A week ago I received a tip about a Kentucky teen arrested for writing what he said was a zombie story involving a high school. I immediately notified the county court about my book Bring a Gun to School Day. Because Bring a Gun to School Day addresses school violence and oppression from perspectives rarely heard in mainstream discussion, it is worthwhile reading for anyone interested in improving the lives of teens.

So far I have not received a response from the Clark County authorities. It would seem they’re not interested in literature after all. Perhaps I was right to present power-seeking as a motive of the school safety enforcers in Bring a Gun to School Day.

How to be blackmetal:

1. Get instruments

2. Corpse paint

3. Be grim

4. Forest or icy rocks

5. AAAAAAAAAH

How to be blackmetal amazing:

1. Play evil riff on electric guitar while standing in water…grim water

Two weeks from today a political spectacle will take place in America. Thousands of people will register preferences for how the ruling system will be run, in the culmination of millions of dollars being spent for political influence that could have been put to vastly more productive uses.

I choose to boycott the ballot. The miniscule influence that my vote would have will be instead counted as a vote against the system, a firm “no” to the collective that my allegiance is supposed to be reserved for.

To those who would call me apathetic I say that I care too much about liberty to care which tyrant presumes the title of our leader. I will not be lead. Leaders ultimately lead to leaders, and the system of suppressing humanity leads inevitably to crisis, collapse, or mass death.

What is needed are not leaders, and not working within the system. When you play a game with the system as rulemaker and referee, the winner is predictable. What is needed is anti-establishment organization to empower the people against the state – market against politics. Call it counter-economic, counter-cultural, mutual aid, co-op, underground, networking, contacts, or whatever else you want, but build now. Rulers only care about you so far as they can insure your allegiance or acquiescence. Voting will not change this. Free market action has the ability to displace the state, making it crumble as people withdraw their dependence and allegiance.

I don’t consider myself a moral non-voter, but a strategic non-voter. The marginal influence that each vote has is not enough to count as moral complicity in the actions of government. It is simply more useful to use that miniscule influence against the system.

The objection could be raised that not voting will simply be read as apathy, not as activity. It could be, but that is still better than casting a vote against McCain-Palin that is read as a vote in support of Obama-Biden, which is how such a vote will be read. A vote for a “third party” will be read as support for the idea that your voice is represented in elections, when in reality the game is rigged so one of the big guys will win. Essays like this one will hopefully change the perception of apathy to a perception of anti-state activity, and the only way to start down a road is to begin. Boycotting the ballot can be used as a springboard for further rhetorical attacks on the system when questioned about it, which will happen if you broadcast your intentions.

My experiences in activism and political science studies have convinced me that electoral strategy is rarely useful for lasting positive change. There is a political system in place that is deliberately and explicitly designed to perpetuate itself, satisfy the lust for power of its administrators, and ensure the stability of its benefactors’ fortunes. Whatever political-class candidates say, they are inextricably part of the political class, their first allegiance is to the political class, and their first duty is to work for the dominance of their faction of the political class and drive the tanks and bulldozers of public policy to their faction’s benefit.

Whatever usefulness the Libertarian Party ever had, it is now clearly counter-productive to the libertarian cause. It now promotes candidates who advocate taxation, national language law, militarized borders, government schools, drug regulation, government control of social services, and “state’s rights” over individual rights. Clear opposition to the United States military empire, the most powerful violator of liberty in the world, is not seen as too important either. This result should have been predictable for an organization dedicated to being let into the system to make government operate better. The political means of ballot access, campaigns, meetings, leader costumes, and the inner workings of governance became the political ends, and radicals (those who are consistent in thought) were either driven out or wasted their efforts trying to explain why they didn’t really support the status quo that they were desperately trying to become a part of. The joke was on us all along.

It is also important to remember the vast superiority of creative expression to political action in influencing the world. That which is supplied by politics is demanded by the dominant culture. When libertarians make the dominant culture ungovernable or smash the idea of dominating culture entirely, we will have greater success than if we controlled all the voting machines in the world. Drawing a cartoon or uploading a video can be a vastly more influential act than voting. A person who scorns creative expression in favor of immediate power gains demonstrates his level of apathy for a better future. Such a person would do well to drop his plans for other peoples’ lives and realize that individuals are not resources for his dream collective.

