[extropy-chat] [FoRK] "Free State" backlash: Libertarian Rhetoric is Counterproductive (Op-Ed) (fwd from jbone at place.org)

Mike Lorrey mlorrey at yahoo.com
Wed Jun 23 14:50:25 UTC 2004


If you are following the news, I was in Grafton on Saturday at an
unofficial town meeting (attended mostly by the town's Democrat
minority), and was on NH Public Radio today, on Laura Kinnoy's show
"The Exchange". (you should be able to hear the audio track on their
website)

Kuro5hin's article is dead on, I've been telling the more outlandish
for months that they are not just talking to fellow libertarians, that
they talk to the entire world when they post on the internet, they need
to talk like they are talking to their mother.

--- Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> ----- Forwarded message from Contempt for Meatheads <jbone at place.org>
> -----
> 
> From: Contempt for Meatheads <jbone at place.org>
> Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 23:49:11 -0500
> To: FoRK <fork at xent.com>
> Subject: [FoRK] "Free State" backlash: Libertarian Rhetoric is
> 	Counterproductive (Op-Ed) 
> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.618)
> 
> 
> I've been out on FSP ever since they "decided" (IMHO the voting was 
> rigged) to go cold-state.  Yes, call me superficial, but warmth
> trumps 
> ideology.  Why the hell else would I live in Hell, er, Texas?  Either
> 
> way right-wing (rest of state plus most of the Capitol campus) or 
> left-wing (Austin) nuts, there has to be some justifying upside in
> the 
> middle.
> 
> Nonetheless, via k5:
> 
> 	http://www.kuro5hin.org/print/2004/6/21/19280/4046
> 
> Libertarian Rhetoric is Counterproductive (Op-Ed)
> 
> By CaptainSuperBoy
> Tue Jun 22nd, 2004 at 07:14:24 PM EST
> 	Freedom
> 	
> 
> There's a problem with typical libertarian rhetoric, and it's 
> illustrated in this article in New Hampshire's Union Leader. When we 
> speak like crazed Rand-worshippers, how do we expect people to react?
> 
> Of course they're going to call us 'cultists.'
> 
> From the article: "if you care at all about New Hampshire, you should
> 
> do everything in your power to cause the Free Staters and Towners to 
> abort their mission. They're nothing but a selfish group of anarchist
> 
> carpetbaggers whose sole purpose is to destroy a place and people
> they 
> don't give two hoots about."
> 
> (I'm not a member of the FSP by the way, just taking an interest.)
> 
> 	The Free State Project is an ambitious undertaking, whose ultimate 
> goal is to move 20,000 libertarians to the state of New Hampshire, in
> 
> order to form a libertarian state within the US. The Free Town
> Project, 
> an offshoot, wants to take this further still by moving to a specific
> 
> town and establishing a libertarian town government, free from 
> mandatory recycling and beautification ordinances. Needless to say, 
> many FSP members are distancing themselves from the FTP.
> 
> And what's got Gregg Ramsay, the author of the op-ed, so hot and 
> bothered? Crazed Free Staters on the Internet posting garbage like 
> this: "We don't want their honey, we do want them out of their hives.
> 
> If they sting we swat, and if they don't wise up we torch the hive." 
> And this: "[we should] ensure that the Town Police are never allowed
> to 
> waste valuable Town resources (taken from the residents as taxes AT
> THE 
> POINT OF A GUN)."
> 
> The back-story is that the Free Town Project has chosen to colonize 
> Grafton due to its lax zoning laws. But whose fault are those laws? 
> There's not much you can do if people choose to buy land and build 
> houses in your town. Still, they're going to put up a fight. I've 
> experienced small-government politics and I know how ugly these
> things 
> can get. Idealism goes right out the window when people feel their 
> homes or their way of life is threatened. Sure it's xenophobic, but
> I'm 
> just trying to be realistic here. The Free Towners (and Free Staters
> by 
> proxy) should try to make friends, not enemies. After all these are 
> their future neighbors.
> 
> Granted it's not wise for Gregg Ramsay (professor at Pace University
> in 
> NY, according to the article) to respond to anything posted on the 
> Internet. People say a lot of stupid things on the net and it's best
> to 
> ignore it. I have a feeling that he found the worst of the several 
> thousand messages posted to the Free Town Project mailing list and 
> wrote an article about it. No libertarians have yet moved to Grafton 
> and tried to take over his precious town, but he is worried that
> they'd 
> "legalize drugs, prostitution, incest and other crimes they refer to
> as 
> 'victimless.'"
> 
> I'm recommending that libertarians tone down their cult-like
> rhetoric, 
> and in return non-libertarians should honestly consider whether the 
> ideals of small government and personal responsibility are really
> that 
> harmful.
> 
> To: Zealous Free Staters
> Yeah, it's terrible that they're xenophobic and the landlords are 
> refusing to rent to you. But you brought it upon yourselves for being
> 
> SO confrontational. Did you have to call the townies socialists at
> the 
> town meeting? Was that really necessary? Tone down the "omg
> government 
> jackboots taking taxes at the point of a gun, I live my life for no 
> other man, imperialist pig" talk. Even outside of the FSP, this kind
> of 
> rhetoric does NOTHING for the libertarian cause. Lasting change
> doesn't 
> happen overnight. You can't expect to achieve a free state tomorrow.
> 
> To: Gregg Ramsay
> You're a big-government liberal, and we (libertarians) disagree with 
> you. I understand that you think you're smarter than everyone else,
> and 
> you want to ban things that you believe are harmful to society. Yes
> you 
> do, it's your party platform. But saying things like "[their] sole 
> purpose is to destroy a place and people they don't give two hoots 
> about" isn't helping my estimate of your IQ. Obviously that's not the
> 
> intent of the project. There may be a few bad apples, but hey: are
> the 
> current Grafton residents ALL perfect? Don't think you're any better 
> than the FSP members. And geez, toughen up a little. People say all 
> kinds of things online. If you read something online that you
> dislike, 
> it doesn't mean you have to write a whole indignant article about it.
> 
> Of course, maybe I should take my own advice on that one.
> 
> Kuro5hin previously covered the creation of the Free State Project
> and 
> the selection of New Hampshire as the "free state."
> 
> Full discussion: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/6/21/19280/4046
> 
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
> 
> ----- End forwarded message -----
> -- 
> Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
> ______________________________________________________________
> ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144            http://www.leitl.org
> 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
> http://moleculardevices.org         http://nanomachines.net
> 

> ATTACHMENT part 1.2 application/pgp-signature 
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat
> 


=====
Mike Lorrey
Chairman, Free Town Land Development
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                         -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Sadomikeyism


		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail 



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list