powder

that's a good post Wuzzums

this is conjecture. I would argue that it is just as likely that keeping the status quo with the democrats and hitting the iceberg sooner and sinking fast has as good a chance to preserve freedom as trying to slow the ship. welfare and immigration would evaporate when the gov goes bankrupt. The voice of freedom needs to be there when it happens. conversely, I think the ruling class are pretty good at knowing when to give the cattle a little more freedom when they get restless so that they can regroup and regrow state power after the wealth has been rebuilt and the new generation forgets the past. This has happened countless times, the oligarchs are in no hurry, they think long term.

in 2000 when Bush was coming in we had the dot.com crash, Obama's reign saw the housing/mortage crash. I suspect the next big one, to dwarf all others probably, will be the derivatives bubble bursting. Will this next election cycle be the harbinger? It might be time to get your investments out of the stock market or at least into something safer than the usual stuff. thoughts?

anyone claiming they know what is good for other people is, well, usually running for office, or cheering for the one running that is going to give them what they want. good is relative. it is good for the thief and his family to steal. the only thing that matters is what is right and wrong, that is why we have philosophy.

unprecedented compared to what? There are many examples of leaders that were outside of the norm or status quo, usually didn't turn out so good. That darn ring of power.

you can start with the names and the link I mention in the post above and go from there for yourself if you are interested.

I don't understand what you are responding to, how this is relevant, or exactly what you are saying. Can you sort that out in a different way?

who is someone?

Where is this general lack of awareness about the stakes? How is it so different from the dire situations faced by previous generations? Do you think that the people facing World Wars, Communism, and Nuclear annihilation during the cold war were not made to feel the same: "OMG, something has to be done now or there won't be a future?"

What if Trump's role in all of this is to pull a Bernie? What if the whole charade is just that? What if the president doesn't have the real power to make the kinds of changes they claim? What if the political process is not what they want you to believe it is?

I would like to hear how he unpacks that as well

It is important to make the case for freedom now before the ship goes down because if Trump is the captain at the helm when it goes down it will be the biggest "I told you so" from the very people (the left) that are backing the things the right is wanting to defend against.

that is a good article dsayers, thanks for doing that. I am not clear on this point: There was a time when I was convinced that voting was the initiation of the use of force. It was explained to me that because the people being voted for can refuse to initiate the use of force, that the act isn't immoral. Condoning something is not the same as being culpable for it. Isn't the act of voting more than just condoning? isn't it granting authority, giving licence, delegating rights that the person voting does not have themselves? If someone asks someone else to murder another person for them, and the hired killer decides not to go thru with it, isn't the person who gave them the go ahead morally responsible for that action?

Isn't this assuming that your vote will matter, that the results will be accurate and not tampered with, that the system works the way the rulers tell you it does, that the politicians are being honest, that they will follow thru...?

Why? To show that we are being lied to? That governments do terrible things? So what if no one was killed in the gas chambers? Millions died fighting wars because they were lied to by the ruling class. Guess what, the German people were told, just like we were, that they were fighting for freedom. The only way to get decent people to do bad things is to convince them with moral justifications. Stef and others here have argued that time is short and we will lose our chance for freedom if we don't somehow get behind some promises to halt the influx of negative influences in our culture. My point is, Hitler and the NAZI came into power to stop terrorism and immigrants from further destroying the country. Sound familiar?

wait,... the ruling class are going to find another way to take more control of resources and people's lives? we had better petition our masters, make our voices heard! get out and vote! Hi Tim, welcome to the forum. Some of us are still anarchists/voluntarists here so I thought I would start you off with some voluntaryist sarcasm.

Woah, an ACE score of 6! Mine is around 4 and that cooked my corn pretty good. check into how you were programmed at a young age by your caregivers - you know what the Jesuits say: "give me a child til he is 7 and he is mine for life". take a good luck at the relationship with your mother or female caregiver in particular I would suggest. good luck.

The motives of the political leaders is not the issue here, it is the fact that they, and the Christian leaders that I sited, have used their influence to gain the support of a large portion of the Christian population to carry out their agenda. If you don't think that a lot of Christians are keen on the Middle East because of interpretations of end times stuff as cited in Revelations esp then have a look at the dispensationalist movement and its tenets.

damn right the Christian right is significant in supporting the US to invasion and occupation in the middle east - that is my point. Bush made it into a religious crusade, look into those massively popular Christian leaders that I listed and their rhetoric.

