Fellow Travelers and Purity Tests

Author's Note: I'm not a big fan of the whole "voting" thing, agreeing in large part with those ideological purists who consider voting a validation of the system. Nor am I seriously convinced that political action will ever reverse the current course of government. As an agorist, I think that replacing the functions of government one piece at a time in our own lives and focusing locally will have more long-term impact.

That said, I'm philosophically a pacifist, too, but in self-defense I'd certainly be willing to pull the trigger. Thus my pragmatic approach to politics, and voting. Read on and you'll understand why this explanation was necessary. I'm simply laying out a game plan for those who are convinced political action can still turn the tide. I consider them fellow travelers too, regardless of what label they self-declare, and I write for the whole "more freedom, less coercion" movement, not just those most closely aligned with my beliefs.

P.S. In this essay, I use the term libertarian in as "big-tent" a context as is possible... excluding Bob Barr, of course.

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This weekend, two-time New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson won the Presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party, kicking off quite likely the most successful of Libertarian Presidential runs to date. The Ron Paul Revolution cleaned up in Nevada and Maine, claiming 22 of the 28 national delegate slots in Nevada and 21 of the 24 of the slots in Maine. While 20 of the Nevada delegates must vote for Romney on the first ballot at the convention, the Maine contingent is free to vote their conscience, since the Maine "primary" was nothing more than an unbound beauty contest staged for the press.

In a recent column, The Underground is Surfacing, we discussed The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America, by Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie. The book's thesis is that "we are in fact living at the cusp of what can only be called the libertarian moment." Independents are now the largest voting block in the country, their 41% share outstripping both Democrats and Republicans, and they hold political positions very similar to those reported for Millennials (18-to-29-year-olds) surveyed in a recent Harvard study.

In general terms, only 20% of Millennials feel the nation is generally headed in the right direction, opposed to 43% who think it's off on the wrong track and 36% who aren't sure. Only 15% disagree with the statement "Politics today are no longer able to meet the challenges our country is facing."

Millennial's Libertarian Leanings

As we saw in The Transformational Generation, the generations that grew up on the Internet have a different view of the future than that represented by the left-right, progressive-conservative, Democrat-Republican paradigm. We saw that play out when The Largest Libertarian Society in History took on the crony capitalism machine and sent SOPA and PIPA to the graveyard.

Most recently, we observed that The Underground is Surfacing, with people of all ages taking their destiny into their own hands, refusing to wait for solutions from an increasingly bloated and incapable political machine. And now, courtesy of the Harvard University Institute of Politics, we have data on the 18-to-29 year old generation that backs up these observations.

Although Harvard's report leads with the possible impact of their findings on the 2012 election, the real story goes far beyond November, and it's mostly bad news for the two-party system and the political machine in general. Forbes took their own look at the data and arrived at somewhat similar conclusions, although they too generally focused on the short term and the upcoming election.

These attitudes betraying both the traditional left and right fall generally within the bounds of libertarianism. Live and let live. Individual responsibility is as important as collective responsibility. Avoid military interventions. Distrust both government and corporations. Protect civil liberties.

Red Hat, Blue Hat, Which Hat, No Hat

There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern.
They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.
Daniel Webster

Another of those infamous political discussions at the premier writer's site, Absolute Write, forced me to spend some time thinking about the differences between political groups, particularly those here in the US.

The political narrative in the US is between the left and the right, liberals (or progressives) and conservatives, or as I prefer to put it, the nanny state and the daddy state.

Malum in se, Malum Prohibitum

When it comes to the proper role of government, most people seem to agree on a few basic issues; murder, rape, fraud, theft and vandalism (acts of aggression against individuals and their property) are almost universally accepted as violations that government should prevent or punish. Conflicts tend to arise only after we step beyond that common theme.

Two legal terms illustrate that fundamental split: malum in se and malum prohibitum.

Agorism, Country Style, in Hardyville

"If we as individuals can't find freedom in our own lives, our own work, our own communities, we're never going to find it. And that's what Hardyvillians do."

Claire Wolfe, interview with Brian Wilson, 8/12/2011
Although I've written on a number of topics over the last month, I've always felt remiss for not explaining the name of my blog. While "Tireless" is explained by the masthead quote, I've never defined the term agorist, although most of my posts reflect the agorist philosophy in one way or another. ¹

So here it is, briefly stated.

Agorism is a libertarian philosophy that holds as its ultimate goal a society in which all relations between people are voluntary exchanges and rejects the view that the solution to human aggression is to institute aggressive governments. It proposes that such a society can only be brought about by circumventing or ignoring the state.

Agorism embraces the libertarian philosophy of individual choice and responsibility and expands it to include a method for instituting that philosophy.

Claire Wolfe, libertarian author and columnist at Backwoods Home Magazine, wrote extensively of the rural community of Hardyville between October 2003 and September 2007. Hardyville, as a profoundly libertarian community with strong agorist tendencies, is a perfect example to illustrate the meanings of both libertarianism and agorism.

Is Gary Johnson a Threat to the Two-Party System?

Theo Anderson, writing at In These Times, makes a good case for Gary Johnson's impact on the Presidential Race as a third-party candidate running as a Libertarian.

