If this is your first visit...
I highly suggest that you read this blog from my earliest post to my most recent post, because I am chronologically documenting my journey to personal freedom and it might not make much sense if you dive in half way through. At very least, learn more about me before reading further! Thanks!
Here’s a good look at atheists, a group that is currently considered the least trusted group in America.
Here is a link to all of the sources used in this video.
Tags: atheist, atheists, christian, christianity, dave ramsey, god
When the planes hit the World Trade Center on 9/11 I think just about everyone in the western world suffered shock. I know I did. I didn’t know what to do, but I couldn’t handle the overwhelming feelings, and I wanted to spring into action. Since I felt helpless to do anything I thought the only choice was to support my government. What I didn’t do, with just about everyone else, was to ask why someone would kill so many innocent people. My emotions were trying to guide me to ask these questions, but at the time the rising truth was so intense that I pushed it aside.
After the initial shock wore off people began to discuss why we were attacked. It took a few years for it to sink in, but I started to realize that support of this mafia that we call the government is why we were attacked. The attack was the result of the initiation of force. It was the result of a contradiction that most people hold: that the initiation of force is wrong unless it is the government that initiates it. Now that I see that contradiction clearly, I will not support anything that uses a gun to achieve its ends.
When people find out that I am against Obama’s plan for nationalized healthcare, they look at me as if I am some sort of monster that doesn’t care about the sick and poor. The truth is the opposite. I care deeply about people, especially those who have been less fortunate than I have been. That is why I support a stateless society. That is the biggest reason why I have come to the conclusion that anarchy is the best way for people to live, including the sick and the poor. The results I have seen at the hands of the government are the opposite of compassion. The results are MASS death. The results are more poor, more sick, more disadvantaged.
I will not support the use of force, no matter what end it supposedly achieves. When you support force for ANYTHING, including “helping” the less fortunate, you are standing in blood. If you do not support the use of force in your own life, but support the government in any way, you are standing in blood.
Nothing I have come across says this better than this video. Please watch it. It changed my entire perspective and I hope it changes yours.
Transcribed from the video “Standing in Blood” by Stefan Molyneux
I know that people get confused by my approach to the question of a stateless society. “Why would you work so hard, why would you quit your career, why would you expose yourself like this, for the sake of something like a stateless society, a voluntaryist society?”
“Is it because you hate the welfare state?”
“Is it because you would like the roads to be privatized so you can bypass traffic jams?”
“Is it because you would like children to get better education?”
All of those are not unimportant; I would like the currency to be more stable. I would like economic growth to be the rising tide that lifts all boats and helps people out of poverty. I would like the people currently incarcerated in prisons to be free of their torture and rape.
Of course.
But I must tell you, it has a lot to do with these poor…fucking…Iraqis. 1.2 million murdered as a result of this war. America has ten times the population. Imagine 12 million Americans being murdered and one million Americans fleeing America every month.
Just imagine. Just imagine. Just imagine: your entire society, your entire life, detonated, decimated. Your children dying, helpless, starving, wracked with disease and malnutrition in your arms.
Imagine fearing every airplane, every possible disease you have in your body as a sign of cancer of leukemia in your children – death of some horrible, slow, wasting kind.
Imagine watching your country — and the best in your country, those who you desperately need to help you survive (the engineers, the doctors) fleeing the country to live in tents with no future and barely enough food. Imagine being stuck in the limbo, in the null zone between countries for years — for decades.
Imagine what your life would be like if you were them: helpless, bullied, tortured and murdered by Saddam Hussein, installed and maintained by the United States for a decade with the US-Anglo blockade. Half a million children died in hospitals in their parents’ arms for lack of food, lack of medicine, lack of inoculations.
5 million American children would have to die as an equivalent. Remember how angry you were when 3,000 Americans died on 9/11. 5 million children, 12 million Americans, 1 million Americans fleeing the country every year because the country is being turned into a desert. As they said of Rome, “They made it a desert and called it peace.” They have made Iraq a desert, and it is not even peaceful.”
And this is the cost of our patriotism. This is the cost of believing in these sick fantasies of states and governments and the virtue of violence in any form! For the roads, for the poor, for the sick, for the old — that is the bait on the hook that breeds war!
You can’t get state control of education without this type of genocide. You can’t get collective services like roads and sewers and garbage collection without this slaughter!
Because violence breeds violence. If we say we can point guns at people to help the poor (in the form of “income redistribution”); if we say we can point guns at people to help the old, then the guns will be pointed at you to fund the slaughter.
When you salute the flag, you stand in blood.
When you praise the military, you stand in blood.
When you praise a politician, when you join a political party, you stand in blood. You wade in blood.
