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Topic: Well, the Free State Project is now officially a tax trap (Read 568 times)

legendary
Activity: 1078
Merit: 1003
Quote
Whereas Chris Cantwell has made the following public statements, been offered the opportunity to retract, and has refused to do so: “It’s a terribly unpopular thing to say, but the answer, at some point, is to kill government agents,” and “any level of force necessary for anyone to stop any government agent from furthering said coercion [tax collection in the context of funding the salaries of all government employees] is morally justifiable…”

I see where he's coming from; if someone takes from you, and you didn't want them to (99/100 times, you likely wouldn't want this to happen), you might ask them to stop and give back what they took; they neither give back what they took and threaten you with violence if you try to stop them.  So of course, if they resort to violence, one must use self-defense to protect themselves and their assets, which may result in the death of the person representing the violent entity.  If we can't justify self-defense against any violent force, we're truly screwed.

I also see where the FSP board is coming from; they're the Davids standing up to Goliath, and the last thing you really want to do is piss off Goliath before you're ready for the final blow.  FSP will do everything possible not to anger their overlords, which includes shutting its own members up or removing them from affiliation.  They've already been referred to, mistakenly, as domestic terrorists, and I believe they still make the cut (among various, almost unrelated and benign people), and so the last thing they would want is to appear as though they advocate terrorism, which is a very touchy subject; you can get blown to bits for even being suspected of terrorism, nowadays.  I mean, unless you're the guys who own the military, anyhow.

I wish I could write something here that would rationalize this one way or another, but this is just the state of the nation ATM; they're both right to do and say what they did.
legendary
Activity: 1330
Merit: 1000
Apparently it's no longer possible to be a member of the Free State Project and advocate defending yourself against arbitrary government coercion:

http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2013/09/chris-cantwell-and-the-free-state-project/

Can't say it wasn't obvious from the beginning.  Why would libertarians want to move closer to DC?  It never made sense to me.
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