I’ve got to give Lew Rockwell some much-due credit. He doesn’t shy away from his support for the stateless society. There is no doubt it has cost him support since the “Restore the Republic” message has a much larger audience. Judge Napolitano, who I hear makes five figures for public appearances, really banks. (How weird is it that I don’t know Napolitano’s first name, by the way?)

On Thursday, Feb. 25, Rockwell published three anti-state articles on his own site. I wouldn’t go so far to call them pro-anarchism articles, but they do undercut some false rhetoric about the beloved republic.

The first article, “Doomed from the Start,” is from Thomas DiLorenzo, who explores some of the misbeliefs that the framers of federal constitution ever meant to limit the powers of the national government. He writes how the Jeffersonian notions of state secession and nullification were deliberately attacked by the nationalists to ensure an expansionist government. Alexander Hamilton and his “disciple” John Marshall, who served as the chief justice of the Supreme Court for three decades, worked to undermine the any constitutional restraints.

It was Hamilton who first invented the expansive interpretations of the General Welfare and Commerce Clauses of the Constitution, which have been used for generations to grant totalitarian powers to the central state. He literally set the template for the destruction of constitutional liberty in America the moment it became apparent at the constitutional convention that he and his fellow nationalists would not get their way and create a “monarchy bottomed on corruption,” as Thomas Jefferson described the Hamiltonian system.

Hamilton’s devoted disciple, John Marshall, was appointed chief justice of the United States in 1801 and served in that post for more than three decades. His career was a crusade to rewrite the Constitution so that it would become a nationalist document that destroyed states’ rights and most other limitations on the powers of the centralized state. He essentially declared in Marbury vs. Madison that he, John Marshall, would be the arbiter of constitutionality via “judicial review.”

The second article is titled “The Government Is Just a Referee? Hardly.” It is probably the least informative with new thoughts, but it does provide a good quote.

Given the government’s failure at its refereeing role, it seems fair to ask: Is it better to have a biased, powerful referee who helps his friends win, or is it better to have no referee at all? Obviously the optimum situation would be to have an impartial and competent referee; but it seems that fewer and fewer people still believe that it is possible for the government to play this role. History has shown us that the impartial arbiter inevitably evolves into the protector and benefactor of certain players in the game. And because the government as referee can use guns, fines and imprisonment to enforce its will, it is indeed a formidable benefactor for its favored ones, and a formidable oppressor for its disfavored ones.

The third anti-state article, “Romans 13 and Anarcho-Capitalism,” deals with who constitutes “the governing authority,” according to the Christian belief. The Bible’s “Romans 13″ reads:

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.

This sound pretty authoritarian to me, and has been used by those in power to justify their assault. I don’t know much about The Bible, but it’s my guess that passage and the “turn the other cheek” verse were written and or preached after Christianity became the dominant religion. Just a hunch.

The author, Jim Fedako, said, “As Christians, we are to obey the legitimate governing authority, but it does not follow that the authority must be the state. Paul’s instructions are the same no matter who is in charge. And in an anarcho-capitalist world, we would only be forced to obey the governing authorities whose properties we chose to enter.”

I don’t call myself an anarcho-capitalist for the reason Fedako believes property defense is a Lockean absolute demand rather than a Rothbardian degree of proportionality.

~ An Anti-Stack Manifesto

George Donnelly makes two contributions today. The first is his rebutal to the grieved Joseph Stack, who published a suicide note online before flying a single-engine plane into an Austin building housing the offices of the Internal Revenue Service on Feb. 18. Stack had claimed he was left no other option, stating that “violence not only is the answer, (sic) it is the only answer.” Donnelly wrote:

Am I powerless? My vote doesn’t count. My voice is not heard in the corridors of power in Washington. My bank account is too small to fund political change. My salary is siphoned off into FICA taxes, income taxes, gas taxes, mortgage payments, credit card payments and inflated grocery bills before I see a dime. At any time I could be assaulted by the cops, fined by meter maids, tasered by the state police, murdered by the ATF, seized by the FBI or left penniless by the IRS. I am a punching bag standing patiently in line for my turn in the wringer. …

When I’m frustrated I remember that none of it matters. It doesn’t matter that the wrong candidate won office. He doesn’t rule me! He only has as much power as I voluntarily grant him. I never agreed to be bound by the laws he passes. I live my own life with integrity and honor by following the natural law: I do not aggress against others and I keep my word. …

As I grow more happiness and independence in my own life, I will help others do the same. I’ll boycott the strategies, agencies, options and involuntary obligations that once led me into vulnerability. I’ll exhort others to do the same. Soon we will be free, happy, at peace and prosperous. I am powerful. I have many options. I can overcome. I can make a better life for myself. I can.

