Conscientious Objection

Posted on

This is a bit of my latest episode in which I respond to Tom Woods and Dave Smith's episode on a libertarian objection to voting Trump. Hear the whole thing below. Enjoy. -P

Hey, this is Pen up at the front here. I have a few introductory thoughts that should help set the forthcoming in good order. This is a response to Dave Smith and Tom Woods talking about why someone might have felt inclined to vote Trump, including themselves. Their conversation covers a lot of important stuff, so it merits some response, and a few really important points (maybe) went unaddressed, so I'm going to respond and contribute to the conversation, for whatever it’s worth. Election day has now passed, but I think that make this a better time to do this because it gives people less to get worked up about. “You’re going to talk people into not voting for-” That objection has passed. So there's that.

I want to say up front that I do appreciate these gents. I am criticizing their take, not them. I've been a fan of Dave Smith since seeing him on youtube videos of the insult comedy stuff at the Stand in New York. I can't remember if I'd heard of him liberty-wise before that or- that was my early memories of Dave-Smithery. Tom Woods is my gateway drug into libertarianism, so I very much appreciate his work. And really, who says it like Tom? And, mostly I agree with him on stuff. So having said all that, I want to get started with the disagreement, and there is one particular consideration I want to highlight up here at the front. I think it helps bring all of this into focus. It may sound trite at first, but just hold on. Hear me out. Here it is:

Opposing Harris did not require voting Trump. A candidate can be shown to be horrible (and Tom and Dave do a great job of that in their episode) and that, showing them horrible, that helps drive their success down to the point where they don't get elected. One can bring a candidate's success down somewhat, at least a single vote's worth. (That’s a low bar right?) They can bring the [opposing] candidate down a vote's worth instead of voting. How much does a single vote do, especially in a non-swing state? Maybe nothing . . .

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves, enjoying life in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… (see “about” above). Get his eletters at penjams.com/subscribe.

Better Libertarianism

Posted on

This is a bit of my episode with Iowancap in which we discuss how Libertarianism might be served by considering how various schools of ethics relate. Hear the whole episode below. Enjoy. -P

Penjammin: I was just reading For a New Liberty by Rothbard, and his last chapter is a strategy for liberty . . . He makes one caveat in there that I thought was really fascinating and perhaps a little controversial, which is really what you're saying. The idea that– well, a conservative in Congress might prefer some sort of a policy compromise or a trade where they get a little bit of this, a little bit for that. Whereas a libertarian who might want agree with the conservative on the boon, you know, that's to be had (maybe lower taxes or something), but they won't also say, “okay, but for this, what we're going to do is we're going to introduce a new act of aggression by Washington, DC against the people.” I'm not going to positively support that. I'm going to hold principle. The goal is always not to be incrementalist or gradualist, but to have the whole thing now. But with that hope, you know, firmly in place, there's you accept gains as they come. You're not going to tell them no. But he always had that caveat. It's like, “but I'm not going to vote positively against my principles. I will accept gradual movement towards them, but I will not vote against them.” . . .

Iowancap: Yet, I think there there is also an idea where, sometimes you do go for less bad. Sometimes that is the move. I think. In fact, I suddenly realized, Pen, that this all worked out perfectly because I realized that it was that phrase that I told you that I really loved, that you said, that actually launched all this thinking for me.

Penjammin: Okay.

Iowancap: And that is when I saw it, it was in a in a group chat, I saw that you made the statement: The means must be worthy of the ends.

Penjammin: Yeah.

Iowancap: And I think that is really what I'm talking about. Yes, we should keep in mind the ends. We need to keep the goals in mind. And, we shouldn't live purely principally and say, “but let's not look at what works. Let's not look at strategy, let's not look at tactics. Let's not look at reality.” At the same time, we have to always keep our principles in mind because if the means are not worthy of the ends, then you could start asking the question: “Are we really going where we think we're going?”

Penjammin: Yeah.

Iowancap: Especially as a Christian, I think that's very important because obedience to the law of God, obedience to the gospel and to Christ's commands, that is ultimately a winning strategy, even if short term it is not.

Penjammin: Right. I mean, we've already won.

Iowancap: And so I think that's really where this whole tension of principles and strategy is so important. Yeah, let's look for strategic ways to get the gospel to go out. Let's look for strategic ways to accomplish and to carve out the freedom to do the work that the church needs to do. And yet, if we at any point find ourselves going against the law of God with a sort of ends justify the means sort of mentality, then– if the means are not worthy of the ends, then we should question whether or not the means are actually going to get us to the ends that we think we're going toward.

Penjammin: Yes, because that's how you trapped. I think when you play the game, you get played by the game. It doesn't work in the long run. And, that's how I think about third-party voting as well. But I'll leave that for another time.

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves, enjoying life in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… (see “about” above). Get his eletters at penjams.com/subscribe.

