Moriartis

Wow, yeah, that's a great point. People would take it a lot more seriously if they didn't know it was coming from North Korea.

Seeing quotes like this is such a scary reminder of how much of a fundamentalist religion statism is. The fact that the left-wing is so blindly unaware of how evil their government is is just astonishing. I can no longer believe that Presidents actually believe anything they say. He of all people knows how little the government represents it's people. For him to make statements liks this is proof positive that he's nothing more than a big-time snake handler selling people a lie for his own benefit. It sickens my stomach to know that millions of people hear these words and are inspired by them. Being unplugged from the matrix sucks.

I've only watched the first 5 or so minutes of it(I'm at work, so I can't really get too into it at the moment), but so far, from what I've seen it it's pretty damn accurate. The "our eternal leader" stuff is pretty hilarious, but otherwise it pretty much hits the nail on the head. It's pretty sad when another countries propaganda doesn't even have to lie in order to be effective.

Conspiracy theories are now the litmus test I use to determine whether or not I care about someone's opinion. If someone outright rejects conspiracy theories because they are "conspiracy theories" without hearing the evidence first, I'm not wasting my time talking to them. Thanks for bringing the article to my attention, very interesting and terrifying stuff.

Yeah, there are so many things about this article that irritate me. I'll list some. I'm forced to assume that the author of this article is very anti-gun. His use of the "assault weapon" ban example, which logically should ban the vast majority of guns because it's a vaguely defined propaganda term is immediately suspect. It's also not a fallacy to say that a populace that only has access to revolvers and basic rifles with small magazines would be unable to defend themselves against a government with access to apache helicopters and M4 assault rifles. The author not getting this concept is not a logical fallacy. Pepin, your point about his own use of weasel words and the nirvana fallacy was awesome. Very nicely put. I had the same thoughts when reading the article. As far as the meme he uses for the example of the nirvana fallacy, perhaps someone can explain to me how that's a fallacy. Saying that gun laws have prevented shooting sprees is an unfalsifiable claim. Saying that the people who have committed shooting sprees are people who ignore laws is not only not a fallacy, it's obviously true(unless I missed something and suddenly shooting sprees were legalized). Granted, there are better ways of arguing this point, but the author seems to overlook massive fallacies if he doesn't agree with their conclusions. Very irritating.

@Super Adventurer. Yeah, it is a rather freeing feeling knowing I can bash whatever and I don't have to try to defend the indefensible. The problem is, you have to connect with the audience in order for it to work. So, in addition to attacking their sacred cows you have to do it in a way that they won't react to with anger and resentment while still making them uncomfortable. It's a difficult balance to find, for sure. @Ribuck. Thanks so much for the link. I'm definitely going to read up on that. I don't know if I would consider my new form of comedy to be "conservative", but perhaps that's because my mindset on liberal vs. conservative is still Democrat vs. Republican, and as we all know, Republicans aren't really conservative. @Morse Code Stutters. Yeah, I had issues with Chrisitianity as soon as I encountered it, so it was never a danger to me. I regard this as proof that if you raise a child without indoctrination, they won't gravitate towards dangerous cults. Tragically, this was not the case with statism, but I'm now free of that mentality as well. As far as my father goes, I've never really had a good relationship with him. There was always tension between us because he tried really hard to push ideas of "manliness" on me when I was young and after he left he became guilt ridden over abandoning me. In everything that happened with my family, I was the one person who you absolutely could not pin any blame on, what with my being 9 years old at the time. He still blames my mother and my sister for what went down. He thinks my mother turned me against him, which is the exact opposite of the truth. My mother and sister went through great lengths to try to get me to talk to him more often and take more time to get to know him. I've had quite a few arguments with my sister about it. She didn't think that it was right that I didn't really talk to him and I never understood why she gave him the time of day. I never really had much desire to get to know him. I came to the conclusion that he was a broken man years ago. He apparently had quite a tramautizing childhood that he's never really dealt with. He lost both of his parents to alcoholism and had to deal with the dysfunction in the family that persisted up until then and the abandonment that came after. He never talks about his childhood and I think his kids were a chance for him to control things and make them less chaotic than his childhood was. Because of this he was obsessed with controlling my sister and when my sister became her own person and he didn't have control over her anymore, he kind of lost his mind about it. Similarly, with me, when I first contradicted him about something I knew about that he didn't(Weird Al Yankovic music, of all things), his automatic response was to sucker punch me in the chest. I could tell it was an automated response. The idea of my having my own opinion and coming to my own conclusions was too much for him. This, combined with his "relationship" with my sister and my sisters two kids has shown me that he doesn't deal well with children who can form their own opinions. He has control issues. All of the free thinking that came about from my family was a direct result of the person my mother is. I've never really felt that blood is thicker than water and hearing Stef talk about defooing was just an affirmation of what I already knew to be true. I essentially defooed from my father a long time ago. I don't feel any loss for not having him in my life. There is a saying that goes "hurt people hurt people". Meaning people who are hurt will hurt others. My dad is the perfect example of that. Having him in my life wouldn't be a positive thing. My sister is now largely of the same opinion. The difference with her is that she wanted her two sons to have an adult male in their lives to look up to(both of the fathers were scumbags). Because of that she has gone through great lengths to patch things up with him and tries to include him in their lives. Naturally, it largely fails. My father, being the intellectual coward that he is, is unable to form genuine attachments with anyone. His relationships, so far as I can tell, are largely social mystiques and acquiantances that he only knows through his new wife, who ironically and predictably has complete control over him. He is kind of my own fascinating case study is psychological dysfunction.

