If there is one thing that really mangles my gears, angers me to no end, and boils the hot red blood of screeching bald eagle freedom in my veins to the point that I could literally cook an egg on my head, it’s the supposed ‘anarchists’ claiming now in vast number that politics is an ineffective, non-viable, and immoral path to liberty. This article aims to prove them wrong, and increase Libertarian Party membership at the same time.

Neckbeard Losers Don’t Change the World

Instead of measured, pragmatic steps toward freedom, so many of these non-player characters of liberty choose a kind of utopian pipe dream where individuals can actually make change without involvement in the state, building a ‘private law society’ or some other such madness, in the absence of centralized governance.

We all know the type. Wah, wah, I don’t vote. I don’t pay taxes. I sell seashell necklaces for bitcoin and smoke dope all day. Like that is going to bring about change. The so-called ‘agorists’ think such things can actually take down huge, massively supported centralized government.

This is like suggesting I could remodel a house without even going inside, by just pulling some weeds in the garden. It’s an absurdity on the surface for sure, but it’s also important to dig down further — deep into the broken foundations and rubble of this naive presumption: the narrative that real change can happen without a state. How dumb can you get? I have some very bad news for you, fedora-wearing armchair anarchists: the state isn’t going away. Whether you like it or not, it’s a reality we all have to deal with.

The Freedom Virus

It’s best to understand the mechanisms and processes of government, so we as true Libertarians can vie for positions of power inside these same systems, even if immoral, to bring them down from there, like a fast replicating ‘freedom virus,’ if you will.

Or, in another analogy, what better way to stop Jeffrey Dahmer than to actually become him and get inside his brain, stopping the killing? I am aware this may sound a little crazy at first, but it unquestionably beats the alternative paths of inconsequential agoristic ‘direct action’ on a number of counts which I may get into later, or not.

For now, it’s enough to briefly and logically dismantle the position of these so-called agorists, voluntaryists, and market anarchists, demonstrating that, as that great voice and beacon for liberty, Adam Kokesh once said (I paraphrase): If you don’t get involved in politics, politics will get involved in you.

That guy’s plan to centrally fingerprint homesteaders and redistribute wealth via a small cabinet of his personal choosing is one of the more pragmatic approaches I hope can be given attention in the future. This kind of thinking, while not really voluntaryist or propertarian, could be a pragmatic stepping stone to real liberty in our lifetimes.

It is undeniable then, that if people do not involve themselves in politics, no real change can be had.

Dismantling the Idiot Myth of Libertarian Purism

While it’s true agoristic free trade is part and parcel of the very foundations of libertarian philosophy and principle, with the objective reality of individual self-ownership being the lynchpin that holds it all together, we cannot rule out politics just because they are immoral and stifle the same. Slavery does need to be dealt with, but less slavery is always better than more.

As much as it might pain the principle purists to hear: sometimes ends do justify means.

Take, for example, the atomic bomb. Though a difficult topic to address, there is yet a very strong argument to be made that had those two monsters not been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of non-violent people, and had the fire bombings of Tokyo and Nagoya not also wiped out tens of thousands of their own, freedom as a whole may have greatly diminished in the world.

Now, I am in no way, shape, or form saying the murder of all those people — mothers, children, infants and elderly — was justified! But had it not happened, where might we be today?

Most likely violent, collectivist, National Socialism (Nazism) would have won out. The action of such bombings was imperfect, as it was in Dresden as well, but was going to happen one way or another. What if we could have made it a more sensible and proportional bombing to the actual threat of the Axis powers at the time? That would have certainly been better than bombing so many, or ignoring the problem altogether.

If we as Libertarians do not seek positions inside such governments, there is no way we can make them smaller in scale, reining them in to save more lives by taking more reasonable actions in such difficult situations and contexts. One thing the ‘freedom now!’ morons fail to realize is that defying and disobeying the state as if it doesn’t exist can be extremely dangerous.

