guess that the “should not even exist” state funded worker bees should have just looked and stared at him until he was done and left the building.
Is he a clover by running for a government funded political office? I mean he is supporting the Statist system by asking for the job.
If your argument is against my cloverism is that tax payer-state courthouses exist, well that is a whole different topic.
It’s not about what’s in my mind. Or whether these Founding Filmers are any better than the rest of us.
It’s about your insincerity. About your cowering behind euphemisms and political language to hide the atrocities and brutalizations you committed of your own free will.
I understand now, that when I was party to my own violations of the NAP, of robbing the unsophisticated in the court system, and that what I did was wrong. Even now I’m only one degree away from being a tax feeder myself. I help keep kids incarcerated in a roundabout way. I’m not above reproach here.
But you’re seeking to use words to make lies sound truthful and murder and human caging respectable.
It was watching this video specifically, that turned me permanently against government and towards the free market. There are many like it. This one is mine.
Collateral Murder – Wikileaks – Iraq
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0
George Orwell:
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties.
Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.
Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called PACIFICATION.
Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called TRANSFER OF POPULATION or RECTIFICATION OF FRONTIERS.
People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called ELIMINATION OF UNRELIABLE ELEMENTS.
Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism.
He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.” Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
While freely conceding that the Soviet régime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.
The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity
50 Ways to Leave Your Governor – Orwell essays
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html
You might consider doing as I have done and also develop a rational ethical standard – meaning, you’ll know not just what’s right and wrong, but why it’s right and wrong.
Some already have a religious basis for such behavior; the way of self ownership I propose involves a universal basis, not dependent on religion but on our nature as human beings. Everyone wants to hold himself in high respect, and I believe what I’m discussing provides one a sound basis for doing so.
Yours and Clover’s religion of government is not a system that allows you to hold yourself in high respect. No torrent of invectives, nor obfuscation from your keyboards will change that.
You need not adopt anything I propose. But you truly would benefit from developing your own sound and stable basis for acting rationally, and for living and cooperating with others in this world.
@Tor – OK. You won’t answer with any original solution of your own, only accuse. I will leave it there.
Garysco asked, “What in your mind should have those other people in the building do or not do to Gavin’s presence and complaints about a particular law he did not even read himself? I can only guess that the “should not even exist” state funded worker bees should have just looked and stared at him until he was done and left the building.”
The key phrase runs along the lines of, ‘ What have those other people in the building do or not do.’
Back in The Day, no one had to enter into the local courthouse through metal detection gates while emptying out their pockets and removing their belts under the the watchful eye of a Centurion.
When things “changed” after 9/11, those people asked to guard the entrance should have quit their jobs in protest, or something like that. But no, they went along, to get along.
The question isn’t “What should they do”.
The question is, “What have they done, and, what are they doing”?
Do you think this fella doing the filming would have even had an audience in 1970 or 1980?
Why?
Asking, “Should the state funded worker bees just looked and stared at him until he was done and left the building.” is a lot like saying, “Should the Nazi concentration camp guards just looked at the inmates and stared at them until they left”? Or, “Should the East German guards at The Wall have just looked at the inmates and stared at them until they left”?
The guards in the courthouse are much like the unitedstate RE’ The Wall
Russia also offered to withdraw from eastern Germany, with the same proviso. The US refused, condemning the eastern Germans to decades more of foreign rule.
RE: The defense of the response of the courthouse guards.
I’m reminded of this bit:
“The slogan conveys a “first position” that is deceptive and manipulative… idolatrous, really.
This argument starts with an unspoken assumption that the state is beyond question and that any failures must be attributed to someone else.” …
All Idolatry Shares a Single Root
Dear Gary,
Helot is correct. I expressed the same point in slightly different terms with my holdup men in a store analogy.
The holdup men holding guns on the store clerks and store customers are the moral counterparts of the goons and vermin who unilaterally “founded a government” then proceeded to demand obedience and money from anyone with the misfortune to be in their vicinity.
Sovereign individuals have the inalienable natural right to flatly reject the “order” unilaterally established by these goons and vermin.
The initial violation of the NAP was by “The Government.” Any subsequent refusal to knuckle under is plain and simple self-defense. No question about it.
Dear Gary,
I realize this hardline take on moral legitimacy may be psychologically disorienting, even emotionally unsettling.
But it is 100% consistent with an Objectivist (revisionist Objectivist, or properly understood Objectivism) understanding of right and wrong.
Speaking for myself, I used to have a very different feeling level experience of libertarian ideology. When I was still a champion of “constitutionalism and the rule of law,” I very likely would have taken the same stance you just did against Eric, Tor, and helot.
But in recent years, my feeling levels have begun to catch up with my intellectual level understanding of libertarian ethics and morality.
Before I was closer to a Lockean. Now I am closer to a Stirnerite.
I’m at a loss, Bevin. The ‘Self’ is nothing? I was just this evening ‘forced’ to watch a chick-flick film, ‘Wall Flower’, or something like that. A character in the film was told by his co-ed prison (high school) instructor, “I will either call you __’his name’_ or, I will call you ‘nothing’.”
The student was referred to as, ‘Nothing’ throughout most of the rest of the film.
I’ll have to read more to understand. [Great! Read more, as if I haven’t read enough? …Page freaking two:]
“Stirner argues that the concept of the self is something impossible to fully comprehend; a so-called ‘creative nothing’ he described as an “end-point of language”.” …
Philosophy of Max Stirner
Interesting. I asked Tor 2 questions that he refuses to answer, only insult and tell me how to think. I see here everything but an answer to 2 concrete questions.
No offense intended, but we all have personal opinions and philosophies of could’a, would’a, should’a that make great conversation and a potential for learning something new. But they have little value if not useful in answering practical nuts & bolts questions in the real world.
Dear helot,
Did Stirner say the self is nothing?
If he did, then I take it back. I am not a Stirnerite.
I only mentioned Stirner because he took a hardline in rejecting all “authoritay.”
Stirner is not one of the libertarians I investigated in any depth. I only know him from a handful of quotes.
I should probably be more careful about making such declarations in the future.
Who is most like the bull you shouldn’t grab by the horns?
I’d say the guys who’ve raised a million dollars in slush funds, just for this one minor mafia position.
Doc Hastings is probably the type of ruthless bull you don’t want to get caught in the ring with, if you’ve done him any kind of wrong or rubbed him the wrong way.
Ol’ Gavin hasn’t surpassed $8,000 bucks even, so I don’t think he’s going to win this time.
http://ballotpedia.org/Washington's_4th_Congressional_District_elections,_2014#Gavin_Seim
Cops are at most mere janitors and garbagemen with guns. Irrelevant municipal flunkies really. They might get a few scraps, but they never ride the gravy train. They’re permitted to terrorize who ever the made men tell them they’re free to terrorize.
Ghetto proles, druggies, immigrants, sovereigns, deadbeat dads, those kinds of guys. They’re not their own men in the least. That’s for sure.
Seim is a foot soldier in a rival gang, new wise guys trying to move into the established incumbents gang turf. I wish him the best of luck, maybe he might even slow down the machine once in a while.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections_in_Washington,_2014
Cops Rough Up Seim for Suspicion of LEGAL Gun!
19,204 views. 336 upvotes, 65 downvotes.
US Congressional candidate Gavin Seim (callmegav.com) has an encounter when he asks for the State mandated method of securing his weapon at Grant County Courthouse in Ephrata WA
– – –
Seim is also the fruit checkpoint refusal guy. This has over a half million views. He might have a bright future, if he’s not really running for office. If he’s instead showing individuals how to stand up to tyrants, how to be self owners. In that case, good for him, keep it up Gavin!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlxJHMRzsvM
@Tor – Cops Rough Up Seim for Suspicion of LEGAL Gun!
19,204 views. 336 upvotes, 65 downvotes.
Not exactly a statement full of details of the actual event, but well enough written to garner support.