When you say the government should do this, the government should do that, you stand in rising blood, and it is almost covering our mouths by now.
If you’re interested in these ideas, go to Freedomain Radio, the world’s most popular philosophy podcast.
Tags: force, NAP, PhilosophyRSS
After taking some personal finance courses, getting some help from friends and finally finding the discipline to get my finances under control, I have come across a number of tools that have been useful to me. After trial and error the most useful to me has been Google Docs, mainly because they are free and you can access your financial planning tools from anywhere with an Internet connection. A lot of people are not comfortable about that because they are afraid about security. As far as I am concerned if someone is able to access my Google account and see my budget there really isn’t anything they could do that would hurt me. Google’s connection is secure so as long as you are the only one with the password it probably is as secure as anything on the net.
At first I created my own budget sheets, because I love Excel and have a lot of experience using it, but eventually I found a great set of tools on Google docs that were superior to the tools that I created. Pre-made templates for budgeting. Fortunately there is a rating system for these templates so you can sort and find the template that will work best for you and has been reviewed by other people. They also include all of the common expenses that you will need to fill in to make a proper budget.
A budget isn’t very useful without the discipline so I recommend finding a system and dedicating yourself to it. I recommend The Simple Dollar blog to see what others are doing to give themselves the discipline to control their cash flow.
As always, please share your tips for budgeting. I am always looking to improve my system.
Tags: finances, google docs
There are two things that I want to convey to the world more than anything. One is that the initiation of force is always wrong. Second is that violence (spanking, hitting, beating, smacking) against children is the worst form of the initiation of force.
Lost Liberty Cafe published a great article about how children are the only class that is still unprotected.
“A hundred years ago it was considered a novel idea for the law to say you couldn’t hit your wife. Today, we can’t hit slaves, wives or military personnel. Children are the only class that is unprotected.” …read the rest here.
I really recommend this article to anyone who agrees that the initiation of violence is wrong. There is no better way to practice what you preach than to protect children from violence.
Tags: children, PhilosophyRSS, violence
*EDIT* here’s a link to the debate. It’s very frustrating to listen to and I was dissapointed in Jan to say the least. Stefan did a great job as always representing the anarchist position.
I am looking forward to this debate, Jan Helfeld vs Stefan Molyneux. Check it out:
For those unfamiliar with Jan Helfeld, I made a post about him a couple weeks ago.
Tags: Jan Helfeld, PhilosophyRSS, stefan molyneux
A couple years back, when I was still a minarchist, I made the following image.
It was my response to some grafitii I had seen while walking the streets of Santa Barbara.
My original point was to correct the myth that capitalism was a credo that used force to achieve its ends. At the time I didn’t realize that most people mistake corporatism for capitalism. Corporatism is certainly force, because it uses the gun of the government to protect the individuals within it from liability, enforce its patents, copyrights and any other law it can exploit to achieve its ends. In effect, corporations are just mini-mafias. None-the-less, calling capitalism force is still not correct.
Due to my statist support then, pointing out the gun did no good, as you can see that my original image is now being used by conservatives to further their agendas.
So it is time for me to correct this, since I am the somewhat original creator of that image.
So if you see that image being used for any other purpose, I am sorry. The message I wanted to get across, even back when I was still slightly statist, was that freedom can not be achieved through a point of a gun. If you support taxation, you support violence against people. If you support the concept of a government, you support violence against people. You can not support the non-aggression principle and the government too without contradicting yourself. Taxation equals force.
Download the full size image here (vectorized Fireworks PNG) and feel free to distribute.
I co-host a Meetup group called Atlanta Anarchists. We meet once or twice a month in the Little Five Points area of Atlanta, Georgia. We’ll be discussing anarchy (non-aggression principle type) and how to achieve it from a reasoned first-principle standpoint. Hope to see you there!
What got me thinking most about my life and what I wanted to get out of it was the possibility of someday having kids. Since my desire to have my own family and children has grown over the years, so has my desire to make sure I don’t mess things up. I didn’t have a great childhood and it hindered me in many areas of my life, particularly in the realm of thinking for myself. It took a lot of introspection and study of philosophy and psychology to get me back on track. I basically am having to re-parent myself. I don’t claim to be all the way there yet, but I am doing my best to learn what I was not given the opportunity to learn as a child.
I am doing this for myself, but also for my future kids and wife. I want to give my kids every opportunity that I was not given. I strongly believe that this is how I can bring about a future free society, by living my values in my own life and not treating my own family like some sort of dictatorship.
In his most recent video, Stefan talks about the way he is bringing up his daughter with these values in mind. I highly recommend this video if you are at all interested in making this world a better place. 