I don’t have a grand plan for society, and that is what makes my political philosophy humane and rational. Society is after all just a large number of individuals who can usually best make their own plans. I am an individualist, I am an anarchist, and I am a libertarian. Voting will not bring about any result I will be content with and it is therefore a useless strategy. The most productive thing I can do with my ballot is to discard it. I urge everyone to do the same.

Some great photos were taken of the RNC protests.  I just found a particularly interesting one on Facebook. I believe it is Day 4.

Hardly.  We are witnessing the death throes of statism, which I expect to lose it’s command of the world in the next 2 to 5 decades.  They can only fool people so long, and we are working day and night to destroy them. We have the knowledge and the tools and we are actively building a better future. Non-state actors, soft power, and individualism are continually increasing in world importance and the state as we know it is struggling to keep its grip on progress. It will fail.

Some idiot apparently wrote an article saying how the recent failures of the corporate state are the fault of libertarians, who are some of the most vocal opponents of the corporate state.  Anthony Gregory does an excellent job of tearing apart said idiot:

When someone says the biggest government in the world represents the absence of government, or that politicians and bureaucrats made the wrong decisions because they had a “libertarian” ideology that was skeptical of their ability to make the right decisions, you know something doesn’t add up. When they associate Bush’s government with laissez-faire, when it has been much less so even than Clinton’s, and blame its non-existent deregulation, you know their argument is inherently incoherent.

Those who have embraced sound free-market economics have been warning about the housing bubble, the impending problems with the dollar, and the precarious nature of our financial system for a long time.

Gregory does consider Ron Paul to be a libertarian, which I do not think is the best description for Paul’s position. However, Paul is the only member of Congress who both understands Austrian economics and cares about the economy outside of its ability to fuel the plans of the political class.  For this reason his insights and warnings are valuable.

Fuck the Fed!  Free the Markets – Free the People!

Overkill put on an awesome show last night on their home turf in New Jersey, “probably on top of toxic fucking waste” as singer Bobby Blitz put it. If you like metal and you’ve never seen them live, you should really get on that. Not only do they have the stage presence of an apocalyptic alien invasion, they play relentless thrash metal as rowdy and rude as imaginable.

Overkill has been around for well over two decades and they’re still putting out great material. Last night’s mosh pits for their 2007 songs proved they haven’t gone the least bit soft in their musical approach.

Warbringer put on an excellent show before Overkill’s set. Check them out if you like your music fast and ruthless. Epicurean sounded good too but I spent most of their set just waiting for Overkill.

There is something about seeing a man in his 40s successfully stage dive that proves life is awesome. From the evil entrance noise to the final Fuck You of the night, Overkill was a treat for the metalhead.

Christian Science Monitor reports:

In several provinces close to Kabul, the [Afghan national] government’s presence is vanishing or already nonexistent, residents say. In its place, a more effective – and brutal – Taliban shadow government is spreading and winning local support.
“The police are just for show,” one local says. “The Taliban are the real power here.”
Widespread disillusionment with rampant crime, corrupt government, and lack of jobs has fueled the Taliban’s rise to de facto power…
…Independent political analyst Waheed Muzhda says the Taliban’s advance from the south toward Kabul resembles their progression when they first took power 12 years ago. In both cases, he says, they won support by bringing law and order.

Governments exist largely because people feel they provide necessary things. Generally, a sense of security is at the core of services. One strategy of revolutionaries must be to displace the government by providing services better than it can. In libertarian left land, that would certainly include mutual aid to replace government controlled welfare and a host of private firms and entrepreneurs providing everything a counter-establishment economy would demand. Not least among these services are private security organizations, whether they be professional firms or guilds, or community militias.

The counter-economy operates on free market principles and not fundamentalist commands, so it can avoid failures like the following:

[L]ocals say that the number of schools in Taliban-controlled territory is dwindling fast. Of the 1,100 schools operating three years ago in Ghazni, only 100 are left, according to the Ministry of Education. Almost no girls’ schools remain, except nearly a dozen in the government-controlled provincial center.
The group also brings its austere interpretation of Islam to the areas they control, banning nonreligious music and flashy wedding parties. In Logar, guards at Taliban checkpoints regularly stop vehicles and beat drivers playing music.

