The Second Civil War

[poohan]

but negative gibber gabber is my favorite.

[imperator03]

Mar 4, 2011 14:48:48 GMT -5 poohan said:

i support gay marriage pretty much for the same reason. if america really is the land of the free then we shouldnt be passing laws like that. not so sure about this anarchy thing your going on about though. no central authority or laws? yeah that worked out great for somalia didnt it? just look at their vastly improved lives. put people into communities depending on their beliefs? sounds an awful lot like a tribe with a shiny new name. before you know it the anti-gay and pro-gay "communities" will start killing each other over their viewpoints, especially if theres no law or central authority to stop them.

Another person deliberately distorting what I said. I said people choose where they live and people, being people, tend to congregate where people who have similar attitudes live. You are, after all, known by the company you keep.

Somalia does have government, of a sort. Much like medieval warlords who enforced order at the point of a sword, they have total control over the territory they conquered. In a sense they're not much different than any other state system, the only difference is the territory they control is much smaller.

A real anarchic society would have rules, they just wouldn't be enforced by a central authority like a state. In fact, if you look at the earliest tribes and settled communities, they operated just fine without any king or politician telling them how to live. It's only when you have a large surplus of goods (food in early human communities) that you have states arise and take control of the surplus.

Now it is true that little scholarly research as been done into the private production of defense, but there is little reason to believe that the results would be any worse than that of government sponsored efforts in law and order. If you accept the authority of the state over your life, you have to accept the fact that you'll have to live according to laws you don't agree with.

[poohan]

if its the choice of the people where they live then how would it be any different than what we already have? or are you not suggesting we change that at all? a "real" anarchic society however is not possible. the earliest tribes didnt have kings or politicians but they always had some kind of ruler to guide and unite them like a chieftain. you cant have a large group of people without one person trying to lead them, which is not always a bad thing by the way. its basic human nature, why do you think governments and countries have come to exist at all? you should take psychology and social science classes if you truly think otherwise. also if there is no central authority to enforce and make laws then who does it? the people? then you have majority rule so you will still end up living with laws you dont agree with. why must you hate a central authority? all your doing is giving it a different name and changing the way it operates. i wonder what you would do when you have to live by laws you dont like but have nobody to pin all your blame on. the country as a whole? and i did not deliberately distort anything, you left room for interpretation. you simply didnt like the way i interpreted it.

[King of the Wastes]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Family
A interesting group, just found out about them yesterday while reading a book.

[imperator03]

Mar 11, 2011 23:22:35 GMT -5 poohan said:

if its the choice of the people where they live then how would it be any different than what we already have? or are you not suggesting we change that at all? a "real" anarchic society however is not possible. the earliest tribes didnt have kings or politicians but they always had some kind of ruler to guide and unite them like a chieftain. you cant have a large group of people without one person trying to lead them, which is not always a bad thing by the way. its basic human nature, why do you think governments and countries have come to exist at all? you should take psychology and social science classes if you truly think otherwise. also if there is no central authority to enforce and make laws then who does it? the people? then you have majority rule so you will still end up living with laws you dont agree with. why must you hate a central authority? all your doing is giving it a different name and changing the way it operates. i wonder what you would do when you have to live by laws you dont like but have nobody to pin all your blame on. the country as a whole? and i did not deliberately distort anything, you left room for interpretation. you simply didnt like the way i interpreted it.

It's different because the national government intrudes too much on what we can do and how we can live our lives. Let me use Prohibition as an example. Before Prohibition about half of the counties in the US were dry. People used local politics to decide the types of towns and municipalities they wanted to live in. That's perfectly fine from a libertarian perspective. It became evil when the Volstead Act and 19th Amendment were passed. Now nobody in the US had the ability to go where they could drink legally. So what happened? They drank illegally. How many people were incarcerated and thus entered a life of crime because of that? How many people died in gang violence and from police raids? How many people died from "bathroom gin" and other unsafe products? It's not much different than the arguments for the legalization of drugs.

When you expand things to a national level, you eliminate the ability of people to move somewhere that suits them. Well, there's expatriation, but most places are worse about government control than the US, and it's not an option for most people.

PS Good questions by the way, it is possible to have an anarchic society, you confuse anarchy with a society that has no rules. An anarchic society means that there is not state to tell you what to do, that doesn't mean there aren't rules, customs and laws.

[imperator03]

Mar 12, 2011 15:02:23 GMT -5 King of the Wastes said:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Family
A interesting group, just found out about them yesterday while reading a book.

Interesting group. They seem to be libertarian at first glance, but look less so as you look into the group more and more. The central tenet of libertarianism is to do what you want, so long as it doesn't interfere with others doing what they want. I do worry that they were founded back in the 60's by hippie groups. That, coupled with the issues they've had with other groups. The Boy Scout thing is particularly telling. The fact that the Forest Service pussed out is a further indication of the leftist leaning of this organization.