Why does this donkey keep picking piss-ant fights over piss-ant events he creates? Not exactly founding father material. IMHO.
Seim, Please go and get a real issue to run your GoPro on, not just running your mouth at a fruit inspector or a courthouse receptionist, then standing back and filming the results.
That is how the free market works, there’s no avoiding it. He has 7,055 followers of his YouTube channel, so there’s a market signal for you.
I’ll take his mouth over anything you hear on C-Span any day. Which one of those are better than Gavin? Is it because they have nice suits, law degrees, and a title of authority? It seems there are still a lot of Royalists among us. Vermin and vermin admirers.
Bad mouthing a duly deputized fruit inspector? Perish the thought. How does one even type such a thing? My bafflement grows even more baffleified.
Founding fathers were the lowest of the low, at least when acting in the founding capacity. Even a homeless transient with a cardboard begging sign is only after voluntary contributions.
You get how ghetto kids are dumb for wanting to kill for a pair of shoes. But are blind to adults wanting to kill millions for a nameplate and tin horn political title.
Your sequitirs aren’t sequiting like they should.
I’m not familiar with pissant as a modifier. I also never understood what Gordon Ramsey accomplishes by calling everyone in his kitchen a “donkey.”
I guess we all have our vulnerabilities. I don’t like being told I’m crazy, or that my writings make no sense. So I’ll just have to assume pissant and donkey are quite wounding to some people.
piss·ant [pis-ant] Show IPA
noun
1.
Slang: Vulgar. a person or thing of no value or consequence; a despicable person or thing.
2.
Obsolete . an ant.
adjective
3.
Slang: Vulgar. insignificant or worthless.
Also, piss-ant.
Origin:
1655–65, in sense “ant”; piss + ant, probably orig. on the model of pismire
Was it really all that great, the way everyone tensed up and tried to “act cool” because you were nearby in a uniform?
Seems sort of sad, being the projectionist in a neo-concentration camp.
You’re still out riding fences, open the gate and come inside with us regular folks. You desperados and desperado hunters are two faces of the same lonely people, the way I see it.
Desperado – by demenche – 342 subscribers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDAIpqo8oow
Desperado – by Liv – 48 subscribers so far
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxmaZV-GHlE
From what you said earlier, it seems some fine things have been laid on your table. You ain’t gettin no younger.
I never mean to mock you, I did go thru a vicious attack phase early on, but that was before I knew what a good man you already are, and what a better one you could be still.
Oughten you better let some mundane girl love you, before its too late? Just a lyric to consider or disregard as you wish.
Desperado – Tor-i Amos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3Y_kuig1Rw
@Tor – Gordon Ramsey stole it from me. I have been using the “synonym for” longer.
Go watch his fruit inspector video. Another case of gorilla chest pounding while atop the Empire State Building. Much ado about nothing. But “he showed ’em who’s boss” after he was down the road a few miles. Pffft.
I get it. He is a cult of personality with a YouTube press pass around his neck. Like I said before, not founding father material.
“Pissant is an epithet for an inconsequential, irrelevant, or worthless person, especially one who is irritating or contemptible out of proportion to his or her perceived significance.”
post scriptum – While on that note, lets not make his unanswerable rant to a receptionist about a box she has no control over, a private security guard who asked him to leave, and a very informative “tongue-lashing” of common prol on video taping freedom into something it isn’t.
All of those in that room pry their paychecks forcefully from my labor and deserve everything thrown at them (and more).
We could ask Bevin how many Chinese or Russian equivalent type of these videos in Standard Mandarin dialect one can reach via Baidu.
Do you think this is allowed anywhere in Muslim majority countries? Try finding one narrated in Arabic, on the Yamli Arabic search engine. Both Hebrew and Arabic are descendants of the language Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. Guess the Jeez is not so influential in the lands of his birth, huh.
Why does so much of the world routinely kill, cage, or re-educate such an insignificant GoPro guy?
Serious humorless nations not on the cusp of being frog-marched out of their homes by Pantsuit Polly to start work on the National Honey Do List like we just might be. Hmmm.
So pissant is another word for mundane then. Okay.
And cult of personality is anyone who idolizes long dead cadavers he reverently calls: founders. Check.
IC below gets it. Belling the cat, in even an obscure way, is still a victory. Screw everyone who lives via that courtcathouse and destroy markets and freedom while serving as whores for authority.
I’m wondering what it must be like, hugging it out with Barack, and Kissing Killary?
I hear those sores in her mouth make kissing her taste like Blood & Roses?
http://thehungergames.wikia.com/wiki/President_Coriolanus_Snow
Though far more lucid and genial, you seem of the same mind and in the same cohort as clover when it comes to this domain.
This Gavin guy is a nobody scofflaw, and if someone duly authorized decides to gun him down in the name of public safety, well that’s the system we’ve inherited from our brave and wise UFZF’s – our Undying Founding Zombie Fathers. Check?
Sorry, but this guy is a donkey. He creates the probable cause by asking for a box to put his gun in, then complains they have no reason to check him for same inside the courthouse.
Garysco,
Regardless of his status as a donkey,
Does the statute he reference require a lock box to be in the same building as the courthouse?
If yes, then there should have been a place to secure the gun in the same building as the courthouse.
I can understand why the LEO wanted to search him, even though he did not state that he had a gun. The way he was speaking caused me to think he did have a gun.
@Mith – Here is how I see the video. He intentionally goes to the building with his camera and an attitude to make an issue out of a “box” that should be there. BFD in my opinion, but that is what he wants to do, so fine. I don’t know what he expected, maybe they would all jump up and install one for him right then and there? He made his point to the receptionist, then makes a donkey out of himself to the guy on the bench and the security guard, all about a missing GUN locker. IMHO from experience, a courthouse has some very angry upset people there daily. Many in family court, where lots of shootings and stabbings have taken place in the courtroom and hallway. So guns and knives have been verboten for many years.
When the guard calls the cops about an unruly guy who is giving him trouble about a GUN issue in the building he gets all indignant about the response. What did he think was going to happen? In other words, acting like an angry jerk, he took the issue beyond a “box” that should have been in the lobby and then complained about his rights being violated. Gun locker rebel without a cause.
Garysco,
I think we are basically on the same page.
His attitude did not help his position. The receptionist and the LEOs were probably not the people to belabor his point regarding the missing lock box (assuming it should have been there by statute).
The decision makers for the town should be where to direct his complaints or a court to argue against the town for failing to follow the statute.
Given the current state, he is fortunate in not receiving worse treatment.
@Mith – Amen, brother.
I actually read the statute. Yes it did say “the local legislative authority shall provide either a stationary locked box sufficient in size for pistols and key to a weapon owner for weapon storage, or shall designate an official to receive weapons for safekeeping”.
The thing the guy missed reading is number 1 and after “(1) It is unlawful for any person to enter the following places when he or she knowingly possesses or knowingly has under his or her control a weapon:” Not having a lock box does not override number 1. There was a clearly posted sign to not have weapons.
Yes Eric if we get enough of his kind in office we would have a bad nation. Thankfully there are only a handful of you people that would vote for a jerk like that.
Yes Eric I could care less if you think we should have guns in a courthouse or in my local restaurant. It is a bad thing. It is like carrying a ball bat in a public place with the saying on it “I am going to hurt some people.”
Since there has not been any public gunfights in my area ever, why should you now need to carry weapons that threaten people. Yes Eric carrying a gun in public threatens people. Is your right to carry more important than a family not feeling safe going into a restaurant when you are there? I do understand the libertarian views more all the time. You want to go back and live in the wild west times where there were not roads but paths. There were no bridges instead they needed boats to cross a larger river. Eric I and hundreds of millions of people do not want to go back to those times. Why would you want to?