In another post, “We Must Live in Alignment with Our Principles,” Donnelly makes a point I’ve been reconciling in my own mind.

Liberty starts with each of us. If we can’t make the voluntary society happen in our own lives, what hope is there of making it happen on a large scale? Change requires that good people set good examples. If nothing else, your efforts will keep the promise of liberty alive until conditions become more favorable. It’s our best option. No one will make this happen but ourselves. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

~ Answering the ‘Yes, But the State is Inevitable’ Falsity

For context, Benjamin Tucker defined government as “the subjection of the noninvasive individual to an external will.” BK Marcus answered whether government was inevitable.

And for me, the question “Isn’t some form of State inevitable?” is like saying We will never get rid of rape and robbery, murder and torture, so what sense does it make to take a principled stance against these things? They will always be with us.

It’s sad to me that such a basic thing as the principled opposition to coercion is considered to be extremist, unreasonable, unrealistic. Why do I have to believe in permanent peace to oppose war? How is it utopian to denounce force?

I share your confidence that force and fraud will always be with us, and I will always oppose them. But Statism is more than the prediction of “the subjection of the noninvasive individual to an external will.” Statism is the claim that institutionalized proactive coercion is justified. Anarchism rejects that conclusion” (emphasis in original).

~ The New Normal for Government Services

Wendy McElroy has a post from TechDirt about the new ways that government is servicing you. In California, the city of Tracy is going to charge residents $300 and non-residents $400 when the fire department is called to a medical emergency. I would completely support this but for the fact that residents already have to pay for the fire department with taxes. The reason the city is having to take such measures is to pay back the government-backed labor union that lobbies for excessive compensation and funded the city council member’s election campaigns. The city spends $9 million per year in a city of 80,000 on employee pensions and deposits ¢33 for every dollar the police and fire fighters make in wages.

No charge will be issued when the fire department responds to a car collission or a fire. So the solution is simple enough, according to McElroy: “In short, if you see someone have a heart attack in the street, you should quickly set a trash bin on fire.”

~ Think Small, Change the World

Libertarian persuasion guru Michael Cloud has some advice and motivation for activists.

Because the vital few, the great men and women, the key events were indispensable and necessary to what happened — but they were *not* sufficient to make it happen.

Without the vital, indispensable small actions of many forgotten individuals, the great events would have faltered, fizzled, and failed. …

Think small. Start small. Work small. For liberty. You can change the world.

~ Speaking of Changing Minds

Seth Godin has a post on the importance of extremists. He concludes:

It’s interesting to note that an enormous amount of apparently principled argument goes on about relatively tiny movements in where the line is being drawn. In most cases, to paraphrase an old joke, “we’ve already figured out what sort of girl you are, now we’re just arguing about the price.” It’s not the principle, in fact, it’s just the degree of compromise we’re comfortable with and content to argue over.

And so it’s left to the zealots. The people at either end have little hope of moving the masses all the way to their end of the argument. Instead, what they do is make it feel safer to change the boundaries, safer to recalibrate the compromise. Over time, as the edges feel more palatable, the masses are more likely to be willing to edge their way closer to one edge or another. Successful zealots don’t argue to win. They argue to move the goalposts and to make it appear sane to do so.

Leonard Read, the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, said principles are not compromised; they are abandoned. Principles, by their nature, are utilized or they are not.

That is an important reminder for those who believe the maximum role of government should be the protection of life, liberty, and property — which I think, logically construed, means self-government; however, I respect that others disagree. Our time is going to be most wisely spent improving ourselves and building relationships with like-minded liberty people. Even still, while the conventional political process is still dominant, there are ways for principled people to use political tools for their own benefit.

The conventional political dichotomy is a struggle between short-term opportunism and long-term progress. I think there is a simple reconciliation that can be made between the two camps. That is, under no circumstances, never ever, should we ever support an expansion in the role of government or a further restriction on a peaceful person’s liberty. Second, any policy support should be done with the explicit purpose of decreasing the role of government and directly benefiting peaceful individuals.