Nope, my high school had a whole 2 history teachers that only taught that one class, all day. You seem to be having a really hard time believing me.

Yes, I'm talking even about high school. Once I hit high school the only history I learned in school was the founding of the country and the Civil War. That was it. This was in Colorado suburbs. I graduated in 2000. To be fair, most of the people I've talked to have had similar experiences with their history classes.

Sorry, I should've been more specific about Bill Hicks. I'm not tying to imply he was a hard core libertarian, but there is definitely a lot of libertarian philosophy in his comedy. To be fair, though, saying we should all help each other isn't anti-Libertarian at all. Libertarianism isn't anti charity, it's just anti forced charity. I don't recall him advocating for forced charity, but I'm far from an expert on his works so maybe he did. And yes, my history classes did not include Watergate. I was dead serious when I said that the most recent thing they covered in any depth was The Civil War. They briefly touched on MLK and WW2, but only watered down versions of those two topics. The history I was taught was almost entirely focused on the founding of the country.

Yeah, the problem with comedy is that it in general has to be written for the lowest common denominator. The moment my views on politics/philosophy changed I no longer had as positive an outlook on my potential comedy career. When things like public school and statist brainwashing are commonplace, it makes it very difficult to get ideas through to people in wity snippets that only take a couple of seconds. It's FAR easier to write comedy that doesn't have to be explained before they'll get the punchline. This is why liberal comedy is everywhere. It's very easy to get it through to people. To be fair, there are libertarian comedians that are pretty damn good. Bill Hicks, Doug Stanhope, Joe Rogan, to name a few. The problem is that being Libertarian makes you far less marketable in Hollywood, so they will always be less well known.

I'm not trying to imply that I couldn't or didn't take anything positive away from public school. I went there for 12 years. It would be absurd to think you don't get something positive out of it. My point is not that I didn't get anything out of it, but rather that it does far more harm than good. I also believe that the basics are a lot easier to learn than people tend to think they are. So the only good that public education does can be done better elsewhere. The rest of public education is entirely indoctrination, by design. To me, real education is what you take away for life. A passion for learning. All of things that stuck with me are things like my passion for philosophy, which had nothing to do with schooling, because I never even had the option to take a philosophy class. Basic skills like reading and writing that could have come from somewhere else are hardly worth all the statist brainwashing. It's curious to me that your public schooling didn't have that kind of thing in common with mine. You are the first person I've come across that doesn't have stories about saluting flags, pledging allegiance and being taught whitewashed versions of history. Where/when did you go to public school?

It's been a long time since I took the test, but I know I wasn't a Rational. I think I was an Idealist. When I was a kid I wanted to be a wise man and I really valued Truth and Compassion. I was vehemently pacifist and what turned me away from politics and towards anarchism was my study of secret government policy in the Middle East/South America/Latin America/Africa. I wasn't into libertarianism until I found out that Ron Paul, a Libertarian(whatever that was) was the only guy calling out the government on it's war crimes. I started paying attention to him and his supporters, which is when the rest of my Marxism was shattered into bits. So that being said I fully understand what you're getting at. You have to find the thing that really matters to them and approach it from that perspective if you want to get any progress. For me it was being a peacenik. For some it's fiscal policy. For some it's Corporatism. it's always going to be different.

