To me, a person that desires to control and dominate the life of their neighbor through violence or the threat of violence reveals a moral compass that is askew. Or rather, the person who actually understands that controlling and dominating their neighbor through coercion is the applied effect of their political advocacy reveals said immorality. Most are simply unaware and have never given a second thought to the victims of State violence if it is perpetrated on the other.
My preference and indeed the moral imperative if we are concerned with ethical clarity and consistency, is the recognition that each individual owns himself or herself and that human interactions must be voluntary. Thus, as far as politics and society are concerned, the law ought to criminalize all activities that are coercive against the person and property of another while providing no impediment to all activities that are consensual between different groups of people.
In that context, it is the State that is the biggest aggressor against all of us and our rights. To the extent that politics concerns us, our primary political goal should be to reduce the size, scope and revenue of the State as much as possible. Ideally, in my view, this would lead to the complete abolition of the State apparatus to be replaced by voluntary alternatives in a consensual, mutually-beneficial market order. To be more specific, every action undertaken by the State that causes the initiation of force against peaceful people, even if we don't particularly like those people, what they believe and how they live, should be resisted since we wouldn't like those other people to wield the State's power against us, depriving us of our inalienable rights.
In political discussion forums such as this (and I apologize since I haven't familiarized myself with the peculiarities of this particular site yet though I think it to be consistent with most others), people seem to delight in the ability of their chosen "leader" to impose their vision of society on the party that happens to be out of power.
I'm hoping you'll be able to see the profound immorality of politics in general and come to understand that having a supposed democratic mandate doesn't make an action virtuous. History is replete with majorities who unleashed unspeakable atrocities on the minorities of their day.
Politics is a valid exercise in my view only to the extent that it is used to try to remove the State's funding, abolish it's departments, end it's insane military empire, release it's captives from the cages euphemistically referred to as "prisons" and eventually abolish it from society. The goal in the end is the death of politics.
In it's place we can recognize each other's right to self ownership and jurisdiction over his or her property. Then we can associate or disassociate with whoever we please. Those we don't particularly like in society are really no concern of ours if they are leaving us alone.
You can call this perspective liberalism, market anarchy, or voluntarism. All are appropriate labels.
I'd like to discuss the merits of a radical libertarianism as an alternative to Democratic and Republican politics.
My preference and indeed the moral imperative if we are concerned with ethical clarity and consistency, is the recognition that each individual owns himself or herself and that human interactions must be voluntary. Thus, as far as politics and society are concerned, the law ought to criminalize all activities that are coercive against the person and property of another while providing no impediment to all activities that are consensual between different groups of people.
In that context, it is the State that is the biggest aggressor against all of us and our rights. To the extent that politics concerns us, our primary political goal should be to reduce the size, scope and revenue of the State as much as possible. Ideally, in my view, this would lead to the complete abolition of the State apparatus to be replaced by voluntary alternatives in a consensual, mutually-beneficial market order. To be more specific, every action undertaken by the State that causes the initiation of force against peaceful people, even if we don't particularly like those people, what they believe and how they live, should be resisted since we wouldn't like those other people to wield the State's power against us, depriving us of our inalienable rights.
In political discussion forums such as this (and I apologize since I haven't familiarized myself with the peculiarities of this particular site yet though I think it to be consistent with most others), people seem to delight in the ability of their chosen "leader" to impose their vision of society on the party that happens to be out of power.
I'm hoping you'll be able to see the profound immorality of politics in general and come to understand that having a supposed democratic mandate doesn't make an action virtuous. History is replete with majorities who unleashed unspeakable atrocities on the minorities of their day.
Politics is a valid exercise in my view only to the extent that it is used to try to remove the State's funding, abolish it's departments, end it's insane military empire, release it's captives from the cages euphemistically referred to as "prisons" and eventually abolish it from society. The goal in the end is the death of politics.
In it's place we can recognize each other's right to self ownership and jurisdiction over his or her property. Then we can associate or disassociate with whoever we please. Those we don't particularly like in society are really no concern of ours if they are leaving us alone.
You can call this perspective liberalism, market anarchy, or voluntarism. All are appropriate labels.
I'd like to discuss the merits of a radical libertarianism as an alternative to Democratic and Republican politics.
