13 Jun 2014

Do Not Underestimate the Power of the Dark Side

Pacifism 42 Comments

What a great week! We’ve got activists tiptoeing around cop-killing, and we’ve got tenured professors explaining the economic benefits of war. (Maybe Adam and Tyler should do a new “Odd Couple” show: the hijinx ensue!) I’ve never felt so lonely in my own views.

It is truly stunning to see the sloppy arguments by which people justify mass killing. In response to my recent piece arguing that persuasion is a better strategy than opening fire in restaurants, a guy wrote in the comments: “Tell it to Citizens in Iraq, Syria, etc..”

Look, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it is naive to think that peaceful education is the best strategy for lasting liberty. Maybe people do need widespread violence to overthrow despotic regimes.

But, when you want to show me why violence against despotic regimes is a better strategy than voluntary education, you shouldn’t really point to Iraq to make your argument. That’s like Krugman saying 2009 proved he was right about stimulus. (And I’m betting the guy who left that comment–being a reader of LibertyChat.com–would recognize the fallacy immediately in the case of Krugman and fiscal stimulus.)

42 Responses to “Do Not Underestimate the Power of the Dark Side”

  1. John says:

    Boy, do I agree with this sentiment.

    • Grane Peer says:

      I do too but I think it means I need to leave.

  2. K.P. says:

    So what would you have recommended Southerners do? Send up folk to hand out pamphlets and set up classes talking about the benefits of separation?

    (Not that that would have been a bigger disaster than what did happen)

    • Bob Murphy says:

      KP,

      If someone has cancer and says, “I think I’ll smash my testicles with this hammer,” I’m doing a service by pointing out that that’s a bad idea. It’s not my job to cure cancer too.

      At this point, we’ve got lots of libertarians building hammers because there’s so much historical evidence of heroes smashing themselves.

    • K.P. says:

      I didn’t intend for that to look so snide, my apologies. Genuine question.

      • Bob Murphy says:

        KP right, I know. And my flippant response isn’t really an admission, “I have no idea.”

        But what the Confederate states did clearly was a horrible idea. Yes, under natural law one has the right to use violence to fend off an invading army. But, if we ask the question, “Did the people of the Confederacy achieve their goals of getting the North to stop meddling in their affairs by fighting for it?” the answer is an unbelievably resounding, “Hell no.”

        • Matt M (Dude Where's My Freedom) says:

          Bob,

          Couldn’t one suggest that the Confederacy came closer to achieving their goal than any other effort to escape the clutches of domination by Washington DC ever has?

          Yes, they ultimately failed, but they might have won had a few battles turned out a little differently. Where are all of the peaceful libertarian movements that might have “won” if not for a few strokes of bad luck?

          • Bob Murphy says:

            Couldn’t one suggest that the Confederacy came closer to achieving their goal than any other effort to escape the clutches of domination by Washington DC ever has?

            If you ignore hundreds of thousands of people dying, your cities being burned to the ground, and the US empire emerging stronger than ever, then I really don’t know what to say.

            Yes, they ultimately failed, but they might have won had a few battles turned out a little differently. Where are all of the peaceful libertarian movements that might have “won” if not for a few strokes of bad luck?

            Oh, now it’s just bad luck that the Confederate strategy failed? Like bad weather caused Soviet citizens to starve, right?

            What about the relative period of free trade because of the work of Bastiat et al.? You really don’t think reason and logic have ever achieved anything in human history?

            • K.P. says:

              Bob, are you saying the particular strategy of the Confederacy – say, King Cotton – was doomed to failure or that revolution in general was?

            • Matt M (Dude Where's My Freedom) says:

              There were certainly elements of bad luck (Stonewall Jackson killed by friendly fire, Lee’s battle plans being discovered by the union) as well as bad strategy (repeated offensive attacks rather than defensive guerrilla warfare, failure to secure European alliances) that probably influenced the final outcome a great deal.

              I wouldn’t say reason and logic have never achieved anything. Just that with the specific example of “attempting to escape the American empire” that your claim the confederacy “failed spectacularly” almost invokes Bastiat in a way. Think of it as the seen versus the unseen.

              We see the confederacy losing a bloody war and being devastated as a result. The unseen in this case would be all of the various pacifist movements who thought that reason and logic would totally dismantle the U.S. empire, but never even came close to achieving anything, and as a result, their names aren’t even familiar to us, as they weren’t even worth writing about in the history books.

