Carl Watner, who has operated voluntyarist.com for long years, provides a definition of what a voluntaryist is, front and center:

Voluntaryists are advocates of non-political, non-violent strategies to achieve a free society.

Carl has done amazing work in collecting and promulgating anarchist literature. The amount of learning I have obtained and that others have benefited from via his work — as writer and archiver — is incalculable. Carl’s one of the good guys. One of the guys, indeed, who I can count on to wind up on the right side of the barricades, come the revolution. I heart Carl Watner.

Image from headsonpikes.blogspot.com -- that guy's dead. Sorry.

However, I can’t but quibble with this definition. I might well prefer non-violent strategies for the attainment of a free society (and the political will certainly never be acceptable). But I am not going to rule out violent, bloody, homicidal strategies to get there, if such turn out to seem essential.

Perhaps this is not what Carl means with his definition. Perhaps the preference, the advocacy for such does not preclude other paths. But I read this definition, and the words of many other self-proclaimed voluntaryists, and see a commitment to non-violence above all other things.

I am not so committed.

I don’t really advocate the strategies as such. I want the end results. Of course I am keenly aware that ends do not justify means. But when one recognizes that the world is ruled by criminal gangs, one ought take into account all legitimate actions for the elimination of crime and criminals.

If the achievement of a free society is to require that a million bleeding heads of torturing tyrants, damnable dictators, pandering politicians, sadistic generals, privileged policemen, criminal soldiers and psychotic, irresponsible “servants” be hoisted on pikes to surround the palisades of the free cities, count me in for the headsman’s role, for I will not dwell in my ice-cream-and-flying-ponies fantasies so long as to preclude my own action toward the attainment thereof.

Would that neither you nor I ever face such choices. But we should be ready, should our realities eventuate as such, to know what we will do.

Do you?

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on anarchism
• Anarchism vs. Minarchism: Stefan Molyneux and Jan Helfeld, Post …

• Related Blogs on execution

• Related Blogs on voluntaryism
• Free of State » Blog Archive » “There Is a Tide in the Affairs of …
• Free Talk Live's Ian Freeman talks to MHD | the Motorhome Diaries
• Our Weekend in New Orleans | the Motorhome Diaries
• Free of State » Blog Archive » Spending Other People's Money Is …
• Debbie 'The Suburban Voluntaryist' | the Motorhome Diaries

That doesn’t mean that “most people are stupid,” a proposition to which 95% of citizens surveyed will agree.

But when I see dozens commentators on talk shows discussing bailouts, tax increases (and, properly, taxes at all), inflation, the hot/cold/muddled trade wars between east and west, war, torture and any number of other subjects, well, gosh… there’s a whole lot of stupid out there.

Add Guy Fawkes mask for more powerful effect

When there is talk of, oh, another trillion dollars being shoveled out to first-to-the-trough interests owned and controlled by the global elite, well, the talk isn’t about where the money comes from. The talk isn’t about how inflation of that sort is exactly equivalent to grand larceny. The discussion doesn’t center around any sort of moral consideration, or recognize the fact that lending out a trillion of these “dollars” into existence has the net effect of devaluing the holdings of all dollar holders, or that these compelling accounting fictions created by the elder warlocks of Wall Street and Washington will be as yokes upon the necks of generations. The questions come to revolve instead around such subsidiary matters as whether or not enough tribute is being extracted from the proletariat via inflation to benefit the komitet, or whether or not the right factions of the ruling class will receive the newly-stolen booty first — certainly not around such other (equally subsidiary) matters as whether or not the robbers should be executed by firing squad or by being bound to a tree naked in the jungle, smeared with honey, and left for the ants.

This in and of itself isn’t stupid. The people here are focusing attention in directions which benefit them. They flirt with the jungle, honey and ants every day by speaking their “minds” to the masses. They get paid very well for doing it. The stupid, here, is that people watch and listen to and read this drivel, they absorb it, they internalize it, they believe it, and they will cast out as devils those who would challenge the dominant tribal paradigm.

One day, the masses are going to wake up, en masse, as it were. Paradigms will shift, as it were. The future will, perhaps, shock again.

Meanwhile, the stupid is man-in-the-street reactions filmed on the east coast of the US by Iran’s PressTV along the lines of “Gee, I don’t know much of anything about anything, but I got faith in Obama,” or “Change gonna win, baby!” or “Well, I guess if that’s what they figured out is necessary…”

Me? I’m investing in honey.