Matt Collins
Member
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2007
- Messages
- 47,707
Too many people in the liberty movement have a defeatist mentality which is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I'm not "Mr. Positive" by any stretch of the imagination. Things are getting worse without a doubt, but in some respects they are also getting better.
That being said, the reason a lot of activists in the liberty movement have a defeatist attitude is because they continue to look for a silver bullet to achieve victory.
That simply isn't how the world works most of the time be it in business, school, or bringing about liberty.
Most of the time to achieve victory it takes grueling non-stop tedious unpleasant work which quite frankly many people are unwilling to do either because they are lazy or do not have the mental capacity to understand the long term results of short term actions. It's like hoping you'll win the lottery as the best chance for success.
Running candidates doomed to fail with zero results (and one can "win" an election without achieving electoral victory), attempting to get bills passed on their merits and giving up after the first try, are morale crushing activities. Do enough of this and people become defeatists, sour on the whole idea, and then give-up and go home.
Deeper, I think a lot of it has to do with personality types of the liberty movement. Many of us are INTJs or similar, which means we are thinkers, not necessarily doers. We definitely don't like dealing with other people. That makes it hard for us to want to be leaders and build organizations by recruiting others to show up and help out. It means we are not typically outgoing, or warm and friendly.
There are exceptions to this of course, but it is the world as I see it.
In the 7 years I have been doing this I have tasted victory in both small and big ways, so I know it can be done, I've done it myself, I've seen others do it, and I've had a front row seat to some pretty successful endeavors. I've also seen a lot of failure too, most of which was due to fighting the wrong battle.
If more in the liberty movement would take every political training course they could so that they would be able to understand how to be more effective, and then if they would choose their battles more wisely, we would start to see an even greater change across the country for the cause of liberty, guaranteed.
I'm not "Mr. Positive" by any stretch of the imagination. Things are getting worse without a doubt, but in some respects they are also getting better.
That being said, the reason a lot of activists in the liberty movement have a defeatist attitude is because they continue to look for a silver bullet to achieve victory.
That simply isn't how the world works most of the time be it in business, school, or bringing about liberty.
Most of the time to achieve victory it takes grueling non-stop tedious unpleasant work which quite frankly many people are unwilling to do either because they are lazy or do not have the mental capacity to understand the long term results of short term actions. It's like hoping you'll win the lottery as the best chance for success.
Running candidates doomed to fail with zero results (and one can "win" an election without achieving electoral victory), attempting to get bills passed on their merits and giving up after the first try, are morale crushing activities. Do enough of this and people become defeatists, sour on the whole idea, and then give-up and go home.
Deeper, I think a lot of it has to do with personality types of the liberty movement. Many of us are INTJs or similar, which means we are thinkers, not necessarily doers. We definitely don't like dealing with other people. That makes it hard for us to want to be leaders and build organizations by recruiting others to show up and help out. It means we are not typically outgoing, or warm and friendly.
There are exceptions to this of course, but it is the world as I see it.
In the 7 years I have been doing this I have tasted victory in both small and big ways, so I know it can be done, I've done it myself, I've seen others do it, and I've had a front row seat to some pretty successful endeavors. I've also seen a lot of failure too, most of which was due to fighting the wrong battle.
If more in the liberty movement would take every political training course they could so that they would be able to understand how to be more effective, and then if they would choose their battles more wisely, we would start to see an even greater change across the country for the cause of liberty, guaranteed.
