Not So Crazy Libertarian Ideals – Page 41

Why I Won’t Get Involved in Politics Again

I received an e-mail over the weekend from an individual begging me to get involved in the 2016 presidential race. More specifically he wants me to get involved in the Republican Party. Normally I treat e-mails as confidential but I asked permission to post this one and my response publicly. My reason for this is that I’m lazy and want a link I can send anybody else that urges me to return to politics.

Here’s the e-mail:

Chris,

What happened man? You used to be a strong supporter of the second amendment. Now you say you’re out of politics. I urge you to come back. 2016 is going to be the most import election for gun rights. If Hillary gets in she’ll be appointing at least 2 supreme court justices. You know they won’t be progun. They’ll undo everything Heller won. We need everybody working the GOP. It doesn’t matter who they nominate. I don’t like Bush either but he’s better than Hillary. At least he’ll let us keep our guns.

I’m begging you to set your pride aside this one time. Not just for yourself but for all of us gun owners. If you don’t get involved none of us may have any guns after 2016.

My position as an anarchist means I won’t help anybody achieve power over other people. Some may say, “But Chris, there will be a ruler either way!” That’s true but it won’t be by my hand. However, in the spirit of being thorough, I will explain several other reasons why I won’t get involved in the 2016 presidential election.

As a gun owner and an advocate of the right of self-defense one may assume that by not getting involved in the 2016 presidential election, specifically within the Republican Party, I’m throwing gun owners under the bus for my own selfish ideology. Here’s the problem, if I were to help get a Republican president elected I would be throwing many of my other friends and principles under the bus.

Let’s start with my gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender friends. Between the Republican Party’s push to prevent same-sex couples from marrying to it’s push to dictate what bathrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms transgender individuals can use there’s no way I could involve myself with that party without directly harming those I care about. I’m loyal to my friends and will not actively assist anybody who desires to oppress them.

Republicans also have an obsession with imaginary lines. I don’t believe people who obsess over imaginary things are in a sound enough state of mind to hold a position of authority. But the Republican Party is absolutely obsessed with preventing people born on the wrong side of the border from entering this country, at least without first submitting to an insanely difficult immigration process. What right does the state have to claim ownership over a landmass as large as the United States and go so far as to murder people who cross its stupid imaginary line? None. Yet the Republican Party seems to get its rocks off on the idea of using the state’s capacity for violence to prevent people from crossing its stupid little line in the sand.

Speaking of imaginary lines, the Republican Party not only wants to prevent people from crossing their line but it also wants to murder people on the other side of the line. It’s true that the Democratic Party shares in the Republican Party’s zeal for this, which means there’s no way to get involved with either party and not provide active support for murdering people in the Middle East.

Since the main topic is the Second Amendment let’s talk about the Fourth Amendment for a moment. The Republican Party has a well-earned reputation for being tough on “crime”. I put crime in quotes there because what they really mean is anybody who violates the arbitrary decrees of the state and a real crime requires a victim. This tough on “crime” position has caused the Republican Party to be major advocates of both the police state and surveillance of the citizenry. When you see a story of a cop murdering somebody for no reason chances are somebody high up in the Republican Party will excuse the behavior. They will certainly advocate for giving these violent cops more cell phone interceptors, armored personnel carriers, and other assets they can’t be trusted with. So long as we have an out of control police force there can be no protect against unlawful search and seizure so involving myself in the Republican Party would require me to shit all over the Fourth Amendment.

These are just a few of the reasons I won’t involve myself in Republican politics. You can claim I’m throwing gun owners under the bus but will just turn around and point out all of the people I’d have to throw under the bus to work within that party. If I’m not loyal to my friends then I’m not worth anything. Due to my diverse set of friends I can’t prevent some of them from getting fucked by whoever wins the presidential election but I can say that I didn’t provide material support to their oppressor. Being able to say I didn’t help my friends’ oppressors is the only way I can have a clean conscience.

