Someone please remind me how we will fix this by voting, etc.

[William Tell]

Not gonna happen ever sorry

Do you think an an-cap society, or whatever you prefer will ever come about?

[osan]

This is very impressive in its cleverness and apparent passion. However, back in the real world and in places where the tyrannies are of the right temper and timbre, those so absolutely free and rebellious in that freedom tend to get their asses black-bagged to parts unknown, very often never to be seen nor heard from again.

What does it mean to be "so absolutely free" when I cannot walk the street without permission, and when I do, my life becomes forfeit? That's not freedom. That is lying to oneself, saying "I'm absolutely free" when in point of fact you are no such thing.

[TheTexan]

Do you think an an-cap society, or whatever you prefer will ever come about?

No, but its still more likely than the US voting as a whole consistently for freedom lol

[osan]

Lol the system is at least 40 years away from collapsing.

I am not confident that anyone knows how long it might take or if even ever it will happen.

NZ went from Super socialist to Super liberty in one election, and it stuck, 20 years later we are still pretty solid. But its a much smaller ship to turn.

Last I checked, and please correct me if necessary, NZ is still no place for a man to be armed. As for a much smaller ship, it is not even a dinghy when compared with the USA. I also suspect you have nowhere the internationalist influences that we have here. OTOH, what you describe does illustrate the power that people have, if they will only choose to exercise it with some minimal semblance of intelligence. That happens far more readily with smaller populations than is the case with humongous ones. Just look at the seemingly hopeless mess that Europe and China have become.

The problem is the population is still loving the status quo in big enough numbers, but that is changing.

Astute. As to how much it is changing... that remains to be seen. I grant that things can change suddenly and in unexpected ways, but that is rarely the result of the sorts of activities to which I put the original question. It's more likely to come from some something out in left field... hence the "unexpected" part.

Meanwhile for all the no hopes with no plan, be careful when people sneeze.

Heh... cute. What is that from? Call it my morbid sense of curiosity.

[osan]

I think living your life and working and creating and being entrepreneurial all do more for freedom than voting does.

I must agree with you on this. In support of your assertion, I direct your attention to all the ways in which men like Bammy have endeavored to squelch that spirit of the American go-getter.

[HVACTech]

No, but its still more likely than the US voting as a whole consistently for freedom lol

"lol" @bxm042

[osan]

BTW, the words of the Declaration of Independence seem to indicate that the revolutionaries only felt that what you seem to consider an unavoidable denouement to be a last resort necessary in some cases. I believe it is never necessary but by the incorrect choices of those who believe it is.

Let me be certain I understand you clearly with a hypothetical that has played out many times in human history.

Imagine conditions continue to deteriorate here in good old America. The economy is doing a slow but steady face-plant. Unemployment is going up; the standard of living heading south; politicians making ever more outrageous intrusions into the territories of our rights. Things get so bad that even the more blithering examples of progressive liberalism have abandoned the status quo as viable, much less desirable. In time people, with nothing better to do because they have no jobs, begin to openly express their displeasure in large numbers, without the least equivocation, but retain a peaceable demeanor. As we see routinely, the police are eventually called in to clear the manifold protest areas, issuing their arbitrary and non-authoritative fiats such as "the governor of <state> has declared this gathering illegal..." The protesters all sit down in their places and become dead-silent as they refuse to comply. In the end, the police open fire, perhaps in initially with "non-lethal" and "less-than-lethal" instruments, to no avail. In their frustration, they begin killing protesters openly, having dispensed with all pretenses of civility, reason, and service. By the apparent logic of your statement, which I have bolded, it would seem firstly that the choice of the protesters to, well... protest, was incorrect because it resulted in police murdering them with no pretense of self-defense. Would that be a correct reading? If so, then you would be saying that the protest is wrong in sé, and that the people are therefore obliged to obey the police order to evacuate the area.

If not, the only remaining inference I feel I can draw would be that the protesters are somehow obliged to remain idle as the police kill them off, one by one because according to what you wrote, resorting to violence "is never necessary but by the incorrect choices of those who believe it is." This is tantamount to saying that self-defense is always incorrect. I would very much like to know how you support such a position, if indeed you do.