Imagine, for example, if abolitionists like Harriet Tubman had simply had the foresight to run for office, or petition the government to free more slaves (it was eventually abolished by the state, anyway, and not abolitionists!) and gone about things that way. Some lives may have been saved, and she wouldn’t have had to risk her own to lead slaves to freedom illegally.

Similarly, regarding World War II and the bombings, if we had simply ignored and detested all governmental and political action, Japan may have killed many more innocents elsewhere. We had to get involved politically to preserve liberty.

I joke about the stereotypes of weeb keyboard warrior ancaps, but even those that don’t fit the comic book caricature are still just basically deluded fools wishing the state would magically disappear from behind their keyboards. I don’t see them out holding signs, voting, or going door-to-door for delegates. They’re too lazy to actually do anything like that.

Countries Are Just Like ‘Bigger People’

In a sense, we can view nations as ‘big individuals’ that need to be reigned in. The only way to do this effectively is by co-opting them.

Libertarian property norms cannot be applied in every instance this late in the game, because we’re not starting from a clean slate. We have to treat the status quo as basically legitimate, to start. No one is out there homesteading log cabins on a fresh continent! Yes, it is a violent status quo, but it is reality. Individual rights must be worked toward gradually, as such.

The final goal of pragmatic libertarianism is to reduce and localize these ‘bigger people’ countries down to actual individuals. From globalism to national borders, from national borders down to state governments, and then all the way down to communities and finally individual property owners themselves.

Top. Down. This is the true, pragmatic, and safe way forward. If you instead want to try evading taxes, trading freely, and disobeying cops and other state agents, in lieu of using the court systems, good luck with that. It’s true the courts are also run by the state, but to try to be free without due process would be too chaotic. We have families, personal dreams and goals, and valued possessions like PS4s and boats to protect. We need to be smart.

To finally get to the point, what follows is a much better plan. And I seriously hope it shuts up the intolerable lolbertarian dreamers once and for all.

Taking Down the Nazis From Inside the SS

If you want to know how truly powerful change from the inside can be, look no further than Daryl Davis, the black American musician that attended KKK rallies and got numerous leaders of the racist, Nazi group to quit!

While it is true he didn’t ever join the KKK, or agree with their organizational mechanisms or philosophies, his message and actions of understanding, dialogue, and refusal to abandon his principles actually brought about real world change.

Now, imagine the level of change he could have brought about if he had actually joined.

Of course it would have been impossible for him to rise all the way to the top of the organization as a black man, because the organization itself is ideologically and violently anti-black. The whole point of the KKK, in a sense, is to keep blacks ‘in their place.’ But if that could somehow be overcome and gotten around, what a miracle it would be to see a black leader of the KKK.

Can you imagine?

The same is true of libertarians. Yes, your understanding and empathic spreading of the philosophy of liberty may help many to escape the cult of statism, but how many more could you free if you actually joined the cult itself?

What if they voluntarily let you, their sworn enemy, get in through the election mechanism they painstakingly designed specifically to keep you out, as an anti-statist!? What if you even rose all the way to the top to become president?

You could single-handedly cut, reduce, replace and cancel thousands of armed-to-the-teeth agencies with virtually limitless funding and the unquestioning support of the billions of everyday people all around you, just by signing a paper.

Little old you! — mind you, with just enough LP delegates — could topple these down-to-the-core-of-the-earth-entrenched, psychopathic, centuries-old special interest crime syndicates comprising trillions of dollars of mega-corporate globalist military superpower, standing armies and nuclear weapons, which have murdered over 262 million human beings in the last century alone (not counting war), thereby thwarting their sworn fraternal allegiances, banking cartels, lawless systems of back room mafioso-style back scratching, and rigged political protocols, all by using those very same protocols, to win!

These people called the state, that know not reason nor logic would be forced by virtue of their own system, to peacefully concede your DEMOCRATIC VICTORY FOR THE PEOPLE!

