Thursday, May 21, 2015

Pointing out stupidity

(Previously posted to Patreon)

Sometimes, in a moment of frustration, I will openly say that statists are stupid.

Not generally in a blog post, but rather in a Facebook status.

I admit that's probably not nice, but I need to vent occasionally.

Most of the time, one-on-one, I try to nicely walk statists through an examination of their claims to try to make them see how odd their notions are.

However, sometimes, some people need a little more of a kick.

It is not helpful to pretend that really stupid and self-destructive things are not stupid. If you see someone licking the front sight of their loaded and cocked pistol, with their finger on the trigger, it doesn't help them to say "That's just how they choose to clean their sight- it's a perfectly valid way." Maybe it helps to calmly talk them into getting the pistol aimed in a safe direction before you point out how stupid they were being, but they really do need to understand how stupid that was.

Because, if you care, you don't want them continuing to do something monumentally stupid- like advocating statism.

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