Better Conservatism

Posted on

This is a bit of my episode with Iowancap in which we discuss Trump and conservatism. Hear the whole episode below. Enjoy. -P

Iowancap: At the Flyover Libertarian, which is the parent podcast, I guess you could say of The Anarchist Bible Study. On that show, we did an episode 23, Trump is a bad conservative is the title of it, but we kind of generally talked about conservatism broadly. And Penjammin, when we talked about getting him on the live stream tonight, he said he wanted to talk a little bit about what I said on that. I think that's what you were saying, right?

Penjammin: Yeah because I'm, you know, just such a bad fan that I haven't got to watch it yet. So now, if I have you here personally, I can get the scoop straight from the horse's mouth or whatever. It's an interesting subject to me in general, so I'd love to hear what your thoughts were.

Iowancap: Yeah. Just to give a brief kind of overview of that (and I recommend any anyone who wants to hear more to go over to The Flyover Libertarian podcast on — well, pretty much any app that you find, the anarchist Bible study, so whatever you're listening to this on or watching this on, go find the flyover libertarian on that same platform and watch episode 23 or listen to episode 23) — kind of the overview is we started by talking about how Trump had put up a page with his achievements, and we looked at that page and asked, so how many of these things are really things that . . . classical conservatism would really be excited about? And we said there's not a lot. But really, it got into some of my concerns, I guess, with conservatism in general . . . and ways in which I think libertarianism can help conservatism to be better.

Penjammin: Yeah ok.

Iowancap: And so one of the things that I said…

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves, enjoying life in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… (see “about” above). Get his eletters at penjams.com/subscribe.

Inspiring Action

Posted on

This is a bit of my episode with Haley Heathman in which we discuss the Liberty Alliance Network. Hear the whole episode below. Enjoy. -P

Penjammin: Please tell me more about the Liberty Alliance network.

Haley: Yeah. So I started the Liberty Alliance Network. I think it was like January of 2021. And it was, of course, as a result of the covid insanity. I was a little bit disappointed in people on our side that we were not doing enough to fight back against everything. I think by 2021, most of us on our side, in the circles that we run, we already knew. We knew enough to know that this was something wasn't right. And this was a garbage and a hoax and whatever you want to call it, plandemic. But nobody was doing anything. And I was really upset and disappointed that even people like us who should know better- We've spent our whole lives (maybe not our whole lives, but since we're libertarians) railing against government day after day after day, and here's the biggest government intrusion on our liberties in our entire life. And yet everybody was just kind of sitting on their thumbs like, “I don't know what to do.”

Penjammin: Yeah, even even the LP leadership was just like, the messaging was horrible [when] it was there at all.

Haley: Yeah. Right. And I was just like, are you kidding me? It was like, so we're all just, like, cosplaying here or something? We're just pretending to care about liberty, but we don't really? The problem with… libertarians but the right in general, I would say, we are not known to be good organizers or effective organizers. The left, of course, they can organize in a heartbeat, drop of a hat, they can get five hundred people out to protest not being able to kill babies in the womb, no problem. Us, we have to fight tooth and nail to get people involved in anything. So that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to to start a network where we could start promoting each other and our organizations. And my goal is to inspire and encourage others to take action because that's what we need. We can't just sit here and be keyboard warriors. You got to get in the fight. You have to kind of get involved. And so maybe you might not be like the type that's going to go out and start your own organization, but you might want to join up with somebody else's. And you need to know where they are.

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves, enjoying life in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… (see “about” above). Get his eletters at penjams.com/subscribe.

You mad bro?

Posted on

Michael Landon. Remember him? I stumbled upon a documentary of Highway to Heaven and was struck by a particular slice of back-when. Someone asked an actress on the show if there were any stories of trouble on-set during filming. There was one anecdote. A couple of actors were causing trouble. Maybe they were showing up late, not knowing lines, being prima donna’s… I forget. But they were grating, very annoying. Apparently they caught on to the fact that they were pushing their luck and brazenly went up to Landon with the question: “Are you mad at us?” He responded, “No, why would I be mad at someone I’m never going to see again?” And apparently, they never worked there again.

It was a word choice though that struck me. When the interviewer asked the question about trouble on-set, that lady answered, “What? You mean like someone being a stinker?” You never hear someone called a “stinker” anymore. It seems the word retired decades ago. Well, it got me thinking.

Some behaviors are repugnant, but not for anything to do with the law or personal offense or immorality. They’re just obnoxious. They stink. And aversion to literal stench is healthy. Something similar is probably true with metaphorical stench as well.

To be sure, I don’t mean to defend snubbing either the truly destitute or a normally pleasant person just going through something. But I wonder if we’ve been arm-twisted into the idea that the only reason to avoid someone (or their behavior) is if there is some level of wrong-doing. What if they’re just obnoxious?

No one wants someone stinking up the conversation with pompous or nasty tones, innuendos of aspersion, gossip or other party fouls. We try to invite good guests, but even careful effort there is no guarantee. What else can we do? I suppose we can reward earnest wonder with engagement, rather than feed the trolls, and we can be our best selves and attract the like in kind. Again, no guarantees, just helps, but for me, that's plenty for me to get to work with. Failing that, there's the block button. At least for now.

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves, enjoying life in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… (see “about” above). Get his eletters at penjams.com/subscribe.