You, by the power vested in you from that same bloody, filthy, child-sex-trafficking, innocent-family-bombing, sociopathic nightmare mind control extortion system, with unimaginable power and influence, limitless cruelty, and unquenchable hatred, could end it ALL with just one peaceful oath of office, and go on to receive an extorted salary for a better tomorrow! With just enough donations and delegates, you could do it!

(SCENE)

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Or. You could put down the statist crack pipe.

The above word salad of inconsistent, non-libertarian trash is all too easily refuted with a little logic and understanding. If you want to know how real, principled, libertarian change is brought about on a mass level: it’s by the individual and the individual alone.

If each individual in their own time, fashion, and understanding, begins to give up the aforementioned poly-tick-ing delusions — because they realize violence against peaceful people is always wrong, even if perceived as ‘pragmatic’ or on a ‘limited scale’ — mass change happens spontaneously and naturally, as each individual says, in one way, shape, or form:

“I will help feed and protect my struggling neighbor, whether the state does or not.”

“I will not join the military.”

“I will not become a politician or a cop.”

“I will not pay the state the fruits of my labor.”

“If the state asks me to steal or be stolen from, I will not comply.”

I. WILL. NOT. COMPLY.

As the sound, logical, and ethical philosophy of liberty catches on, which says that no action or societal arrangement is legitimate without voluntary consent, guess what? Each individual taking action in the above fashion, across the globe, has just ‘single-handedly’:

• Eradicated almost all world hunger/poverty, need for violence-funded police ‘protection’
• Ended all war
• Ended taxation and violent central banking systems
• Ended the state itself

To those who would respond that we cannot trust people to take care of things in such ways, via the market and refined self-interest, and so need a state to force people to do so, it should be asked: Why do you trust the state, then? Are they not humans, as well? Perhaps you deify them.

For those who understandably fear the consequences of non-compliance, and want to play politics as described in the upper portion of this article, fair enough.

Each individual must decide the level of risk he or she is willing or unwilling to take. But a warning: there is no hiding from this risk, in the end. You may put it off a while by joining the gang and playing along, or shuffling papers for liberty, but it always comes back to bite you in the ass, in the end. Unacknowledged risk always comes home to roost. Nazi leadership killed and severely punished plenty of its own when they finally questioned or disobeyed protocol. It’s only a matter of time.

The State Is a Joke and You’re the Punchline

The next time you hear some Libertarian Party talking head regale you with all the positive change they’re going to bring about with “just a few more donations” or “more delegates,” remember: they’re seeking a position with a salary paid via extortion. Even those that say they’ll donate their salary. They’ve no right to accept it in the first place.

They’re further — and more important, foundationally — seeking a position natural law and the libertarian property norm does not recognize as legitimate. They’re seeking non-propertarian, blanket power over individuals and property they have no direct objective connection to, even if they claim it’s for the ‘greater good’ or some other such euphemistic, political posturing.

Next time you’re challenged, then, with the ‘Well, do you have a better idea!?’ cop out, you might confidently respond:

“Yes, growing some balls and living free, right now as I see fit, while networking with like minded individuals in my community, so as to not participate in violation of others — even if it’s just a ‘pragmatic’ amount of violence ‘for the greater good.’ How about you?”

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Caveat: I know many people bring up the argument that sometimes localized voting can be done ‘defensively.’ Also that things like marijuana legalization have brought about positive reform. While personally I try to refrain from judging anyone’s actions here at an individual level, it must be noted that lasting, widespread liberty can never be brought about by systematic participation in state mechanisms. You’ll simply trade one freedom for a supposed other, while the iron fist of the state clamps down ever more tightly around your neck. More taxes on cannabis, a stifled and damaged black market, more regulations, etc. You can chop some leaves, but you’ll never take the tree of tyranny without uprooting it. It’s not done with brute force, not with party-archy or politics, but with the spread and subsequent integration and expression of one simple, and beautiful idea: you own yourself.

It’s up to each individual, alone, to decide how to act on and in this reality.