If you do not, then it is clear that your statement, above, is flawed.

If a man on the street attempts to rob me or harm me in some other way, he stands to end up on the receiving end of my defense tactics. If a government attempts to harm me by destroying the economy (for example) through the inept or malevolent use of its state power, am I less within my right to take unequivocal material measures to protect myself from such harms?

[nayjevin]

My opinion is that America, taken as a statistical gestalt, is not very likely to come to its collective senses.

Were it to, the mechanisms that remain in place might still be sufficient to right the ship, so to speak. The problem, as it now appears at the time of this typing, is that America is not really even in the ballpark of possibility for coming sufficiently to its senses such that it would begin taking the needed measures. I see what the news is like - what they say and, perhaps more importantly, how they say it. I see and hear what people around me say - it is not nearly as bad here in WV as it is in much of the rest of the nation, and yet it is plenty bad enough - and what issues from their gullets is impossibly disconnected from reason and rationality. We all see it.

I think this view (maybe not your view) is commonly a result of low sample size and subconscious extrapolation from what is seen in major media. For instance, someone might put on MTV for a minute and unwittingly form an opinion about today's youth. But we don't see how many kids watch MTV, and how many of those who do watch it like a train wreck. One might see that Honey Booboo is one of the popular shows on television. But what we don't see are how many people don't watch television. One might see a headline in the newspaper front and center, as though it is relevant, but recognize it for the propaganda that it is. What we don't see is how many people recognize it also, how many people get their news from the internet. The other part is the chicken/egg problem. People think stuff is important because it's in major media - it's not in major media because people think it's important. Therefore we are closer than it appears, and once at critical mass, those same sheeple will believe a truthful newspaper the same they would a propagandist one. So all we need are leaders, not 51%.

Consider some of the posts of cops beating/murdering/robbing/kidnapping innocent people, showing on video the open hostility and contempt in which they hold "us". Then you read the comments by people who praise this behavior and then punctuate with the equivalent of FrankRep's now infamous "...did this to himself" meme when they utter expressions such as "what do you expect when you <fill in the blank>.

Some of those comments are fake. Some of those comments are from people who would require an alarmingly low degree of peer pressure to be just as vocal the opposite way. And still it is rational to feel safe around cops for almost everyone in almost every city in America.

I read and see and hear this same sort of thing no matter where I go. There is a crushing plurality of people whose mental states are truly terrifying. We now have a huge proportion of people who are just like those Germans who blindly followed Hitler and who are so timid of character, so in need of that external symbol that serves the role of synthetic courage, and so self-loathing that they actually become enraged when anyone has the temerity to stand tall and assert their sovereignty over themselves. When such people are taken and savagely beaten by police, these cowardly chameleon people cheer adore the abusers all the more for having crushed yet another reminder of how wretchedly inferior they are to those who have been abused.

The weaker their character, the easier they will be to persuade (with truth).

I am sure they do, but the real question is whether the effect is relevant? Is it sufficient to the goal? Thus far, it appears the answer is "no" because we are in no better a position than we were 50 years ago. Indeed, it seems quite clear that we are in a decidedly far worse position.

Red herring. We are far better off than we would be had no political action been taken. An action needn't be sufficient to the goal to be the proper action. Relevance is not determined by whether everything became perfect as a result. If only everyone had spent all time innovating that which circumvents those who would presume to wield power, perhaps we would be there today. If only everyone had voted we'd be there too.

I cannot speak for the motivations of others. If they have other goals in mind, good for them I suppose... but they ought not utter a peep's worth of complaint if one day they wake up to the muzzle of a black rifle between their lips and some rather harsh language and a trip to parts unknown and for who-knows-how-long.

Ok, but that's absurd, because people who are trying to stop that now through politics should be able to complain if they are kidnapped, even if they are mistaken as to their actions (or weak of character in comparison to you.)

I cannot presume to know that answer. But my question is "at what point do we admit that we are going nowhere and choose to adopt other means?"

Good question. For me, talking about the presidency, it's after an honest and give or take Jefferson principled candidate wins, serves 8 years, and either does zero things, or does very few things and a statist gets elected afterwards.