Clover – We already have plenty of your kind in office. And we already have a bad country. Maybe it’s time to try something different? Your assertion about the ‘statutory prohibition’ on carrying a weapon in “the following places” does not override the Second Amendment. What made the cops really uncomfortable (and almost always does) is when Seim asked them about their oaths of office. The one cop came right out and admitted he didn’t care about it. A man whose word is no good – a proven liar by his own admission – swaggering around with a gun, lording it over the people that pay his salary; nice. The other cop refused to discuss his oath, saying that it was a game. Do you think it might be that he knew he’d already violated it? The ugly truth of the matter those cops oaths meant nothing to them when it came right down to it, whether you like that fact or not.
You see Clover, you’re all for “obeying the law” until it comes to the Supreme Law of the Land. Ever heard of “The Supremacy Clause” Clover? Read up on it. Your precious federal courts have been relying on it to tell the States what to do since 1796 (Ware v. Hylton). As recently as 1957 the Supreme Court even ruled that the Constitution (which inconveniently for you and your ilk includes the Bill of Rights) even supersedes international treaties ratified by the senate (see Reid v. Covert).
If virtually everyone in any courthouse were armed you’d have a lot less trouble than the kind Garysco brought up. Someone who was really bent on killing his ex or settling a score could easily walk in calmly, distract Officer Oathless, drop him before he could even respond, then move on to his next intended victim. It would “only” take minutes for the other cops to arrive (as you saw) when seconds count. But with just 30% of the general public in that courthouse armed, the response would be almost immediate. Hence, the likelihood of that sort of thing happening to begin with would be very low. The asinine thing was, they knew if Seim was really intent on doing harm he wouldn’t have walked in there asking about a lock box. He would have walked in shooting. What the cops did was harassment in an effort to get him to shut up and go away. They wanted to go back to their routine; how dare a lowly tax-payer interrupt them and ask them – law enforcement officers – if they knew the law? Which they didn’t.
Ever hear of a mass shooting in a gun shop? How about at a gun show? No Clover, mass shootings occur at “gun free” zones that post their “safety” policy on the door, like schools, theatres and malls. Of course if we let average citizens carry in courthouses the judges and lawyers would have to be a little careful who they screwed, now wouldn’t they? And “we” can’t have that. But you don’t comprehend any of this do you Clover? You think that everyone is just like you; lacking self-control. So “guns” scare you unless they’re in the hands of trained professionals, right? And no matter how many well documented instances of police misconduct due to their lack of self-control and outright lawlessness we show you, you still can’t see the light…because you don’t want to.
Boothe, Clover and those of the same ilk do not care about obeying the law, they care about obeying authority. That’s why they don’t concern themselves with laws that limit government and get in the way of their good ideas. They believe in the rule of man over man. To them it’s always that they don’t have the right people running things. They just don’t have enough power. They just couldn’t go far enough. If they just got the right people the powerful government would create utopia.
When clovers say ‘obey the law’, they mean ‘authority’.
Dear Brent,
“Clover and those of the same ilk do not care about obeying the law, they care about obeying authority. That’s why they don’t concern themselves with laws that limit government and get in the way of their good ideas. ”
Good point! Glad you underscored it.
For example, clover says “The law is the law, dammit!”
But what is the highest law in the land? Isn’t it the Constitution? Isn’t it the Second Amendment?
So what happened all of a sudden for all of clover’s veneration for the law? Poof!
Dear Brent,
Speed limits and lane discipline is another area where the clovers’ demand that everyone “Obey the law!” is really not about the law, but rather about enforcing obedience.
Many clovers have no qualms about speeding up well past the posted limit in order to “punish” anyone who would pass them when they are already driving at the limit.
Clearly it’s all about forcing others to obey, not about “respecting rules made for everyone’s safety.”
BrentP – I well know and concur. Clover is sooooo smart that he should be making all the critical decisions for the rest of us (not). Oh I understand his mindset probably as well as you do. But it never hurts to remind these “law & order” types just what the supreme law here in the states really is. It just chaps their asses when we do it; hence the “we’re gonna change it!” frantic response it has evoked from “Sir Clover” in past posts (by the way Clover, good luck with that). Because even though his real god is “authoritay”, he still has to live with the actual legalism of the written law. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as forcing statists to confront the written law (even though I was never party to it) and see them experience the cognitive dissonance it brings on. So I try to do it as often as I can. 😉
I get all that, Gary.
On the other hand, a free man ought to be able to carry a weapon with him – and not be assaulted on suspicion of same. The video is educational in the sense that it starkly shows who gets to carry guns (not us) and who does. And what those who do think about those who don’t.
The guy was very clearly non-violent. The response was over-the-top, as is typical of the hut! hut! hut! set.
@Eric – I disagree. HE initiated the confrontation. I get no sense from the video that his “packing a gun” had any problem until he made it one. Pull the bull’s tail and you will get the horns.
He definitely pushed their buttons. I agree.
But – as I see it – the point he was trying to make (that a free man has a right to carry a gun without being assaulted because Authoritay is “uncomfortable”) was valid.
It’s like asserting one’s rights during a traffic stop. Cops will see it as “confrontational” – and it will likely increase your odds of being jacked with. But who’s in the right?
The expectation seems to be we’re supposed to be meek, defer to Authoritay. Which I get, as a practical consideration.
But, should we?
Who are these people?
As I see it, we ought to be free to tell ’em to fuck off – and they ought to be powerless to do a damn thing about it. These costumed creeps are not peace officers. They’re just “law enforcement” goons looking to enforce laws; that is, to confect “crime” in the absence of any victim.
Feed ’em fish heads….
Clover writes:
“Eric you say that you have the right to do anything you dang well please to a policeman and they are supposed to take it.”
In fact I said no such thing.
I said a cop doesn’t have the right to do anything he “dang well pleases” to me.
Quite a difference.
You’re so tiresome, Clover.
Why not try to debate what I actually did say rather than lie about the things I said?
So Eric, you liked how Gavin handled himself? What if a policeman stopped you and acted like Gavin did towards you. Would you thank them? I understand libertarians like you Eric. You do not have the same standards for all people and you are proud of it.
History of force
Eric back thousands of years ago they said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. You have changed that to a bullet through the head for an eye and a bullet through the head for a tooth and a bullet through the head for a traffic ticket. Your ideas as libertarians is not equal force but death for anything even close to force.
Eric that is exactly why i do not want your kind having guns in public and exactly why a family would not want to go out to eat in a restaurant when you were there and why restaurants then do not want you in there with guns. Eric it is not government that is stopping you from having guns in public but the private companies and stores that are starting to block your kind. The government is supposed to support the majority of the people’s interests. The vast majority do not want your kind around in public. It is not the government but the people that are speaking.
Clover, here’s the difference:
Gavin neither had nor attempted to use official state power against the cop. He didn’t “do” anything to them. They could have ignored him; they were free to walk away.
Am I free to ignore your black-clad, buzz-cut, mirror sunglass-wearing heroes? MayI simply walk away if I find them annoying?
Eric Gavin was acting like a jerk to a secretary. Tell me Eric what you would say if a policeman acted like that toward a secretary? Eric you said the policeman could have just walked away. Yes Eric and so could Gavin. The ONLY reason he was there was so the idiot libertarians who watched his film would be proud of him. Eric I am not proud of jerks who act like that around secretaries. Tell me again Eric would you like policemen to act like that when you talk to them? It is a very easy question for most people.
Clover,
Acting like a jerk (accepting your argument for the sake of discussion) is annoying, perhaps. But it’s not physical assault, now is it?
But when one of your “heroic” law enforcers comes along, assault is exactly what he does. You are not free to ignore him, or to walk away. If you do, the “hero” will physically assault you. If you attempt to defend yourself, he may even kill you. And the law will see this as ok.
You’re just not very bright, are you?
PS: What do you do for a living, Clover? When are you going to come clean and admit you’re a tax feeder?
Speaking of “acting like a jerk,” how about this quote from a motorcycle cop, posted at policeone.com, a LEO watering hole.