Any strategy or policy goals that we recommend or follow should be consistent with the purpose of restoring individual liberty and responsibility. I understand the importance of intermediate goals or markers to help fully achieve our ultimate purpose. But our means of achieving that purpose should not be contradictory to that end. For example, a lot of politicians try to justify tax cuts because they believe it will actually increase the total revenues to the government treasury. I believe this is wrong and sends an inconsistent message.

The goal of a tax cut should be to reduce the burden of government. Again, we should not advocate the re-legalization of cannabis on the grounds that it will raise tax revenues, but because prohibition is immoral and counterproductive. Expanding government and further restricting the liberty of others to correct another ill-fated government policy is an abandonment of principle. As Ron Paul said, “Few Americans understand that all government action is inherently coercive.” Reducing the level of coercion in people’s lives is a worthy goal.

Principles in Practice

The goals that we have should be radical — not liberal- or conservative-lite. This serves two purposes. First, it provides cover for not-so-radical views to be considered more mainstream, thus limiting the fear of ostracism people might have for holding these slightly less radical views. It provides an objective guidepost — like a lighthouse — for gauging the success of our efforts during darker times.

I would also like to suggest two methods of communicating these ideas. We should definitely take the time, on an intellectual basis, to refute anti-liberty or collectivist ideas. But we must acknowledge that the people advocating these mistaken ideas are not dimwitted. In fact, many know exactly how they benefit from these policies. They are ripping us off, so we must make direct, populist appeals that reveal that fact.

By its nature, government is crude and unaccountable, so there will be an infinite supply of aggrieved individuals. Ideally, that means that we don’t have to convert individuals fully to the virtue of liberty before taking action together. Over time, I hope that those who are “liberty minus one” or “liberty minus whatever” come to see the error of their ways.

Some Ideas to Bat Around

Sometimes, pick losing issues to get the message out by presenting a pro-liberty analysis. I’m not saying be a stick-in-the-mud. The situation might provide an opportunity to get some free media publicity or lay the groundwork for winning progress on the issue in the future. Liberals have deployed this technique by pushing socialized health insurance and environmental regulations.

Now, I don’t even know how possible this next one is. Those arrested for committing consensual crimes could be high-target prospects for the liberty message. When I’m passing out Fully Informed Jury Association literature on jury nullification, those called for jury duty are naturally receptive to the material I am providing. I’ll usually stay a little past the time when potential jurors are due to report in downtown Fort Worth in order to catch any stranglers. When I do, I just happen to pass out literature to defendants, and they are just as interested in the concept of jury nullification as potential jurors, if not more so. There has got to be a way of contacting those folks by getting ahold of  some public records.

(Image credit: john curley, with Creative Commons license)

Super activist John Bush, of Austin’s Texans for Accountable Government, posted a commentary on the prevailing notion that liberty could be achieved by seizing control of the Republican Party. I have less care for electoral politics than might Bush, but I think his critique is well founded and should be heeded by those participating in electoral politics, including myself to some degree.

Disclaimer: This note is not meant to devalue or discredit the work that has already been done by activists in the GOP. Any action in this liberty movement is much appreciated. It is also worth noting that everything in this note applies to those from the left attempting to use the Democratic Party as well. Myself and many others are merely trying to point out the damage that can be done to the movement if we adopt the “restore the GOP” strategy as our primary means of affecting change in this country.

1. We give up our leverage as the majority maker.

From Chuck Young’s blog [post] “Lessons of the Paul Campaign – r[evol]ution within the reForm“:

“There is a branch of game theory called coalition theory. It ponders questions like the following: if we have 3 groups, with 49, 49, and 2 ‘votes’ respectively, all seeking to win an election with 51 votes total, which of these 3 can be said to have the most ‘power’? And the answer is (drum roll): they all have equal power, because any one of them that wishes to win must make a deal with some other group.

“In this little theoretical truism lies a possible answer to the riddle of how a dedicated and united cadre might wedge and manipulate two bloated, corrupt ’superpowers’ like the Democratic and Republican parties. What is required isn’t a majority, but rather a minority substantial enough that both powers must continuously bargain with this third group to gain its temporary allegiance. Of course, the two superpowers could always come out in open alliance with each other once and for all — but that in itself would be a victory for the good guys with immense ramifications.

“The difficulties in launching and sustaining a viable third party are well documented; what is called for probably isn’t another political party. Indeed, such a thing would likely be undermined, as have the Libertarian Party, Constitution Party, and similar entities of the left, e.g. the Greens. But while a third party is probably untenable, it’s clearly suicide to remain in this abusive relationship with the Republicans.