At this point, the only thing I will do is sit back and watch. This is not because I am lazy, but because I am in no humor to get myself injured of worse for the likes of the Average Man. He is not worth such a sacrifice, IMO.

Average man had ill-informed parents and teachers and never had a chance.

Our continued participation in this charade that the American political process has become strikes me as nothing more than a tactic for maintaining diversion of the great majority of people based on a 2-year cycle that repeats itself like clockwork. People become upset with whatever the issue du jour may be. They bitch. Some become active. They campaign. They rally. They stump. They vote. Some cheer. Others curse. Then they wait for the miracle of "hope and change". Predictably, it never comes and they become temporarily discouraged, but it passes and by that time they are pissed all over again and the cycle repeats.

You'd make a great ombudsman.

However, with each cycle, the average man appears to become marginally less-smart than he was the previous one. As each successive generation goes through the public education meat-grinder, the average intellect weakens such that one day we may expect to find few capable of even the most rudimentary levels of rational thought. That is what I mean by "buying time. If those in power can stave off the coming together of Americans (for example) into a vein of thought inimical to Theire designs, whether through the normal political process or by taking up arms against Themme, Theye better ensure the future of Their positions because it is now abundantly clear, what with standards and methods such as "common core" that Theye are in a state of open warfare against the intellects of America's future. One more generation of so and the average high school graduate stands to be so pliant, so well trained to the master's heel, that Theye will no longer have anything but the slightest reason to fear reprisals against Theire caprice, not matter how outrageous precisely because the meaners will no longer have the capacity or the desire to recognize it.

And yet it was the violence of open warfare that resulted in the establishment of America. Perhaps the assumed fact that it is a minority view say less about the view than the capacities and opinions of the majority. Had the colonists repudiated war, precious few of us would be here today and those of us present would be subjects of the crown.

Yeah but civilization has come a long way.

[nayjevin]

That's a fine goal. One comment though

"Balkanization, or Balkanisation, is a geopolitical term, originally used to describe the violent process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or non-cooperative with one another."

The definition doesnt say anything about voting.

Oh, dang. Yeah I thought of it as a simple reformation into smaller autonomous parts.

I just think lots of small governments with lots of cooperation and standardized constitutions representing various sizes of government to be adopted by each precinct for maximum consent of the governed.

I don't see it through violence, and not fragmentation. Just defacto precinct's rights as a result of either a federal government and state government that becomes insolvent or as a result of federal officeholders relinquishing power (I know you're laughing, but Ron Paul would, and there are many others).

[nayjevin]

I wish I had your optimism.
I can't see anything changing until people choose Freedom OVER safety. As it stands, people conflate the two, although they are nearly opposites. But even if they understood the difference, they would still choose safety.
"Land of the safe, home of the fearful".

In an ideal world, I agree, people have to choose freedom over safety. But if you'll notice, people don't vote for what they choose, they don't even know what policies/philosophies a candidate represents. They're like children - and you don't choose freedom over safety with children.

Further, you are viewing it through a lense of adequate civic and philosophical education. Things will change if only the leaders the majority look up to are ethical - not if the majority is ethical. They will be if that is what they emulate.

[nayjevin]

No, but its still more likely than the US voting as a whole consistently for freedom lol

It could happen right now if everyone who sees the bull$#@! and doesn't vote because of it voted.

[nayjevin]

Let me be certain I understand you clearly with a hypothetical that has played out many times in human history.

By the apparent logic of your statement, which I have bolded, it would seem firstly that the choice of the protesters to, well... protest, was incorrect because it resulted in police murdering them with no pretense of self-defense. Would that be a correct reading? If so, then you would be saying that the protest is wrong in sé, and that the people are therefore obliged to obey the police order to evacuate the area.

Choosing to protest is not always wrong, but doing so in such a way is a series of choices, some of which were bound to have been less than ideal. That is not to say they get what they deserve, of course. But the situation we're in now is not like those situations. In isolated cases enforcers act absurdly. The Tenth Amendment Center and Radley Balko pick up on it and we're getting to the point that many departments are using bodycams. It's progress, and it's actually happening.