2. Approach
As a professional car stopper (read: motor officer) with eight years on two wheels under my belt, I have one simple technique that has allowed me to surprise occupants of a vehicle time and time again. Whilst they gander out the driver’s side waiting for me to sidle up — I sidle a lot… it’s kinda my schtick — I suddenly appear on the passenger side.
The closer it gets to Halloween, the more tempting it is to lean close to the window and yell “Boo!” to see the reaction and get a quick laugh.
So who’s the jerk now?
Bevin;
(Cop acting like a jerk)..
Optional: “Officer, if you want to waste my time then I’ll waste yours.”
Then you get out your license as if you’re moving under an infra-red alarm system..
Very………………………………………. slowly………………………………
Always with the distortions and lies; or is it just that you’re not smart enough to follow a simple conversation?
I pointed out that all the guy in the video did was talk. Annoying, perhaps. But no physical threats manifested or even implied. The people being talked to were free to ignore the guy, or just walk away. I pointed these facts out – and contrasted them with the realities of interacting with a cop. You can’t ignore the bastard, much less walk away. Because he will physically assault you.
That’s the difference, you got-damned imbecile.
And it’s you – not I – who continues to bring up shooting people.
Dear Rev,
Hey, “Turnabout is fair play.”
Clover writes,
1. “Eric it is not government that is stopping you from having guns in public but the private companies and stores that are starting to block your kind.”
and
2. “The government is supposed to support the majority of the people’s interests. The vast majority do not want your kind around in public. It is not the government but the people that are speaking.”
Re: 1. Under market anarchism, as everyone here has made clear as crystal, ad nauseum, property owners would establish house rules. Market anarchists have no problem with that whatsoever. In fact, it’s what we’ve been pushing for!
R: 2. Here is where clover’s Big Lie becomes obvious. Clover equates “the majority” with “the people.” In other words, some people are not “the people.” Namely, “the minority,” who disagreed with “the majority.”
Clover can’t get it through his thick head that outnumbering others means nothing to market anarchists! Merely belonging to a larger mob does not confer additional rights that one did not have by oneself.
Clover can’t seem to grasp the notion that everyone has the right to be left alone to live in peace. Even if they are in the minority or totally alone. That one should not have to be part of the biggest mob to be safe from aggression.
Clover doesn’t realize that this market anarchist principle protects even him when he is outnumbered and in the minority, or god forbid, alone.
Ain’t that the truth: Clover equates “the majority” with “the people.” In other words, some people are not “the people.” Namely, “the minority,” who disagreed with “the majority.”
The notion put forth in the novel and the film, ‘Animal Farm’ just flies right on over atop his/her/its head, Whooshh!
Dear Helot,
Right on!
You know, the more I debate mainstream statists, the more I realize how utterly hollow their rationalizations for monopoly state power are.
When a judge, who is a loyal member of the crime family known as “The Government” whitewashes the actions of a LEO, who is a loyal member of the same crime family, what other “ruling” can we expect?
It’s a miracle the crime family was able to keep up the appearance of “liberty and justice for all” as long as it did.
Since 9/11 however, “everything has changed.” Not substantively. The monopolistic state was always a rigged game. But the scam is now out in the open. The crime family members aren’t even bothering to conceal it.
It’s a case of “We write the laws. We interpret the laws. We enforce the laws. So shut up the fuck up and sit down!”
Mang. You described things so well in that short bit, Bevin. Perfectly! You got me shaking my head in agreement and …
I used to know a few small time criminals, even They (!) adopted the gooberment line of, “So shut up the fuck up and sit down!”
SHocked the shit out of me to hear them say it.
Maybe it was then I knew they were one and the same?
Anyway, Ya, “It’s a miracle the crime family was able to keep up the appearance of “liberty and justice for all” as long as it did. ”
Almost as much of a miracle as how people Keep looking the other way and/or pretending otherwise even Now.
The Pretenders,… I wanted to post a link to a song that came to mind for no reason, but…
“The single’s B-side, “My City Was Gone” is now the theme music for The Rush Limbaugh Show.”
I’m sure there’s a similar sell-out song for The Left, but if you think about it, doesn’t that wiki quote say a lot about The Right wing of the bird of prey the same as for The Left?
“We write the laws. We interpret the laws. We enforce the laws. So shut up the fuck up and sit down!”
You’ve been to the same courts I have! 🙂
Dear helot, Brent,
Actually I haven’t had too many direct dealings with judges.
But I have had some “instructive” dealings with the IRS.
I can tell you they definitely opened my eyes to the underlying nature of goonvermin.
Dear Eric,
“He definitely pushed their buttons. I agree. But… the point he was trying to make… was valid.”
Absolutely right!
Gandhi: The function of a civil resistance is to provoke response and we will continue to provoke until they respond or change the law. They are not in control; we are.
Gandhi: I, for one, have never advocated passive anything. We must never sumbit to such laws. And I think our resistance must be *active* and provocative!
Gandhi: What you cannot do is accept injustice… You must make the injustice visible, and be prepared to die like a soldier to do so.
Clover (water head):
For the umpteenth time, “the law” (in a Libertarian society) is: No first-use of violence. “Anything” does not “go.”
Can you possibly get that through your pea-brain?
You – and I – have the absolute right to be left in peace do live our lives as we each see fit . . . provided we don’t aggress against others and so long as we cause harm to others.
It’s such a simple, logic thing. But you not only can’t comprehend it. You have to resort to embarrassingly obvious lies to disparage it.
Again: We (Libertarians) want nothing – materially – from you. Just leave us be. We will not take your stuff, nor ask that others take it on our behalf. We will never threaten to harm you physically – or actually harm you – except in defensive response, should you attempt to impose your will on us, or forcibly take our stuff.
How about you, Clover?
No.
You and yours can’t imagine world without violence – deliberate, institutionalized violence. To get what you want. To force others to pay for it.
You can use euphemisms, you can talk all day about the great stuff you have. The fact is you’re nothing but a thug. A cowardly thug.
Some day soon, I hope you get the opportunity to deal with those you victimize on more equal terms – without your army of Clovers backing you up.
Dear Clover,
What part of the “Non-Aggression Principle” or “NAP” don’t you get???
Non=no
Aggression=first use of force, aka “initiation of force”
Non-aggression= NO first use of force. NO initiation of force.
Force under the NAP is only permissible in response to someone else first using force. You are minding your own business. Some thug suddenly attacks you. The thug could be anybody. A mugger. A costumed member of the goonvermin with a badge on his shirt. It makes no difference. If he initiates force, you are permitted to use force in defensive response against him.
How many times must this be explained to you??? Just how dense are you???
Clover, neither Bevin nor Larkin Rose nor any Libertarian I’ve ever known advocates or defends aggressive violence.
And you manage to turn that one around, too!
Eric if Bevin or Larkin do not defend aggressive violence then why do they post videos bringing a call to arms to start killing and in Bevin’s case to post those videos as something that he backs and supports. Eric I have seen dozens of videos and articles where libertarians say they want to kill police or in your case you say it is OK to take the first swing at them just because they are there.
Clover is amazing isn’t he?
He can’t seem to get it through his head that “governments” are not something holier than thou that must be obeyed. Sovereign individuals owe “governments” nothing. Zip. Nada.
Clover has never bothered to think through about how “governments” came into being in the first place, what they are beneath their outer trappings, and why they cannot possibly have any special status that individuals do not.
Clover doesn’t seem to realize that “The Government” he’s familiar with is nothing more than a club that some strangers got together and founded. These strangers, who are no different that you or I, made up a bunch of club rules and established club dues.
So far, no problem.
But then they suddenly began claiming that everyone living inside a line they drew on their club map, was automatically a member of their club whether they wanted to be or not, and had to obey their club rules and pay club dues, whether they wanted to or not.
