What should Freedom Lovers Do ?
How can one combine professional life with the advancement of liberty? Of course it is presumptuous to offer a definitive answer since all jobs and careers in the market economy are subject to the forces of the division of labor. Because a person focuses on one task doesn't mean that he or she isn't great at many tasks; it means only that the highest productive gains for everyone come from dividing tasks up among many people of a wide range of talents.
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- The Reconstruction period of Union-run martial law invited many blacks to participate in politics as a primary goal. This proved to be a terrible temptation for many, as the former Virginia slave Booker T. Washington said. "During the whole of the Reconstruction period our people throughout the South looked to the Federal Government for everything, very much as a child looks to its mother." He rejected this political model because "the general political agitation drew the attention of our people away from the more fundamental matters of perfecting themselves in the industries at their doors and in securing property."
- We can learn from this. The thousands of young people who are discovering the ideas of liberty for the first time ought to stay away from the Beltway and all its allures. Instead, they should pursue their love and passion through arts, commerce, education, and even the ministry. These are fields that offer genuine promise with a high return.
- If often happens that an ideological movement will make great strides through education and organization and cultural influence, only to take the illogical leap of believing that politics and political influence, which usually means taking jobs within the bureaucracy, is the next rung on the ladder to success. This is like trying to fight a fire with matches and gasoline. This is what happened to the Christian right in the 1980s. They got involved in politics in order to throw off the yoke of the state. Twenty years later, many of these people are working in the Department of Education or for the White House, doing the prep work to amend the Constitution or invade some foreign country. This is a disastrous waste of intellectual capital.
- The problem of strategy was something that fascinated Murray Rothbard, who wrote several important articles on the need for never compromising the long-run goal for short-term gain through the political process. That doesn't mean we should not welcome a 1 percent tax cut or repeal a section of some law. But we should never allow ourselves to be sucked into the trade-off racket: e.g., repeal this bad tax to impose this better tax. That would be using a means (a tax) that contradicts the goal (elimination of taxation).
- The reason has to do with ambition, which is not normally a bad impulse. The culture of Washington, however, requires that ambition work itself out by paying maximum deference to the powers that be. At first, this is easy to justify: how else can the state be converted except by being friendly to it? The state is our enemy, but for now, we must pretend to be its pal. In time, the dreams are displaced by the daily need to curry favor. Eventually the person becomes precisely the kind of person he or she once despised. (For Lord of the Rings fans, it's like being asked to carry the ring for a while; you don't want to give it up.) I've known people who have gone this route and one day took an honest look in the mirror, and didn't like what they saw. They have said to me that they were mistaken to think it could work. They didn't recognize the subtle ways in which they themselves were being drawn in. They recognize the futility of politely asking the state, day after day, to permit a bit more liberty here and there. Ultimately you must frame your arguments in terms of what is good for the state, and the reality is that liberty is not usually good for the state. Hence, the rhetoric and finally the goal begin to change.
- The Rothbardian approach to a pro-freedom strategy comes down to the following four affirmations: 1) the victory of liberty is the highest political end; 2) the proper groundwork for this goal is a moral passion for justice; 3) the end should be pursued by the speediest and most efficacious possible means; and 4) the means taken must never contradict the goal—"whether by advocating gradualism, by employing or advocating any aggression against liberty, by advocating planned programs, by failing to seize any opportunities to reduce State power, or by ever increasing it in any area."
- Are there politicians who do some good? Certainly, and the name Ron Paul is the first that comes to mind. But the good he does is not as a legislator as such but as an educator with a prominent platform from which to speak. Every no vote is a lesson to the multitudes. We need more Ron Pauls.
- First, each individual has to understand the real situation of our country which is:
We currently are the Nazis and have been since WWII.
Nazis and Zionists are the same beast with two heads.
Zionists control Nazis with their illegal ponzi money scam.
GW Bush Gang: IG Farben 2001
http://www.rense.com/general7/gw.htm...
Along with the Rockefellers (Standard Oil, Chase Manhattan Bank), Mellons (Gulf Oil, Alcoa Aluminum), DuPonts (DuPont Chemicals), General Motors and Henry Ford, banks and shipping companies operated by the Bush family were crucial players in setting up the industrial power behind the Third Reich. These companies poured hundreds of millions of dollars into IG Farben and provided it with technology for tactically-essential synthetic materials-***while withholding the same materials and patents from the US government.***
Not only has the eugenics agenda continued but many of the top Nazis who were advancing it during WWII were brought to the US after the war and installed in academia, the media, government research institutions and the CIA by the same American officials who worked with the Bush family to build up Nazi Germany in the first place. Their ideas formed the basis for much of the agenda promoted by this nation's most influential right-wing think tanks-the same think tanks that are the sponsors of GW Bush and virtually every one of his appointees.
