No Coercion

I live in Durham County (NC), right next door to Wake County, which is in the midst of a heated debate over its notorious forced busing program that the new school board just declared its intention to end (they’ve been assigning children still trapped in the government school system to schools very far from their homes in order to achieve a “diversity” goal of no school having more than 40% of the children in the free or reduced lunch program–the result is lots of parents who otherwise would have had their kids in the local neighborhood school and who now have a much greater difficulty staying involved in their children’s education while the kids spend hours each day on the bus, sometimes force to go out to the bus stop before sunrise). I’ve been having a tough time, in a particular discussion forum, trying to explain the injustice of such a program to some statists, who already don’t understand the injustice of the government education system in the first place. My latest attempt is to compare the State to the Mafia, along the lines of thinkers like Spooner and Rothbard. After I typed it up I decided it would make a good blog post, so here’s what I posted in the forum (for clarification, my use of the phrase “propaganda language” is a reference to the use of that phrase by one of the statists in response to another libertarian’s referring to taxation as theft):

Here’s maybe a different way of looking at this busing issue (and really any issue involving compulsory government). Imagine it’s not the government that comes around to take some of your money to fund schools, but rather a Mafia enforcer. Imagine it’s not the government that threatens to lock you up if you don’t send your kids to school, but rather the Mafia enforcer. Imagine it’s not the government that then makes it harder for you to be involved in your children’s education by sending them to a school across town that you otherwise wouldn’t have chosen, but rather your friendly Mafia enforcer. Now, what we call theft (or armed robbery if you refuse to send in the money on your own), kidnapping, and general aggression when the Mafia does it, we call ‘democracy at work for the public good’ or some other such *ahem* propaganda language when the state does it.

Ah, you say, but it’s okay when the state engages in this kind of violence because “we’re a democracy” and “we can vote for our leaders.” Okay, then–let’s say the Mafia comes along and says, “You can vote for which Mafiosi you want to do the hiring of the enforcers! Woohoo! We won’t let you out of the violence we’re initiating, but YOU get to tell us who you want holding the gun! Aren’t we nice?”

Ah, you say, but it’s not really like that with the state because we’re all part of the “social contract” that allows the state its monopoly on justice and the legal initiation of violence. Well, alrighty–so the Mafia comes back and says, “Hey, whatcha fussin’ for, guy? Don’t you know what we’re doing is okay because of this special “social contract” we just came up with that we say you’re agreeing to?”

So here’s the deal. The difference–the SOLE difference–between the Mafia and the state is that the state has managed, through nonsense logic and “propaganda language,” to convince enough of you terrified children of its legitimacy that you allow it to go about its business of aggression without too much resistance.

Ending the busing program is a reduction in the level of aggression involved in education, a smaller reduction for some and a greater reduction for others.

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Matt Drew, a resident of Durham and a local Libertarian Party activist, is running for Durham City Council. He’s looking to shake up the way things are done:

The inevitable question that gets asked is, why should I vote for you?  And my answer is: Chickens.  The debate over urban chickens in Durham stretched over months, three public hearings, and finally ended in February 2009 with a 7-0 vote in favor of allowing them.  Now, I support people having chickens on their property – as a Libertarian, how could I do otherwise?  The problem is not with the issue.  The problem is the default.

The Durham City Council is set to “default deny”: that which is not expressly permitted is forbidden.  In computer security this is a good thing; in a government, it’s a bad thing.  It took incredible effort to convince the Council to permit people to do something, as if it is the Council’s place to decide what peaceful people do in their homes and on their land without disturbing their neighbors.  And it took months to make what should have been a simple decision.  Are these people hurting anyone?  Are they stealing from anyone?  Are they causing anyone suffering?  Then why are we even talking about this?  It should have been a done deal weeks before.  Citizens shouldn’t have to prove why it’s a good idea to have chickens; the Council should have to prove why they should be banned.  The debate occurred in entirely the wrong direction, and as a result took far too long and wasted an enormous amount of time and energy.

I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon working the LP booth with Matt at the Eno River Festival a few weeks ago. He may not be a radical market anarchist like me (I would probably run on a platform calling for the city council to abolish itself or something), but he’s a great guy and a genuine libertarian. If you’re one of my local Durhamite readers, check him out, and consider voting for him and mentioning him to your friends.

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Well, the government is up to its old tricks, this time in my own back yard. A divorce court judge in Wake County is apparently ordering a divorcing couple’s kids into government schools after having been home schooled by their mother for the past few years. The mother’s curriculum seems to be based on the Biblical teachings of some kind of fundamentalist Christian sect, and the father is opposed to such education (as is the judge, it would seem).