That is all “The Government” is. Nothing more, nothing less. That is how all conventional monopolistic governments were created.
The fact that they print up a bunch of “official” looking engraved stationery, build some white marble buildings for their offices, design some snappy looking uniforms for their enforcers, means nothing.
It certainly does not mean they have mysteriously acquired the right to order you about or demand money from you.
Clover simply cannot seem to understand this.
*Bolded type added by editor.
Ah, but Clover, we will change it.
And it won’t be to your liking.
Then you can move!
But – and think on this – we won’t force you to do anything. You’d be free to live in peace in our Libertarian society. Own your land, live your life. With one qualification: You wouldn’t be free to prey on others, as you do today.
And that’s what you cant abide. The horrid (to you) notion of not being able to force others to pay your bills, or do as you order them to do.
Right, Clover?
Has it ever occurred to you, Clover, that this country (that is, the people who comprise it) was more prosperous when it was more free? That as it has become less free – thanks to your kind – it has become less and less prosperous? And more and more violent?
And, again: You refuse to deny you’re a government “worker” …
Dear Clover,
You wrote,
“Bevin if I do not like where I am living I would not continuously complain about it when I knew I could not change it. ”
Eric took the words right out of my mouth!
We can change it, and we are determined to do so. We will change the current system, which is based on legalized robbery, to one based on mutual respect and voluntary exchange.
When that happens, you will be the one who can either “love it or leave it.”
Your prosperity isn’t the issue, Clover. Well, it may be for you – in the same was that a mugger’s prosperity is the main thing as far as he’s concerned.
But this discussion is about rights – not what you’ve got. Hitler had lots of stuff, too. And while you may not be a mass murderer, in principle, you and Der Fuhrer have a great deal in common. You both live by violence, taking things from other people.
Clover writes,
“Eric I am far richer in both possessions and money than my grandparents were. ”
He “just doesn’t get it.” He doesn’t realize that the increased wealth is a result of technological advances. He doesn’t realize that without goonvermin leeching off ordinary citizens, ALL of that increased wealth would have wound up in ordinary citizens’ pockets.
Instead the goonvermin skimmed most of it off the top. Ordinary people are somewhat better off than they were before, due to the technological advances. But they are far less well off than they would be if they hadn’t been ripped off by the goonvermin.
Clover, being part of those who receive the “wealth transfers” does not object.
But what he doesn’t realize, is that a completely free market would have generated so much more wealth, that EVEN goonvermin parasites like him would be better off even than he is today.
The now cliched anecdote about the scorpion and the frog crossing the river comes to mind.
Even the kleptocratic global elites would be better off under a genuine free market. They would be even richer than they are now, from their ill-gotten gains.
Alas they are like the scorpion. It’s in their sociopathic nature to sting others, even when objectively it hurts themselves as well.
Clover writes,
“Eric… you say it is OK to take the first swing at them just because they are there.”
Resistance Hit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMrk0twBLd8
Classic scene from “The Great Escape” with James Coburn.
Remember my analogy with the Nazi occupation of Vichy France? This is what I’m talking about.
LEOs aren’t “just there,” innocently munching donuts at Winchells. They were already brutal aggressors, charged with collecting protection money, euphemistically known as “taxes.”
Morally speaking, they can hardly complain if their victims fight back at a time and place of their choosing.
PS:
Left a comment at the YT vid.
Bevin Chu
1 second ago
Basically LEOs in today’s Amerika are no different that this.
The only difference is they hang out at Winchells munching donuts.
Reply
·
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMrk0twBLd8
“Eric I am far richer in both possessions and money than my grandparents were. ”
Every one of your manufactured possessions, thank an engineer or some one doing the same tasks as one. For it is engineers who figure out how to make things cheaper year over year so more and more people can live better for less labor. No thanks to you and the rest of your ungrateful kind.
For your money thank the younger generations and generations unborn who have been robbed through monetary polices that pull the future’s wealth into today.
Clover,
Brent is an engineer. What are you?
A government “worker”?
What have you produced or done? I mean, other than extract other people’s money at gunpoint?
Tell us (as you always put it) what you do for a living, Clover… .
Clover, I realize that it is reflexive of you to resort to insult when you’re intellectually cornered. There’s no way in hell I am going to give you a clue where I work now.
But what I’ve designed lately takes out cost and weight. That’s what many engineers do everyday. Reducing cost and weight.
This is why you can afford a better level of living, that and you’re benefiting from Chinese and third world labor and a cheap credit. Now of course government is largely responsible for the last two, but even without the last two you’d still live better thanks to engineers who make products cheaper and better. It’s the natural deflation that bankers steal part of, all of, or more. Some industries beat inflation, others hold tight, some lose. But inflation gives you the cheap labor of other countries so it evens out, for you.
So what about death by government then, clover? There were 169 million murdered by governments in the 20th century. There’s even a word for it, democide.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM
Tell us what does it feel like, being a democidal maniac?. Is there ever a democide you feel bad about? Tell us, how many deaths were caused by libertarians today? We know 4,636 people were murdered by government today. One of the government’s own universities tells us this is so.
Only a delusion murderous psychopath would concern himself with reading statutes and proclamations of such an assemblage of butchers.
It’s worse than studying Ted Bundy’s code of ethics by far. 20 times worse to be exact.
Even if you were right, and we’re all heartless criminals, which we’re not. Even then, your government is 20 times more prolific in amassing its human corpse body count than are all the criminals of the world combined. It boggles the mind really, assuming you even have a mind.
Democide includes three main forms of government inflicted death.
Democide: The murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.
Genocide: among other things, the killing of people by a government because of their indelible group membership (race, ethnicity, religion, language).
Politicide: the murder of any person or people by a government because of their politics or for political purposes.
Mass Murder: the indiscriminate killing of any person or people by a government.
Death by Government 20x More Common than Death by Criminal
http://www.freemansperspective.com/death-by-government/
Dear Gary,
I see your point.
That said, sovereign individuals do not forfeit their natural rights merely because they acted like jerks.
Let us not forget that the goonvermin has no justification for existing in the first place. No sovereign individual who asserts his natural rights ought to be blamed for doing so.
This remains true even when it is obvious to everyone that the goonvermin will crack down on him. That foreknowledge does not make him wrong, objectively speaking, and the state right.
@Bevin – HE chose the “no guns allowed” courthouse to make his point, and HE was the one acting out. Not just with “authority” but he was verbally challenging the guy on the bench. Both together was a bad decision on his part. Not knowing for sure he was there to discuss sovereign gun rights and gun locker building codes the security guard asked him to leave. When he refused is when it escalated. Maybe HE thought his beliefs trumped authority, but he did it in a stupid location (for his purposes) and in a irrational confrontational demeanor. I still am in the dark as to what expected those people to do about his “box” complaint.
Ah, but let’s examine this “no guns allowed” business.
Says who? By what right?
He provoked them, I agree. But to make the point that the whole situation is predicated on the BS of deference to Authoritah.
Ok OK. If you think it is a good idea to have everyone possess loaded guns in the “by its nature emotionally argumentative” courthouse in 2014 America I respectfully disagree. They are not allowed inside jails by anyone as well, and for some logical reasons. Maybe in cowboy barroom courts where all were equal and in plain view (if it really happened that way).
My issue is not the gun possession, but his taunting authority hoping to get it on video. At that he succeeded. That is much different then a violation of his rights peaceably walking down the street, or walking into the same building. Which he originally did without interference. He violated the NAP. The cops just responded to the perceived threat.
Not everyone. Just those free men who wish to carry. Why not? Isn’t it an inherently Cloveritic argument to presume that I (for example) will go nuts and start shooting the place up? Isn’t this exactly the argument used by Clovers to pass laws forbidding CC in restaurants that serve alcohol, disarming people who’ve never done a blessed thing to anyone?
I admire the guy for taunting authoritay. Jeering/mocking authoritay is precisely what’s needed. To dissipate the halo of “respect” and deference.
