As a young man I was naturally anti-war. The result of this made me suspicious of governments since it appeared that only governments could start large wars. But other than this tiny seed I was just a “normal” person. I grew up in a labor-union Democrat household but my grandfather had a small business and experienced difficulties caused by the local town codes, regulations, taxes and so forth. I thought that the founders of the USA had it about right; we needed a small government to keep the peace and protect us from foreign powers but other than that the government should let us live our lives. But I also thought we needed the state for still other things: after all, how could the USA have courts and lawyers without government? How could we have roads to take me to another state without the government having eminent domain? How could we get our mail? How could the young go to school? Who would hire and pay the police?

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Imagine you and another person squaring off in a game of poker. Now pretend that your style of play is generally aggressive, whereas your opponent is generally defensive. When the action is upon your opponent he will only apply passive measures, such as checking and calling bets. You, however, choose the aggressive strategy of betting. Over the long hall the aggressive player is almost surely to be the victor by a large margin. The state, therefore, wisely values aggression as a long term stratagem.

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For me, For a New Liberty was my holy book. It was the work that converted me to anarcho-capitalism. And there have been many prophets along the way, namely Ron Paul, Walter Block, Lew Rockwell and gang. But I think for me and my generation, nobody preaches the gospel as well as Stefan Molyneux. Here is another video of Stefan doing what he does best, speaking to live audiences. Enjoy!

What do you do when you wake up and realize that you are an anarchist? What will people think? Will visions of Molotov cocktail-tossing terrorists fill their minds? Will they think you have finally lost your mind? After all, no reasonable person can reject the idea of government. Without government, all of society would erupt into chaos and barbarism!

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It seems like every decade or two, a new technology blasts into society and radically changes our way of life; electricity, cars, radio, telephone, television, computers, cell phones and now the car blackbox/ dashcam.

Every day, growing numbers of people are realizing that the state thinks they own us. Whether it’s the ever-increasing taxation, regulation or police state, government is claiming more authority to run our lives. This is why the number of Tea-Partiers, libertarians, sovereigns and anarchists has grown so much over the past few years.

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Was it the “free market” that exploited Japanese Americans in World War II? Was it “capitalism” that drafted thousands of young men to be sent off to Vietnam, with many to return in body bags? Is it the free market that implements mandatory wage and price controls, takes a third of each American’s income, and leeches money to politically connected corporations? Who is the true exploiter, free markets or government? All things involuntary and compulsory are not compatible with freedom, yet it is constantly government using its monopolized force to accomplish its various goals, not the market. In a free society and market your greed, anger, and any other such negative qualities are purely limited to free and voluntary exchange. You cannot work like government using coercion to sell your products, force to maintain your position, and threats of imprisonment as your insurance.

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People often use the quote, “The only constant is change.” Sometimes this phrase (or something similar to it) is used to bash over the head those who prefer liberty and freedom to government interventions. We are told that those who don’t embrace social change through government must love the rich, hate the poor, and enjoy seeing people remain in their current undesirable status quo living situations. The irony is that government is not what initiates true change on the human level. Collective government force is no more convincing than an individual thief holding a gun to your head – you may do what he tells you to do, but you’re not going to suddenly change your view of the world because of it. If anything, you will increasingly resent the thief the longer he holds a gun to your head and tells you how to live. True change comes on an individual basis, and the only “system” in a social sense that ever truly embraces and supports this change is freedom.

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It is often said that government represents the collective ability of society to come together and legislate for the “public good.” What exactly the “public good” represents is rarely agreed upon by the two dominant political parties, but they both generally agree that it is the role of government to meddle in society in one form or another. The irony is that to help “the people,” government must first expropriate money from the people it intends to help. All this is defended as “public service,” which presents a selfless image of noble representatives working for the betterment of society. The term “public service” both greatly distorts the reality of government operations and negates where the actual service really takes place: in the private sector.

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In, “What is to be Done?” Rothbard argues that our objective is to “advance our principals—to spread libertarian-individualist thought… among the people and to spread its policies in the political arena.” The liberty movement has two main objectives: “boots on the ground” action and creating and disseminating propaganda. The propagandist wing of the liberty movement currently resembles a book club, albeit a large and decentralized book club. Currently the movement pushes forward with enough energy that even the layman not usually inclined to read is motivated enough to do so, however, we should not bet on this continuing. The book club model works fine for now, but it is essential that the propagandist wing further develops blogs and forums focused on different aspects of the liberal project, and particularly develops a means by which a layman may be exposed to increasingly radical ideas.

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