Actually, yes, my education was pretty horrific. I had already taught myself to read and use basic math using Garfiend books before I ever attended school. Most of my education regarding the basics was something I explored on my own without any help/guidance from anyone at school. When the time came to approach these subjects in school, I flew through my classes. I was reading Jurassic Park when I was in elementary school and was considered to have a post high school literacy level. My mother was fascinated by science and I had that instilled in me long before public school could get it's clutches into me. Most likely the only reason I have a brain left at all today. As far as the rest of it, my public school education was the most indoctrinating, white washed version of American history imaginable. It was the one class that I had to take EVERY semester, no matter what. I was taught that Columbus discovered America and with no mentions of his crimes. I was taught that the wars with the Indians were unfortunate, but there was never any mentioning of atrocities that were really commited against them. No talk of burning down their homes while they slept. No talk of their women and children being raped and killed while the men were out hunting, only to return to see their loved one butchered. Most talk of the indians was relegated to talk of Thanksgiving, which is the equivalent of telling people that Hitler gave Jews free showers and then conveniently leaving out the rest of the details and then claiming that you are being honest with them. I was never taught a single thing about anything more recent than the Civil War. The Civil War was the furthest my American history courses ever got to, and even that was shrouded in nonsense about it being fought over slavery. The only exception to this was the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King Jr, in which the government was treated as the cure to the symptom of a backwards populace that needed to be forced to act right(ironic considering that the FBI was most likely involved in his assassination). The only thing I learned about Hitler was that he was a bad man killing Jews and we stepped in and saved the world, my wonderful government. Everything I ever learned in history classes was entirely propagandised. I had to salute the flag, pledge allegiance, sing anthems. I was taught all sorts of nonsense about how wonderful Democracy is and how important it was to vote. I took place in a mock election when Ross Perot was running for office when I was in the 4th grade. 4th grade. How could that possibly be seen as anything other than indoctrination? Every mentioning of the founding fathers and our system of government was laden with polished, worship-esque rhetoric of how noble and awesome it all was. My entire education wasn't about how to think, it was about what to think. Furthermore, there was a growing Marxist sentiment in everything. Even when we were covering works like Animal Farm, Farenheit 451 or Robin Hood, where the bad guy is undeniably the government and the works are clearly intended as criticism of power structures and not money or greed, the emphasis was always on how bad other governments were and on how great and free I was in comparison. The "bad guy" was always greed, and not violence and coercion. My entire education taught me that freedom was something my government gave me. It taught me that "the rich" were the bad guys, not the government. The government were always seen as the protector of the people from the corrupt. This continues all over the national diaologue today. Soldiers "fight for my freedom" and police "protect me from bad guys". Delusional. I cannot remember a single criticism of my government being taught in class. I never learned about Japanese internment, Watergate, playing both sides of various wars, nothing. I would love to say that I'm blowing it out of proportion or maybe exaggerating, but I'm dead serious. I was taught hardcore Marxist rhetoric about using the government to "protect myself" from the evil that is humanity and nothing about using my humanity to protect myself from the evil that is government. Later in life I learned about the Prussian model of education. Here is a link to the Wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system Stated explicitly on the wiki page is the fact that our system of public education was specifically set up to indoctrinate children to be obedient to power and to worship the power structure. This of course is exactly opposite of libertarian thinking and it was the intended goal of the Prussian system and one of the main reasons it was brought to America. I realize that if you're just coming across that information, it sounds like crazy conspiracy theory stuff, but it's important to remember that back then(1818-20ish) propaganda was not seen as a bad thing. "Propaganda" didn't become a dirty word until after the years of Hitler when the American government was doing their best to really tarnish the name of Germany during/after the war. So my criticisms of public education and blaming it for the dismal condition of libertarian philosophy in the mainstream is not just a kooky opinion. It comes from trying to understand how the system functions. I think it's a pretty solid hypothesis.

Very well said. I see your point. I think this makes the case for peaceful parenting and the promotion of the non-agression principle and steps that must be taken if anarcho-capitalism is ever to see any mainstream acceptance.

Masonkiller I couldn't agree more with your post. After I defected from liberalism and started trying to point out logical inconsistencies to my liberal friends when they would post some pro-Obama nonsense on facebook I was attacked pretty visciously for it and it reminded me of several years beforehand when I would try to have conversations with Christians. There was just so much anger and weak rhetorical excuses to back points. I, of course, used to get the exact same way when I was a liberal. Liberals are trained to react emotionally to certain cues. If someone's viewpoint can be associated with some form of bigotry or selfishness, then you are conditioned to respond to it with vitriol and disgust even if their point doesn't actually have anything to do with bigorty and selfishness. It definitely goes back to projection. Any correct philosophy doesn't run away from facts and respond to curiosity or challenges to it's thinking with hatred and rage. This is the exact way I see Christians/Liberals/Conservatives respond to any differing views. If I had to theorize why this happens, I think it's a matter of degrees of frustration. As a voluntarist, I've already ripped apart and shredded every belief I've ever had, so challenges to those beliefs don't frustrate me that much. Dealing with someone who is being irrational is quite frustrating, but I'm so used to being relatively alone in my belief system that it's something I've come to accept in others, so the frustration turns into amazement and sometimes humor. Statism, on the other hand, is such an indefensible position that when someone comes up with a huge flaw in the ideology it must be incredibly frustrating to those who haven't done the research trying to refute the evidence. I see this all the time when point out to Obama voters that he's even more pro-war than Bush was. They instantly switch to anger because they have no way of refuting it. So I think in a sense you can use the time frame in which they switch to anger and vitriol as a measure of how flawed their ideology probably is.