              Yes, the final result of the civil war was brutal, bloody, and devastating for the South. But I think it’s fair to say that Robert E. Lee came a LOT closer to defeating Washington DC than Thoreau ever did…

            • Ivan Jankovic says:

              “If you ignore hundreds of thousands of people dying, your cities being burned to the ground, and the US empire emerging stronger than ever, then I really don’t know what to say.”

              So, Confederation is now responsible for Sherman’s scorched earth “military” tactic? Victim “provoked” the murderer. And that shows why resisting tyranny by military force is a bad thing. Brilliant.

    • Gene Callahan says:

      Give up their slaves, for a start?

      • K.P. says:

        That’d just be giving up in many ways, wouldn’t it?

      • Matt M *Dude Where's My Freedom* says:

        So, if the South would have abolished slavery, Lincoln would have abolished the tariff a a gesture of good faith? What?

        • Philippe says:

          do you think that those two things are somehow equally bad?

          • Matt M (Dude Where's My Freedom) says:

            No. Did I say they were?

            KP asked “What should the south have done?” with an implied “to achieve their independence.”

            Callahan answered: “Freed their slaves.”

            This implies that freeing the slaves would have somehow resulted in southern independence. Unless he is referring to the South freeing their slaves and then seceding and fighting a violent war anyway, but being able to more easily secure European alliances (who were hesitant to ally with slaveholders), then his point makes no sense.

            • Philippe says:

              “This implies that freeing the slaves would have somehow resulted in southern independence”

              Do you think that the slaves had independence?

              Secession was mainly about slavery. If Southerners hadn’t wanted to maintain slavery, then the main reason for their secession wouldn’t have existed.

          • Z says:

            Probably not, but slavery vs. more than 600,000 dead seems much closer.

      • Gamble says:

        Great idea.

        Maybe the IRS will give up their slaves? I doubt it.

        http://news.yahoo.com/irs-computer-crashed-erased-lois-lerner-emails-203605784.html

      • Ivan Jankovic says:

        nobody asked them to give up slaves. Lincoln was fine with slaves as long as they paid taxes to DC, see under first 13th amendment. And see this as well:

        “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”

        Linbcoln, 1864

  3. Matt M *Dude Where's My Freedom* says:

    “But, when you want to show me why violence against despotic regimes is a better strategy than voluntary education, you shouldn’t really point to Iraq to make your argument. That’s like Krugman saying 2009 proved he was right about stimulus.”

    All serious people know that Iraq would have been a smashing success if only the military intervention was much larger!

  4. Innocent says:

    So, and please understand that this is a genuine question. Did the Jews have a chance against Hitler by complying? What happened to the Jews that protested first?

    Violence is a definitive answer. Perhaps the most definitive in history. History has been awarded to those that were the most violent. Show me one state that has survived without the use of violent force and aggression.

    Even the founding of this country was established by force. It does not matter how educated your populace is.

    Additionally Education can be used as a means of force to turn people to you or against others. Napoleon understood this. Hence the reason he was big into establishing the Lycee or why Hitler was so into education as well. Education does not enable ‘freedom’ it can create its own forms of prison and group think. Ever heard about the 97% consensus about Climate Change? Yes I know science has nothing to do with consensus.

    An example of this is Homosexuality, an aberration in sexual behavior affecting as best can be told between 1% and 3% of the population. To what end should legalization of same sex marriage be established? What good does it provide? Even if there are limited benefits does it really matter as an institution? How do you handle people who disagree on moral grounds? How does it benefit society etc and so on. Yet we are told that if we do not see this as a civil rights movement and agree that the state should recognize homosexuality as a non deviant behavior then we are bigots and need to be punished. Which in itself is ironic as punishing people for their belief is fairly… shallow? Sort of like Hitler targeting Jews? People hate me, such is life, Love them back.

    Now to be perfectly honest I don’t care about homosexuality I am attempting to demonstrate that there is no logic in your argument that we simply need to educate people as education is a form of force. You might say persuasion is okay, well great, the education system is about conformity not about persuading.

    Violence, or force, is simply a part of the human condition. You are looking for a Nirvana. A state in which all people realize that they are simply in charge of themselves and leave everyone else alone. This is a trap that Libertarians set for themselves. Force will be used, Force must be responded by force.

    Force does not always mean violence. The pen is mightier than the sword can be true, so long as people are listening to what you have to say. However at times, the only thing you can do is stand and die for what you believe in. It bites.