Where Libertarianism and Social Justice Share a Common Foe

It’s time for me to earn my dirty anti-libertarian leftist social justice warrior creds. Except I’m actually going to discuss a situation where libertarianism and so-called social justice warriors have a common cause (in reality what libertarians often disparagingly refer to as social justice has a lot in common with libertarianism).

Libertarianism and property rights tend to go hand in hand. In fact the biggest gripe many libertarians have with the state is its constant violation of individual property rights through taxation, confiscation, eminent domain, and other powers it has granted itself. Of all the ways the state violates property rights though the most egregious is probably the issuance of decrees that either prohibit property owners from performing or require property owners to perform certain actions with their property.

The social justice movement tends to fight against discrimination in any form. Recently many members of the social justice movement have been working to fight discrimination against transgender individuals. Although they oftentimes clash with libertarians over the property rights issue, as some social justice advocates want the state to prohibit individuals from discriminating even on their private property, they actually share a common enemy. The most egregious violator of property rights and the most dangerous discriminator happens to be the state.

Florida has become a battleground where violation of property rights and discrimination will be one and the same if HB 583 passes. The bill would make it a first degree misdemeanor for a transgender individual to use the bathroom of the gender they identify as. Likewise the bill would also open any property owner who allows transgender individuals to use the bathroom of the gender they identify as to civil lawsuits in the state’s monopolized courts.

In other words the bill, which has passed out of committee, would require property owners to enforce bathroom usage in the manner decreed by the state and that manner happens to be discriminatory.

Libertarians often have a knee-jerk negative reaction to anything the social justice movement advocates and vice versa. These knee-jerk reactions often cause each side to refuse to work with the other side even when they share a common foe. It’s stupid and allows the state to use divide and conquer tactics to stomp on all of us. Both groups should be able to put aside their labels, declare a truce, and work together when they face a common enemy. Who knows, maybe both sides can learn a little bit from each other and create a longer lasting alliance.

The DMCA is a Corporate Subsidy

Planned obsolescence is a term generally used by the economically ignorant to explain the improvement of products over time. The claim is that, for example, Apple doesn’t make as good of phones as they could because they want them to be obsolete next year so consumers will buy the new one. This ignores the fact that using the latest and greatest hardware drastically increases costs so manufacturers of mass produced devices tend to use components that are still very powerful but cheaper as they rely on older technology. It also ignores the fact that a phone isn’t suddenly obsolete just because a new model has been released. If there were the case there would be no market for used phones.

But there are times when examples of planned obsolescence, that is to say times when companies invested time and resources guaranteeing a product would cease to function after a certain period of time, can be found. Not surprisingly most of these examples rely on various corporate subsidies put into place by the state. One of those subsidies is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA criminalizes the production and distribution of technology that circumvents copyright protection schemes, which are commonly referred to as Digital Rights Management (DRM). How is that a corporate subsidy? Let’s take this case of actual planned obsolescence as an example:

The IlluMask is a $30 “light therapy” mask that utilizes LED lights to zap away bacteria, stimulate skin cells and otherwise fight acne/aging (depending on what model you purchase.) Sounds great (if you buy IlluMask’s claims). A lifetime of skin revitalization, and all for just $30. Oh, wait.

The trouble is, it is limited to 30 daily uses of 15 minutes each, totaling just 7 1/2 hours, effectively lasting you a month. At the end of which, you just discard the device and get a new one. That seems like a ridiculous waste of a perfectly fine, functional device whose LED’s can last at least 30,000 to 40,000 hours.

Even if we ignore the negative environmental impact of discarding plastic masks loaded with perfectly good LEDs, there’s still the incredible audacity of IlluMask’s claim that its mask will only last 30 days, at which point the LEDs doing all of the facial revitalization/bacteria zapping are suddenly useless, even with well over 99.97% of their lifespan still ahead of them (based on 35,000 hours).

