I’ll be handing out fliers at one of my local polling places and I encourage others to do the same. Please feel free to download and print them out using the links provided. Also feel free to modify them to suit your particular message. There is a list of websites on the last page to go to for more information. You may have a different list in mind. I like to say “Peaceful alternatives to politics” to people as they approach and I try not to shove the flier at them in an aggressive way but rather hold it up to inspire their curiosity. Your methods may differ.

I’ve also added a new design to the Anarchy In Your Head store if you’d like to have a shirt to wear for the occasion. Just click the “Peace Not Politics” image in this post to visit the store.

The Peaceful Evolution for Word (Windows / Mac)

The Peaceful Evolution for Open Office (Linux)

The Peaceful Evolution PDF

UPDATE 2009/10/30: There is now a Facebook Event that you can sign up for and invite your friends to.
UPDATE 2009/10/27: I’ve uploaded a video in hopes of getting the message out via YouTubers.
UPDATE 2009/11/2: I’ve udpated the flier and added a PDF version. I feel the changes better reflect my point of view after my views have developed and matured over the last year.

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We often confuse expediency with pragmatism. You can make a choice that provides immediate return and seems the pragmatic choice only to pay a higher price later. A person who commits a crime is getting some immediate reward but has an ever-increasing risk of being caught each time. He’s gambling. He’s also shitting where he eats by destroying the sense of trust in his community. Lying is similar. When you get caught in a lie, which is likely just a matter of time depending on how often you attempt it, you seriously undermine your reputation. Worse yet, if you lie now expecting some immediate gain from it, even if you correct yourself in the future, anything you say thereafter will be suspect. Even when you get away with it, every lie you tell for some immediate benefit undermines your veracity because you know you’re a liar. Conversely, knowing in your heart that you are consistently honest and sincere shows through in the power of your convictions. It’s a rare talent to be able to lie convincingly.

If you claim I’m hiding behind my principles, I wonder if you have a completely different notion of what principles even mean. It makes me wonder how in the world you derive your own so-called principles if you see being principled and being pragmatic as opposing paths. In fact, I think this is at the core of the failure of liberty movements. More importantly, it’s at the core of my views of why politics and statism are such dismal failures and have created the destructive beasts of governments that spread misery to this day. If you frequently sacrifice principles for expediency, then you’re constantly taking one step forward and three steps back, and I say it that way only because that’s the familiar expression. It’s probably conservative compared to the reality, a much more discouraging ratio.

I’ve also been referred to as a purist which I’ve denied. I do make some concessions to tyrants like paying taxes and registering my car. Am I being unprincipled then? Aren’t these things a crucial part of what keep tyrants in power? Of course they are! If everyone stopped doing these at once, the tyrannical State would wither almost immediately. But the reality is I, like all liberty activists, have two different goals. I have a longer-term goal of advancing liberty by reducing the violence in my community. The other goal is my own personal liberty. They’re both good goals. I pick my battles because I have to balance the two. Both goals are actually selfish. I want to live in a peaceful and prosperous community and so I work for that and decide what risks and sacrifices I’m willing to make. But when I do make those concessions to tyrants out of a totally selfish and yet reasonable desire to remain out of jail, I would never make the ridiculous claim that they advance the long-term goal of reducing the violence of governments! And of course, I would never try to decide for someone else what personal risks they should take or sacrifices they should make for the long-term goal of shrinking violent governments. We all have to maintain our own balance. How could I call myself a lover of liberty if I said otherwise?

Examples of large political goals achieved through incremental progress are often referenced as examples of the counter-intuitive notion that expediency at the cost of principle is ultimately pragmatic, but that’s a case of severe tunnel vision. I’ve seen plenty of special interest groups getting government attention for their pet projects by making deals with politicians, at the cost of the liberty of many others. Always, government expands. Occasionally one bubble is pushed down and several others bulge. Yes, you can tediously grind away devoting tremendous time, money, and effort, lobbying for a specific special interest, but at what price? What other liberties are being sacrificed to their power lust while you wheel and deal with politicians, criminals who see nothing wrong with controlling others with threats of violence, who stay in office by selling violence to their constituents in exchange for campaign help and contributions. Their job is violence and they don’t stay in office by offering to do less. Imagine going to a job interview and telling your potential employer that you promise not to do very much. When multiple special interest groups are all pulling in different directions, government expands in all directions, according to its nature, and no one seems to understand how they each played a part in that expansion, or they simply don’t care. To be clear, I don’t doubt that progress toward liberty will be gradual, but I don’t see incremental progress in pet projects as evidence that it will happen by making deals with the devil.

If I’ve failed to persuade you to my point of view, I can accept that. What I find hard to believe is the idea that you could be paying any attention and still doubt my sincerity. If you continue to say I’m hiding behind my principles, that’s intellectually dishonest. If you still believe you can use politics to achieve liberty, I will not doubt that your intentions are good. You obviously have faith in it. I encourage you to follow your own heart and do what you feel is right. All I ask is that you extend to me the same courtesy. I have no faith in that game. Don’t drag me into it.

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I wouldn’t go in there telling them to vote a certain way. I would simply use the platform of the meeting to talk about why they have no right to control the behavior or property of others. I wouldn’t give any moral support to the idea of the vote. I realize they are going to vote on it, but that’s their game. What it comes down to is I’m not going to go through the motions and essentially act out what is to me a big lie. It’s the same reason I don’t rise for a judge. They are hoping I’ll go through the motions and act publicly in accordance with their lies, reinforcing them, and in complete contradiction to my deeply held beliefs. It’s disgusting and offensive to me. On the other hand, simply taking the opportunity of the meeting and telling them they have no right to control others is as honest as I could be.

You have to understand that the vote is not the act of violence. The vote is a lie. The vote is an elaborate justification that makes them feel okay about it when they do violence. I feel strongly that we need to stop providing them that comfort while also doing what we can to sensitize them to the cognitive dissonance they should be feeling absent all the years of indoctrination that have put them at ease with their violence.

I do feel that politics follows culture overwhelmingly more so than the other way around. The only way to affect substantial change toward a peaceful culture is sensitizing individuals to the ramifications of their choices and actions. Collectivism is such a huge part of the problem and we can’t solve it with yet more collectivism. If the vote is swayed in a favorable direction, that’s just icing as far as I’m concerned. It would be a greater victory if a councilor became uneasy with their role in the game and decided to quit even if it meant a bad outcome of the vote. A politician constantly being challenged about the violent nature of his or her work, and who can’t present a reasonable defense to the contrary, can begin to feel that cognitive dissonance even before they have processed it and accepted it intellectually at a conscious level.

I can’t definitively argue that there is more harm done in the long run by playing their game than not. I can’t pour specific choices of action into a graduated cylinder and compare them. It’s not a mathematical equation that can be solved on paper. I’ve played their games for a while and I’ve watched a lot of politics and part of it is just my gut about what feels really wrong. That little voice of justification that says I’m alleviating some harm right now and what’s the big deal anyway is drowned out by the other voice that says playing their game is a lie that sticks in my soul and undermines my veracity and in the long run it’s just not worth it. I think we all have a sense of how some questionable action can get us a short-term gain but at a long-term price and that’s what this feels like to me.

That’s why I tell people to do what in their hearts feels right. It’s what I’m doing. Maybe some day, after they play the game a while, they’ll feel what I feel. There will occasionally be events that provide an opportunity for me to remind them to reconsider in light of new experiences and do some introspection as with the recent medical marijuana bill, but ultimately they’ll probably have to realize it themselves. I don’t think I can argue it into them.

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