I also disagree that he violated the NAP. He didn’t threaten anyone with violence – did he? Maybe I missed it.
The fact that he made them “uncomfortable” – no question – even that he may have violated “the law” – fair enough – is not the same thing as violating the NAP….
The mindset that must be challenged is that it’s acceptable to restrict anyone’s liberty absent that person having caused a tangible harm to others (or clearly intending to, such as pointing a weapon in someone’s direction or announcing his intention to attack, etc.)
This business of “no guns in court” is exactly of a piece with “no guns at school” – or any other place. It means you are forced to become a potential victim, having been disarmed. If a person is bent on shooting up the court, he will do so. Just as they shoot up schools, restaurants and other “gun free zones.”
Right?
Dear Gary,
To me the key is that the leviathan state never had the right to exist to begin with. Its very existence is funded by armed robbery and extortion.
Therefore no sovereign individual can be faulted, at least not from a natural rights perspective, for “defying authoritay.”
Over the past several years, my experience of libertarianism has changed. It has deepened. Specifically, I have become increasingly aware at the gut level, just how many statist institutions I took for granted as “normal.”
For example, if I happen to catch a segment of a lawyer show or film on TV, and watch a scene in which some “legal minds” are arguing learnedly about “malum in se” vs. “malum prohibitum,” I am no longer impressed.
I now realize that I was formerly under the Spell of Authoritay, and the Latinate legalism were nothing more than some jungle witch doctor’s mumbo jumbo to keep the natives in awe and in line.
The spell must be maintained through fear. Hence the “contempt of court” charge for anyone for whom the spell appears to be wearing off.
I’m not saying I’m not afraid of them. I’m just as afraid of them as I am of a mugger who has the drop on me. I know they have power. But that is not the same as imagining that they have any right to “govern” me.
Well unfortunately humans have not progressed to the point of a society living together without some rules. Call it authority if you will. I don’t think that every rule descends to cloverism.
Lets go to the point where the cop enters and approaches him. Was it irrational for the cop to think he was acting out of the ordinary, and likely possessed a firearm in an area surrounded by innocents?
If I verbally threaten to kick your ass, blow up your house while you sleep, or similar threat, have I violated NAP? Or must you wait until I knock you down or take destructive action?
If he succeeds at getting elected, or wants to make his case to the people to remove the courthouse ban, or all bans, well more power to him. But until that day, and with the number of actual deadly assaults inside certain buildings where people go to resolve disputes and determine criminal guilt, we will have to make due with not acting like a donkey to prove a minor point.
But Gary, did the guy threaten anyone? I didn’t see him do that. He challenged the statute – or rather, the interpretation of “law.” And – I agree – he did so in a way that was probably intended to annoy the cop. Or which did annoy him, regardless of the guy’s intent.
But – unless I missed something – he didn’t do anything physically aggressive.
Did he?
I see this as of a piece with Clover feeling “threatened” by Mere Mundanes merely being armed at restaurants and schools, etc. Not because they’ve fingered their weapons while getting in someone’s face. But merely because they are armed. “Someone” might doooo something! Therefore (says Clover) everyone must be treated as having presumptively “done something.”
Same thing here.
Except this guy wasn’t even carrying – and said so, openly.
Where’s the “threat”?
Dear Gary,
An anacap society would most emphatically have rules. Rules as opposed to laws, as currently defined.
I suspect that some PDAs (Private Defense Agencies) would have stricter rules than we have today, in at least some areas of life.
But that would be okay! Why? Because there would have been genuine “consent of the governed.” There would have been a genuine “social contract” binding on those who agreed to it voluntarily.
A PDA counterpart to today’s goonvermin court might well impose a “no guns” rule. If it did, I would not object, providing it was something I agreed to contractually in advance.
As always, we must remember, that “Anarchy is NOT chaos. Government, on the other hand, is disorder.”
I for one, want anarchy because I want a more orderly society. I know that sounds funny. But that is only because the CW is so completely wrong.
Dear Gary,
Another perfect example:
Under a market anarchist society, with private road systems, we would have near perfect lane discipline. No more slowpokes in the left lane. No more moving roadblocks.
How do I know this?
Because I know that people do not like to put up with things that do not work in their lives. They try to find solutions. They do not stop until they have found them.
The reason the problem with road hogs persists, is that they are legally prevented from finding solutions because the road systems are “public.”
So do not fear “too much anarchy.” Fear “too little anarchy.”
@Eric – “But – unless I missed something – he didn’t do anything physically aggressive.
Did he?
I see this as of a piece with Clover feeling “threatened” by Mere Mundanes merely being armed at restaurants and schools, etc”
Fair enough debate on the morality and legality of the states existence in the first place, but we are not operating in a theoretical or philosophical vacuum.
And they did not shoot or kill him.
Lets not confuse cloverific feelings with situational perceptions of those involved. Replay the 911 phone call information that the officials were working with. Why was the call placed, and by whom? I don’t see that on par with me sitting in Denny’s drinking my coffee and a gun on my hip scaring clover in his booth nearby.
Re: schools & courts. Not a fair comparison. Courts are known to have armed enforcers around all the time, and the potential for deadly violence by its visitors and defendants is proven orders of magnitude greater. Schools are just state sanctioned free fire zones.
No, but they did assault him. They physically restrained him – then subjected him to a forcible “pat down.”
If I did the same to you, what would you call it? So how come these guys in funny outfits get to do it – and it’s “ok” (“legal”)?
And if he had “resisted” – that is, defended himself against those physically assaulting him – what do you suppose the result would have been?
We’ve got to get beyond this conditioned reflex that some people have special rights – or have the right to infringe upon other people’s rights – by dint of “authority.”
I disagree that it’s not a fair comparison (in re schools, etc.). In the first place, the same principle is at issue: Do I have the right to defend myself or not? And – put another way – do armed strangers have the right to forcibly disarm me, even though I am behaving peacefully and haven’t done any harm to anyone, nor given any legitimate reason to suspect such intent? Is the mere fact that I am armed sufficient reason? Because I “might” – and because my being armed (as such) alarms others?
Remember: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
No exceptions.
Finally: I’d rather not rely on the good offices of “officers” – who no doubt value their skins more than I value mine. And who may not be better shots than I am, for that matter. There is something craven and unmanly about relying on other men in special outfits to defend you.
Ultimately, we are responsible for our own defense – which is why the right to self-defense is so important to defend.
@Eric – How would you handle violent crazy or irrationals that have not yet taken a life, but pose the appearance of going in that direction. If not “patting down” or some other temporary restraint to make a determination for the benefit of others around him then what? Say so what, he has done nothing yet and …..
This guy was neither crazy nor irrational. Not in my opinion. He was perhaps annoying – but that is another thing.
He did not brandish a weapon (in fact, he clearly stated he did not have one). He made no threatening gestures – or even comments. His argument was not irrational. He was being pedantic, but – again – that is not irrational. Certainly, not “threatening.”
I think it’s unfair – because inaccurate – to equate this guy’s arguing (not yelling, not screaming; no violence threatened) with “crazy” and “irrational.”
We have to be very careful, I’d suggest, about going down that road.
Never forget: Clover thinks we’re all “crazy” and “irrational” – and would have us locked up, possibly killed. Certainly, he’d have our guns taken away.
Something to chew on.
Dear Gary,
I get your point about the how. For example, one can assert one’s right to free speech by shouting a string of obscenities, or one can do so in a more “dignified” manner.
You and I might as a matter of personal preference choose the latter.
But that does not impact the underlying reality. The sovereign individual does have inalienable rights. As market anarchists know from analyzing the logical basis for natural rights, the state has no right to exist in the first place.
Therefore it has no right to tell any sovereign individual what it may or may not do, good taste or not.
Again, nobody will argue that from a realpolitik perspective, the dissident knew full well that he would probably be hassled for what he did. But that does not change the underlying fundamentals.