Now I’m certainly no fan of religious education and all its attendant absurdities. It’s always disheartening to know that there are people out there teaching their children that many of the foundations of modern science are wrong, that two of every living thing on the planet were carried around in a big boat while the whole planet was underwater, that long-extinct creatures (like dinosaurs) were included in that big boat party, that people were healed and raised from the dead and walked on water through some supernatural means, that an ancient book of history combined with mythology (that has had its inherent absurdity compounded by being thoroughly garbled by a multitude of poor translations and intentional additions, deletions, and redactions) is the infallible word of an apparently schizophrenic supreme being, and that they will be tortured forever after they die if they break any number of ridiculous rules.

Nevertheless, it’s every parent’s inherent natural right, as the trustee of their dependent children, to determine how and whether their children are educated. Disagreements between parents on the issue should be settled through private, voluntary means—not compulsory action by others (i.e. the state). The state is committing a gross violation of natural rights by making and enforcing laws that require children to be educated, using force to cause the vast majority of children to go to the state’s institutions where they are then taught for years on end to view the compulsion foisted on them by the government in a positive light and to not attempt to reject it or defend themselves against it, and by funding all these actions through funds taken by force from all of us.

If someone wants their kids to worship Yahweh, Zeus, Odin, or the great and powerful Tom Cruise, we should perhaps feel sorry for them but should never use the illegitimate power of the state to force them to do otherwise. Hell, we probably have less to fear from people who worship mythological characters (with a few notable exceptions) than we do from people who worship the very real and very dangerous state.

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The Libertarian Party of North Carolina succeeded in getting more than 2% of the vote in the gubernatorial race, thus meeting the state government’s oppressive requirement for staying on the ballot for the next four years without having to complete another obscenely time consuming and expensive petition drive!

Mike Munger, Libertarian candidate for Governor, received 2.87% of the vote. Along the way, he managed to spread the message of liberty to all corners of the state. He showed people fed up with the state-sponsored parties that there is another choice.

The Republicans and Democrats have worked for decades to make sure the public doesn’t hear other voices. They don’t want people to know that there is a philosophy out there that is based on cooperation and achievement rather than coercion and pandering. Now we have a good four years to focus on breaking through the government’s barriers to our message and helping North Carolinians get to know the libertarian philosophy–the only philosophy that’s built on freedom in ALL areas of life, not just certain select categories. More on that in my next post.

Again, great job by Dr. Mike Munger and all our candidates across the state!

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The farcical puppet show known as Election Day is upon us. As I’ve said before, if you’re going to participate in this charade that seems to have many people convinced that they are somehow living in a free country, at least take an actual stand for freedom by voting for Libertarians. No, they may not win this time around, but don’t be a short-term thinker. Even if you aren’t necessarily in love with the Libertarian Party (you know who you are), I’m sure you like the idea of political competition and having additional voices in the debate to keep the major parties from completely getting away with murder.

So think about these very awesome reasons to vote Libertarian today:

The more votes Libertarian candidates get, the more they’ll have to be given a voice by the media outlets. They won’t be so easy to ignore in news stories, debates, and polling. The conversation will be much richer and more focused.

The more votes Libertarian candidates get, the greater the chance that they’ll win next time or the time after that. There’s no need to mince words. Weaker-minded people prefer to vote for winners over the candidates they actually agree with and will be increasingly willing to vote for Libertarians as they see others doing so.

The more votes Libertarian candidates get, the harder it will be for state governments to keep them off the next ballot. In North Carolina, if we can just get 2% for our presidential or gubernatorial candidates (Barr and Munger, respectively), we’re automatically allowed on the ballot for the next election. There would be no need for us to spend our entire war chest just to collect petition signatures for ballot access.

And, of course, you should vote Libertarian because you believe in voting on principle rather than for the lesser of the two evils, and you agree with the Libertarian principle of not initiating force or fraud against others–the principle on which every plank of the Libertarian Party platform is built.

Now this appeal wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t also acknowledge and promote libertarian individuals who are running under the banner of another party and not competing directly with Libertarian Party candidates. To that end, most of the “Ron Paul Republicans” around the country are probably worth looking at. In the Triangle area of North Carolina, a really impressive guy trying to unseat ‘the great and powerful’ David Price in the U.S. House is B.J. Lawson. The guy is sharp, personable, and very libertarian (so much so that he has been thoroughly rejected by the local party establishment, whose big-government, neocon “Chosen One” Lawson soundly defeated in the primary). But you do have to be careful with some of the Ron Paul Republicans as their views on immigration, abortion, and gay rights can sometimes be rather unlibertarian. At any rate, B.J. Lawson and others like him could certainly shake things up in Washington and would likely garner increased attention to the libertarian philosophy that they mostly adhere to.

