Ricardo J Gonzalez for a Better America

I’ve been listening to a podcast of a show called Free Talk Live. One of the hosts, Ian, has a tendency to be a complete jerk to anyone he disagrees with. His position is that if you’re not a borderline anarchist, then you support government sanctioned violence, and therefore you don’t deserve his respect. In his activism with the Free State Project, he has recently been interacting with judges in a variety of small cases that are arising in the protest movement that has developed there, and even in cases where the judges have made concessions, which are small victories for the movement, he continues to be derisive.



I can surely understand his point of view. When you have a strongly held position such as his that “anyone who supports big government is directly trying to take my freedom”, it is easy to develop negative feelings against them. After all, the logical conclusion is that these people also want to harm you. But in this case I don’t think most people approach it with that mindset. When the average person says “I think the government should help ______” they don’t think of the logical consequences of how that’s funded with taxes, and how those taxes can be considered theft, etc. They just have this image of the government as a “catch-all” organization to help everyone in need. These aren’t fascists, they’re just misinformed.
This attitude of “if you don’t agree with me, screw you”, is terribly unproductive for convincing people to your viewpoint. It reminds me of the problem that plagued Ayn Rand. She was a brilliant woman, a deft author, but was completely unpleasant to anyone she disagreed with. Her works have been demonized by people who knew nothing more of her than how she treated people.
Like the old adage says, you catch more flies with honey. In the political realm most people’s opinions and preferences are much like children who don’t know any better. If you’re trying to teach a child math, you don’t yell at him for not knowing differential equations after he finally understands division. You congratulate him and encourage him, and keep trying to teach him more. If anyone wants to see our country return to a more liberty oriented society, we need to encourage and thank the bureaucrats that make baby steps towards liberty, and not insult them for not doing enough.

Six years ago President Bush appeared before a banner on a warship that said Mission Accomplished. To every observer, he appeared to be claiming that the Iraq War was over and had been a success. Today, we're still in that war. Yesterday, John McCain took credit for the successful passing of the bailout of the banks. A few hours later, the bailout plan failed. McCain is such a maverick, he's willing to spit in the face of conventional wisdom. "I've never touted the party line against counting chickens before they hatch".

More on this at Politico