It is interesting and fascinating, inspiring and frustrating to fight for the cause of liberty.
Once involved, it is very easy to let one’s mind wander with regard to the barriers we have to our success in life, as well as the barriers to peace. This is a process in which we are all taught in our formative years that the enemies to these highly prized desires are people, groups, countries, political foes, religions, criminals, and other entities that are not supposedly “under the control of the people”.
The lessons that formed our thinking during the years that we receive formal education are ingrained in most of us, until we experience a key event that rattles our perceptions and we make a different recognition… that the infrastructure that was created for the protection of the people is the very same infrastructure that violates peace, blocks our success, sustains violence, stifles our creativity, limits our freedoms, and destroys the spark in many of us to live our lives to the fullest, essentially standing firmly in the way of the pursuit of happiness and a peaceful world.
For many of us, this realization is a serious wake-up call which ignites a spark that inspires us to do something about this travesty. We are awake, but feel alone and frustrated because so many other people with whom we communicate have either not made this realization, or have already recognized the situation and find it insurmountable to change.
So, we fight the current and begin to fight the system. Some of us are so outraged that we make mistakes and the system destroys us. Some are more thoughtful with respect to their communications, plans and goals that they can help to raise awareness and grow the numbers of people that will subscribe to the fight for freedom. Others fight and become weary from a fight that on occasion feels futile.
Speaking from personal experience, I can say that I am prepared for the opposition from those who either strongly support government control, or who simply have not yet made the recognition as to the importance of casting these negative and controlling entities out of the way of self-actualization. What wearies me is the discouragement that I receive from people fighting the same fight as me, because my end goal does not match their end goal.
Having identified government as the culprit in so many violations against the happiness and peace of the individual, I too have been though a deep process of soul searching and analysis of this reality to which I was luxuriously oblivious only a decade ago. I have noticed myriad disastrous and destructive actions promulgated and acted upon by entities of government. It was easy for me to envision a society without government, a world without borders, and a truly free human society… it was exhilarating!
Sadly, in my most rational analysis, this “utopia” cannot and will never exist in a grand scale on a planet in which the vast majority of the inhabitants are indoctrinated with political systems and religious beliefs to the contrary, as well as personal inflictions such as mistrust, fear and paranoia which are the reality of the landscape of life on Earth.
Where there is a void, there will always be a filler of that void. Where there is a weakness, there will be someone taking advantage of that weakness to satisfy whatever their need may be. Governments will always exist. Borders will always exist, unless there is only one government over the entire world, which is the complete antithesis to the growth and happiness of the human condition.
The internal arguments are powerful and with great fervor. Our struggle, the way I see it, is between reality and fantasy. The fantasy is that there will be a sustained period absent any government. The reality is that the entire planet would need to subscribe to this philosophy for it to be possible. While this would be beautiful, it will simply never happen.
If I am to inspire a positive change toward peace, happiness, growth, progress, freedom and individual prosperity, I must be rooted in the real world as it exists today; for if I am to be effective in this goal, I must address the actual challenges we face in order to begin the process of the reduction and removal of these barriers to human success that so many people do not see as barriers.
The road to a resurgence of liberty is a lonely road, and discouragement to the fighters from within our ranks makes this road even lonelier. I have made many friends in this movement, from all spectrums and all viewpoints, and each makes valid and pertinent points.
Today, I appeal to you all for unity within the liberty movement.
How can we be united when we have so many different visions of what the end goal should look like? The immediate answer is simple. We all have a common enemy. That enemy is an over-reaching, violent, oppressive, expensive and destructive government that will never be reduced if we are our own enemies, standing in the way of our progress.
Let us focus on the short term first. Stand together as one in the exposure of the reality of today, and the recognition that each elimination of a barrier to freedom and peace is a victory in its own merit. Let us work together toward each of these smaller goals and experience success together.
If we are to reach a point in which some of us are satisfied with the reductions and want to stop, while others want to keep going… that is the time for the debate to begin. The longer we fight amongst ourselves, the longer the establishment will continue to grow itself unfettered. If there is no group that is organized enough to stand in the way of those currently in power, nothing will change and the opportunity to reverse their atrocities will no longer exist. They will simply remove our ability to institute change for the better.
I respectfully call on all of us in the liberty movement: Moderates, radicals, anarchists, and everyone in between to put your battles with each other on hold, so that we all can stand up together against the common enemy that we all have identified.
I look forward to the day when we can once again argue about the end goal… because that would mean that we were successful; and the only way we can be successful is to use the strength that we all have as a unified power against tyranny.
Featured image: Libertarian Wing Media
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If your “fantasy is that there will be a sustained period absent any government,” then you probably are going to be frustrated because that’s not the goal of the Liberty Movement and not the libertarian utopia.
Libertarians recognize that there is a proper function for government, and that’s to intervene in order to help the weak and powerless against people who go around hitting others or stealing things. The government is delegated self-defense, and that’s a real and legitimate exercise of the power delegated by individuals to the government. But, often, libertarians (and Libertarians) are so busy talking about what the government should NOT do that we fail to explain what our vision is of the things government should be doing.
Libertarians all too often confuse libertarianism with “rugged individualism” and an absence of government, but Ludwig von Mises wrote in his seminal “Human Action,” that “In the frame of society everybody depends upon his fellow citizens. Social man cannot become independent without forsaking all the advantages of social cooperation. The self-sufficient individual is independent, but he is not free. He is at the mercy of everybody who is stronger than himself. The stronger fellow has the power to kill him with impunity. It is therefore nonsense to rant about an alleged “natural” and “inborn” freedom which people are supposed to have enjoyed in the ages preceding the emergence of social bonds. Man was not created free; what freedom he may possess has been given to him by society. Only societal conditions can present a man with an orbit within the limits of which he can attain liberty.”
Until there are no bad people in the world, there will always be a government, and hence even hardened libertarians don’t wish for a “sustained period absent any government.” In that world, the stronger fellow has the power to kill off others with impunity.
Until libertarians understands that truth, the fight seems hopeless. For so long as “utopia” is believed to be an absence of government, the fight seems hopeless because it’s true that such a “utopia” cannot and will never exist in a grand scale on planet earth.
Maybe what that means is that we’re closer than many suspect to achieving our goals and that the magnitude of the task ahead is not so impossible or difficult as it seems at first.
Agreed. See https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cda3f5fd5673773a5c1c940c09e64bc13ca51e2479981952c1608fd29b0b9889.png .
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3e5218f5bc23585d13cf4ea9ffbb7c853cafc09a2758e80fe287f72608b08095.gif
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