The manufacturers of the IlluMask utilize DRM to prevent the device from working after 30 days. Fortunately bypassing the DRM is easy:

1. Change the batteries if lights are getting dimmer.
2. Use a screwdriver and open the case. Then remove batteries and unscrew screws so the plastic battery holder on top of the circuit board can be moved over. Be careful NOT to damage any of the delicate wiring.
3. Now that the circuit board is exposed, put the batteries back in their slots.
4. Using a piece of wire (such as a paper clip) touch one end of your wire and place it where the thin copper wire connects to the circuit board (silver spot marked LED). Touch the other end to the little RESET copper circle–located on the left of the circuit board (use the copper circle above the word RESET, not below).
5. Press the start button while the wire is in place.
6. Move your wire from the RESET button to the TEST button.
7. Press the start button again while the wire is in place, and the count should reset to 30!

Unfortunately the DMCA makes disabling the DRM a potentially criminal offense. And herein lies the subsidy. Thanks to the DMCA developing DRM technology can be worth the investment in time and resources. Even though DRM can always be bypassed, which would making it a poor investment in time and resources under normal circumstances, the existence of the DMCA means that anybody who does develop methods of bypassing DRM faces fines and prison time for doing so. The state threatens violence against anybody who attempts to bypass DRM, which drastically raises the cost of doing so. And the tax victims gets to foot the bill for sending the heavily armed cops to kidnap developers of DRM bypassing technology, having highly paid prosecutors and judges argue and rule the developer’s guilt, and guarding the prison the developer will be kept in for years. Were the DMCA not in place bypassing DRM would carry no risks and manufacturers would have no recourse other than attempt to develop a hardier DRM mechanism.

The Only Prison for Libertarians is On the Right

As a libertarian one of the things that greatly amuses me is how elements on both the “left” and “right” sides of the political spectrum attempt to court us. One minute we’re an ineffective minority of extremists and the next we’re supposed to have a lot of common ground with whatever side is trying to appeal to us.

One of the more entertaining articles that tries to court libertarians to the “right” is this fine piece. You know the article is going to be a doozy when it starts with “The talented National Review writer Charles C.W. Cooke…” If there’s are two things that don’t go together it’s talent and the National Review. The laughs don’t stop there. The author, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, claims:

The political calculus for libertarians is relatively straightforward: They are a small minority — albeit an influential one — and are not completely at home in either party, but can get a lot done if they ally with one in particular.

See, when we’re being courted we’re influential! Gobry’s assertion that libertarians could get a lot done if they allied with one of the two major parties is particularly funny. A lot of libertarians decided to do exactly this and jumped onto the Republican Party ship only to get kicked off and boarded by many unsavory scoundrels. During this libertarian expedition they were told how valuable their views were and how they were welcomed with open arms. Then the Republican National Convention started getting closer and it appeared the libertarians captured a sizable number of seats in several states. This forced the Republican Party to show its true nature and it threatened to banish Nevada’s delegates if too many were going to vote for Ron Paul, had Ron Paul supporters arrested in Louisiana, and prohibited Ron Paul supporters in Maine from participation by forcing them to sign an oath of loyalty to Romney. As a final blow the Republican Party moved to change the rules to dissuade libertarians within the party from participating and even went so far as to hold up one state’s delegates to prevent them from hindering the rule change. Needless to say participating in the Republican Party didn’t do jack shit for libertarianism.

The article then makes the best argument against libertarians participating in either major party’s political process:

And self-delusion it was: On every issue of importance, the left has betrayed libertarians (if “betrayed” is the right word, given that they never actually bothered to promise them anything). Obama’s treatment of the Constitution has been as roughshod as any of his predecessor’s.

