Friday, August 10, 2018

On Libertarian Violence


At the post. Bashing Some Commenters, Shimshon writes:
Bob, a ware is exactly right. It's not about immediately resorting to violence, but the willingness to do so. The Germans stopped using gas only because they got the same treatment in kind. The Allies didn't say to themselves, we're better than that, or, that's not who we are. And spare me the claptrap about how war is just evil and what's the difference between gas and any other weapon of war.

"As far as a government attempting to kill me, I would do what, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstien and Ludwig von Mises did when facing similar circumstances, get out of town."

That's great, Bob. Three world famous Jews got out of Dodge. You know who also did that? Otto Frank (father of Anne), unlike many of his fellow Jewish Germans, did leave. He went to Holland. It was compelling logic, because Holland was neutral in WWI, and it seemed a reasonable assumption its neutrality would be respected the second time around. How well did that work out? As it is, von Mises barely escaped Austria after fleeing Germany.

Bob, people are not cogs, and that advice might apply in certain limited circumstances, but it doesn't work when scaled to millions. You deserve quite a bit of bashing for this idiotic advice. Sometimes fighting back is the only option.
This is probably the most absurd, dangerous comment ever put
up at Target Liberty.

Shimshon is advocating violence as opposed to just getting away from serious trouble.

This is quite frankly nuts, unless it is the unusual case where the masses are in favor of establishing liberty. Imagine a German citizen during the rule of Hitler choosing to stay in Germany and fight Hitler's regime rather than leave. But it just so happens this German lived in the eastern part of Germany, so his great battle against Hitler resulted in decades of his facing Soviet oppression---when the alternative would have been to leave.

Imagine a Cuban citizen fighting the crony Batista, with his "victory" resulting in the multi-decades of rule by the oppressor Castro.

As for Otto Frank, he stayed in Holland after the Germans occupied the country! Do you really think that made "compelling logic"?

Watch the movie The Pianist by Roman Polanski. Make your kids watch it with you--so they will learn to be prepared well in advance. It shows the remarkable step-by-step increase in German oppression against Jews. And most Jews not seeing the big picture and only reacting to the very immediate crisis that eventually got them sent off to death camps.

You have to be alert and act in advance.

Otto Frank was not alert enough to do the things necessary to act well in advance. The Germans occupied Holland in May 1940. He stayed. In early 1942, things got much worse in Holland for Jews, they were not allowed to go to parks or concerts and they had to wear stars on their clothing. He stayed. There was plenty of time to get out, deportations didn't start until July of 1942.

And the absurd alternative: He was somehow supposed to fight the occupying German army?

When you are alert, you take steps in advance.

From a profile on billionaire gold bullion dealer Dr. Henry Jarecki:
 [Jarecki was] the son of immigrant parents who fled Nazi Germany’s wave of anti-Semitism in 1937...

“My father thought I was crazy, abandoning a 13-year medical practice in New Haven and teaching job at Yale Medical School in 1970 and moving into a New York World Trade Center fifth floor office to plunge full-time into the bullion business,” Jarecki said...

Jarecki survived the first Trade Center terrorist attack that killed six persons in 1993, but the memory still haunts him..

‘”The building rumbled, the lights flickered,” he recalls. “I told my 100-person staff to leave. We gathered at a restaurant across the street, and I told them, ‘You don‘t have to tell a refugee twice. We‘re moving out.’ And we later did.”
Got that, he had been in the World Trade Center for  23 years, but he knew when to get out!

And why couldn't libertarians of the day follow Freud, Einstein and Mises out?

Why wouldn't we be able to all leave the U.S. if in the future it is warranted?

We are supposed to stay and fight, for what?

There is no significant libertarian movement in the United States today. If we all got together, we wouldn't even be able to capture Rhode Island--by surprise attack.

Unless there is broad support for libertarian ideas, a revolution makes no sense. It will only get some of us locked up or killed.

There are no violent shortcuts to liberty. If you think there are, well, go for it and, like I say, email me when you are victorious.

The only thing we can do now is stay away from trouble that will take us out of the game. As I have pointed out before, Saul Alinsky made this point to the Left.

  I wrote in 2013:
I have never been a big fan of getting thrown in jail as a means of  political protest. Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises never ended up in jail and they have probably done more in recent decades to advance libertarian thinking than almost anyone else.

Which is why I found commentary by Saul Alinsky about getting thrown in jail quite interesting.

Alinsky was a very skilled major league lefty rabble rouser, who influenced both President Obama and Hillary Clinton. In his book, Rules for Radicals, he was always calculating, even when it came to protests that could put you in jail. He wrote:
At the same time, the revolutionary leaders should make certain their publicized violations are so selected that their jail terms are relatively brief, from one day to two months. The trouble with a long sentence is that (a) a revolutionary is removed from action for such an extended period of time that he loses touch, and (b) if you are gone long enough everybody forgets about you.
I think he is correct, though I would advance the point and say that any time in jail because of a protest is wasted time.

Be careful out there. Don't take yourself out of the game. The idea is to make things difficult for the coercers, not the other way around.
We certainly shouldn't be advocating violence. Violence to accomplish what?

The advancement of a libertarian society is a long-game that must be won at the idea level and that will take a very long time.

If your attention span is too short for this, well then, perhaps you should spend more time playing pinball.

-RW