I've been observing some meltdowns going on online. Meltdowns driving a wedge into the liberty community. In other words, doing the anti-liberty bigots' work for them. That's sad.
The funny thing is, it's always over compromise with evil- with inconsistency. Some people get their knickers in a bunch when others do it, while doing the exact same thing themselves and not recognizing it.
You look silly throwing a fit over some Second Amendment Rights compromiser who helps write anti-gun "laws" if you also support anti-liberty military mass murderers.
Yeah, it's the same sort of thing. It's support of State over Rightful Liberty in both cases.
Consistency is important. You can be consistently wrong- it is unlikely but possible. But, it is impossible to be inconsistent, yet right. You may be right about some things (by supporting Rightful Liberty) and wrong about others (by rejecting Rightful Liberty for some people in some instances and/or by supporting a particular enemy of liberty you want to support for whatever reason), but the areas where you are wrong damage your credibility where you are right.
I try to remain consistent. If I notice inconsistency in myself (or have it pointed out to me) I know it means I am wrong somewhere. I have worked hard to eliminate those inconsistencies, always toward a deeper respect for Liberty, even when it makes people hate me. I'd rather be right than popular- well, I suppose it would be nice to be both, but that's just not going to happen. Besides, if you are right, it means the people who like you are the good people, and not just those who "like" you for your popularity.
These petty (or not so petty) in-fights could be avoided if people would take consistency seriously and just stop trying to appease the anti-liberty bigots who will never be their friends anyway: those who give lip service to liberty as long as it suits their purposes- advancing their own liberty- and quickly forget it as soon as the State and its "laws" can be used against someone they hate.
When in doubt- and even when sure- always default toward Rightful Liberty. If you choose something over Liberty, own it.
Added: Someone, on the Facebook "share" of this post, commented "Good advice for you, Kent!", to which I replied "Please be specific about any inconsistencies I exhibit so that I can fix them." I'm still waiting for a response. Maybe I misunderstood what she was attempting to communicate.
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This is my exact problem with Stefan Molyneux, inconsistency. You are right and now you are also popular as well!
ReplyDeleteI haven't listened to Stefan that much- I have heard a few of his videos (most are just too long for me to be able to listen to), but I haven't personally heard inconsistency in him. I have heard him say a few things I disagree with, but in most cases I didn't take the time to really analyze it enough to see which of us is wrong- and he may have changed his mind over the years. Or, perhaps I misunderstood. It does seem long ago I heard him on an anti-gun rant, but later I believe I also heard him explain that he had been wrong about that. Some of the criticisms I have heard/seen directed at Stefan were from people who also had a consistency deficiency.
DeleteHowever, it is certainly possible some of his critics are right- I just don't have enough information to say.
I'm not so popular in the Grand Scheme of Things. When I stopped getting 50 to 100 spam comments per day, my page views dropped from 1200 to around 500 per day. Sometimes I think "Wow! 500 people read this?!", but then other times I think "Out of 7 billion people, this only reached 500?" It helps if I remember that my readers are an Elite. ;)