The group also has some consistency issues. The fact that they move to intimidate Forest Service officers and other groups. Libertarian groups would work with people to find a mutually beneficial outcome. These people sound like elitist jerks, not unusual for left leaning groups.

Burning Man sounds funner. I'd be interested to see how the "barter" system works and what they wind up using as a money-equivalent. As the festival grows larger, they'll have to come up with something, the amounts and types of transactions will gain in complexity as attendance increases and some sort of monetary system will make things run more smoothly. The civic mindedness and "Leave no trace" rules tend to make Burning Man a much more congenial place than the Rainbow group. I'd also argue that Burning Man is a bit more commercial, though the proceeds go to charity or civic improvements like the local school system. This is how good neighbors act.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Man

[King of the Wastes]

I want to go to a Burning Man gathering, I think it would be a lot of fun. Reading through the wikipedia on the Rainbow Family makes me think they aren't all that great at their core even though they try to be. Also not so fond of hippies, but if they stopped throwing their weight around and actually tried to help I think that they would be a better group.

[imperator03]

Mar 13, 2011 4:48:22 GMT -5 King of the Wastes said:

I want to go to a Burning Man gathering, I think it would be a lot of fun. Reading through the wikipedia on the Rainbow Family makes me think they aren't all that great at their core even though they try to be. Also not so fond of hippies, but if they stopped throwing their weight around and actually tried to help I think that they would be a better group.

That's not the point, at least not to the minds of those in the Rainbow Family. I'd not be surprised to see a rather large strain of entitlement running thorough the group.

Burning Man, by contrast, seems to be trying to lay down some ground rules on how to exist as a group while preserving the rights of individuals. What is interesting from a libertarian standpoint is the balancing act they're running between freedom of art and privacy. The fact that they've resorted to copyrighting all pictures and videos is an attempt to protect the privacy of people who attend, but I'm not sure that this is the best measure. It'll be interesting to see what the participants think up.

Did you see the part about how attendants compete against one another to find the best way to collect used water? That is how you should encourage people to be ecologically sound. Whatever winds up becoming the norm will probably be the perfect balance between ecology and sustainability.

[smokey]

I believe a civil war is possible in the country however it will be nowhere near the causality rate of the Civil War. That being said I believe that sure if some states seceded, the Union itself would still have control over US Federal facilities such as military bases, federal reserve bank, federal buildings (FBI, Post Office, DEA, ICS etc etc) in which case I do not believe that they would defect to the secession side itself unless something radical happens to drastically change the opinions of the federal employee's and have everyone question their oath of allegiance to the US Constitution. In which case even if say the base commanders of Fort Hood or Benning were to defect to the new government in which the facility is in, they do not have the 100% loyalty of their troops in which case they would most likely split 50-50.
A military action would surely come quickly in which a military occupation of the break away states would occur after a minor military action. The problem in this would not be the military action in terms of tank v tank or infantryman v infantryman but the problem of the population. Upon the occupation of a break away state, history shows that the government would quickly make any weapons owner turn in their firearms, swear loyalty to the US and never again be allowed to own any form of weapons. Any military or political personnel (from the rank of E-5 and up) would be stripped of all formal rank and removed from public office to never again be allowed to hold office or military positions and the higher-ranking officers and politicians would more than likely be given prison sentence's. Using any form of guerrilla tactic against the occupying union troops, they would be able to inflict casualties on the soldiers in great numbers through the use of boobytraps, IED's and sharpshooters making a military occupation long, drawn out and unwanted by the union states.

Now we must look at this and view it from a different position. Granted the United States has been a whole from sea to shining sea but each area of the country is different from one another. I do not think that this would be a war of North vs. South, East vs. West, Texan vs. New Mexican. I believe that if the United States was to drop into civil war that it would mean the break up and formation of a number of independent states within the United States all moving for the number one power position. Instead of the United States, it would look more like Africa or Europe. Many small states constant fighting on another for superiority in land and resources until we manage to forget our differences and pull together.
-Smokey

[King of the Wastes]

Interesting, I do agree that should civil war happen that it wouldn't be a north v. south like last time. It would be chaotic, and I don't believe that it would end up with any states. With the way things are any government that tried to establish itself would be attacked by those in our society that don't want society. In the end it would all end up a convoluted mess.

[washley]

Its a pretty thought but I can't imagine a split in the US military to enable this... afterall the population is pretty much cannon fodder unless there was a split in the actual military.

[washley]

even with the fiscal cliff and end of social security, it would be destructive but I couldn't imagine it being anything but rioting blood baths and some terrorist attacks.

It would need backing of the paramilitary perhaps unpaid solidiers,for that to happen, and as we can see when the fat gets to the burner in congress and with the president they work out a deal to find more money to pay the troops. I thnk the only way it could happen is after some sort of nuclear attack or series of nuclear attacks globally with a power vacuum created due to the destruction of the previous backbone.

[Deleted]

It will involve civilians attacking each other:

lewrockwell.com/orig12/shield2.1.1.html