    • Tel says:

      I disagree, my Irish ancestors were plenty violent, but they still got beaten by the English, simply because the English were better at it.

      There was no shortage of violence amongst the Gauls when they were beaten by the Romans. Gaulish tribal warfare was frequent and brutal, but ultimately ineffective against a well armed and well organised Roman force. Here’s what the Romans had:
      * Not just iron, but large supplies of iron.
      * Mass manufacturing (for the day) providing good equipment for the troops.
      * People who actually studied tactics.
      * A full logistics network, including roads, trade, accounting, etc.

      Modern war is even more dependent on large numbers of people tightly organised doing a wide variety of specialised tasks. You simply cannot run a modern war without a strong economy behind it. For every one man out on the front line being violent, you need a thousand people back home doing all of the other tasks to enable that to happen.

      So how do you keep a large number of people working together? Well, they have to trust one another, they have to be able to make exchanges between each other, they need a currency of some sort, they need law and order (in some form or another), they need some type of leadership (we can argue about the details). In short, you need a peaceful productive society to have any hope of winning a modern war.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Show me one state that has survived without the use of violent force and aggression.

      Right. Sorry for the confusion: The people I’m talking to are against States.

  5. Philippe says:

    “Maybe it is naive to think that peaceful education is the best strategy for lasting liberty.”

    Spreading a specific political ideology is not the same thing as education.

    • Bob Roddis says:

      You’d be the expert on that.

    • Tel says:

      Hey, works fine for “common core”.

    • Richie says:

      You don’t know much about K-12 and universities, do you?

  6. Bob Murphy says:

    Those who criticize my views on this stuff: How do you explain the fall of the Soviet Union? Does that show the success of Reagan-era defense spending?

    • Ivan Jankovic says:

      yes, it does, to a large degree.

      • Yosef says:

        Ivan, do you believe the way to defeat a masochist is to slit your own wrists and then call him a pansy?

        • Bob Murphy says:

          Ivan, do you believe the way to defeat a masochist is to slit your own wrists and then call him a pansy?

          Hey don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

    • Tel says:

      Giving Stinger missiles to the Mujahideen is Afghanistan probably helped.

      The “Star Wars” program was mostly expensive pork barrels, possibly intended for distraction more than anything else.

  7. John says:

    Just as an outsider, I strongly agree with Bob. I’m reading “Anatomy of the State” now because one of the bloggers on this site recommended it. I’ve learned a lot about Libertarian ideas on this site and I feel I’m less likely to consider it simply “crazy” or some kind of tinfoil hat notion, as the people in my circle generally would. Will I actually become a Libertarian? Well, probably not, but reading, learning, these are the first steps. When I read talk about violence, homosexuals being 1 to 3% of the population and engaging in aberrational conduct, or get a whiff that libertarians wish the Confederacy — perpetrator of one of the most monstrous crimes in human history — had WON the Civil War, it becomes incredibly hard for me to take The Liberty movement seriously. And I don’t think you will be able to defeat me and the people who agree with me, along with the armed might of the United States, by force of arms, at least not any time soon. You will have to do it, as Bob suggests, by persuading Americans that you are right, that Ancapistan is going to be a fairer, better, more prosperous place than America. I don’t know whether you can do it, but armed insurrection is a fantasy. Ask Jefferson Davis.

    • Richie says:

      The South tried to take over the government?

    • guest says:

      I don’t know whether you can do it, but armed insurrection is a fantasy.

      The Federalist No. 46

      Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger.

      Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes.

  8. Philippe says:

    Bob, what happens if the vast majority of the population continues to ignore or reject the anarcho-capitalist ideology? Do you start shooting people then?

    • Richie says:

      I wonder what happens if you continue to be a troll.

  9. John says:

    I don’t understand what just happened. I thought Bob’s whole point was that Libertarianism has to prevail in the marketplace of ideas. I didn’t understand him to be saying that if the public didn’t agree he was all for armed rebellion. I thought he was saying the opposite. Am I missing something?

    • guest says:

      I think you’re right about Bob’s point.

      Some of the rest of us disagree with him.

    • K.P. says:

      Obviously a couple of psychopaths going around killing police officers isn’t going to win any war, especially for people’s hearts and minds. I don’t think they’ll be remembered even as fondly as the Bonnot gang.

      But do you think there’s ever a time when taking up arms is the best move?

  10. Bob Murphy says:

    I have to shut this discussion down, everyone.