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 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 451, January 13, 2008 "Words have power."
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Half Baked Cookies Topped With A-priori Assumptions
Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise Recently on a forum that I frequent, one of my numerous correspondents named Fred (It's amazing how many folks are named Fred; or I can't remember their names, so they default to Fred... Are they related to Zathras?) suggested that a wealthy libertarian might fund a new non-profit newspaper to spread the word of the abuse of the Bill of Rights—until just about everyone was familiar with those laws; so that "we" could then begin to dismantle the government. He had absolutely no idea how or why that might work. Magic, perhaps. I really don't want to single-out this particular Fred (or Zathras) for criticism, but rather to use his half-baked idea as an example of the incomplete, start-in-the-middle, riddled-with-a-priori-assumptions and-fallacies thinking that I see all too often in the freedom movement. In fact, I am exaggerating the half-baked-nes of his thinking by leaving part out and ignoring context; to make it resemble more closely the worse thinking that I see all too often. Many folks in the freedom movement present "ideas for action" that have no foundation in reality, and so do not address the problems that the presenters are trying to solve. They spin their wheels in the mud, making, at best, "much sound and fury, signifying nothing". This is the inevitable result of thinking processes that are crippled and contaminated by the government's "education" process in its schools. And the politicians love it. That mental crippling process is exactly the goal of the government school system. That is what it was set-up to accomplish back in the mid-nineteenth century, and has been so successful at to this day; to make a lower-class of people that could be enslaved and controlled for industry and the military. They are "educated" to be unable to think their way out of the subservient position that was imposed on them. The "public" school system not only refrains from teaching valid thinking processes such as deductive and inductive logic or the scientific method. It actively trains the student to accept a-priori assumptions spoon-fed by that school system, to be blind to the context and history of the subject at hand (or the project or problem to be solved) and to start all attempts to solve the problems that they need to solve in the middle, rather than at the beginning. Some of those false a-priori assumptions and fallacies (read "lies") are:
This is the recipe for failure for the mental slave. It forges the chains of the mind and disarms the will; just as surely as stealing a man's guns disarms him for the battlefield. The following is my admonition to Fred to check and overhaul both his premises and his thinking methods. Sorry to horn-in on your "brain holiday" Fred, but I just couldn't resist. Why do you want a newspaper? That is an obsolete medium today. It takes dedicated effort and (after your first three free months) money to buy and read. The internet is the new medium that replaced the daily printed sheet. It is MUCH more efficient than the printed sheet at reaching the people that you want to reach. Ayn Rand said to "check your premises". I will second that and add that you need to check your demographics. And while you have got the tools out, check your goals and strategies too. In any big and important endeavor whether military, business or other, we need to follow the triad of goal, strategy and tactic in that order. If you leave even one of those out, or get them out of order, you doom yourself to failure. And perhaps to a useless death.
What do you really want?
Is it a limited state under the Constitution? If so, for how long before its limits sink again in the sea of power-madness? How would you enforce that law? You would have to come up with something new, as the Jeffersonian method of periodic rebellion did not work, despite the Second Amendment. As Lysander Spooner reminded us (paraphrase warning) "The constitution either authorizes what we have now, or has been powerless to prevent it." Do you really want to repeat a failed experiment (with the known results) or try something else? The great Anarcho-capitalist philosopher and economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe http://www.hanshoppe.com/ compared monarchy to democracy (and republics) and found that the former was better than the latter. He also found that none is better than either. Do you want a government or not? If so, which kind? How many people are you willing to kill to have that? Would you really prefer freedom? That is anarchy. You cannot have both freedom and government in the same context because they are mutually exclusive. When "mixed" (which can only be an unstable and temporary state of war, usually lasting about 200 years at most), the more you have of one, the less you have of the other. Decide what you really want first. Then you can work on the "how". Without a well-defined goal all action is futile. How will you achieve your goal? That leads us into...
For background on strategy see: —Sun Tzu's "The Art of War".
—"The Four Generations of Modern War"
—"Election and Revolution" an introduction to fifth generation war strategy (5GW), linked below.
Remember, you must think about and decide on all three of these things, and in order, or you will fail. Your Constitutional newspaper idea quoted above is only about tactics. Have you done the goal and strategy work yet? If so, what are your goals and strategies? To give an example: I have a goal. That goal is to achieve freedom (of action and from oppression) and earned wealth for myself and others, along with the saving of hundreds of millions of lives (including mine) from genocide—by the complete and permanent elimination of all states everywhere; or, if you will, the imposition of "An-archy and Order" to replace "State (Archy) and Chaos". The strategy that I have chosen (and invented, by combining Mr. Ross's historical description of the old free-market, top-down, distributed order of battle with Mr. Bell's original work on the prevention of the re-emergence of the state) is Fifth Generation War, or 5GW. I outline this strategy in the article "Election and Revolution" at http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2004/tle295-20041031-03.html. My chosen two-stage set of tactics are outlined in the book Unintended Consequences by John Ross and the paper "Assassination Politics" by Jim Bell at www.jya.com/ap.htm and other places on the net as referenced in my article above. My opening tactic is to publish the above goal, strategy and tactics as far and wide as I can, so that a small "Gideon's band" may form around the ideas to carry them out on the battlefield. It may be (in my opinion) that the United States, for example, can be defeated by a force of no more than 200 serious and competent combatants—without military organization. I would be surprised if it took more than 1,000 to do the job. Therefor, there is no need to convince or recruit a majority of the population—or the registered voters—for an election. Taking to the battlefield to fight for our freedom is not an initiation of force, as the state started the war. It is a legitimate act—of defense of self and others—against initiated force by the state; and therefor it does not violate the ZAP (Zero Aggression Principle). See "Would Killing Hitler Violate His Freedom of Speech?" by Victor Milan at http://ncc-1776.org/tle1996/le9610a02.html. Our rights are inherent in our lives and derive from our ability and willingness to fight for them, and are therefor not subject to the democratic process. Evil rarely, if ever, leads to good. We should not rely on such a fundamentally evil process as democracy to achieve anything good. Such as our freedom. I hope the stuff above may prove useful to some, and profitable to all.
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