The problem is, even here, you're displaying a level of "our way or the highway." I understand that the strategy to take over the GOP would be more effective if we were all on board, but we're not. Just as I accept that you will try to convince everyone that is the correct path to take, you have to accept that I will try to convince people that I do not think that is the correct path to take. We both have to accept that we need to let the free market of ideas operate, and we need to do so respectfully.
I know what you mean about my tone, but I don't mean to imply "our way or the highway" so much as, "There's a difference between people who just don't want to participate themselves, and people who treat sabotaging the effort like it's their job." You're not like that, but you're getting caught in the crossfire, so I think it's difficult for someone in a position like yours to see that someone else might really be trying to sabotage the whole thing.
And actually I don't have any issue with the GOP takeover effort itself, but rather the illusions that those who are for it encourage and allow to persist. Those illusions are that if we just say the right thing in the right way, the GOP will get on board with the message. Another illusion is that if we simply take over the GOP and work hard for many years we can win our freedom back through a vote of congress. I've made well-thought out and specific arguments about how that cannot ever happen. Which, like your well-thought out arguments, people of the opposing opinion tend to ignore.
I don't really think getting the GOP (voters) on board is about saying the right thing in the right way though. I think getting them on board is more about showing the kind of "strength" and social acceptability they want to be associated with in an emotional sense. That's not to say, "Oh, they're all going to flock to us at once like magic," but Ron Paul clearly had a lot more support in 2012 than 2008...and most of this was not hard support woken up by airtight rational arguments and principles, but soft support from Republicans who had finally come around enough on an emotional level to give us a fair hearing. Everyone has their individual threshold for what it will take for them to reassess, and each person who does come over helps shift the social atmosphere in that direction by just as much as well.
I'd be interested in hearing your strongest arguments, btw.
There's a few good reasons for voting for GJ. One, is so that your vote gets counted to send a message against the two party system. Another, is to get him in the debates (though, I personally think he would do more harm than good in the debates). Some bad reasons are to vote for him a lesser of three evils. Another bad reason is to vote for him because he's a good candidate (he's not. he's a joke.).
I obviously do not like GJ. But I try not to criticize people for voting for him, because I usually do not know their reasons. But that does not mean I should not criticize the man. He is a lying panderer with no moral philosophical compass that has no idea the importance of currency freedom and how central that is to freedom as a whole.
With that said, people can vote for who they like. There are legitimate reasons to want to vote for him, even if he is a terrible candidate.
There could be a lot I don't know about the guy, because I've never seen him as a liar. Maybe he is, in which case I'd have to reassess. I know there's controversy over his spending record, but I haven't looked into it myself enough to sort out the facts...mainly because he won't win, so it's not going to matter much. Anyway, it's fair to criticize him for a lot of things, especially his poor understanding of currency, but I don't think it's fair to say someone who isn't a strictly principled libertarian has no moral compass though, if that's what you mean. None of us were born knowing the NAP, but we eventually reached libertarian principles after being guided by our preexisting moral compass. It's pretty annoying that the LP nominee is so utilitarian and doesn't know these things of course, but compared to the guy who is already running the country with an iron fist...
Anyway, don't think I mean to attack you or anything. I'm bothering to bring a lot of this stuff up with you out of the blue, because you're one of the more reasonable people I disagree with on stuff like this.
I've actually thought on several occasions the opposite. That the CIA/psy-ops would be trying to drift us towards forgetting who we are and what we stand for. Which is what I've observed over the last year. We're slowly becoming an entirely different movement. One with no spirit or soul, and simply becoming cogs in the Republican machine. And this is destroying our enthusiasm and energy. It is no coincidence that once we started getting in bed with the GOP that this movement began to fracture.
I strongly disagree: For starters, I've seen a distinct trend over time where people have become stronger and stricter libertarians. Neocon worshippers have become paleocons. Paleocons have become strict Constitutionalists. Strict Constitutionalists have shifted toward stronger libertarian views and become minarchist federalists. Minarchist federalists have become minarchist anti-federalists. How many times have you actually seen individual people go in the opposite direction? The LP's leadership has started faltering - and I think that's a mistake - but on these boards, how many people have you seen loosen the standards they previously held? In addition to the above shifts, libertarians of all types have become an-caps, an-syns, and voluntaryists...and from what I've seen, once you go black, you never go back.
People in general have also become more jaded, more appalled by the establishment, and more committed to seeing it utterly destroyed (regardless of mechanism). The general trend here is very much in the opposite direction from corruption. Is our movement starting to attract people from the "mainstream" who just woke up to the establishment's despotism and want to make a difference, thereby increasing the proportion of newborn paleocons in our presence? Sure, but welcoming an influx of fresh blood doesn't mean we libertarians are losing our way. We're still here, and we know where we stand...and we're having a lot more influence on their worldviews than they're having on ours. Sooner or later a lot of the newbies are likely to follow the same path we did toward a firmer sense of libertarianism, too.
