So when you try to make the discussion about people rather than ideas, as here with an implied accusation worded vaguely so that you wouldn’t have to be responsible for actually defending it:

“So the answer is, you have no use for people who otherwise don’t believe in your philosophy?”

…that’s OKAY.

Then when people, in turn, give their opinion of you they’re being unreasonable all of a sudden?

Pavlovian conditioning? That’s what you think of me, or others? I said that I can respect a reasoned libertarian argument (though, I question how “reasoned” your argument really is). If you automatically assume that people who don’t necessarily agree with you are pre-programmed drones who need a lot of work to convince them of the rightness of your idea, instead of rational people who perhaps have already weighed the merits of radical libertarianism and found it lacking, yet still have common goals with you, then you’re not going to get anyone to assist you at all. Furthermore, it is an extremely convenient answer that points to a fundamental flaw in your reasoning: if people really aren’t so rational after all and can be controlled like dogs, then why bother with libertarian rationalism to begin with? If you’re right, then your whole approach is wrong.

But whatever. I thought this blog would be posting videos of police abuses to build awareness and grow to a wider audiance. It seems you want to post rants in an echo chamber. Good luck with all that.

If you mean I’m going to do everything I can to convince as many people as I can to not let themselves be victimized, sure. Of course, that’s almost exactly the opposite of what your choice of words would seem to imply — presumably because the very idea that someone has a firm and intellectually defensible notion of what constitutes victimization, one which can be applied without regard to social status, sets off your Pavlovian conditioning (because that’s ultimately all I’m arguing for).

Monopolies are inherently abusive. One can either addres the issue or engage in ritualistic kabuki theater of concern over the issue that accomplishes nothing.

Sure, not many people get the connection. We also live in a world with pervasive abuse by monopoly police. It’s hardly my fault many are in denial about the true extent of the issue.

BTW, I’ll stack my own rationality up against the cult-like devotion to irrationality and aggression of any statist devotee of monopoly government any day of the week.

It sounds like you’re selling a religion instead of something practical for society. What if someone is not a libertarian but does not like police abuses at all?

I mean, take a basic example: the crosswalk guard. Almost everyone on the planet respects them because they protect their kids safety when they’re walking to school. Yet the crosswalk guard has authority to force a car to stop moving down a public street. Are you guys against that also?

I’m with you. Liberty-lovers need to grow a pair and stop begging for freedom.

Hope to see you soon in NH – it’s easier to be courageous when you have people near you who agree!

This is the so-called pragmatic approach, but it’s not actually very pragmatic at all. The strength of the libertarian position is its logical consistency and moral weight, yet that is precisely what it is urged that libertarians abandon. This so-called pragmatism is a lie and it is no worse a lie because its advocates sincerely believe it. The simple truth is that we have a radical message and there will be social sanctions that must be endired by the people who are early in spreading that radical message. With familiarity brought on by exposure from the stubborn and the brave, we will win acceptance. We just have to suffer for it first.

We are enslaved today because libertarians 30 years ago were, on balance, cowards. That must come to an end, and the end of it begins here and now.

While I can respect a reasoned libertarian argument, you should understand that many people do not understand it and believe in the need for some level of policing. The general public is not going to accept an argument that requires them to believe that all policing activity is the immoral exercise of force. It is better to convince them that certain laws are unjust or that drugs should be decriminalized. Your average voter will listen to that argument instead of one that says all cops are evil.

That’s just the nature of what you’re dealing with. Even if you don’t want to abandon that argument, it should be done in baby steps (as it is, I don’t think it’s a good argument to begin with but from a strategic matter even if it was a good argument it should be made after a stronger foundation is laid for the public to accept it).

I think you’d have more success focusing on the abuses performed by cops that are plain for all to see. These sort of philosophical arguments aren’t going to get you anywhere fast.

FYI, the Greenfield PD also has a twitter feed: http://twitter.com/Greenmapd

Clearly, this cop failed History. The first battle of the Revolutionary War (you know, the one that started “this country”) occurred when the British government tried to take the peoples of Massachusetts’ guns. Massachusetts, for cripes sake!

If someone held a gun to my face, and a bystander called 911, I would still have a gun in my face while I waited for the fat blue line to show up. It would only take an instant to blow me away, it takes the cops minutes to arrive. Logically, it’s better to have a gun and not need it than to need one and not have it.

Maybe this guy should live in England if he wants people to be defenseless from thugs in or out of a uniform. I don’t really believe that, as I’m not a “love it or leave it” kinda guy, but he should at least think about how insanely dangerous that place became when they banned guns. Or how about the murder capitol of the world, Washington D.C.? Thank god they finally allowed people to preserve their lives.