From a natural rights perspective, the dissident was justified. The state, and the “court” was not, because it was illegitimate to begin with.
Let me suggest an example. A bunch of holdup men have clerks and customers in a store held at gunpoint, and are robbing them. One customer decides to give them lip, and even starts to make moves that make the holdup men suspicious.
Obviously the customer is risking death or at serious injury. He is being foolhardy. But is he in the wrong? No he is not.
@Bevin – The guy making the video is taking the same risks (with the armed police present) and has the same options doesn’t he? If they kill him for moving his hands to the wrong place before they know he is not an armed physical threat, well he had that right as well. Would he be wrong?
I really enjoy reading your posts, Garysco. It’s a shame really.
But at the end of the day, it appears you are just a nicer more scenic road to serfdom. Your arguments when it comes to justice have only irrational fear and wild what ifs. And violent innuendos and lashing out at the messengers trying to reason with you. Just like Clover.
“If they kill him for moving his hands to the wrong place.” Why would that ever be required?
Here in Vegas high end casinos, there are millionaires, billionaires, celebrities all over the place. And millions in assets, jewelry. VIPs of every stripe.
Yet everyone is free to put their hands wherever they want. Signs in Nevada do not have the force of law, except in Govt buildings. No one will be able to stop you from having a gun within a few feet of VIPs.
CCW permits from 16 states are recognized in NV. Generally, you can do as you like, as long as you wear decent clothes and spend a few bucks in a casino. Literally anything you can imagine sometimes occurs.
Even if you were to pull your gun out, you would find yourself rapidly tackled. And quickly removed from the public areas.
No howling screeching monkeys shooting holes into everything that moves with no abstract reasoning or finesse whatsoever.
Now once they get you to a back room or adjacent maintenance building, who knows what casino security might do to you? They have to be smart about things though, because they don’t have the state behind them.
See, casinos are thousands of times safer than govt buildings, because they are free market. Because everyone working there has an incentive to do right.
And everyone visiting there has the potential to do what they wish to do. Why not finagle a free drink or two. Cruise for a working girl. Find someone to bum a cigarette and 5 bucks from?
No one is under that much strain. There are still some options on the table. No one barking orders at anyone. Norms are enforced by security, but on the down low. With ear pieces, such that customers don’t even know something dangerous was developing near them.
http://www.defensivecarry.com/forum/concealed-carry-issues-discussions/144526-vegas-hotels-casinos.html
@Tor, brother, please see the light. Bevin made a scenario up of someone not exactly acting in their own long term interests, but being right. I made a comparison of the same person in a different scenario, but being right. Why does that brand me as a Statist?
No government, no authority over me and you? Yes, in a world that does not exist. In the mean time why postulate over what cannot be, and say it is all bad? I would guess even cavemen had a hard time getting along. I sure do know the American Indian tribes did not do too well at it. I am all about workable solutions, like tear up the big books and reboot a tiny amount of rules. Moses only had 10 for a whole nation (well except for all the Kosher stuff).
I hear you, Gary – but at the same time, I think it’s critical we acknowledge (and defend) principles while making the best of a bad situation.
I’ve mentioned this before, but:
I’d be ecstatic if, somehow, the country could be rewound to circa 1980 (better yet, 1960) in terms of “leave us alone” individual autonomy. I agree one ought not to let the perfect become the enemy of the good. At the same time, I will never concede an inch regarding principles. Not in terms of defending them. Perhaps not physically. I understand that’s not realistic in every situation. But I will never give ground in terms of arguing the point. Never will I grant the legitimacy of another person’s doing me violence (or threatening to do me violence) in order to compel my submission or take my stuff.
Dear Gary,
A holdup man robbing a store who shoots a hostage because the hostage made a “threatening move” cannot claim “self-defense.”
Even out goonvermin “justice system” would argue this way.
But here’s the irony. From a strict NAP perspective, agents of the goonvermin, including judges and cops, are morally equivalent to the holdup man robbing a store.
As voluntaryists know full well, the agents of the goonvermin are in fact committing violent crimes, or are accessories to violent crimes whenever they “perform their official duties.” This includes providing the muscle for tax collection.
Therefore their victims, the taxpayers, including gun owners, are merely defending their rights any time they refuse to obey the goonvermin’s “authoritay.”
The goonvermin agents are therefore in no position to claim “self defense,” any more than the holdup man was in the example I cited.
Does that mean one will necessarily confront goonvermin agents on this? Not necessarily. But if sovereign individuals did, they would not be in the wrong.
@ Eric
“At the same time, I will never concede an inch regarding principles.”
So I have jury “duty” on the 7th. I have a speech prepared to try to get me out of this slave-wage “duty”. Not to mention I am buying another house and need to be at the inspection 2 days later and I dont want to get snared into a long and drawn out deliberation (and it will be if I am there).
As far as not conceding and inch, the best I have so far is to say, during jury selection, “If I am to decide the guilt or innocence of a Malum Prohibita case I will try to nullify; if that does not work I will hang it.” You think this will get me kicked out of the court room. Or should I go in-depth about how the whole thing is a sham?
Sirlrb – If you refuse to take their oath (or affirmation) because you can’t participate in their corrupt system in good conscience, that should do it as well. Now, I don’t know if they can hold a potential juror in contempt legally, but I wouldn’t put it past them to do it anyway if you piss them off. But I expect they will probably at least make you stay there all day even if you’re not “selected”, like they did with my wife. I, on the other hand, have been trying to get on a jury and believe I can make an affirmation based on literal truth. But I think “they” know who I am and so far have cancelled both summons they’ve sent me. Hmmm. I don’t think “they” want to get FIJA’d.
Thanks, Boothe
I think as soon as they hear malum prohibita and nullification they will give me an armed escort home. They dislike persons with legal knowledge on their juries. And I will not take an oath. For me it is Theological.
Thanks again,
SI
“I’d be ecstatic if, somehow, the country could be rewound to circa 1980 (better yet, 1960) in terms of “leave us alone” individual autonomy.”
Eric, I agree completely. I remember 1960 quite well. Of course there were problems and bullshit of the day to deal with, but nothing like we face today. Back then we did not have a pervasive surveillance state, it was much more possible for a freedom-minded person to “disappear” him or herself off the grid if so desired. Back then we had real silver coin in circulation (one would just spend the stuff in the stores like it was nothing unusual), and even paper money still had some backing behind it.
If there were such a thing as a time machine, I’d get on board in a heartbeat to get back to that world.
Hi Jason,
Even 1990 was a Libertopia compared with the situation now.
Imagine it: Cops needed a warrant to filch through your mail or tap your phone. Your “health care” was your business. (As a young guy in those days, I rationally chose to not buy “health insurance” because as a young guy, I did not need it. This saved me thousands of dollars without which I probably would never have been able to save up the down payment on my first house.)
You were not forced to let a stranger paw your person to board an airplane.
If you talked about the “Homeland” circa 1990, people would have looked at you funny.
More than anything else – and there are other factors, of course – I will burn with eternal enmity toward The Chimp and his Rethuglicans for creating the current situation with their vile imbecilities about “evildoers” and “terrism.” That inbred monkey-faced son of a bitch poured gasoline on the fire – knowingly did it – and deliberately gave free reign to people’s worst fears and basest instincts. He did so for calculated political effect. The man was not only a sociopath, he sociopathed America.
And now the cretin paints.
Dear Jason,
“I remember 1960 quite well. Of course there were problems and bullshit of the day to deal with, but nothing like we face today. ”
Indeed. I was in high school during the early to mid 60s. I belonged to the high school rifle club. I used to bring my .22 bolt action target rifle with me on the school bus once a week.
Imagine trying to do that today!
Today school kids are arrested for drawing a picture of a gun, or making a shooting gesture with their fingers.
Addendum.
And this was in Bethesda/Chevy Chase, in the DC area!
