Comments on: Anarchist propaganda struggle tip

By: BradSpangler.com » Blog Archive » Dead State Walking

BradSpangler.com » Blog Archive » Dead State Walking — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 19:17:25 +0000

[...] BradSpangler.com Easily offended? Go away. « Anarchist propaganda struggle tip [...]

By: Kevin_Carson

Kevin_Carson — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 03:32:05 +0000

pansophia,

Anarchists want to actually do what statists *claim* to do. Bill Clinton said government is just “all of us working together.” Anarchists believe any group of people in a community should be free to really work together to keep themselves safe–but without forcibly collecting taxes from people who prefer other options, or otherwise claiming the right to initiate force against those who don’t voluntarily participate.

The interesting thing is that the state is nowhere legally obligated to protect you from harm. There is no civil standard for negligence when it comes to the state doing an inadquate job protecting you. But the state does claim an absolute right to limit your options for self-defense in circumstances when it can’t defend you. If a bad guy goes after you when there’s no cop around, and you defend yourself by a means the state doesn’t approve of, you can get in serious trouble.

By: pansophia

pansophia — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 05:09:05 +0000

That sounds like a good plan! Can you spell out what some of these alternatives might be? (Then you can write your own agorist sci fi novel…)

By: Brad Spangler

Brad Spangler — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 18:46:33 +0000

@pansophia:

I consider myself to be weak and in need of protection (or at least help getting justice).

I think you may have an inaccurate idea of what I support if you believe I want you to not have any protection. I want you to be able to choose from among a variety of protectors and have someone else to go to in case your current one becomes abusive.

By: pansophia

pansophia — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 18:37:39 +0000

While I have not faith in the government, and I believe strongly in maintaining individual liberties, there is one point that keeps me from being a Libertarian. I consider myself to be weak and in need of protection (or at least help getting justice). Sorry if that’s an unfashionable sentiment - I know that expressing such sentiments opens me up to being dismissed as a perpetual victim and a complainer. From my perspective, though, it’s just a fact that predators seek out relatively weak and isolated people: they steal from them and subject them to violence just as a matter of projecting built-up anxieties or just because their normal instinct for violence is repressed when they are interacting with people they consider peers. Some people ARE weaker, and they become even more weak and isolated as stronger people network with other people they perceive to be useful and strong.

I don’t believe the weak are useless and should be destroyed by the deserving strong. The weak may have extraordinary intellectual or creative skills - in fact their very weakness may come from their ability to empathize with others, which causes them to eschew aggression.

From what I can see, Libertarians don’t have a solution to this problem. :-/