{"id":22575,"date":"2014-04-12T07:22:47","date_gmt":"2014-04-12T14:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/?p=22575"},"modified":"2015-04-12T13:49:12","modified_gmt":"2015-04-12T20:49:12","slug":"the-urge-to-do-something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/the-urge-to-do-something\/","title":{"rendered":"The Urge To ‘Do Something’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Strike-The-Root.com<\/a> | It\u2019s virtually the mantra of the statist government-believers \u2013 those of the Left, Right, and Center \u2013 whenever there\u2019s a perceived \u201ccrisis.\u201d A mass shooting. Unemployment. A display of racism or gender-bias. A tax-financed school system that fails to actually educate (though why such should baffle anyone is beyond me). At once come the hysterical cries that \u201cwe\u201d need to \u201cdo something\u201d \u2013 which usually means pass a new law, create more rules, raise taxes, and have just a little more inner contempt for that dangerous, dangerous concept called Freedom<\/a>. The end result, of course, is always that very little of a positive nature changes \u2013 except that the tax burden gets heavier, police become more intrusive and abusive, the paranoia of society increases on all sides and levels, and the world becomes just a little worse of a place to live in. But those who feel they \u201ctook action\u201d feel strangely relieved and vindicated, as if something noteworthy and of great import were accomplished.<\/p>\n

Even among many of those who customarily decry the actions of bureaucrats, there is still insistence that \u201cwe\u201d mustn\u2019t allow \u201cthe other side to win.\u201d It\u2019s important to vote, they say, otherwise you\u2019re just \u201cdoing nothing\u201d to stop the ever-rising tide of government expansion, intrusion, and aggression. The socialist government-lovers will continue to vote, and so \u201cwe\u201d must stop them.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe I really need to spell out the complete inconsistency in that kind of non-logic, so instead, I\u2019ll just jump forward to say that not only is non-voting better than \u201cdoing something,\u201d it\u2019s also not <\/em>\u201cdoing nothing\u201d \u2013 especially not when combined with other actions aimed at delegitimizing, defunding, removing support for, and ultimately abolishing government.<\/p>\n

No, as I\u2019ve spelled out heretofore<\/a>, non-voting alone<\/em> will not eliminate government. It might be argued that voting, at least on occasion, can provide some short-term, temporary relief from certain actions of those in government. Even Lysander Spooner, in his infamous essay, \u201cNo Treason: The Constitution of No Authority<\/a>,\u201d had something to say about what we might call \u201cdefensive\u201d voting: \u201cAs taxation is made compulsory on all, whether they vote or not, a large proportion of those who vote, no doubt do so to prevent their own money being used against themselves; when, in fact, they would have gladly abstained from voting, if they could thereby have saved themselves from taxation alone, to say nothing of being saved from all the other usurpations and tyrannies of the government.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if we are to form any kind of a consistent, long-term vision of achieving true liberty, it is wildly in<\/em>consistent and counterproductive to include voting as part of that strategy. We must of necessity look elsewhere.<\/p>\n

We live in a society which, ironically, because of the abundance and prosperity made possible in bygone decades and generations due to even a relative absence of governmental intrusion, is accustomed to instant solutions and gratification: Fast food, ATMs, high-speed internet browsing, movies-on-demand, swipe the plastic card and make the purchase. We are currently still reaping yesteryear\u2019s crops, though if government continues, it\u2019s beyond any rational dispute that this state of affairs will most certainly not<\/em> for much longer. However that, most members of our culture at least implicitly believe that politics functions in a similar capacity: Enter the voting booth every couple of years and pull the right levers and everything will come out all right. Sounds more like a toilet stall to me.<\/p>\n

There are <\/em>more than likely any number of things that need to be done in order for humanity to realize true liberty, but it might be fair to say \u2013 at least at this juncture \u2013 that there are even more things that we need to stop <\/em>doing. Like voting. Believing that taxes are some kind of an essential element of a stable society, and being afraid of finding ways to avoid paying them. Working government jobs<\/a>, or accepting government contracts if you operate a business. Associating with government employees on any kind of a social basis. Using government money to complete transactions. Calling the police if there\u2019s a problem (which, these days usually just creates another problem).<\/p>\n

In other words, what I\u2019m driving at here is that, when attempting to get government off our backs \u2013 once and for all \u2013 less is often more. Standing down, so to speak, or non-engaging, often accomplishes more of a productive (or, at the very least, not non<\/em>productive) nature in terms of anything beneficent to the cause of libertarianism.<\/p>\n

So the next time something seems to spur you self-righteously into knee-jerk action, consider whether what you have in mind is helpful or harmful.<\/p>\n

It might just be something better left undone.<\/p>\n

By Alex R. Knight III<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Strike-The-Root.com | It\u2019s virtually the mantra of the statist government-believers \u2013 those of the Left, Right, and Center \u2013 whenever there\u2019s a perceived \u201ccrisis.\u201d A mass shooting. Unemployment. A display of racism or gender-bias. A tax-financed school system that fails to actually educate (though why such should baffle anyone is beyond me). At once come […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[294],"tags":[758,501,11,141],"class_list":["post-22575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-government","tag-law","tag-tax","tag-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oooorgle.com\/BeyondTheCorral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}