If not, the only remaining inference I feel I can draw would be that the protesters are somehow obliged to remain idle as the police kill them off, one by one because according to what you wrote, resorting to violence "is never necessary but by the incorrect choices of those who believe it is." This is tantamount to saying that self-defense is always incorrect. I would very much like to know how you support such a position, if indeed you do.

It's far before the point where an angry cop has a gun in the protester's face. Taken in a vacuum, self defense is relevant, but with the context of the example, it isn't a fair picture. I am far more sympathetic to those who are at college and have a passionate friend talk them into joining a protest party and end up getting teargased when they really weren't sure about the cause in the first place.

There may have been a time when all the kings horses and all the kings men came to the hut and dragged the family off, and there was no other choice. It's antiquated now though. People who are choosing other means of increasing freedom are making real progress, rather than laying in fearful wait.

Glenn Greenwald, Ed Snowden, Satoshi Nakamoto, all used no violence.

[TheTexan]

It could happen right now if everyone who sees the bull$#@! and doesn't vote because of it voted.

In the US? Or in this country:

[HVACTech]

In the US? Or in this country:

trying to make the mountain taller?

[otherone]

Things will change if only the leaders the majority look up to are ethical - not if the majority is ethical. They will be if that is what they emulate.

Things will change only if it's in the best interest of the leaders. The mob wants it's bread and circuses; the leaders provide them. The mob wants to feel safe, the leaders provide it. If a leader won't capitulate, the mob will find one who will. Help me imagine a scenario where this is not the case.

[Mach]

It won't be fixed by voting. It will be fixed by it collapsing under its own weight, and rebuilding from the ashes.

That's part of their plans, after they tear things apart their way, they will get out their pre-made plans and convince the public to rebuild in a way that they'll never have to worry about our kind again.

Problem - Reaction - Solution

For instance, Extreme Leftist have said.... our goal is not to change things, but to tear apart what is already here and rebuild everything our way from the ground up.

[nayjevin]

Things will change only if it's in the best interest of the leaders. The mob wants it's bread and circuses; the leaders provide them. The mob wants to feel safe, the leaders provide it. If a leader won't capitulate, the mob will find one who will. Help me imagine a scenario where this is not the case.

President signs executive order for balanced budgets.

Fed is truly audited.

Some honest news source in between smart TV's and kindles explodes as fast as kindle did.

Snowden gets a TV show.

FOX gets bought out by a bitcoin billionaire.

But more likely than my guesses, is that a candidate finds a way to make people feel safe by actually making them safe (national defense = defending the nation, not other nations) and doesn't pull the rug out from under those dependant on the welfare system.

[heavenlyboy34]

President signs executive order for balanced budgets.

Fed is truly audited.

Some honest news source in between smart TV's and kindles explodes as fast as kindle did.

Snowden gets a TV show.

FOX gets bought out by a bitcoin billionaire.

But more likely than my guesses, is that a candidate finds a way to make people feel safe by actually making them safe (national defense = defending the nation, not other nations) and doesn't pull the rug out from under those dependant on the welfare system.

Warfare is a type of welfare-perhaps the oldest variety. The beneficiaries (MIC, etc) will not let a serious threat to their welfare be elected. Such a person would get JFK-ed even if they did get elected by some miracle.

[HVACTech]

what a depressing thread of hopelessness.

all wrapped up in intellectual snobbery.

[TheTexan]

what a depressing thread of hopelessness.

all wrapped up in intellectual snobbery.

Damn reality always getting in the way of blind optimism. Hate it when that happens.

And its not hopeless, but you need to have a sizeable pair to understand and accept what needs to be done

[Ronin Truth]

Voting ain't magic.

[phill4paul]

Voting ain't magic.

Though there is certainly smoke and mirrors WRT vote counting....

[osan]

I think this view (maybe not your view) is commonly a result of low sample size and subconscious extrapolation from what is seen in major media.

In many cases - most? - I would strongly agree. And yet, that does not render the truth of the opinion any less. It only means that someone has arrived at it by invalid means. IOW, it is a fluke, but one that has obviously been driven by something powerful if so many have trodden the same mental path.