Why is it significant that many of Bush's staff and cabinet appointees are former pharmaceutical company executives as was GW's father, former President George Bush? These corporations are voraciously patenting the earth's life forms-its plants, bacteria, viruses, animals, and even human genetic lineages. Reproduction of plants, animals, and humans may eventually be totally controlled by these corporations, genetically altered, recombined into chimeric life forms and exploited for profit.
The Bush family fortune came from the Third Reich," - http://www.newscoast.com/headlinesstory2...
Bush and Eugenics links http://www.padrak.com/alt/bushbook_index... http://www.geocities.com/alanjpakula/tri... http://www.shorejournal.com/elkhorn/...
http://www.bartcop.com/nazigop.htm...
Alliance between American Corporate & German Militant Fascists
http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=cor...
Bilderberg Organization -- A Front for the Nazi S.S.
http://www.bilderberg-mirror.org.uk/bern...
CIA’s Operation Gladio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/operation_g...
Gehlen-Nazi S.S. arm of the CIA
http://www.angelfire.com/ut/branton/nazi...
Nazi-JFK Assassination Connection
http://www.ctrl.org/essay2/nctjfka.html...
Nazi Connection to the John F. Kennedy Assassination
by Mae Brussell (from The Rebel, November 22, 1983)
http://www.prouty.org/brussell/nazi-1.ht...
Nazi Occupied America: A Chronology of Nazi Infiltration and the War On Some Drugs
http://www.d2kla.org/pipermail/d2kdiscus...
Operation Paperclip & Nazi War Criminals
http://www.dc.peachnet.edu/~shale/humani...
Nazi Antigravity, genetic & mind control research
http://www.anomalous-images.com/text/ome...
Neuropa: Hitler's New World Order
http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.net/cgi-...
"Neuropa is a perfect pun and New Europe a meaningful name. The Nazis are using it to indicate the new order in Europe which Hitler proposes to establish...."
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-29...
The OMEGA File
THE FINAL INVASION OF THE UNITED STATES?
Nikola Tesla and His Murder
http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20070...
GHW Bush's real Nazi name is George H. Scherff, Jr., became the 41st President of the United States as GHW Bush and George H. Scherff, Sr., was Nicola Tesla’s “trusted assistant.”
- every american young, old ect. needs to stand up and be counted and get some balls, quit bitiching to deaf ears make it count, this is our country,guess we need to take it back, kick out alol the riff raff and start over, both parties suchk and have way to much power, that isn,t bein g used for the purpose it was given.
- That is quite a tome you have written. Do you think you could shorten it and ask your question again but briefly? Get over Ron Paul. That Libertarian has the chance of an ice cube in the Sahara of making it to the presidency. I am telling you this because it is true and don't want you to sob for weeks on end because you are crushed under the defeat of your god hero.
- my conclusion from reading this although it is very intelectual it is like our government going in circles because it tries to cover too much like government trying to run too much of our lives in the name of good intentions.
- But Ron is the first to say that, more importantly, we need more professors, business owners, fathers and mothers, religious leaders, and entrepreneurs. The party of liberty loves commerce and culture, not the state. Commerce and culture is our home and our launching ground for social reform and revolution
- It is a long struggle but it is the way the struggle for liberty has always taken place. But somewhere along the way, some people, enticed by the prospect of a fast track to reform, rethought this idea. Perhaps we should try the same technique that the left did. We should get our people in power and displace their people, and then we can bring about change toward liberty. In fact, isn't this the most important goal of all? So long as the left controls the state, it will expand in ways that are incompatible with freedom. We need to take back the state.
- your question is too long
- Libertarians are not the first people who have confronted the question of strategy for social advance and cultural and political change. After the Civil War, a large part of the population of the South, namely former slaves, found themselves in a perilous situation. They had a crying need to advance socially within society, but lacked education, skill, and capital. They also bore the burden of pushing social change that permitted them to be regarded as full citizens who made the most of their new freedom. In many ways, they found themselves in a position somewhat like new immigrants but with an additional burden of throwing off an old social status for a new one.
- people come to this site to read and answer questions, this was not a question, this is not the appropriate forum to present articles like this
- make love not war.
- Mine your passion. It seems to be for writing with some politics and social action thrown in for good measure.
