From ignorance to anarchy
Back in September 2000, I had just
turned 17. Near as I can recall, all I cared about were the second
coming of Christ and the baby fat brunette in my Spanish class
(stories for another time). But the Bush v Gore race was all the TV
could talk about, so for the first time, I turned my attention to
politics.
I remember having a sense that the free
market basically worked. I was opposed to business regulations. I
was opposed to welfare programs. I was even opposed to the minimum
wage. I also had a vague distrust of government. I was naive enough
to believe that republicans also supported the free market and
distrusted government, so I became one. Had I been able to, I would
have voted for Bush. But a couple of things happened over the next 2
years.
First, Jesus and I started fighting
about the gays. He said that it was a choice, and a sin, and that we
should burn them forever in a lake of fire. I said that it was
probably a biological trait, definitely morally neutral, and that we
should leave them alone. Eventually we broke up, but this was the
first time I gave any consideration to body rights. Or really, any
rights at all, because my support for the free market had never been
about respect for property rights. I had never even had any
emotional attachment to the market. I had just always thought it was
more efficient than government.
Second, George and I started fighting
too. He wanted to spy on me, and incarcerate me without due process,
and ship me off to a secret overseas prison to be water boarded. I
didn't like any of those things, so body rights suddenly became
extremely important to me. I was naive enough to believe that
democrats also supported body rights, so I went from republican to
democrat by the time I was 19. But I realized pretty quickly that we
had a couple of problems.
First, they didn't actually support
body rights. They voted for the patriot act. They prosecuted the
drug war. They restricted immigration. They supported restrictions
on certain forms of protest. And they even waffled on marriage
equality.
Second, they really hated the free
market. They called successful entrepreneurs greedy and accused them
of stealing and cheating their way to the top. They demonized Wal
Mart for providing poor people with the lowest possible prices. They
called my job “wage slavery” and would have regulated it out of
existence by raising the minimum wage past my market value if they
had had the chance. Listening to their hateful rhetoric, I started
thinking seriously about property rights for the first time. So I
found myself being a strong supporter of body rights AND property
rights. I put two and two together, and by the time I was 21, I was
a libertarian. I still voted for Kerry the next time around, though.
I felt dirty doing it, but lesser of two evils and all that.
I spent the next four years reading
reason magazine and trying to square the circle of libertarian
government. I hated government, but it just didn't occur to me that
we could get rid of the whole thing (failure of imagination on my
part, I admit). I couldn't tell you how many hours I dedicated to
writing constitutions, thinking that the big idea that would
permanently restrain governments to their “bare essentials” was
just on the tip of my brain. I majored in political science in
college for just that reason. I was going to be the guy who fixed
government forever. I was so radically libertarian the next election
cycle that I refused to vote for Bob Barr because he wasn't
libertarian enough.
I, of course, was completely head over
heels banana pants bonkers for Ron Paul (Later, we broke up too. For
the usual reasons.). Clicking through the Ron Paul media sphere
sometime around the 2008 election, I stumbled on the Lew Rockwell
Show. I fell in love with it immediately. I think I listened to
every episode in one sitting. I couldn't tell you at what point in
the binge I listened to this episode, but I can tell you that it was
like weights falling off my shoulders. It was also the moment when I
discovered that Walter Block is my soul mate (Some day I'll do my
doctorate at Loyola. Wait for me, Walter!). So now I'm an
anarchist. And I'm absolutely rabid. I wake up every single day
full of anger for all the injustices I can't stop and the self
detonating platitudes that accompany them, and enthusiasm for all the
fresh ideas I have for how to effectively and efficiently communicate
the moral superiority of the free society.
From anarchy to disgust
Being an anarchist these past several years has been liberating and joyous. It's mostly been a
continuation of that same journey of self discovery I started as a
teenager, slowly and painfully scraping off ever older and deeper
layers of the scar tissue of childhood trauma. But it's also been increasingly
lonely. The more I come to consistent principles in every facet of
life, the more I peer through the fog of violent indoctrination, the
less respect I have for the people who refuse to question their
principles, and the less satisfied I am with my current
relationships.
