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RE: Authoritarianism as Security Blanket

in #anarchy8 years ago

Great post as always, Larken. By the time I found your videos online, I had already completed a 20-year journey from small-government libertarian to anarchist, but the easy, compact way you present everything really crystallized it for me, and now I try to do the same.

One of the remaining hurdles for me is that statists are reluctant to see any flaw in themselves. Not as people, but as statists. They will acknowledge that, yes, I have my faults, like everyone else, yada, yada. But when confronted with their intellectual cowardice, laziness, reluctance to think their own positions through, or anything that challenges them on a philosophical level, that's when they throw their most intense verbal tantrums. When confronted in any way about things like consistency, principles, and ethics, statists will, as always, resort to any number of logical fallacies: projection, moving the goalposts, circular reasoning, arguing from authority, etc.

I just began martial arts instruction under a teacher whose teacher studied under Bruce Lee. Literally, just one lesson so far. I can tell it will be a long process, requiring much practice, but I'm confident in my capability to progress. The same goes with statist logical fallacies. It's not enough just to read about them, and identify them in conversation. It takes practice to point them out and refute them on the spot, rather than figuring out an hour later what I should have said.

I see the articles and videos that you (and others such as Sterlin Lujan, Amanda Rachwitz, and any other writer who quickly gets to the core of the issue) as anarchist martial arts instruction. With enough practice, perhaps the millions of debates we all get into will yield better results. All in all, I'm likewise confident in our ability to make progress.

Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Cheers.

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Sorry for the shameless plug, but have a look at my stuff too. I only write until I've made my point, whether that's 500 words or 50.