Milton Friedman made it impossible ignore that there are two ways of dealing with people: voluntarily, or by force.
Tax collectors and the parties that send them out to collect more and higher taxes invariably choose the second option. Of course they paper it over with sanctimonious doublespeak. At every turn they liken their men with guns to acceptors of voluntary contributions. Media outlets are all tax-subsidized since 1971 (thanks to Nixon). This anti-libertarian subsidy doles out influence to entrenched gerontocracy election campaigns and helps sell an image of eleemosynary voluntarism through the initiation of force.
But what of the people at whom their guns are pointed? Thanks to the Nixon anti-libertarian law, many voters are completely unaware of the existence of a political party whose members seek to gradually replace coercion with voluntary cooperation wherever possible. Here’s what happens when media subsidies–designed to favor entrenched parties–interfere to produce uninformed voters.
Is taxing people at gunpoint worth it? As a Libertarian voter I just say “no” every time I cast a ballot. No, I do not expect all taxation to disappear by the time I unchain my bicycle to return home after voting. But I know for a fact that my LP vote will pack the clout of at least six votes in favor of reversing the trend toward increased taxation. In the case of individual rights for women, fewer than 4000 libertarian votes handed the Supreme Court the language they used in the Roe v. Wade decision, a relative vote clout of 10,000 for 1 if you believe it takes 50% of the total to get anything done. That’s winning!
Forcible expropriation leads to situations like the Bay District standoff. People follow good or bad examples, depending on what they can see. This guy observed the use of force and imagined two could play.
Richard Nixon and Congress changed the tax code in 1971 to keep you from finding out about the no-guns alternative. Like the snake tossed into baby Hercules’ crib, it was an attempt to kill off the Libertarian Party.
But here it is, 46 years later, and we’re still here. What’s more, four million voters–as many as voted in the entire State of Virginia–stood with us this last presidential election. Our vote share is up 328%, and we got way more of the popular vote than the difference between the two looter parties dedicated to the initiation of deadly force. Here’s the sigmoid political party substitution curve, the hockey stick Republican Dixiecrat fascists and Democrat communists do not want you to see:
So, which will it be? If you like what you see, by all means listen to what the Republicans and Democrats say about each other. If you would rather take a positive step to increase freedom by reversing the growth of coercion, read the Libertarian Party platform and vote with us.
If you need a website localized into Brazilian Portuguese, look us up at http://www.falascreve.com Falascreve is how they translated Orwell’s speech recognition neologism http://www.speakwrite.com.br in South America.
Try my Amazon Kindle explanation of Prohibition and The Crash and see how a small party wrote the plank that brought repeal.