I'm a firm proponent of the GOP strategy here, but could you seriously say that I have no spirit or soul, or that I've forgotten who I am, simply because I want to take the fight to the establishment's doorstep? There is nothing at all about the GOP strategy that's mutually exclusive with libertarian principles, let alone the less strict (but still hard and inviolable) Constitutional principles that a lot of other supporters consider their personal baseline. You say below that you agree it's possible to take over the GOP without getting into bed with them, but there are others who don't, who equate the core of the strategy itself with a one-way trip to corruption...despite the fact that it necessitates no violation of bedrock principles. As I mentioned before, it seems like we're suddenly judging our level of integrity vs. corruption with vague and extraneous new principles that have never been at the core of libertarianism ("never play ball, never compromise in any sense of the word, don't associate yourself with a tainted brand, scowl at anyone who's not one of us so we know you're not in bed with them, keep a three meter perimeter between yourself and anyone corrupt...;" the last two are obvious exaggerations, but it almost feels like we're getting to that point).
There is indeed a minority of people here - a few strongly Republican paleocons from the start - who might be content being cogs in the Republican machine...but do you really think it's fair to judge the spirit of the GOP strategy based on a select few of its adopters, who were never as principled as the rest of us in the first place even before the strategy took full shape? Is it really fair to point at people who have been paleocons all along (or previously neocon worshippers), as evidence that the GOP strategy is changing us? There's at least one guy here (not naming names) who appears to have no standards whatsoever and throws out exaggerated accusations about purity tests against anyone who does. It may be tempting to use him as an example of "what we're becoming," but it's important to remember that every single one of us came into this from a different point on the sliding scale of idealism vs. pragmatism in the first place. You can't effectively judge whether someone has changed or lost their way by how much they've strayed from your principles...only by how much they've strayed from their own.
I don't see the strategy itself as being what's damaging our movement or energy or causing division. Instead, I'm seeing a self-fulfilling prophecy unfold when people
insist that's the case. We've always been a diverse group, but the moment we forget that and see one of our allies with fewer principles (but still principles, e.g. Constitutionalism), we're convincing ourselves to agonize over how we're becoming corrupted and losing our soul, and we're letting that biased and erroneous judgment limit our options. The more people repeat the meme, the more it seems to ring true, not because it is, but because we're emotionally susceptible to it. We have serious trust issues, and for good reason, but they've led us to take mental shortcuts toward reasoning about corrupting influences, instead of really thinking them through.
Over time, we've come to a point where anyone who views the GOP strategy with mistrust is tempted to consider people who disagree with them to be morally or ethically corrupted, or to have lost their souls...and so we're dividing not because of the GOP strategy itself, but because we've been led to view each other in such an insulting and judgmental way.
Almost every single one of us here has a number of hard principles we've internalized. Even if we strayed from them, we'd still remember what they were, so we can look back at the mile marker and see how far we've strayed. We each have objective standards to judge and measure ourselves by. For some of us, these standards include the NAP, for some, they include Constitutionalism, etc. Unlike any other movement EVER in the history of civilization, we actually have concrete objective principles that serve as powerful safeguards against corruption, and in the worst case scenario where we actually lost our way, having internalized those principles in the first place means we could easily find our way back with a glance. No one else in history has ever had such an advantage: Without exception, other movements were led by an unchecked sense of utilitarianism that could only be judged subjectively, and so it was easy for corruption to set in and for the goal posts to shift without them ever being aware it happened. It would be a lot more difficult for the same thing to happen to us...especially the hardcore libertarian wing, of which I count myself a member.
The important thing to recognize is that the CIA and psy-ops agents know this: They will try to corrupt us of course as usual, but they know that we're unusually resistant to "Plan A," and so they absolutely need a backup. They know very well that action is necessary to effect change, so they know that if they can't count on corrupting those who act, they have to prevent them from acting in the first place. Usually "Plan B" is "kill them," but that's a little easier said than done in this instance. Instead, I believe that twisting and warping our principles into something self-defeating and disconnected from reality is that backup plan: If the most resistant people to corruption are led to paralysis and inaction, then not only will the movement be deprived of its most passionate and intelligent activists actually doing something, but they'll use their intellect and passions to dissuade others from acting as well. The movement will be stuck between "a rock and a hard place," and the resulting antagonism between the activists and non-activists will lead to the two groups consuming each other.
