Some Words for Walter

I see that Walter Block has continued with the deriding of anarchist non-voters for not supporting RP—or, as he puts it, “kicking people in the crotch”. (Yes, I know; it’s a lovely image of tolerance in the pro-freedom family, isn’t it?) He completely missed mine, but offered some interesting new gymnastics in the attempt, so I guess it’s my turn to add to the shouting again.

Block begins by announcing his standard for whether someone is in the family or not:

In my view, the "Ron Paul question" constitutes a litmus test for libertarians. Simply put, the "Ron Paul question" consists of determining whether or not a person supports Dr. Paul. If so, as I see matters, he passes this test and can be constituted a libertarian; if not, his credentials are to that extent suspect.

So we’re starting from the perspective that “one person defines an entire ideology” again. How short-sighted, silly, and boring. He continues by quoting another open letter to anarchists (emphasis mine):

David [Gordon]’s response to their objection to Congressman Paul is brilliant:

"However good his program, though, isn’t Ron Paul attempting to become head of the criminal gang that constitutes the State? To come to grips with this question, we need to ask, why is the State a criminal gang? As Franz Oppenheimer, Albert Jay Nock, and Murray Rothbard have explained, the State is not a productive organization. To the contrary, it seizes property from the productive members of society. Given this understanding, we can see that the objection against Ron Paul fails completely. His proposals are all efforts to curtail the exactions of the State, not to continue or extend them. The objectors count both political supporters and opponents of State power as ‘statists.’ Apparently, by participating in the electoral process, regardless of the program one advocates, one incurs some sort of pollution."

If that were true, then I would be more sympathetic than I am; but as I recall, Dr. Libertarian Savior supports the border wall, which is hardly a curtailment of the exactions of the state. But the larger issue is the more important one, in my view: I am not content with curtailing the state; I want to see it shrivel and die. Thus, anyone who seeks the office of president—or any other position of coercive power—is worthy of suspicion to me.

Block then continues:

If it is wrong to be part of a criminal gang calling itself the state (Spooner), it is not also improper to cooperate with it in any way; to avail oneself of its benefits, lest one give one’s imprimatur to this evil institution? If so, then it would be impermissible on libertarian grounds to become an employee of the government. Dr. Paul’s actions are therefore incompatible with our libertarian principles not only for running for President, but also for being a (10-term) Congressman. I, too, am not without guilt in this regard. Previously, I taught at (was an employee of) a state university. At present, I am employed by a private university, but one that accepts money from the government. But more: all of us, me, Ron, every last one of the anarcho-capitalists who object to his candidacy on this ground, use the sidewalks for walking, the streets and roads for driving, U.S. currency for making purchases, post letters with the U.S. postal service, visit state libraries, museums, etc. It ill behooves so-called libertarian anarchists, who do not fully understand either of these two philosophies, to object to Ron Paul’s actions, which are in this one way indistinguishable from their own.

The correct libertarian anarchist position, as I see matters, is that the state is of course evil. Therefore, anyone who decreases its power is on the side of the angels. Mr. Paul certainly fits this bill; his critics do not, no matter how tightly they wrap themselves in the black flag.

So, Walter has taken an old trick in The Family playbook and elevated it to a new logical fallacy: the Argument from Purity. Further, in the process he has conflated vastly differing levels of acceptance of (or tolerance, if you prefer) and cooperation with the state. Walking on a sidewalk is hardly the same as seeking an office of coercive power; moreover, there is hardly a patch on earth that some government hasn’t claimed as its own and to some degree attempts to control its use, as well as those who use it.

It would appear that the only way out of Walter’s false puzzle for all of us pro-freedom anarchists is to commit suicide rather than taint ourselves with the state’s near-monopoly of this planet. Sorry to disappoint, but this is my only go here and I am not about to make things easier for those who believe that wielding coercive power over others is an acceptable form of interaction.

And last on this point, I don’t believe I have ever met Walter Block in person, nor corresponded with him at length in email. Thus, he probably knows practically nothing of what I have done—and am currently doing—to try to decrease the power of the state; and any comparison between my efforts and a longtime politician’s on Walter’s part is pure speculation, and again, quite silly.

My last comment is in response to this paragraph (emphasis in original):

Let me try to make this point in another way. Suppose a slave master allows his slaves to choose between Overseer Goody, who has a very light and judicious touch with the whip, and Overseer Baddy, who never met a bloody back he didn’t like. The slaves take up the master on his offer, and vote for Goody. Are they thereby demonstrating support for slavery, for goodness sakes? No; they are only registering a preference for Goody over Baddy. Even Spooner, who might be considered patron saint of this viewpoint, regarded voting, and, presumably, holding public office, as a defensive, not an invasive, act.

Spooner may be considered a patron saint for some, but not for me; so I don’t much care what he may have written or said about defensive and offensive voting. Walter’s depiction is, again, rather shallow; it leaves out the very real possibility that some “slaves” would prefer to opt out of the vote altogether—recognizing that no person has any justification, save voluntary, informed consent, for controlling another individual’s time, life, or body. I do not recognize any other individual’s authority to control me so long as I do not voluntarily give another that power; thus, I will not involve myself in exercises of assigning coercive power to myself or any other non-consenting individual.

I don’t know much about Walter Block and his specific beliefs, but I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt regarding his familiarity with the freedom philosophy. Thus, I am surprised that so much of his self-labeled crotch-kicking of anarchists rests on strawman and other similarly weak arguments. It leads me to wonder if he and at least some of the former non-voters who have hopped on the Dr. No votetrain are experiencing some cognitive dissonance. It must be painful to know, somewhere deep inside, that what one had called principled non-voting was actually expedient non-voting. I am starting to suspect that the insistent fervor of the objections to the stance Wendy McElroy, Wally Conger, Scott Bieser, and I and many others have taken arises from this dissonance. If I’m right, that strikes me as very sad on several levels. As I have repeatedly stated, I am not interested in trying to persuade anyone as to the wrongness of their position nor the superiority of my own. I don’t like the fact that many of the people I thought I could count on not to aggress against me are willing to do so, in the form of voting for a Republican candidate for president; but I respect that each person must needs make his or her own choice. I would like the same courtesy extended in return, but it appears that will not be happening anytime soon.

So, one more time, from something I wrote late last night:

I am not speaking for anyone else, and I am not trying to tell anyone that they shouldn’t be supporting him. I’m trying not to bother you with my differing perspective, yet many of you RP supporters won’t leave me alone. ... [P]lease give me and those like me a little of that vaunted libertarian tolerance. That’s all I want.