So as much as I feel that voting gives sanction to an inherently unjust system, as long as there are those of the libertarian philosophy on the ballot, I guess you should get out there and cast a vote for human freedom.

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It’s a guilty little pleasure of mine that, even though his blog is named after Hayek (whose theory of libertarian ethics was quite internally consistent), one of the first things I do each morning is scan through Don Boudreaux’s (and Russ Roberts’) thoughts on the daily Cafe Hayek feed that comes to my inbox. Don and Russ are great defenders of freedom and fierce enemies of the state.

One of Don’s entries posted over the weekend was this: Yet Another Reason I Dislike Politicians. In it he describes a seminar he took part in where North Carolina’s very own Congressman Brad Miller was also a participant. His thoughts on Miller are insightful, especially as they apply to most politicians.

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Senator Elizabeth Dole has launched an sustained attack against some of her constituents as part of her campaign for re-election. In a press release to her supporters and a mass mailing that’s been going out to voters, Dole attacks her Democratic opponent, Kay Hagan, by pointing out that she attended a fundraiser held by a couple of atheists, whom she describes as “vile.” Here’s the mailer:

Vile? As someone on another blog pointed out, can you imagine her calling some religious group (like Jews or Muslims) “vile?” But those who choose science and reason over superstition are described as vile by a sitting U.S. Senator and no one even blinks.

And in the press release, she describes atheists as people “most North Carolinians would not be comfortable having over for dinner.” Again, this is one of my U.S. Senators. I’ve got news for you, Senator Dole–you had dinner with a future atheist in the fall of 2000. How about them godless apples?

Now, some would argue that this bigoted and primitive behavior by Senator Dole means that anyone who believes in being a decent human being and not spewing hatred at your neighbors should vote for Kay Hagan. I disagree. Both Republicans and Democrats have an appalling record when it comes to their treatment of those who don’t believe in the supernatural. Both use the religious, and their susceptibility to manipulation, to advance their own ends. The only party that truly stands for eliminating the irrational hatred of atheists is the party that would end the church-state alliance once and for all - the Libertarian Party. And it just so happens there’s an outstanding Libertarian in this race that the media simply chooses not to mention. Chris Cole is running on the Libertarian ticket against Dole and Hagan, and is now polling around 5-7% (when he’s actually included on the polls).

Cole and the Libertarian Party seek the dismantlement of the state apparatus, which would leave nothing with which to coercively promote religion or suppress atheists. Hagan, on the other hand, has a platform that is a laundry list of expansions of government scope and power. Also, after perusing her web site, she doesn’t seem to have a single press release hitting back at Dole for her anti-atheist vitriol. No, neither Hagan nor the Democratic Party are allies of atheists and the non-religious. Their schemes for promoting government will do nothing but further threaten everyone’s individual liberty and natural rights, believers and non-believers alike.

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Here in North Carolina, the Libertarian Party has succeeded in getting onto the ballot this year after untold numbers of volunteer hours and lots of money. It takes a lot to overcome the state government’s concerted efforts to keep the voters from having any choice but Democrat and Republican. Even being on the ballot, it’s a struggle to get our candidates included in debates. Mike Munger, our candidate for Governor, has been excluded from several debates so far, including those hosted by WRAL and the Public Forum for North Carolina Education. The hosts of the final gubernatorial debate on October 15 have decided to include Dr. Munger.

WUNC-TV, on the other hand, has included Mike in both of their debates, the second of which was last night. Democratic contender BevPerdue declined both debate invitations, but Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, the GOP candidate, did participate. I thought the first one was pretty decent, but Munger didn’t come out as strongly as I would have liked with libertarian positions on education and a few other issues (although his positions were certainly closer to libertarian than McCrory’s).

The second debate, however, saw Munger give strong libertarian positions on nearly everything, which I was grateful to see. You can link to it from Mike’s site or, in case it moves off his home page, try this permanent link. The only issue I had was one comment Mike made about tax hikes being okay as long as they’re done properly. Tsk! Tsk! No, Mike, tax hikes are never okay. Never. Ever. A Libertarian should never advocate a tax hike or spending increase or claim that they’re even theoretically okay “if done properly.” The end goal of the Libertarian Party is a totally free society, one without a government that collects taxes and imposes its will. Any move in the other direction is a contradiction of that goal and only fit for one of the pro-government parties. But other than that, Mike Munger hit hard on some big issues and showed the clear differences between himself and McCrory.

I’m looking forward to the October 15 debate in which all three candidates will participate.

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