All of your examples are valid, and in a way I suspect this is part of the trick of mass-media. They are so powerful as a sheer matter of the technology itself that the world moves under its nudging. This does not have to be the result of a deep and dark conspiracy. It could be that most of what we see it simply the product of common human habit. For example, the "if it bleeds, it leads" maxim. It just so happens that most of what arises naturally in media suits the Power Trust to a 'T'. That does not mean there is no collusion between media and Themme. I see no possibility that there is not heavy collusion. After all, are their goals pretty well one and the same? The name of the game, above all else, is power and the privileges it lends. Who would not rather be chauffeured hither and thither in $5k suits with a pair of $10K hookers keeping Mr. Stooge happy? Is it not better than that $7.81/hour job at McDonald's, slinging feces that are passed off as food to the public?

This all comes back to the quote by Marshal McCluhan: "The medium is the message." The media are powerful for manifold reasons, which we will not go into here. Suffice to say that they hold immense sway over the tepid intellect of the meaner; so reticent to act for itself; so eager to have all the heavy lifting done for it. Given the terrible habits of perception and attitude to which the people of Empire have taken, it becomes immediately apparent just how perfectly destructive modern tech media is with respect to those habits in that they do nothing to improve them and everything to egg them on to new and stratospheric heights.

Some of those comments are fake. Some of those comments are from people who would require an alarmingly low degree of peer pressure to be just as vocal the opposite way. And still it is rational to feel safe around cops for almost everyone in almost every city in America.

I am sure this is correct in some cases; less so in others. What we do not know is the relative proportion. What I read, however, seems to comport well with much that I witness first hand. But that could be yet another chicken/egg deal as you pointed out. Even so, perhaps even more so, this is a drearily depressing thing to which to bear witness. The potentials of human existence life somewhere up there in the vastness of the heavens, yet the average man stubbornly and lustfully maintains his station in the muck and $#@! at the bottom of the bed pan. Talk about depressing...

The weaker their character, the easier they will be to persuade (with truth).

Oh no no no... That is certainly not the case where the truth in question chafes against their timid corruption. Allow me the power and access and I could have America in a state of open civil war before the end of this week. All I would have to do is impose upon them the requirement of complete, utter, and strict accountability to everything they do. The milquetoast meaner, despite all his bluster about how "the game" should have been won by his favorite team (vomit), is really a jellyfish in most other respects. Despite this, were he to be imposed upon with the requirement that he be fully responsible for himself, he would soon lose his $#@! and go apey. Of that I have no doubt because I have personally witnessed an entire, large human population systematically trained to hate responsibility (in its broadest senses, rather than the narrow that is now taught and enforced) above all other things, including child molesters who, it seems, appear now to be actually rising in the tolerance ratings. 1/2

Red herring. We are far better off than we would be had no political action been taken. An action needn't be sufficient to the goal to be the proper action. Relevance is not determined by whether everything became perfect as a result. If only everyone had spent all time innovating that which circumvents those who would presume to wield power, perhaps we would be there today. If only everyone had voted we'd be there too.

Red herrinrg? Not really, though I think I see how you come to the inference. In this case "far better off" means "less worse off" and that is an attempt to make one's losses appear as appealing. That I will not accept. We are by any reasonable accounting far worse off today than we were in 1920 in terms of human rights. We had real money. I could carry a gun basically anywhere I wanted, save in $#@! holes like Chicago and NYC. Police were no more corrupt then than they are now, but were generally far less violent in their general demeanor toward the public at large. We acknowledge the less-so nature of the plight of blacks, *****, and so forth and in those regards things have improved. But rather than the tide rising to lift all vessels higher, the net effect has been more akin to inflating bladders into the sunk vessels of blacks, etc. as the greater tide has diminished, taking everyone down many pegs.

Our prosperity is turned to $#@! not of "organic" causes, but through the manipulations of a few strategically positioned individuals, most likely acting in some concert with one another. That or we are just having the worst run of luck in history. Our rights are pretty well in the $#@!-can. How much worse must it become before you concede the point that we are screwed in grand fashion and that the choice is clear: fight or capitulate? By "fight" I do not necessarily mean with fists and weapons, though neither do I rule that out.