“Why? Go back to coalition theory. By trying to ‘reform’ the Republican Party, our movement COMPLETELY SURRENDERS THE LEVERAGE IT HAS AGAINST THE TARGETS OF SAID REFORM. There is a shockingly naive assumption in all this, as the criminal elements in the GOP get away with political murder. It’s believed that somehow they will surrender their authority because they ‘need us.’ Some coalescing may indeed happen, but expecting those who run the GOP to just ‘come around’ to our way of thinking because they’re in the process of getting the crap kicked out of ‘em flies in the face of repeated experience. Most people in 1976 wouldn’t have given the GOP another shot at the presidency for 12 years at least; yet they were right back in the saddle in 1980, with a ‘revolution’ … of sorts.”

2. We will never be able to ignite the mass movement necessary to enact genuine change as we will always be plus-or-minus 50 percent of the voting postulation. We will always be trapped in a reactionary paradigm against the other half of the FALSE left-right paradigm.

Which leads to 3 ….

3. The party in power will inevitably waver on its principles if only to maintain its position as the dominant party.

From “A Disquisition on Government” by John C. Calhoun:

“A written constitution certainly has many and considerable advantages, but it is a great mistake to suppose that the mere insertion of provisions to restrict and limit the power of the government, without investing those for whose protection they are inserted with the means of enforcing their observance will be sufficient to prevent the major and dominant party from abusing its powers. Being the party in possession of the government, they will, from the same constitution of man which makes government necessary to protect society, be in favor of the powers granted by the constitution and opposed to the restrictions intended to limit them …. The minor or weaker party, on the contrary, would take the opposite direction and regard them [the restrictions] as essential to their protection against the dominant party …. But where there are no means by which they could compel the major party to observe the restrictions, the only resort left them would be a strict construction of the constitution …. To this the major party would oppose a liberal construction …. It would be construction against construction — the one to contract and the other to enlarge the powers of the government to the utmost. But of what possible avail could the strict construction of the minor party be, against the liberal construction of the major, when the one would have all the power of the government to carry its construction into effect and the other be deprived of all means of enforcing its construction? In a contest so unequal, the result would not be doubtful. The party in favor of the restrictions would be overpowered …. The end of the contest would be the subversion of the constitution … the restrictions would ultimately be annulled and the government be converted into one of unlimited powers.”

4. The party will shape the change agents more than the change agents will shape the party.

From Chuck Young’s blog [post] “Lessons of the Paul Campaign – r[evol]ution within the reForm”:

“This brings us to the very disturbing turn Paulism has taken: the invocation of that same ‘Reagan Revolution,’ the ‘Robertson takeover’ and the like, to ’sell’ Paulism to the GOP ‘conservatives.’ Groups like the Republican Liberty Caucus are even openly equating Ron Paul with Ron Reagan – with REAGAN, super neoconservative, warmongerer extraordinaire, the most profligate spender the nation had ever seen (until the record was broken by a certain successor), a man that sold out so-called conservative principles so profoundly, that Ron Paul himself quit the Republican Party in disgust and ran as the Presidential candidate for the LP in 1988!!!

“What a long, bitter history the movement for LIBERty has when it tries to be ‘conservative!’ And yet, because we’ve convinced ourselves that we’ve nowhere else to go, we find ourselves chanting this mantra: ‘we really are conservatives, we are real conservatives, be a conservative like us.’ And always in this equation of the movement with ‘conservatism,’ ALWAYS, there is a softening of the anti-war, anti-empire stance. And so one wonders, vis a vis this GOP ‘takeover’ – who’s zoomin’ who, hmmm?
The signs are all around the paleocon ’surge.’ It isn’t only that Ron Paul is being equated with Reagan and Goldwater (can you hear that…? it’s the sound of Rothbard turning over in his grave). We have Bob Barr as the nominee for the LP – Barr, ex-CIA, who voted for the Iraq ‘War’ and the Patriot Act. And the rising star in the LP is Wayne Allen Root – note his initials, ‘WAR,’ and rest assured that ‘peace’ will never be his middle name. It seems the deeper we commit ourselves to this dysfunctional ‘conservative’ assertion, the more we are moved towards the ‘libertarianism’ of Neil Boortz – not the other way around.”