Saying Obama’s treatment of the Constitution, which libertarians are supposedly upholders of according to the author, was as roughshod as Bush’s really drives the point home that both parties give no fucks about any supposed restrictions to their powers. If both Republicans and Democrats are doing the same thing then why should libertarians support either of them? Here’s where the real laughs come in:

The reason why liberaltarianism was always doomed to fail is because, at the end of the day, progressivism is an all-encompassing ideology. And while libertarians won’t agree with conservatives on everything, the two can certainly agree on a lot, because of a key bedrock principle of libertarianism that is shared with conservatives but not progressives: the importance of localism.

Holy hell, that’s rich! Conservatives recognize the importance of localism? Is that whey the Republican Party is always pushing for national laws prohibiting same-sex marriages? Is that why they’re looking to replace the Affordable Care Act with another national healthcare scheme? Is that why they’re constantly supporting drug prohibitions on a national level? Is that why they’re always arguing that we need to keep “illegals” out of this country instead of allowing each border state to decide what it wants to do for itself? Conservatives lost the right to claim they supported local politics long ago. But the best laugh was saved for last:

It is exactly this sort of ideological, moralistic progressive urge that makes progressivism and libertarianism like oil and water and makes the conservative movement the natural home of libertarians. At the end of the day, an alliance with the conservative movement is the only plausible way for libertarians to effect meaningful political change in America.

According to Gobry the natural home for libertarians is an abusive one because, as I pointed out above, libertarians were living in that home and were beaten harshly for it. I think the biggest joke of this article though is implying libertarians want to effect political change. While some libertarians certainly do I am not one of them. I am part of the branch of libertarianism that wants to eliminate the state entirely. My goal, and those who share my goal, don’t want to put the right people in power, we want to remove everybody from power. In my opinion libertarianism’s natural home is in counter-economics. That’s because counter-economics allow individuals to act on their own accord and not as part of some political collective. Individualism is at the core of libertarianism so any collectivist strategy is going to be a poor fit.

The True Nature of Sanctions

For decades the United States government has been utilizing sanctions against nations that it doesn’t like. We’re told that sanctions are a humane alternative to war. The thinking goes that the lives of the people of the target nation will be made so miserable that they will rise up and overthrow their government.

First it must be pointed out that sanctions are an attack against the people of a nation, not the government. It must also be pointed out that sanctions assume the population of a nation or complete fucking idiots.

I believe the first point doesn’t receive enough acknowledgement. Sanctions prohibit the people of a nation from accessing goods and services. These goods and services can range from medical and sanitation supplies to banking services. Prohibiting access to medical and sanitation supplies results in a predictable outcome. But even prohibiting access to foreign banking services has a major toll. Notable funds kept outside of a target nation often aren’t taxed by that nation. When sanctions are placed on banking services that forces people of a target nation to keep their money inside of the country and that allows the target government to collect taxes and further enrich itself.

Sanctions also assume that the people of a target nation are idiots. Imagine you’re living in a small nation that has recently had sanctions placed on it that prohibit the importation of medical supplies. Your child becomes severely ill and dies because you cannot access the medical supplies necessary to cure them. Are you more likely to be pissed off at your government or the foreign government that prevented you from accessing the medical supplies your child needed? If you’re capable of any critical thinking whatsoever your anger will be directed at the foreign nation. And therein lies the problem with sanctions, they tend to further strengthen the target nation’s government because it gives them an enemy to point at and blame all of their nation’s problems on.

So one is left to wonder why governments use nations. I think the real reason they do is because the politicians of those countries have a psychopathic need to attack people of a target nation for being foreigners. This day and age it’s not acceptable to firebomb a city because it causes civilian casualties. Therefore other tools must be used to attack those civilians and sanctions are that generally accepted tools. This is something we should all consider whenever we hear about the United States government issuing new sanctions against countries it doesn’t like. When it does that it’s not attacking the government it doesn’t like but the people being stomped by that government’s boot. It’s cowardly to say the least.