First, he points out that Gary Johnson holds a lot of the same positions that Obama supported during the 2008 election cycle, but which he has failed to deliver on.

Gary Johnson is, in some important ways, the candidate that the Left once hoped Barack Obama would be. He vocally opposes the death penalty, the use of torture by the U.S. military, and the indefinite detention of people charged with a crime–even suspects charged with terrorism.

He’s pro-choice. He calls for deep cuts in the defense budget and an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and from many of our military bases around the world. He unequivocally supports marriage rights for gays and believes that legalizing marijuana–rather than building a wall–is the key to solving illegal immigration. He also favors a two-year grace period for immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, so that they can obtain work visas and continue living and working here.

He goes on to point out that the threat isn't so much that Democrats might abandon Obama, but that Johnson's message has great appeal to independent voters, those in the middle who, in the final analysis, will choose the President in the 2012 election.

The danger for Democrats isn’t that Johnson will win a significant percentage of the Left’s vote. The danger is that he’ll peel away a sizable share of the much-prized independent voters, who tend to be fiscal conservatives and social liberals, and who might feel, understandably, that Obama hasn’t played it straight with them. He backed away from his early-career support for gay marriage rights, for example, and endorsed civil unions when he became president. His position is now reported to be “evolving.” Does anyone know where it has evolved to, or when he might come to a definite conclusion? Or where he’s at on immigration reform? Or on the drug war?

The Santorum Theocracy

In 1940, noted science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein's short novel "...if this goes on" was first published. The story was set in a future theocratic American society ruled by a "Prophet." The first of these "Prophets" was Nehemiah Scudder, a backwoods preacher elected to the Presidency in 2012. No elections were held in 2016, the Constitution having been disposed of in the meantime.

Perhaps equating Rick Santorum with Nehemiah Scudder is a bit harsh. He's no backwoods preacher, after all. He's a big government (voted for No Child Left Behind), big spending (voted twice for Congressional pay raises, voted to increase the national debt limit five times and voted for the Bridge to Nowhere), liberal (opposed right to work legislation and repeal of Davis-Bacon, voted for the prescription drug entitlement), buddy of Wall Street (supported the airline bailouts), but he's no backwoods preacher.

Bipartisan Bird of Prey Claims Judge Nap

Judge Andrew Napolitano's Freedom Watch, "the best damned daily libertarian news & argument show in the history of television (name a better one!)," as Reason magazine described it, was cancelled today by Fox Business Network. The Judge will still appear on Fox Business as a legal consultant.

In memorium, this Tireless Agorist will step aside for this column, and let the Judge speak to us through one of his best five-minute editorials ever, Bipartisan Bird of Prey. Video first, followed by a transcript, for those who'd care to follow along or read it later.

More of Judge Nap's Freedom Watch is available here.

What's Your Candidate Done to Change the World?

"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government." -Ron Paul-

Four years ago, Ron Paul was completely marginalized by the political-media establishment. His contrarian views on the increasing centralization of power in the hands of a tiny minority residing in Washington and on Wall Street, endless military intervention abroad and economic intervention at home, the fiat money perpetuated by the Federal Reserve, the ongoing attacks on personal liberty, and the destructive war on drugs were literally mocked by other presidential candidates, debate moderators, political pundits, and the press who reported the stories.

Four years later, those topics are all at the center of the political debate.

Libertarians - The True Pragmatists

Libertarians have long been regarded as impractical dreamers, slaves to a political philosophy of no real-world value. The practical, or pragmatic view, they are told, is that government serves crucial purposes in today's complex world, and that compromising our ideals is a necessity for the survival of our society. Careful observation, however, demonstrates that libertarians (and other small-government groups) are the pragmatists, while those who believe in the benefits of big government are the impractical dreamers. There is a cornucopia of evidence to support this simple observation.

The Largest Libertarian Society in History

While the near-disaster of SOPA and PIPA is still fresh on everyone's mind, it strikes this Tireless Agorist as an ideal opportunity to discuss the largest libertarian society in history. The society that brought the SOPA and PIPA legislation to a halt and that brought you to read this essay. The society of the Internet.

As an agorist, and consequentially a libertarian, one of the things I find most interesting is the myopia among some of the most active members of the Internet society. These are the people who surf effortlessly through the web in pursuit of arcane information, seek out their own voluntary associations among like-minded peers, purchase products from all corners of the globe, and immediately and voluntarily band together to protect their communities from damage or destruction by trolls, spammers and other lowlifes when they sense that the peace is threatened. Such activities are almost second-nature in the more civilized corners of the Net.

Indeed, when these Netizens saw their freedom under attack by a territorial government with no real understanding of the miraculous society they inhabit, they almost immediately swarmed together in an officially uncoordinated but massive protest against the very government that claimed it was working to protect them. And they resoundingly won the battle, if not yet the war.

Yet the same people who defeated the government's attack through voluntary action express doubt about the efficacy, fairness, and capability of the free market and the core concepts of a libertarian society. Immersed daily in the largest, most anonymous, most libertarian society ever to exist, they fail to recognize it for the miracle that it is, or to recognize the compelling forces that make it work.