Lloyd Posted May 12, 2013 Posted May 12, 2013 Okay, so I've come to what may be the final turning point in my lifelong struggle with understanding my relationship with the state. This has not been an easy journey for me. I've certainly left a lot of so-called "friends" and family behind me in the past as my understanding of the nature of man and the state has grown and evolved. I've sought out so many sources to expand my understanding that now I think I've finally spanned a decent (though certainly not comprehensive) breadth of human thought on the subject. I entered adult life in an apolitical and utterly ignorant state. I quickly became a cookie-cutter liberal in my first bout with college. By the end of my military service, I no longer held many illusions regarding the logical consistency of that particular set of wildly contradictory beliefs and values. For a moment, I flirted with conservatism as Burke was fairly persuasive, and certainly far more rational than what I'd already known. It couldn't withstand logical scrutiny very long. During my second bout with college, I began to do a LOT of reading in political philosophy, and began to dip my feet in the waters of economic theory. Libertarianism, for a long while now, has been the most rational sense I could make of these matters, but that too could not last forever. Almost invariably it seems, the moral and logical pursuit that one begins when one starts to understand the principles underwriting libertarian theory leads one to the final conclusion that the state is, at best, a necessary evil. A rational understanding of the history of the state coupled with these principles, and derived from these studies, however, must invariably lead one to objective reality: the state is not only an agent of moral evil, but completely unnecessary. Anarchy is the only moral system under which people can live in freedom. Thanks, Stef, for helping to lift that last bit of fog.
zg7666 Posted May 12, 2013 Posted May 12, 2013 Congratulations on that. Commendable journey indeed. What I would propose, if you're interested, is to write down your journey, feelings and things that helped you or were decisive for you. I heard in a recent podcast, that people can not remember anymore what it was like to be an statist and have some difficulty to empathize. Same is with me... Once again, congratulations, good luck and all the best.
Lloyd Posted May 15, 2013 Author Posted May 15, 2013 For the most part such is already present in the form of my academic writings over the years. Certainly this isn't comprehensive, and it's not a self-conscious record of my development, but rather one can see this process unfolding through the writings themselves--something often corrupted by memory and nostalgia when such efforts are self-consciously directed. Still, the idea has merit.
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