In Libertopia Valid Contracts Require Exit Clauses

Yesterday I stumbled across this lovely story of a landlord putting a clause into their lease agreement that would punish renters that wrote bad reviews with a $10,000 fine. As if that wasn’t enough the lease agreement also gives the landlord the copyright to anything a renter creates involving the property (including photographs of the property and written reviews of the property):

The Social Media Addendum, published here, is a triple-whammy. First, it explicitly bans all “negative commentary and reviews on Yelp! [sic], Apartment Ratings, Facebook, or any other website or Internet-based publication or blog.” It also says any “breach” of the Social Media Addendum will result in a $10,000 fine, to be paid within ten business days. Finally, it goes ahead and assigns the renters’ copyrights to the owner—not just the copyright on the negative review, but “any and all written or photographic works regarding the Owner, the Unit, the property, or the apartments.” Snap a few shots of friends who come over for a dinner party? They’re owned by your landlord.

The article notes that the agreement would be shredded by any judge. But the more interesting part about this story was the conversation I got into with one of my libertarian friends. When I posted this story on Facebook I noted that I wouldn’t abide by an agreement such as this one. My friend stated that I shouldn’t sign it then because I was planning to violate the voluntary agreement and therefore would be committing fraud.

This brought up an interesting debate over what constitutes a voluntary agreement. Some libertarians believe any contract signed in the absence of coercion is voluntary. I don’t subscribe to that belief. Based on my view of libertarianism I believe any voluntary agreement must include an exit clause for any party that signs it. If an exit clause does not exist for all parties then the agreement ceases to be voluntary as soon as one party changes their mind. One of the reasons I don’t consider the United States military to be a voluntary organization is because people who enlist have little recourse if they later decide they want out. Without an exit clause a supposedly voluntary agreement becomes a form of, abeit limited in most cases, indentured servitude.

I say all of this with the understanding that exit clauses can have stipulations. Entering a business agreement with other parties is difficult if one of them backing out could leave you on the hook for their financial responsibilities. For example, it would certainly be valid to require a party exiting from a business agreement to pay their portion of any debt incurred. Libertarians can debate this objection of mine but my other objection, I believe, is harder to argue against from a libertarian standpoint.

As longtime readers know I don’t believe intellectual property is anything more than state created fiction. However even if we accept intellectual property is a thing copyright in this country is defined arbitrarily by uninvolved parties. Right now the length of a copyright in the United States is the life of an author plus 70 years. Work for hire copyrights are valid for 95 years after publication or 120 years after creation if it’s unpublished. But these durations are created entirely by politicians in Washington DC and can therefore be redefined without any input from creators or copyright holders. In other words the copyright claimed by the landlord, over your creation, could become indefinite with the stroke of a pen. How can one be expected to abide by an agreement that could change at anytime without their input?

It’s also worth considering if signing a knowingly invalid agreement with the express purpose of violating it is fraud. To this I would ask if you can fraud a fraudster? Clarifying further I would ask if you stole stolen property to return it to the original owner would you be a thief? In both cases I would answer in the negative. Taking stolen property with the purpose of returning it to its original owner is a method of righting a wrong. Likewise calling somebody out on their bullshit is also a method righting a wrong. If somebody is including an unenforceable clause in a contract then they should be called out. One way of calling them out is to sign the agreement, violate the clause, and demonstrate that it’s unenforceable. As an upside, since it would force the including of the clause to expend resources, this method of calling out their bullshit would raise the stakes of including invalid clauses as opposed to just telling them the clause is invalid.

In summary I would argue that the linked agreement would not only be invalid under current laws but would remain invalid under stateless Libertopia. Just because two parties signed a contract doesn’t mean it’s a valid agreement even under libertarianism.

Hillary Clinton Shows the Value of Hosting Your Own E-Mail

Republicans and statist libertarians have been losing their shit over the news that Hillary Clinton continued using her private e-mail address while acting as Secretary of State and hosted that e-mail address on a server in her home:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The computer server that transmitted and received Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails — on a private account she used exclusively for official business when she was secretary of state — traced back to an Internet service registered to her family’s home in Chappaqua, New York, according to Internet records reviewed by The Associated Press.

