Wednesday, June 20, 2018

A Comment on Strategies and Tactics Toward Advancing Liberty


There have been a number of comments here at Target Liberty that I want to address.

One commenter left themed comments at these posts:
The themed comments:
  • Yeah, we all know the political establishment wants open borders. The fact that the worst cronyist organizations are all opposing Trump's immigration policy is a surprise to nobody.
  • And it should surprise nobody that most libertarians are just passive weak cheerleaders for the status quo.
  • Wenzel has joined the neoliberal consensus. True colors shown.
This has nothing to do with joining the "neoliberal consensus" or being "passive weak cheerleaders."

It is about understanding proper strategy and tactics when you are a minority.

When you are a minority, and libertarians surely fit in this camp all too well, Murray Rothbard taught that alliances were required to reach a larger audience, to gain a far reaching megaphone. 

Identifying groups that one can side with on specific issues is one method of alliance. You don't support their non-libertarian ideas but you can work with them on the issues you have in common.

As it happens to be, the state taking children away from parents is a big issue. It is an ideal topic for a libertarian blogger that may capture the ears beyond the tiny libertarian crowd.

One of my first jumps in traffic at EPJ was when I featured an analysis of Obamacare by a conservative that I had very little in common with. But that post resulted in over 750,000 views.

When you can drive that kind of readership to a blog page some small percentage is going to stick, perhaps .1%. But that is still an important amount.

Notice: The coverage I gave the Obamacare analysis was in line with my views on Obamacare. I did not go beyond that coverage with the writer of the analysis.

It is rare that mainstream media and political leaders agree with anything I write, when that happens, I am going to jump on it. Not because I am trying to show that Blowhard X is supporting my position but because there is a chance that some combination of keywords on the topic from my perspective with that of Blowhard X is going to hit the Google search engine jackpot.

You never will know the combination in advance but well-known names always help.

In 2008 at EPJ, I reported that a rumor was circulating that Senator John McCain was dating the granddaughter of Lena Horne.

Two years later in 2010, when Lena Horne died, the post exploded with over 500,000 views. 

So with my coverage of mainstream media and political types, I am planting seeds for future traffic. But I am also doing something else and of more immediate value. Almost always at these posts, I am hinting that I am coming from a different direction than the mainstream blowhard.

At the post BREAKING Ted Cruz Introducing Emergency Legislation to Keep Illegal Immigrant Families Together, I write, suggesting Cruz is blowing with the political winds: "Cruz is up for reelection, in a tight race against upstart Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke, and wouldn't be doing this if the emergency legislation wasn't polling well."

At the post, Laura Bush: Separating Children From Their Parents at the Border ‘Breaks My Heart,' I write:"Even the generally silent wife of an evil one objects."

The curious will poke around.

I am also alerting those of my readers, who are second-hand dealers in ideas, that the topic of child separation is a hot one that will surely be of interest to almost everyone, across the political board, and that it can be discussed from a libertarian perspective. It is a good topic to help people think in libertarian terms. (My post tomorrow: How to Discuss the Government Child Separation Issue From a Libertarian Perspective).

Finally, I am also reaching out to the few very curious who are trying to understand the child separation issue and who will dig deep into Google searches and perhaps come across a Target Liberty post on the topic.

We can blog to the choir and get nowhere or we can strategically reach out, provided we don't break with principle. This should be our aim.

-RW  

12 comments:

  1. Given the insane views of the Trump/Sanders populist movements, I don’t think that finding oneself on the same side as the political establishment on a particular issue is quite as damning an indictment as it used to be.

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  2. You are a cool head in a storm.

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  3. In a PPS, if a pregnant immigrant mom and her toddlers wandered off and stole some apples to eat from a private farm, the property owner could shoot them in the head on the spot. Or chop them up for the garbage disposal on live TV. Or turn them into sex slaves for life.

    Meanwhile, until that glorious day arrives, all 7 billion people in the world can set up makeshift plastic tents on the government street where my little driveway ends. A public relations dream for libertarians.

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  4. I appreciate your tactics, you're doing more than most to introduce newbies to free market libertarian thought.