Mordor on the Potomac.
Bevin they call what you have and spout out is brainwashing.
In a recently published study, the scientists say they found that when people saw fewer positive posts on their feeds, they produced fewer positive posts and instead wrote more negative posts. On the flip side, when scientists reduced the number of negative posts on a person’s newsfeed, those individuals became more positive themselves.
“Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness,” study authors Adam Kramer, Jamie Guillory, and Jeffrey Hancock write. “We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues.”
Clover, you’re functionally illiterate (as demonstrated by your incoherent, grammatically jumbled posts), a deliberate liar (as demonstrated by such statements as “Libertarians want an anything goes society,” which you know perfectly well is not true – my having carefully explained the “do no harm” ethics adhered to by Libertarians) and someone who is just not very bright. A simpleton.
On top of that, you’re a coward, physically and otherwise. Someone who won’t even use his (her?) real name, or fess up as to what he/she does for living.
No wonder you must resort to childish insults and clumsy lies in lieu of rational arguments!
Eric I gave you my real name months ago.
Dear Clover,
And your point was what?
That is what clover’s mission is, right?
To influence us by getting his negative libertarian posts included in this site’s feed.
Maybe(tho doubtful) it would be tempting to go onto the War and Prison Builders Saving & Loan Forum and post something promoting self ownership & NAP ideas just to see if they have any salient effect.
But to behave as clover has, and post over and over thousands of times, with never any effect?
I’m at a loss to understand the purpose of doing this. Inoperable traumatic brain injury is the only reason I can come up with.
Maybe a full size pickup with a Ron Paul sticker ran clover off the road and he hit the windshield.
To this day he remains mentally frozen at that point in time and is unable to recover, thus his lifelong animosity towards all libertarians who painfully remind him of what he has been reduced to and by whom.
I’ve seen his videos. He’s a little preachy. I applaud what he’s doing, but less words and less you, please. His videos remind me of a show on Animal Planet called “Big Cat Diaries”. I like to watch it while I and the kids are getting ready in the morning. The flaw in the show is that about 30% of the program consists of actual big cats in the wild. The other 70% is the camera pointed at the face of the narrator, droning on about the wildlife he’s supposed to be filming.
@inconsistencies
on exceeding the universal speed limit:
He clocked you doing 670,000,000 in a 55
http://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/61/speedbump_city.png
Speed of light in MPH
http://www.universetoday.com/38040/speed-of-light-in-mph/
https://what-if.xkcd.com/20/
https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/
http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=104843
XKCD R Munroe
http://pixelbark.com/14259/xkcd-creator-randall-munroes-first-ted-talk-covers-baseballs-traveling-close-to-the-speed-of-light-and-googles-storage-capacity
Eric we agree that Gavin acted like a jerk. A person that I would never vote for. How about you? Gavin acted like a 2 year old brat. I know you would know nothing about that but it is pretty much like Gavin acted like.
There was no lock box at the location. Is that enough to act like a 2 year old brat for? Is it enough for libertarians to go to war over? According to the law non is even needed if there is a cop to take the gun for safe keeping. There definitely was a cop there.
Eric if there was ever courts in your ideal world you would not allow guns either. After the first dozen shootings the guns would be taken away. The first time a divorce went wrong or a killer needed to be helped out with the help of his 20 friends in the courtroom carrying their automatic weapons.
The man’s being a “jerk” (in your opinion, not mine; don’t presume to speak for me) is a non sequitur, Clover. Do you know what non “sequitur means”? It means, does not follow.
The question at hand is whether it’s acceptable to physically assault someone who annoys you.
It isn’t.
You can ignore the person, or just walk away.
Which – as I’ve pointed out – you cannot do when the “jerk” annoying you is one of the state’s costumed enforcers. Not without risking a physical assault.
“Eric if there was ever courts in your ideal world you would not allow guns either.”
Illiterate buffoon.
That aside, I am not the one in the business of allowing other people to do – or not do – anything.
PS: Ever stop to wonder, you galloping imbecile, why it is that you never hear about a mass shooting at a gun range? Why “gun crime” is axiomatically lower in areas where there are fewer laws prohibiting ordinary citizens from carrying guns both openly and concealed on their person?
Anyone else interested in attempting to correct this imbecile? I’m done.
Eric the reason there are few shootings at a gun range is because they are there for target practice. They had a purpose and it was not to protect themselves or to go and kill someone. Tell me why you would carry a gun into a restaurant or a store or in a movie theater when there has never been a shooting before? What is your purpose?
Eric would you agree that there are some really bad people out there? If you say you do not have the right to tell others what to do then your option is to wait until many are dead and then say “Maybe we should stop them from killing more?”. Eric in this place in the video was a courtroom and there are some really bad people that go there. In fact there are more bad people that go there than anywhere in our country. You think it is smart to allow guns to be carried by all of these bad people? Yes there are few mass shootings at a gun range but you want to try your hardest to get some mass shootings at courtrooms. Explain why that is a good thing? Our supreme court says it is a bad thing. Are you smarter than our supreme court?
Eric the reason that there are mass shootings is because of mental problems, someone brain washed by libertarians would fit that bill. At a gun range it would not satisfy such a person as in a public place where you can kill kids or adults you are mad at. Just like the two guys that blew up a building a few years ago. They had their target because the building was owned by the government. They get more satisfaction when killing people they are brainwashed to believe that need to be killed. Timothy McVeigh was a libertarian. One of your so called non-aggressive fellow libertarians. Eric, Libertarians are the most dangerous group of people in the United States. What are they going to be like if you have no laws any more? It will be like the gang wars in Mexico.
When are you going to start telling the truth and stop saying lies that you are a non-aggressive group of people?
Once again, Clover – non sequitur. It does not follow.
I tire of attempting to communicate with someone who is either deliberately evasive or simply unintelligent. In the latter case, I don’t blame you since it would unfair to criticize you for something you can’t help.
Regardless, there’s no point to it.
You are unwilling or unable to follow a simple line of reasoning. Example: The man in the video may have been a “jerk” (in your eyes) for arguing (politely, mind) with the bureaucrat and cop. But he in no way threatened them physically, either overtly or implied. Yet they did in fact physically assault him. The discussion at hand was whether it is acceptable to violently assault people who’ve not been aggressively violent themselves.
You are incapable of having such a discussion. Because you will not discuss the $%#!! issue at hand!
Then, you segue into galloping imbecilities about Libertarians being “brainwashed” (apparently, because they use their minds to think logically and conceptually, extrapolating from principles to particulars as opposed to the rote/reflexive reactions of people such as yourself) and then, as is your style, attempt (clumsily) to smear them by claiming ethical consanguinity with Timothy McVeigh.
I’d be pleased to have an intelligent discussion on the merits of any given topic, Clover. But you’re an imbecile, by birth or as a result of how you were raised; perhaps both. There is no more point in attempting to have an intelligent discussion with you than there is in arguing with a cinder block or a goose.
I’m done.
The sphincter has dilated again:
Eric if you actually believe that “they did in fact physically assault him” and as such you believe as a libertarian that you then have the right to kill the person that assaulted you then we will have a bloodbath in our country. Even Gavin did not say he was physically assaulted. Eric your libertarian members have severe mental problems and that includes you.
There was a citizen of our country that noticed within the 30 seconds that Gavin was looking for a confrontation. Eric if you are asking for a confrontation then I would think you would not be surprised to get a confrontation. Gavin continued to film multiple citizens including kids without their permission and distributed that video. Where are the rights and freedoms of the people to not be part of Gavin’s advertisement and to be filmed with a guy that is insane?
Eric Gavin cost the people of our country 100s of dollars to promote himself as being a jerk. He talks about the people needing to be treated with respect. He respected no one.
Gavin talks about liberty. Tell me what liberty is being violated for not having a lock box in one particular building? Eric that is insane saying that is a violation of his liberties.