We are seeing a lot of comparisons from the 'left stream media' and on social media comparing Donald to the Furer. We know that the perception of Hitler's character is used to demonize, but as that Crowder guy points out on his video, Hillary and the Democrats have more in common when it comes to politics and policies. the NAZI party was indeed the National Socialist Party. That said, there is a comparison to be made with Trump in that he is an 'outsider', as was Hitler, and he is coming into the race to 'save' the country from terrorism and foreigners that were destroying German civilization and to challenge the political system that were at the helm when the country was driven into a horrifying mess - and to make Germany 'great again', as it were. Bernie also gained popularity by preaching the failure of the political system that had taken the country thus far. Now, I do not believe that the political leaders are actually the real power behind the state, rather just sales people/puppets used to sway public sentiment towards the goals of the oligarchs - the Germans lost the war, the NAZIs just moved on to the next project. But that is a different discussion. Even if Trump and his people are able to use the levers of political power to influence policies like trade and immigration, there is little anyone can do to stop the momentum of the collapse of the empire, the massive and sure to burst at any moment derivatives bubble, the crumbling dollar and the destructive actions of the Fed and other central banks and countries that may decide to start a war or take out the US using financial WMD strategies. If there is a massive collapse or great crisis, which I think is inevitable before the end of the next presidential cycle, whoever is on the throne when it happens will be the goat, as happened to Hitler. Remember, the first few years of the NAZI party campaign were a massive success and they accomplished much of what they had promised - Germany as doing well again and Hitler was touted worldwide as a hero and genius. As I have argued in another thread, I think that scare tactics are used to get people to rally behind a leader so they can take that faction out of circulation, its time again to scare the right into joining the game so they can be put down. The cycle always repeats. This is why I think backing Trump's candidacy in any way (I won't use the word 'support') is a good way to tarnish the voice for freedom in the same way that anyone associated with Hitler and the NAZI party was not to be heard from for generations to come. We do want to be there when it falls apart having stuck to our principles so people will have somewhere to turn other than the next ruling class ideology touted out to save us all from whatever catastrophy they trot out. I really like the "Hitler Responds to..." videos. This one is when he finds out Trump is being compared to him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfuF3uJKsQU

Why are we talking about kidnapping and gnawing people's arms off. This discussion is not about dealing with people that may use force to limit our freedoms, its about delegating authority to a group of people to violate property rights of other humans, putting them in a separate moral category.

Shirgall, how is this relevant? You must get that we are talking about coercion here. Not "I don't have the freedom to do anything I want whenever I like because of its impact on others." The essence of voluntaryism is that all interactions with other humans are voluntary and consensual. I get to walk away or say "no thanks."

Trump is unique compared to what? Clintons, Bushes? So what? Martin Luther was very unique in his campaign to take on the Holy See. Napoleon was unique compared to the royal families that ruled at the time. The USA was unique in how it got started, we know how that turned out. Brexit was not unique and has no guarantee of granting more freedom. Countries like Ireland had referendums to join the EU and they just kept at it until they got the result they wanted. I lived in Quebec during the referendum years, they just kept at it until they got their majority vote.

Right, which is why I argue that having FDR's voice backing Trump's ascension to the throne will see it lose its credibility as a voice for freedom, as it is very likely indeed that things will not get better no matter who sits on it. Besides, call me a conspiracy theorist but my study of the oligarchs and their methods make me more inclined to believe this stuff than the idea that political leaders are in charge of changing the world: By the time you become the leader of a country, someone else makes all the decisions. You may find you can get away with Virtual Presidents, Virtual Prime Ministers, and Virtual Everything. - Bill Clinton The real rulers of Washington are Invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.- Justice Felix Frankfurter - US Supreme Court Justice "Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." Woodrow Wilson "We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world - no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men." - Woodrow Wilson

It is being asserted that Trump = more freedom, Hilary = less freedom, Brexit = more freedom,... no one can know anything for sure and there are plenty of reasons, and historical evidence, to argue that the opposite is just as likely. Its not trading principles for pragmatism, its giving up principles for hopes and wishful thinking. Back to the recent Referendum we had in my city. I am also friends with one of the top radio morning show hosts and although he is mostly lefty, he is philosophically minded and outspoken in his views. I am working on him and he is curious and open minded about my position. The message will reach many more as I continue to work on him and argue the case for freedom. So although it is true that the more local the election the more direct the influence can be, perhaps that can also be said about the effect of the voice for voluntaryism in your community.