There’s an old joke that runs through hard core libertarian circles that goes something like this.
An overly earnest newbie at a Libertarian Party meeting one night during a lull in a heated discussion of comma placement in a new rule change proposal asks, “What’s the difference between an anarchist and a minarchist?”
The grizzled party chair looks up from his copy of Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty and replies, “About two years.”
And I can tell you that that joke, like all good jokes has a nugget of deep truth in it. Embracing Minarchism is the toe-dip into the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP). It’s your first tentative step into the scarier world of imagining it without a state. SparkPod Shower Head -... Best Price: $21.44 ($21.44 / count) Buy New $29.99 ($29.99 / count) (as of 07:02 EDT - Details)
And it’s a position that’s comforting. But it is also rife with contradictions. Those contradictions weigh on a person who is trying to live up to the ideal of the NAP.
If you are truly on an honest journey to find the right path for your own personal behavior, then rigorously applying the NAP to all facets of your life leads you to shedding the precepts of the necessity of the coercive state to shape and hold society together.
Anarchy in the You ‘Kay?
Because you begin to see the break points, the fault lines of our society in NAP terms. For me, I quickly no longer gave credence to the idea that in order for my individual rights to express themselves I have to submit to a human authority with a granted monopoly power on the use of aggressive force, which the NAP itself stands in opposition to.
At the core of all collectivist thinking is this basic tautology that your rights stem from the negotiation of what others define them as. Only by submitting to a higher human authority over you can you have a hope of retaining any of them, so you need to negotiate them down from the ideal.
Sound complicated? That’s because it is and it’s also insane.
A far simpler interpretation is to state I have a right to life. I have a claim of ownership of myself. Any abrogation of that claim of ownership and right to it by an aggressor is wrong.
Clear, concise, powerful.
Once you come to that conclusion and are willing to apply it consistently then you can become comfortable with freeing your mind of the need for the state.
But it also comes with responsibility. How do you defend those rights? Will you defend every assault on them no matter how minor?
But here’s better questions, ones Marxist will always throw at you to trip you up… Soft Tape Measureu00a0... Buy New $3.99 (as of 07:02 EDT - Details)
If you don’t defend yourself against a minor theft, say a pen or a coffee mug, was your right to property taken from you? Do you still have it in practical terms if you can’t defend against a murderer?
The answers are, in order, No and Yes. Just because the property was taken or the threat made, you always reserve the right to express the right to defend it.
That you choose not to is… wait for it…
… also your right.
“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
NEIL PEART – FREE WILL
That leads to basic economic questions like: Should you always do so? When is forgiveness or acceptance better than retribution?
Is it worth my precious time to chase down a guy who sold me a fake watch rather than chalk it up to experience and go about my other business?
These are basic questions that form the filter on which to view the world around you and are the basic seeds of the growth from being mired in the inconsistencies of Minarchism and blossoming into the flower of Anarchism.
The Right Stuff
It leads you to conclusions about how to find ways to minimize, not eliminate, coercive forces on your life. That we live in a world circumscribed by tyrants constantly climbing over each other for the power to tyrannize is irrelevant. They may in real terms suppress the expression of your right to life but it most certainly doesn’t negate it.
You can always choose to say, “No.”
Notice to this point I haven’t spent one word talking about implementation or politics. Because implementing these ideas isn’t a system to be imposed. That, itself, is a violation of the NAP, the idea of imposing Anarchy is a Collectivist perversion of the process.
We’re seeing this in the hyper-violent rioting of Antifa and BLM wanting to impose their new system that they call anarchy at the point of a gun and an open-ended wrench.
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