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  5. As your readership grows you'll inevitably get more clowns. Just ignore them...

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  6. Can you imagine a better way to ensure we never create a libertarian society by importing from the 3rd world (since 1965) 100 million non libertarians?

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    1. I can: the state more power.

      Also, there’s double that number of non-libertarian natives, so let’s not pretend that it was furrinurs that deprives us of a Ron Paul presidency.

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    2. Damn it. Should be “GIVE the state more power”

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  7. Sorry libwaps, real libertarians cheer any delta toward liberty, even if that increased freedom comes in a roundabout way.

    For example, many libertarians cheered State sanctioned gay marriage. Say what? We cheered the State taking more power and control in society? Some libertarians want to legalize cannabis. Say what? Libertarians cheer the regulation and taxation of market goods?

    In the case of illegal entry by foreign invaders, for whatever reason with this audience, we need to first acknowledge that we don't live in a PPS. We live in a world with State owned public property, purchased by money confiscated from taxpayers and supposedly managed for the benefit of citizens. Second, even if we had 100% private property, you jamokes wouldn't know whether foreigners would be more or less welcome. You don't know if they could even afford to get here (they couldn't sneak through private roads or privately owned ranches).

    Immigration would be a moot point in a PPS. In the real world, there is no coherent argument that an open border policy leads to more liberty (unlike Gay Marriage or Legal Pot). Open borders is clearly antithetical to both libertarian theory (as explained by Rothbard, Hoppe, Rockwell and others) and real world movement to a freer society.

    What we have with these separated kids is simply bad optics, which makes for good propaganda and mushy thinking. You're doing libertarianism a disservice by your mushy thinking and clickbait.

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    Replies
    1. Re: Stuffed Pimento,

      ── many libertarians cheered State sanctioned gay marriage. ──

      What many libertarians cheered was an end to a prohibition on two people getting into a contract and calling it a marriage. There is NO sound argument to exclude two consenting adults from getting into such an arrangement and for their contract to be respected by authorities.

      You simply prefer to see it as "only the State can marry people, therefore only the State can sanction marriage", which is a lie made up by Marxians, and conservative socialists.

      ── Some libertarians want to legalize cannabis ──

      And you don't - right?

      Your description of 'legalization' as government taxing something is interesting, because it goes back to the notion that only the government can sanction something. Legalizing something only means the state is not going to put you in a cage for engaging in peaceful commerce. The fact that it prefers to TAX you for it in no way diminishes the bit of FREEDOM legalization brings to people.

      ── Immigration would be a moot point in a PPS. ──

      In the sense that there would be NO immigration policy? Then yes, it would be a moot point. But people would still migrate. In a PPS, people would still have children; children would move out to other cities or lands; they would be invited by others to live in other places, just like today.

      Why would you thin that a PPS means everyone becomes a hermit? Easy - because you have NO IDEA of what you talk about. You make caricatures of concepts to then draw black eyes and moustaches on them, without ever dwelling deeper on the rationale behind a PPS: the Non Aggression Principle, Voluntary Action, and Markets.

      ── In the real world, there is no coherent argument that an open border policy leads to more liberty ──

      Sure, just like bigger windows don't lead to more sunlight... Right?

      Open Borders, which you dishonestly describe as a Star Trek transporter that moves zillions of people in an instant o something, only means within the framework of a free Market a border open to the free flow of Goods, Services, Capital and, yes, Labor. An Open Border such as the one a Market would create would NOT have an 'illegal immigration' problem because people would be LESS inclined to migrate fully, more inclined to travel back and forth for work and pleasure. The reason why you see more undocumented immigrants is because of the ever-growing barrier to entry that the government has been putting up since the 1920s for whatever eugenicist reasons harbored. Lower the barrier and most immigrants would go home to enjoy lower prices, the food, the family, etc. Those who want to stay would should stay and contribute to society.

      But this is not what Trumpistas want. What they want is to perpetuate this dystopia of zillions of immigrants pushing their way through the ramparts like ants, the kind of story one makes up to scare little children and clueless adult voters.

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