In the right place , you might be able to package your skills for fun and profit.
Mycps= Make my content pre-sell
Myks= Make my knowledge sell
Myws=Make my words sell
- Washington wrote that "the temptations to enter political life were so alluring that I came very near yielding to them at one time" but he resisted this in favor of "the laying of the foundation of the race through a generous education of the hand, head and heart." Later when he visited DC, he knew that he had been right. "A large proportion of these people had been drawn to Washington because they felt that they could lead a life of ease there," he wrote. "Others had secured minor government positions, and still another large class was there in the hope of securing Federal positions."
- Hold on to freedom which is God given gift to decent people
which deserve it
- Okay, you started with a question, but then you more than answered it for yourself. While I may not agree with your philosophy or political stance, I believe you should be free to express it. Next time though, post it on a blog, or an on-line magazine, or some other appropriate place. This is supposed to be for questions.
- Do what you think first,I can not read your quition its too long.
- this is a way to long question! so all I have to say is freedom lovers should love being free!
- We've all seen this a thousand times. It rarely takes more than a few months for a libertarian intellectual headed for the Beltway to "mature" and realize that his or her old ideals were rather childish and insufficiently real world. A politician promising to defang Washington later becomes the leading expert in applying tooth enamel. Once that fateful step is taken, there are no limits. I know a bureaucrat who helped run martial law in Iraq who once swore fidelity to Rothbardian political economy.
- The state is open to persuasion, to be sure, but it usually acts out of fear, not friendship. If the bureaucrats and politicians fear backlash, they will not increase taxes or regulations. If they sense a high enough degree of public outrage, they will even repeal controls and programs. An example is the end of alcohol prohibition or the repeal of the 55 mph speed limit. These were pulled back because politicians and bureaucrats sensed too high a cost from continued enforcement.
- When a libertarian tells me that he is doing some good as a procurement officer at HUD, I don't doubt his word. But how much more would he do by quitting his job and writing an expose on the entire bureaucratic racket? One well-placed blast against such an agency can bring about more reform, and do more good, than decades of attempted subversion from within.
- im not even gonna read your ridiculously long essay and just answer your question. they should sit down and be quiet and stop smoking grass and breaking the law.
- If you understand and fully appreciate everything that goes along with "Freedom", you would not be asking the question(s).
Keep looking, sensing, and interpreting,--maybe it will dawn on you.
- I think that Freedom lovers should realize that their government has been taken over by secret covert operators that are funded by the wealthy elite.
The secret covert operators are from every country in addition to the CIA, just as the wealthy elite are from all over the world.
We just have to trust in our faith that love conquers all, Blessed are the Peacemakers for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
We do need more Ron Pauls.
He is the John F Kennedy of the 21st century.
The seven year reign of the anti-christ is almost over.
Ron Paul for President.
- As it was in the 1870s it is today. The state chews up and either eats or spits out those with a passion for liberty. The extent to which W.E.B DuBois's Marxian push for political agitation has prevailed over Washington's push for commercial advance has been tragic for black Americans and for the whole of American society. Many obtained political power, but not liberty classically understood.
- It is particularly important that believers in liberty not take this course. Government work has been the chosen career path of socialists, social reformers, and Keynesians for at least a century. It is the natural home to them because their ambition is to control society through government. It works for them but it does not work for us. In the first half of the 20th century, libertarians knew how to oppose statism. They went into business and journalism. They wrote books. They agitated within the cultural arena. They developed fortunes to help fund newspapers, schools, foundations, and public education organizations. They expanded their commercial ventures to serve as a bulwark against central planning. They became teachers and, when possible, professors. They cultivated wonderful families and focused on the education of their children.
- So it is with the freedom movement. The more of us there are, the more we do well to specialize, to cooperate through exchange, to boost our impact by dividing the labor. There is no way to know in advance what is right for any person in particular. There are so many wonderful paths from which to choose (and which I will discuss below). But this much we can know. The usual answer—go into government—is wrongheaded. Too many good minds have been corrupted and lost by following this fateful course.
- So goes the logic. What is wrong with it? The state's only function is as an apparatus of coercion and compulsion. That is its distinguishing mark. It is what makes the state the state. To the same extent that the state responds well to arguments that it should be larger and more powerful, it is institutionally hostile to anyone who says that it should be less powerful and less coercive. That is not to say that some work from the "inside" cannot do some good, some of the time. But it is far more likely that the state will convert the libertarian than for the libertarian to convert the state.
- Could you repeat your question?