5. The hierarchical structure of the two major parties is easily susceptible to co-option, as only those at the top would need to be compromised in order to steer the party. This is evidenced by the current state of both parties.

Potential solution?

Remain a tight united libertarian cadre which works on single issue coalitions at a local and state level all the while applying the philosophy of liberty in a manner which will cause those of the statist persuasion to appreciate the consistency of libertarianism and question the hypocrisy of their collectivist mindset. Eventually the tight united cadre will grow as those beginning to appreciate liberty more and more will be picked off from the fringe of the parties.

All the while we must begin to build and create parallel institutions based on mutually beneficial voluntary associations so that we may offer an alternative to the people when the current system inevitably collapses. We must be prepared to offer an alternative as our enemies surely will be. [Editor's note: A few edits have been applied to Bush's note to conform to the punctuation style on this site.]

My take is that the Libertarian Party is largely a waste, save as a protest vote or an education tool. Participating in the primary elections of the major parties leverages the most impact from voting, which is still about as equivalent to a suggestion box on a slave plantation. Bush has said he is “beginning to explore the revolutionary possibilities associated with agorism, counter-economics, and the creation of parallel institutions which will rival and compete with the state.” I wholeheartedly agree; we should be spending our time agitating and organizing, not begging the state.

He is also beginning to take some heat from Ron Paul apologists (not all Paul supporters, including myself, are apologists) for questioning Paul’s support of welfare-warfare Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). For as beneficial as Paul is at spreading the message of liberty, it is just as important that liberty activist hold themselves accountable to at least the same standards by which they hold others. I believe attempts to confine or marginalize different opinions shows a lack of confidence is one’s own ideas. To paraphrase Zeitgeist: The Movie, take truth as the authority, not authority as the truth.

Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online said that “very serious, committed, consistent libertarians are very rare in America (and really, really rare everywhere else). They don’t come close to constituting a major voting block. I respect folks who seriously believe in liberty-maximization in all spheres of life, but that is not a power-brokering constituency in American politics and never will be” (emphasis added).

This is the same point I made in a post earlier this month. Committed libertarians have not made any progress electorally because they are not willing to scratch enough backs, and if they were willing to scratch enough backs they wouldn’t be committed libertarians any longer. It is not simply a small-government versus a big-government mentality. It’s electoral libertarians or constitutionalists versus a multitude of warhawks, rent seekers, and stripes of big-government conservative and liberal social reformers who are more than willing to trade favors. Those are entrenched groups, and they find that big government suites their needs.

Before those groups came to power, Ludwig von Mises published Human Action, the most complete case for classical liberalism, and Socialism, which described the calculation problem of centralized economic planning. Leonard Read opened the Foundation of Economic Education, aiding the early careers of F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Henry Hazlitt. Ayn Rand championed the heroic nature of the individual. Their support for electoral politics was understandable given government’s popularity in the 1940s and 50s; but they failed to stop government growth when government was much less intrusive and when it was a tiny fraction of its current size. All the things that have happened since — the trillion dollar-per-year empire, the instillation of dictatorial client states in South America and the Middle East and the subsequent “blowback,” the hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians killed by American forces, and the authoritarian law enforcement tactic leveled against American civilians — happened despite their work. Those tragedies and many more happened anyways.

The fear is that liberty would be in full-scale retreat and that greater atrocities would have taken place had libertarians not participated in electoral politics. There’s a case to be made there, but it is speculation. What isn’t speculation is that government spending as a part of the economy is at an all-time high, and everyone expects it to stay on the current trajectory indefinitely. Most Americans still support pre-emptive war and torture for anyone the government labels a terrorist. In Michael Cloud’s book Secrets of Libertarian Persuasion, he cares to use the Weight Watchers Test to gauge the promises by politicians of reducing the size of government, referring to the famous diet plan in which participants meet regularly to weigh themselves in front of other members. He said:

The Weight Watchers Test of government lets us know where we are, which direction we’re moving … and how fast we’re going.

The Weight Watchers Test of government frees us from sleight-of-mouth and political illusions.

It offers us the facts, the truth:

Are we moving toward bigger and bigger Big Government … or getting closer and closer to individual liberty, personal responsibility, and small government?