[…]

Most Internet users rely on professional outside companies, such as Google Inc. or their own employers, for the behind-the-scenes complexities of managing their email communications. Government employees generally use servers run by federal agencies where they work.

In most cases, individuals who operate their own email servers are technical experts or users so concerned about issues of privacy and surveillance they take matters into their own hands. It was not immediately clear exactly where Clinton ran that computer system.

I highly doubt Hillary personally administered the server (although I would be impressed if she did). A person as influential and wealthy as her can afford a dedicated system administrator. However that isn’t relevant to this story. What is relevant is the reason her political opponents are losing their shit. It was a brilliant move that protected her privacy:

WASHINGTON — In 2012, congressional investigators asked the State Department for a wide range of documents related to the attack on the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. The department eventually responded, furnishing House committees with thousands of documents.

But it turns out that that was not everything.

The State Department had not searched the email account of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton because she had maintained a private account, which shielded it from such searches, department officials acknowledged on Tuesday.

Everybody bitching about this needs to take a step back and understand the important lesson here. Hosting your e-mail on a server you personally control, one that is under your physical supervision, is a smart fucking move. By doing so she was able to avoid providing personal information to the State Department when it was investigating the Benghazi attack. If she could shield her personal information from a government investigation then you can as well!

The nice thing about hosting your own e-mail server is that you have complete control over it. You can delete all e-mails that are over six months old and verify that those deleted e-mails have been purged from all backups. Investigators can’t get what doesn’t exist no matter how many warrants and subpoena are issued. If your e-mail is on a third-party host you cannot verify that data has been removed from both your system and the hosting provider’s backups. Another benefit is that it’s impossible for the state to use a National Security Letter (NSL) to secretly obtain a copy of your e-mails. The only way the state can get copies of your e-mails from a self-hosted server is to either break in and copy them or order you to provide the data. Either way you stand a very good chance of knowing when the state has copied your data.

So ignore the partisan politics because they’re meaningless. If if those e-mails were obtained by investigators Hillary would have been found innocent of all wrongdoing. That’s a privilege of being a member of the oligarchy. What is meaningful is that she did something very intelligent and there’s no reason you can’t do the same (even if you don’t have the knowledge necessary to host an e-mail server you can learn).

Starving the Beast

There’s a lot of hoopla about large companies storing their cash outside of the United States. According to Bloomberg New a handful of large technology companies currently have $2.1 trillion sitting in offshore banks:

Eight of the biggest U.S. technology companies added a combined $69 billion to their stockpiled offshore profits over the past year, even as some corporations in other industries felt pressure to bring cash back home.

Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc., Google Inc. and five other tech firms now account for more than a fifth of the $2.10 trillion in profits that U.S. companies are holding overseas, according to a Bloomberg News review of the securities filings of 304 corporations. The total amount held outside the U.S. by the companies was up 8 percent from the previous year, though 58 companies reported smaller stockpiles.

Ironically it’s the progressives that are making the biggest stink about this. They are bitching that the tech companies are being irresponsible by not bringing the money back into the country where it can be taxed. I say this is ironic because progressives like to claim they oppose war, militarized police, and violations of human rights. All of those things are made possible because of tax dollars.

By keeping that money outside of the United States these tech companies are preventing the state from extract tax revenue. That means it has fewer resources to build bombs; outfit local police departments with armored personnel carriers and cell phone interceptors; and hire more law enforcers to harass minorities, the homeless, and other people powerless to defend themselves.

Every company should strive to keep as much money as it can outside of the United States. Only by depriving the state of resources can we force it to either collapse or cancel rights violating programs that it can no longer afford to fund. I would even go so far as to say this practice furthers agorist goals even if it isn’t necessarily anti-state in its entirety (since other states are usually collecting some kind of tax revenue).

