Liberty- costly and worth it

Liberty isn’t free.

I don’t mean this the way statists usually do. 

What I mean is that I understand that liberty comes at a price. It’s dangerous. 

You can stand for the right to own and carry guns and get killed by an evil loser with a gun.
You can oppose mandatory vaccination and die of a disease.
You might oppose prohibition and sobriety checkpoints and lose a family member to an impaired driver.
You can oppose mass surveillance and be the victim of a crime that could be solved with more spyware.
You can oppose censorship and get called rude names.

Statists will laugh, because they don't get it. They can't see past their ignorance.

Bad guys aren't violating you because of liberty. Liberty doesn't include the "right" to violate others, and it doesn't shield you from random bad things happening. Life and death happen. The Universe isn't fair.

The price of liberty is that if you're consistent, you might find yourself facing a situation that slavery might have made less likely. 

So? Liberty is always worth the cost.

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"Just doing my job"

When a federal, state, or local government employee, doing government's bidding, violates life, liberty, or property, they should be held personally responsible for paying restitution. (They are responsible; they just aren't currently held responsible.)

They should pay the full price; not the tax cattle.

Or, if you believe in punishment/revenge as a facet of justice, they should be subject to whatever someone else, not working on behalf of any government, would face if they'd done the same sort of thing.

A government "job" doesn't absolve a violator of their responsibility or guilt. It never has. It's weird that anyone would believe otherwise.

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I've seen what makes them cheer.

I don't fit in.

I know that's not shocking news to anyone. 

Plus, when I see what passes for "normal", I'm not sure fitting in is a good thing. What others view as "normal" is nightmare fuel to me. Murder, war, revenge, slavery, obedience, surveillance, theft, and all the other things we're expected to accept as a normal price of living in a "civilized society". Yuck!

It's like that saying: "Your 'boos' mean nothing; I've seen what makes you cheer."

I have a hard time not recoiling at how horrible many people can be. ESPECIALLY when they get political. Especially when they let their feelings take the wheel. Especially when they get trapped in a false dichotomy. Especially when they form hard opinions based on a complete lack of understanding.

I don't fit in, and it sometimes makes me sad and lonely. But a little sadness is a small price to pay for not letting myself be a horrible person just so I'll be accepted by horrible people.

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I oppose human sacrifice

It needs to be repeated.

The ONLY ethical death penalty is carried out at the time and place of the attack by the intended victim or a bystander. I'd be thrilled if this were the outcome every single time.

Killing the killer later is revenge- it's even in the name: "capital punishment". Punishment is revenge, the opposite of justice. It's a capitulation to feelings, not rationality.

Restitution isn't possible in such a case, which feels unsatisfying to people who want revenge, but it's true.

It doesn't stop future murderers from murdering. They never think they'll get caught, or they act in the heat of the moment where conscious thought doesn't figure in. There is no preventative effect.

If you "execute" for the state, you are part of a conspiracy to commit premeditated murder. You are ethically identical to the person you murder. The threat has already been neutralized: they are in a cage. Murdering them won't bring their victim back. Legalistic word games like claiming "you can't murder a murderer" don't change the reality. (Try that line if you get caught doing it on your own and see how well it works.) Working for the state doesn't erase the individual responsibility.

I understand the lust for revenge- for punishment- because I've felt it myself. But I can't support it being institutionalized and made into a quasi-religious cleansing ritual of human sacrifice. Not on my behalf!

I don't trust government with the power to murder people. Unlike a lot of statists. Unlike some "libertarians".

I'm so serious about this that I don't even support this fate for politicians/police.

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Statism has consequences

If people don't get smarter- less political- things are going to continue to get "interesting" at an accelerating rate.

Just a few minutes of scrolling around on various websites has exposed me to many concerning opinions.

Many people want to:

Make it illegal to make "too much" money, and take the excess (or take it all) for government to use.
Limit how much you can own- of anything.
Punish success and subsidize failure.
Make sure no one but government has any effective weapons.
Track us all 24/7.
Punish us for any rule we violate.
Censor everything we say, write, and read.
Expand government's power in every area.
Make sure our vehicles (if we are allowed to have them at all) don't go "too fast" and don't allow us to do things with them that government would like to prohibit ("kill switches").
Make us all dependent on government handouts.
Control ALL money.
Allow only government to define and administer justice.
Turn the whole country into a big maximum-security prison.
Let government say where you are allowed to live, while it also imports people who want to kill you and forbids self-defense.
Keep raising the age at which people are still considered "children" when that benefits the government agenda, and keep lowering this barrier when that benefits the government agenda.
Marginalize normal human behavior as "outdated" and no longer acceptable.
Force racism and other bigotries into all our social and business interactions, in order to advance some and hold others back.
Pretend that one flavor of tyranny is good while the other flavor is bad.
Redefine "liberty", "freedom", "justice", "ethical", and whatever other concepts might become a problem for them.
Make us slaves to the whims of cops, ready to fall to our knees no matter what demand they make.
Pretend there's a way to v*te ourselves out of all this.

Statism is a disease. You can vaccinate your mind against it, but like a zombie virus, that only means you are less likely to catch it; not that you won't be devoured bit by bit by someone who is infected. 

Yeah, things could get more interesting than you'd like. Since I don't expect people to get smarter, I'm preparing for the worst (while hoping I'm wrong). I'll also do what I can to vaccinate people against statism- even if it feels like a fool's task.

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