To view "less horrible" as "better" is a violent mangling of the truth and seems to reveal one unwilling to see that truth for what it is. While technically valid, it is only so as a view of relative measures of an actual circumstance against one of a more speculative nature. In net terms, however, what you have asserted here cannot be credibly posited and IMO no man with a shred of sense would accept it. The line on the chart is going down. That the function's slope is not as steep as it might otherwise be does not make for happy-floaty Titanic. Boat still sinky. I will agree with you in the sense that there is value in braking the race to the bottom because it buys us time. In this we may be in agreement. I just want to be clear that the overall trend still sucks.

Ok, but that's absurd, because people who are trying to stop that now through politics should be able to complain if they are kidnapped, even if they are mistaken as to their actions (or weak of character in comparison to you.)

Perhaps we are speaking past each other. I took your statement to mean that some are milking the process for reasons unrelated to the restoration of proper liberties to the people of this land. IOW making a buck and their bones and who gives a $#@! about any of this. It was to such people I directed my comment.

Good question. For me, talking about the presidency, it's after an honest and give or take Jefferson principled candidate wins, serves 8 years, and either does zero things, or does very few things and a statist gets elected afterwards.

I can be on board with that - exhausting all other avenues and all - but what if that never happens? It hasn't yet and Calvin Coolidge was president a very long time ago. Also direct your consideration to the trend in terms of our presidents since the assassination of Kennedy. Johnson was at least superficially old school. Then came Nixon - a filthy little crook, though he generally comported himself in a more or less adult manner... at least publicly. Ford, similar, even if he was a great pot of nothingness, at least at the surface. Carter was what I would term as the "pre-Klown". His demeanor was, to my eyes as a direct witness to those times, less dignified, less adult than his predecessors. He'd been caught red-handed in lies and his demeanor was generally that of milquetoast. For the first time in history a president's family trash was dragged into the public discussion with Billy Beer and all that and the whole political stage in the wake of Watergate took a decided turn toward the childish.

Then came the release of "Rambo" and the twerp Stallone managed to set something off in a great many Americans, setting the stage perhaps perfectly for the dawn of the age of Klown Prezidentz. Ronald Reagan mayhave been a good and well intending man, personally speaking. He may have even held to many fine and truy American ideals. Despite all that, the man was as a bit of a Klown at times with all his swagger and 7th-grade tough talk. But all that superficiality aside, one thing remains beyond argument: as he made his big talk about the virtues of "small government", the size of the federal establishment grew to the greatest proportions ever, to date. I remember the horror I felt when the <gasp> $160 BILLION defense budget was announced one year. I about fell off my chair for the shock of it. Now look where we stand.

Bush^1 pushed the envelope only meagerly, but Clinton simply blew out the walls. The man was and remains a complete, pathetic, despicable Klown. To date he'd been the biggest joke in presidential history. It could not possibly get worse, right? Wrong. Bush^2 took what Clinton established and went with it like a star running back going for the goal line. That certainly had to be the nadir of the joke, yes? Nosir. For all the dog and pony show that those since Ronbo represented, Obama simply walked away with the ball as if on an empty field right to the goal and then marched out of the stadium, to a rocket, and is now off planet, zooming to the quasars and showing no sign of letting up. One can but wonder how this next round will turn out.

And there we are - a clear and unmistakable trend away from adult statesmanship, such as it may ever have been in the past, with a headlong plunge into raving childishness. Since Reagan the only candidate I have ever seen that comported himself in what I would deem a "presidently" manner was Ron Paul and he never had the least chance because he does not fill establishment requirements.

Given all that, how long are you willing to wait - how many more 4-year cycles - before it becomes clear that you have been wasting your time? I'm already done - been there for a couple of decades now, though holding out hope as recently as the '12 elections that Ron would miraculously step into office. Silly, stupid me... got what I richly deserved in terms of disappointment. Never again.

Average man had ill-informed parents and teachers and never had a chance.