Instead of condemning these companies for keeping their cash overseas we should be cheering them on. We’re not going to vote our way out of this imperialistic police state but we may be able to force our oppressors’ hand into pulling back many of its more egregious practices.

My Nomination for the New Face of the $20 Bill

Since 1928 Andrew Jackson’s face has adorned the $20 bill. A group of individuals believes it’s time for a change up and they want to see a woman’s face replace Jackson’s. I’m all for this. There’s a good reason people were lining up to kill Jackson and those reasons really should have disqualified him from appearing on our money. But the people behind this movement, sadly, have created a list of approved women. Approved lists don’t sit well with me but of the women listed I would say Harriet Tubman deserves the honor. She holds a special place in my heart for breaking the law by helping runaway slaves get to the safety of the North.

With that said, I’d like to present another nomination: Anne Bonny. The reason I want to nominate her is because she embodies the American dream. Like so many her family fled their home country of Ireland in the hopes of finding a better life in the new world. She suffered setbacks before her father made it big but was then later disowned by him. Not one to let the dream of success fall to the wayside she and her husband pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and set course for Nassau. For those of you familiar with Nassau during the 1700s it had another name: the Pirates Republic. Anne made a life for herself by joining the elite ranks of pirates. In so doing she declared herself outside the rule of the state and took up a far more honorable source of work than any politician.

For far too long our money has immortalized despots and tyrants. I think it’s we adorn our money with more respectable faces.

Social Conservatives are the Worst Thing to Happen to Libertarianism

Ron Paul provided libertarians a potential political strategy. The idea was simple, overwhelm the Republican Party with libertarians and use it to spread libertarian ideals. Although I know I will receive protests from libertarians still participating in Republican politics I feel safe in saying that this strategy has not only failed but has backfired miserably. By associating libertarianism and Republican politics the gateway (to Hell) was opened for social conservatives to filter into libertarian groups. While social conservatives have always been involved in libertarianism I don’t believe it was to the extent that they are now. Furthermore the public association of libertarianism and the Republican Party wasn’t there.

I don’t blame Ron Paul or libertarians who entered Republican politics (of which, regretfully, I was one of). There was no way to know how the strategy would work out until it was tried. However the toll paid for the mistake has been high. Libertarianism is primarily concerned with the principle of non-aggression. Non-aggression leads to voluntary association. Voluntary association simply means any individual or group of individuals is free to associate or not associate with any individual or group of individuals they choose. You can begin to see why social conservatives find libertarianism appealing. It is a philosophy that allows them to associate with their echo chamber while discriminating against anybody they dislike.

Unfortunately the influx of social conservatives has also tainted libertarianism with racism, homophobia, transphobia, religious discrimination, and other forms of bigotry. None of these are inherit in libertarianism but neither are they prevented. But when somebody outside of libertarianism sees a self-proclaimed libertarian declaring Muslims the enemy of all humanity or homosexuals sinners deserving of eternal damnation that reflects poorly on those of us who aren’t bigoted assholes. This is made worse by the public connection between libertarianism and the Republican Party, which has a notable history of bigotry.

The effect of this is that people often assume I’m a bigot when I say that I’m a libertarian. It pains me that I often have to clarify that I don’t discriminate against Muslims, homosexuals, bisexuals, or transgender individuals when I mention that I’m a libertarian.

Now that I’ve bitched publicly about the damage I believe social conservatives have done to libertarianism I want to make a proposal. Since I’m a libertarian this proposal is made with the understanding that individuals are free to ignore it without consequence. But I would like to see libertarians utilize voluntary association to disassociate with people who express bigoted ideals and loudly shout them down when they start spewing their ignorant bullshit. In other words make it well known that they’re not welcome in libertarian circles. This is the only way I see libertarianism being able to divorce itself from the filth that social conservative have infested it with.

While voluntary association certainly allows bigots to be bigots that shouldn’t be the main draw. The main draw of voluntary association should be the absence of coercion.