IPFS
Brock Lorber
More About: Philosophy of LibertyDemagoguery of Violence
To the demagogue of violence:
It is so black and white.
On belief and contention, what is yours is yours.
Are you right?
Others don't think so. They believe, rightly or wrongly, that part or all of what you claim is not, in fact, yours, but theirs or ours.
Their reason may be flawed. Their belief may not be based on reason at all, but merely faith or ignorance. They may not be aware of or have ever been exposed to your reasoning for your belief.
Still, you want them to respect your contention. You demand they respect your contention on pain of … pain.
You have declared yourself as the unjust god that condemns a child to eternal death for the sin of not knowing him.
When confronted with your logic and reason, will they recognize their flaws and change their ways? The answer is not yes or no. Some have and some haven't.
But, your demagoguery has left you dialogically estopped from complaining about their demand that you respect their contention on pain of pain.
If, as you contend, you are right, moral, or ethical in violently defending what you believe to be your property from them, then they must also be right, moral, or ethical in violently defending what they believe to be their property from you.
You have rendered moot the question of who actually owns the property in question.
Will they ever respect your claim in their court with their juries? Nope. Will they ever stop grasping for toys you leave within arms reach of their sandbox? Not in a million years.
Not without your violence, and not with it.
But, if your property is your property, and you are right to defend your property, and you know they will claim any property within arms reach of their sandbox, why did you leave your property hanging around the sandbox? Do you only care about your property when another child reaches for it?
What a wonderful world where every person would look at property they don't personally own as belonging to another and, thus, untouchable whether protected or not. Wonderful, as in devoid of all humans. In such a world no property could ever come in to ownership; no tools, no food, no water – no humans.
For basic human survival, property must come into individual ownership. For continued survival, the individual must be prepared to protect his life and savings. However, if your entire protection plan consists of forfeiting the life and liberty of anyone who believes, rightly or wrongly, that some property ownership is in contention, then consistency demands that they, also, can forfeit your life and liberty over the same property.
You compare them to a common thief, and in some respects your comparisons are apt. However, the mugger threatens your life for the purpose of depriving you of property he in no way, shape, or form believes is his. No ownership claim is made and thus none must be respected.
On the other hand, the nameless they honestly believe that you are unjustly withholding their property from them. They legitimately believe they have moral justification for securing that property through violent means that your demagoguery validates.
On the question of ownership, you, of course, are right and the mob, of course, is wrong. But, your declaration that "violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer" ensures such questions remain immaterial. In one short phrase you descend from reasoning creature to the lowly animal that is the mob.
You debase yourself, sir.
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6 Comments in Response to Demagoguery of Violence
While I personally loathe violence I do understand the fact that there are people for whom violence is the first insticnt and since for them there are few if any consequences they are indeed eager to commit violence upon those who either cannot or will not defend themselves, thus you must be willing to make a determination of at what point will you take someone else's life knowing full well they have every intention of killing you.
Giant Run-on sentences FTW!!!
Jet, don't worry about vermin. Come sleep on my couch. I've been regularly dousing the area with chemicals since before the pad was poured, I've got plenty of room, and the "road out of town" includes jumping my fence.
I hope you like meat and GMO veggies, otherwise you going hungry.
I love this stuff...it's people like you that I enjoy arguing with over this type of Freedom's Phoenix shit that I'll reminisce fondly about while huddling in some vermin-infested bunker somewhere in post-Apocalyptic America.
Logical Holes & Bullshit.
Anyone care to point one out?
Jet screeds on points I readily concede. That's no help. Oyate shares my economic duality ... on an opinion piece?
I wouldn't be motivated to write something unsurprising. I strive for economic rigour in opinion pieces, but the opinions are my own. Economic analysis belongs in the "articles" section because econ cannot form an opionion.
On either, I welcome critique and thank you for it. The price is right, and oh, by the way, I WANT to know where I'm wrong.
brock at myotherkids.com
Jet, I agree that Brock's argument has some logical holes. Brock, not to attack but I've been as mystified by some of your economic posts as Jet is with my spiritual psycho-crap. It just seems that occasionally you have a duality of mind. And at the least, you arrive at some interesting conclusions at times.
But this article I'll take on the strength of the headline and tagline. Defending and applauding violence paints a patriot into an indefensible corner.
Now here are various patriots howling for my blood and beyond the fact that I think it's unfair to beat up Oyate without simultaneously beating up Lorber (misery loves company), I think Brock and I are firm: one cannot be "pro-life" and not respect it at the same time.
And to categorically declare war on a certain group of people necessitates ignoring or denying THEIR essential humanity.
The lessons of Waco live on in me primarily (and ironically) through a PBS docu that showed some of the "murderers of Waco" and they showed pics of their wives and kids and they just cried. I knew that those men would never be the same again. Every time they look at their kids, they see dead ones.
I'm not defending what they did. I'm just observing that the cost on them is high. To those of you who say "they should pay for what they did", you may be right, but they are paying right now.
In this, at the least, we saw that while they might be "enemies", they are also flesh and blood men just like you and me. They have familes and lives.
You know how trippy I get on the spiritual side and I believe demons exist, but we at least saw that these men, these BATF Butchers are men. Not demons. The evil clearly exists in the hearts of men. And I don't think we are above other men, we are all one. So to presume that evil does not exist in our hearts might be a lethal mistake.
In the past I have called for ideological battle so we understand who we are. And we seem to be moving at light-speed all the sudden so I think we're already in the time for love and understanding among ourselves, despite our newly articulated differences.
To address brother Jet directly, you may now resume your message of love and unity because now we have that chunk our of our throats, The Purisits Have Spoken. The factions have established our individual identities and now we can work together for common goals because nobody feels like they are left out in the cold.
Myself inclusive because when I got people openly calling me a shill/plant, I know I'm right on the mark. It has never, ever been comfortable or easy to be a patriot.
My Felicitations Sirs.
Pee-e-e Yew!
Nothing personal, but this is a bullshit argument.
If you've earned your property with your blood, sweat, and tears then you know God-damn well whose property it is, regardless of what anyone else thinks; and that's all that matters.
While it may or may not feel good on some masochistic level,. you can't sit atop the fence on this issue; either you're for individual property rights or you aren't. It's that simple. As far as I know, from the libertarian standpoint, there's no gradation of what you're "supposed" or "not supposed" to do when force, fraud, or both in the case of the IRS, has been committed against you.
Nor does anyone who works for the IRS get a free pass by saying "I was just following orders" or "I was just doing my job." It just doesn't cut it.
I'll say to you the powerful words my Mom says to me on occasion...."Why don't you reach in your pockets and come up with some balls."
Personally, I say fuck 'em. FUCK THEM ALL.
Can you say Unintended Consequences?. Sure, I knew you could.