The establishment works through divide and conquer, and it looks like we're being pitted against each other by two conflicting demands: On one hand, they'll try to corrupt us from one end of the spectrum and demand no standards whatsoever, in the hope we're absorbed by the neocons. On the other hand, they'll try to paralyze us from the other end of the spectrum and demand unnecessarily restrictive and warped views on how we must interpret the absolute symbolism of every action. I consider the latter to be more dangerous for two reasons: First, most of us have an inherent resistance to corruption as stated above (by nature of having objective principles to measure ourselves by), even if there are exceptions. Second, hardcore libertarians do NOT have the same advantage of a natural resistance to the opposite manipulation...instead, we have emotionally hardwired ourselves to openly welcome any possible "tightening" of our standards, no matter where it leads, and regardless of whether it's a logical extension of libertarianism or not. In other words, the establishment is bound to have more success manipulating us into inaction than they'll have manipulating us into corruption...and worse, the people most susceptible to this are often the most intellectually gifted, and so we can use our words to great effect to perpetuate this manipulation. I must stress once again that things like "voting necessarily means consent/approval/legitimizing the system" and "it's impossible to take the system down from the inside" were not perspectives that our role models and libertarian giants subscribed to. Their sudden popularity among our generation of libertarians and the level of conviction behind them is alarming to me to the influence of hostile elements. I know you don't fully buy into those ideas or insist on them, but there are some who do...and I feel like some of us have "gone rampant."
It is entirely possible to take over the GOP without getting in bed with them. But unfortunately, we are getting in bed with them. We have to remember: they are the enemy. They have proven this, time and time again. From the highest levels of leadership, to the individuals of the party, they are our enemy. If you want to take over the GOP in a manner that does not destroy this movement, that's how you should approach it. Take it over.
It goes without saying that a few people will make boneheaded mistakes that look like "getting in bed" with the GOP. Rand has done it, and Justin Amash has done it...but Rand is just the calculating type on an individual level, and Justin Amash has already realized that any level of trust he put into the sociopaths was a mistake. When it comes to waging a war, some of us are fans of Gandhi, some of us are fans of General Sherman (metaphorically speaking), and some of us are fans of Sun Tzu...Rand is obviously a Sun Tzu guy. I don't think anyone's basic inclinations along this line are changing much, and different strategies appeal more to each of us, so I don't think it's fair to assume out of hand that anyone following a more subtle path (like Rand) has genuinely jumped into bed with the enemy, at least not in the sense of being corrupted.
I think it's important to remember that almost all of us have principles, but some of us have different principles: Some of us are hardcore libertarians, some of us are Constitutionalists or anti-federalists, some of us have an additional principle against playing ball, and some of us don't. However, if a particular individual never had a principle against playing ball, it's unfair to use that as a litmus test for whether they've compromised their principles, because they might have a number of rock solid principles without subscribing to your full set.
That said, I absolutely 100% agree that the core of the GOP strategy is about
taking it over, full stop. Bring in the numbers, identify our enemies, throw them unceremoniously to the curb, and install ourselves into leadership positions. That doesn't necessarily mean going into your first local meeting ready to rage at everyone though.
Friendliness by default is a good strategy, because while the majority of state chairs and important officers are total sociopaths, there are already exceptions who have become our allies in the process and helped us advance (out of a mutual disdain for actual corruption), even when they don't see eye to eye on every issue. After you know who your enemies are and potential allies, and you bring in the numbers to take over...that's when it's time to strike hard.
As said above, there are a number of long-time paleocons that don't approach this as a takeover, and there are a number of people who have always been too trusting, but that didn't come from them being changed by the process. They simply never viewed it as a takeover from the start...but the rest of us do, and we are not going to forget what we set out to do.
I'm not against the GOP takeover effort. My single goal here is to break the illusions that the people of this country are on our side. They are not. They are our enemy, and will oppose us at every turn. For this movement to stay intact, and make progress moving forward, we will need to accept this reality.
Isn't that a very collectivist thing to say though? You and I are both among the "people of this country," and we were not always part of the liberty movement ourselves (unless you were born into it), but someone finally broke through and reached us. The leaders of this country - and the GOP - are total sociopathic narcissists for sure. They've manipulated the people into supporting them and opposing us, but I don't think it's healthy to view the American public as our enemy. That mentality leads to way too much hostility to be useful, and it basically writes off hope for change as a lost cause. Most people are not unreachable...they're just unreachable under the current circumstances. For that matter, surely you have friends and family members who are frustratingly incapable of "getting it," but when push comes to shove, they're still your friends and family, not your enemies. Given the right circumstances, they're going to start listening.