So I'm constantly proselytizing for
anarchy at every opportunity, in hopes of making deep and lasting friendships. I quickly find a libertarian position
that someone has and I try to ask them the kinds of leading questions
that will get them to think about the broader principles that support
the position. And I find in these conversations, almost uniformly,
that people are sympathetic to the non-aggression principle, but they
continue to support state violence because something else is more
important to them than integrity. Some of them fear that eliminating
liberal government necessarily leads to a Hobbesian nightmare or a
network of tyrannical fiefdoms and they value relative peace over integrity. Some of them fear that anarchy will eliminate the middle
class and they value economic stability and “dignity” over integrity. Some of them fear that anarchy will eliminate the progress
we've made in elevating the status of women and minorities and they
value “social justice” over integrity.
These people say they would like to see
a world where government is “unnecessary”, but they can't see any
way to achieve their higher social goals without supporting state
violence. So what they tend to do is turn the conversation away from ethics and on to pragmatism. They want me to tell them exactly how
their higher social goals would be guaranteed to be achieved without
violence. In the past, I've tried to show that state violence
doesn't guarantee success either, and that the comprehensively self
reinforcing positive feedback loop of the free society is actually
the best chance they have to achieve their goals. But it's never
been successful. I don't ever go down the pragmatic rabbit hole
anymore.
I don't bother with pragmatic arguments
anymore for three reasons. First, the statists who ask for them
don't ever intend to thoughtfully process an argument. When I've
solved a problem they've posed, they've immediately moved the goal
posts without conceding the point. They back themselves into
increasingly absurd and implausible scenarios. I had one guy
actually bring up the potential for a zombie apocalypse as a
justification for the state. I think these people don't listen,
because they WANT to use violence. They PREFER violence.
Second, it doesn't matter. It really
really doesn't fucking matter. “Who will pick the cotton if we
abolish slavery?” I don't know. Maybe the entire economy of the south will collapse and half the people will starve. Maybe we'll invent the cotton gin. But it doesn't matter. “Who will defend the
country if we abolish conscription?” I don't know. Maybe millions of men and women all over the world will volunteer to fight obvious injustice. Or maybe we'll all be cowards and Nazis will take over the world. But it doesn't matter. "Who will
educate poor children if we abolish public schools?” I don't know. Maybe we'll come up with creative solutions to this problem without threatening our neighbors with murder if they don't pay for it. Or maybe poor children will always be less educated than their more affluent counterparts. But it doesn't
matter. “Who will have sex with me if I stop raping?”
Seriously, it doesn't fucking matter. There is no social engineering hobby that is more important than personal integrity. Everyone who supports the
state has a gun to your head and a whip to your back. Giving these
people the pragmatic arguments that they don't actually intend to
listen to in the first place is like begging a mugger not to rob you
or a slave master not to beat you. I won't beg anymore.
Finally, even if I crossed my fingers
and said a prayer and waved my magic wand and the stars
aligned and somebody was actually convinced by the pragmatic
argument, I still wouldn't trust them. I don't want to spend my time
with violence apologizing psychopathic social engineers who oppose
the initiation of force only as the most convenient vehicle to their
more important ends. I want people who love the non-aggression principle. More than
that, I want people who ARE the non-aggression principle. I want people who would
demand the destruction of the state no matter how dire the
consequences would be. I want people who hold integrity as their
highest value.
So,
Dear New Hampshire,
I lied. I said I wasn't coming to your
party, because I got myself convinced that you weren't doing much of
anything productive anyway and because I was getting the intimacy I
wanted right here. It turns out that I was almost completely wrong
on both counts. Sorry to keep jerking you around. Clearly I belong with you. I'll be home as
soon as I finish my master's.
Save me a seat,
Ansible
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