According to the Weight Watchers Test, libertarians have failed and failed more miserably than anyone else I know. (I include myself in that criticism.) The government has grown from arguably the freest non-colonial government in all of history to the most dangerous existing threat to humanity (considering the military arsenal at a president’s disposal and their predecessor’s historical willingness to use it). A limited government has the perverse tendency of growing immensely since lifting many regulations and securing relative stability makes it possible to generate astounding amounts of wealth, allowing the government parasite to grow largely discretely until the point where the parasite of government becomes so entrenched that government and the market almost appear co-dependent and inseparable.

There are three possible reasons why I think libertarianism has lost political ground. First, we could be wrong, and libertarians fail to understand the scope and circumstances to which coercion should play in human interaction to promote prosperity. Philosophically, I think libertarians (those who support the maximum attainable role of individual liberty) are right. Human beings are the most prosperous, yet fragile, animals on earth. So I don’t think humans have progressed because of our extraordinary physical traits. It is because of the human mind and its reasoning ability. So it seems that the negation of the reasoning mind by initiating force is detrimental to the fruits of human progress. I appreciate Ayn Rand’s comment that “All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.”

Second, libertarians may have failed due to a lack of effort. For this, I refer to the Ron Paul’s presidential campaign of 2008. In one day in November of 2007, his supporters raised over $4.3 million. A month later, supporters exhausted over $6 million in a single day, a record for the largest fundraiser in the history of politics. Libertarians are unlikely to ever find someone as honest and distinguished as Paul. He got more media attention than any ideological libertarian before, yet he rarely garnered more than 10 percent in Republican primaries despite the thousands of YouTube videos and millions of dollars invested. Even if Paul ran again, I’m doubtful that level of enthusiasm could be reproduced.

Third, maybe libertarians have tried the wrong strategy of clinging to government strictures to achieve intellectual inroads. Instead of trying to liberate the entire country, we could try to focus on something of which we have some control — ourselves and our personal relationships.

A belief in the maximum role of individual liberty is inherently an individualist philosophy. That means taking responsibility for our own liberty, just as we take responsibility for our own welfare — instead of giving that power to middlemen, the politicians. We can “be the change,” as Ghandi said, and lead by example to thwart the arbitrary controls others seek to impose on us. In that way, our ideals, cascading individual by individual, will eventually be reflected in the institution of government to the point where it is commonly accepted that government is no longer necessary. I don’t have to wait for the whole country to shift before I take responsibility for my own life and enjoy the benefits of living by honest, consistent principles. It can be achieved by taking peaceful direct action through education, outreach, and agorism.

What if Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, Rand, and Hazlitt had worked outside the system 50 years ago? Imagine how much further liberty would have advanced. That too is speculation, but we’ve seen that electoral politics isn’t a path to salvation either.

My discomfort with so many of the state and national “liberty” candidates for office is their general willingness to appeal to collectivism on issues like immigration, otherwise known as “moving.” Even Ron Paul was plagued by this, in part to be taken seriously by Republican voters. Of course, I may be too cynical in calling it a total affectation. I don’t think it comes from a xenophobic fear of foreigners, either. He probably recognizes that the people who most blatantly and systematically usurp our liberty are mostly middle-aged white men, not day laborers at Home Depot. Nevertheless, it is just as safe to assume that Paul’s harsher immigration policies drove away as many potential liberty supporters as they attracted.

Immigrants and their friends and families, many of whom have experienced or witnessed government persecution, could have been the most receptive audiences of a consistent message of liberty. Instead, they may have permanently associated the message of liberty with a perceived hostility toward immigrants. In the long term, that is going to create some challenges for future candidates wanting to promote a message of individual autonomy. They recognize the common objection — that some immigrants take far more from the government trough than they contribute — as a spurious argument, at best, since some government employees and some government contractors take all of their resources from the government, yet immigration foes do not propose deporting them. For that matter, legal immigrants are far more likely to acquire government welfare than unsanctioned movers.

What brings this to mind is the announced immigration platform of one of Paul’s supporters, Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina, someone to whom I have donated my own time and money. For the most part, she sounds a lot like Paul in that she really dislikes the federal government. She wants to nullify the enforcement of some federal laws she believes are unconstitutional and to end property taxes. Thumbs up on my end, though I would prefer nullifying all federal laws and ending all taxes. As someone opposed to non-consensual monopoly government, I can’t enthusiastically endorse any policy other than to disband. However, that shouldn’t discourage me from critiquing existing political proposals or from identifying that some ideas are better or worse than others.