A libertarian revolution will encourage people to decide for themselves what kind of services they would like, and encourage participation in them. Revolutionary libertarian defense, arbitration, and enforcement organizations would not allow such gross initiations of force as beating music listeners or shutting down schools. They would try to remove as many barriers to learning and expression as possible while upholding legitimate property claims.

When desired goods and services are provided in a revolutionary context, the consumers then join entrepreneurs in building revolution. A revolution based on libertarian principles ought to build liberty outside of the system. It is not enough simply to tell people that the free market can do things better. They must be shown that we will make it do things better. Agorism and other left libertarian philosophies provide ideas for such action.

(Article via RRND)

A student arrested in Kentucky for “terroristic threatening” says that he is in trouble over a zombie story that was not intended as a threat.  According to Lex 18, which I can only guess by the name is a news-generating robot,

Even so, police say the nature of the story makes it a felony. “Anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function it’s a felony in the state of Kentucky,”

Regardless of what the cops say (whatever the hell the above sentence even means), my suspicion is they need threats to boost their budget and stamping out remaining creativity in the government citizen factories is always accepted behavior.

I passed along some information to the Clark County Circuit Court, which according to their website, has telephones and water fountains available.

I read that your prosecutor’s office has taken an interest in fiction involving violence in schools. You may also be interested in the novella Bring a Gun to School Day, which shows how overbearing security measures make students less safe.

http://www.bringaguntoschoolday.com

It’s my duty to share any information I can provide to help keep our children safe.

Thanks to Mike for sharing the news story.

The latest version of the Don’t Enlist flyer is now on the New Jersey Alliance of the Libertarian Left website. It was updated to better address schooling and vocational concerns that potential recruits may have.

Specifically, “Military recruiters routinely lie to applicants. Don’t be an imperial pawn. Don’t sign your life away to the government.” has been changed to:

Military recruiters routinely lie to applicants. Military service is a costly and unreliable way to receive scholarship money or vocational training.

Don’t sign your life away to the government. Don’t Enlist.

Any antiwar individual who wants a version of the flyer with different contact info on it can email me to get one. My offer to redo any of the NJ ALL flyers for other libertarians stands. All you have to do in return is receive information on why the Alliance of the Libertarian Left is a great movement that you should join. My email is darianworden- at -gmail- dot -com.

While updating the flyer, I came across a blog post on counter-recruitment. In case you are unaware, counter-recruitment is a direct action strategy to impede the war machine by reducing military recruiting. The body of the blog post contains a sentence that says so much about life in America today:

They also replaced Leo Burnett, their lead public relations agency, who created the “Army of One” campaign, with McCann-Erickson, who after a $200 million contract and year of research came up with “Army Strong” as the new recruiting slogan.

The comments on the post would not be good for a person whose faith in humanity is teetering to read.

For example, one person responds to the numerous non-argumentative claims by military supporters with the comment:

I always hear from military people that they have been defending our rights, but while they were busy invading Iraq (who never attacked us), our Constitutional rights were lost at home. How do they plan to get them back?

The closest thing to an answer seems to be:

OH YEAH YOU CAN WRITE THIS WITHOUT FEAR OF SOMEONE COMING INTO YOUR HOME AND CUTTING OUT YOUR TONGUE BECAUSE WHAT WE DO…AND MARTHA YOU OBVIOUSLY NEED TO GET OFF YOUR FATA$$ AND DO SOMETHING STOP PUTTING OFF ON ANOTHER PERSON THATS YOUR PROBLEMS NOW

So I wrote a little response, which I’ll reproduce in full here:

Are whining about how nobody appreciates you, equating service to the political class with service to the country, using poor grammar, and calling people who disagree with you wimps instead of making logical arguments the kind of skills you learn in the military? Or are they just the only way you can support absurd claims like saying a tool of imperialism is a good thing?

The U.S. military does not protect freedom. It is part of the United States government, the institution that does the most harm to the freedom and prosperity of Americans. It is supported by theft and exploitation called taxation and economic policy. It is a driving force in the global military empire that bankrupts America and inspires foreigners to target Americans for murder. And yes, military recruiters often lie.

I support the troops who renounce the war machine in thought and action.

The avatar that Dale drew of me looks wicked awesome next to that text.

Counter-recruit!

I just re-read this excellent lecture by Roderick Long.  There is too much awesomeness to quote – I direct you to read the whole thing at the Ludwig von Mises Institute site.