I'm sure of it, but so what? How does that knowledge help us when we live in a world where that average man will reject such a notion and will otherwise actively ignore anything of substance that anyone has to say regarding these generally significant issues? How do we fix this? Can we? Seems so in theory, but how does that dovetail with the statistical reality of the meaner? I truly hate to say it, but the average man is a dangerous idiot who will drag the rest of us into the pit right along with him if we do not act to stop them.

Though I wish nobody harm and indeed hate seeing people come to it, my pragmatic sense now tells me I can no longer afford to concern myself with the welfare of those who will not see to their own. If they want to dance through the gates of hell, let the. I do, however, take great exception to the notion that such people will drag my daughter into the abyss in the suction wake as their ship speeds to the bottom. I'm getting old, slowly but surely, and to be honest, I've lived enough. But my girl is just hitting her stride and she is doing so well as I had never dared hope. She is so fab that were you guys to meet her, you would fall to your knees and do anything gain her favor. That is not brag - but a mere observation of what a worthy young woman she has turned herself into. It is THAT which I want to protect and for which I want a better world where lunatic, ADD-afflicted tyrants do not rule by the whim and caprice of the idiot child as is now the rule.

You'd make a great ombudsman.

Thank you.

Yeah but civilization has come a long way.

In many ways, yes, but to what good if the ways in which we have regressed undo all of it?

Never allow the concept of entropy to wander far from your awareness. Consider all the time, labor, and expertise required to erect a 100-story office tower. Now consider that with a few hundred pound of properly chosen and placed explosives, that tower can be taken down in a matter of mere seconds. That is the power of entropy - of disorder. It takes but a small measure of the right negative component applied in the right ways to undo that which has taken oceans of time and effort to put into place. When was the last time you saw an Amitol charge that went off in the midst of a rubble heap cause a building to erect itself straight upward into move-in condition in 10 seconds or less? See what I mean? It's not the painstaking labor to which we necessarily need fix our attention, but the gremlin with a box of dynamite.

[tod evans]

Though there is certainly smoke and mirrors WRT vote counting....

Isn't that done before the polls open?

[osan]

Voting ain't magic.

And yet the counted results at times appear as if miraculous.

[osan]

what a depressing thread of hopelessness.

all wrapped up in intellectual snobbery.

Where's the hopelessness?

[Ronin Truth]

And yet the counted results at times appear as if miraculous.

"Those who cast the votes, decide nothing. Those who count the votes, decide everything." -- Joseph Stalin

[Cabal]

In lieu of getting into a quote snippet back-and-forth, simply because I'm not in the mood, and by the looks of it, there's plenty of that already happening, I'll just respond to this central, defining issue.

As to the morality of voting, the government may indeed be 'the gun in the room,' and if so, it seems you would argue that it's wrong to try to control it.

Therein lies the difference. Those who vote want to control the gun, for whatever reason, excuse, rationalization, or justification they may conjure. This doesn't interest me, as it seems to me those who are interested in controlling the gun have such an interest because they want to use the gun--the institutionalized aggression that the State embodies. And as long as there's more interest in controlling the gun, it will overshadow what interest there might be in removing the gun from the equation. Even most self-proclaimed minarchists will freely admit that the so-called gun (the State) should, or needs to exist. And that's my concern--removing the gun from the equation, rejecting the delusion that it should, or needs to exist, not arguing about who it should be pointed at. And I regard this as the concern that holds liberty as its highest goal.

To me, every vote cast is ultimately a contribution to State aggression upon others, as with that vote comes a bit of responsibility for everything those elected do via the State, at whatever level their office may reside. And even our most practically ideal candidates, such as the Pauls, are not without flaw or error. Were the earth inhabited by an abundance of angels and saints who could all come to occupy every office of government, I'd change my tune, and be all about voting. But this isn't the case. Angels and saints don't exist, and even if they did, I suspect they'd want no part of the State.

There will always be a desire to preserve the gun, and use it, just as there will, in all likelihood, always be murder in the world. But like murder, I will never be bothered to vote for or against it, as if doing so would magically make murder acceptable, I'll simply reject it outright in its entirety, just as I do with the statism in all its forms.