Some of her proposals, like wanting to reduce the scope of gun regulations and to nullify sham free-trade treaties like NAFTA that primarily benefit corporate special interests, would be great. Her most disagreeable idea is to assign “sufficient numbers of Texas National Guard and Texas State Guard” to help local law enforcement. Ethically, it is an abandonment of the non-aggression principle (NAP) as she openly calls for the use of aggressive force to solve what she perceives to be a social problem. The troops and all their resources are funded by the use of force, taxation. In turn, they will initiate force against peaceful movers and foreign entrepreneurs. (Insert the obvious caveat that not all individuals wishing to cross the border are peaceful.) The result will be failure, as all government prohibitions are. It will increase the violence on the border, breed corruption among those guarding the border, and cost a fortune. She also plans to target documented movers convicted of a state or federal law. So for those who break a non-violent federal law, which is done by each individual on average three times a day, they could get tossed, again violating the NAP.

What a Consistent Immigration Policy Looks Like

Since Medina has already shown her support for nullification of unconstitutional federal law, let’s start with all federal immigration laws. The constitution provides no existing expressed powers for the federal government to make immigration policy, only for the naturalization process of becoming a citizen. In fact, the Texas constitution that congress approved after Reconstruction had a Bureau of Immigration, as did most other former Confederate states.

Step two would be to end all government welfare benefits. Then fully re-legalize the prostitution, drug and arms trades. It would completely eliminate the need for anyone to enter the country by sneaking across the desert or trespassing on private property. The vast majority wanting to cross the border conventionally would be those wanting to earn their own way. The fear is that gangs would run wild, causing chaos in the streets. That is unfounded since dishonest criminals who could no longer sustain themselves on inflated black-market profits can in no way compete on the open market. Those wanting to live off the government or engage in criminality would remain in their own country.

We could reduce the scope of government, relieve taxpayers of an extra burden, and demonstrate the fruits of freedom. Government meddling and excuses to circumvent the Bill of Rights would be curtailed, which might get the ire of conservatives in the Republican Party who would rather imprison strangers rather confront the reality of emancipating themselves. If there were ever a litmus test for empathy for the oppressed, immigration surely is it.

An Examination of Alternatives

But maybe I am being too hard on Medina. She’s running a state-wide race in Texas, after all. It is extremely unlikely voters would support a candidate who took such radical steps. We can’t expect someone to be agreeable on every issue, and she would certainly be better than the any other credible choice. The other candidates in the running would have no qualms about some academic non-aggression principle. I agree with all that. But I presume that she has read Paul’s books and articles, in which he has advocates his support for the NAP. In End the Fed, he said for example, “We must reject the initiation of violence by individuals or governments as morally repugnant.” Apparently, even Ron Paul does not get the full impact of that idea. His claim is that it is an “invasion,” yet his emphasis is on curtailing it through economic means by removing the welfare incentives. Medina lists that at the very bottom of her of proposals and puts the state guard patrol at the very top, a complete reversal of Paul’s priorities.

My primary and probably only significant purpose in participating in electoral politics is to spread the ideas of liberty. I readily concede that if I want to participate in electoral politics, I can’t expect ideological purity. Engaging the government in any manner, driving on government roads or attending government school, is a regretful concession. I suppose that “When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spread,” as Paul declared. The temptation is to bite one’s tongue. That is my source of resentment for electoral politics. It offers this simple, elegant solution, making it very seductive. The danger is that by not expressing criticism of supposed pro-liberty candidates who abandon that message, assuming that is their highest political goal, we come across as just another empathetic-less political movement wanting to impose our beliefs on others. I don’t even ask that a politician be opposed to all forms of aggression to receive my support, only that he or she oppose increasing the present scope of violence against the peaceful. In this respect, Medina readily and consistently advocates increasing the use of government violence against largely peaceful immigrants. If I were to vote for her in the March primary or the November general election, I would necessarily be sacrificing the interests of an already exploited group of people for my own interests.

I think it is more practical to practice libertarianism consistent with its principles. There are steps that have already proven more effective and more immediate. Primarily, they focus on liberating ourselves to demonstrate firsthand how beneficial living by these principles can be. That is, if you want freedom, you don’t have to participate in the elaborate resource-depleting, shame-inducing rituals of voting and petitioning for a band of thieves to recognize your humanity. Those rituals and institutions are in place to obscure the violence behind it all. Once the glaring blessings of liberty are realized, all mystic pretenses for an intrusive government will be shattered. Now I’m not saying that being right is easy, for if it were easy then it would have already been done.