Celebration of Peace?

I was talking to my kids today about Armistice Day, and the celebration of peace. The focus was on not being at war. And then the feds decided that war should be the new norm, so now it’s Veteran’s Day. I told them that instead of celebrating an idea (peace), a lot of people celebrate a job on this day, and that job is to go kill strangers for the government. It is viewed as an honorable sacrifice that these people make on our behalf to “protect” us.

Democracy Is War by Other Means

Democracy is war by other means. Superficially, it is waged with ballots instead of bullets. At the end of the day, those ballots become bullets. Elections load real guns and aim them at real people. If you disobey the commandments handed down by elected officials, beefy men with shaved heads and Ray-Ban sunglasses will come to take you away. If you resist them, hot lead will fly. Elections are scrambles for control over the service weapons that propel those rounds. In such contests, every faction is trying to point the gun barrels at someone else.

Estonian Civilians Voluntarily Trained in Insurgency

One of the new chapters for the third edition of The Machinery of Freedom discusses the question of how a stateless society might defend against a state, which I regard as the hardest problem for such a society. One of the possibilities I raise is having people voluntarily train and equip themselves for warfare for the fun (and patriotism) of it, as people now engage in paintball, medieval combat in the Society for Creative Anachronism, and various other military hobbies.

Steve Patterson

Four years ago, I became an anarchist, and I’ve never looked back. My political philosophy now runs through my veins. But this wasn’t always the case. I used to be a young, apathetic conservative. Then, I was introduced to libertarianism, which slowly turned me into an anarchist. This might sound crazy, but I assure you, it’s quite reasonable, and many people share my same story.

Ubi est iustitia?

Nobody asked but … Ubi est iustitia?  This is Latin for “where is justice?”  I have been listening to a very interesting podcast, Russ Roberts’ Econtalk, with his guest Paul Robinson, on Cooperation, Punishment and the Criminal Justice System.  The gist is that even the most transitory societies may impose rudimentary justice, even at the…

Mission Creep, Founding Voluntaryists, Rigor

Send him mail. “Finding the Challenges” is an original column appearing every other Wednesday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by Verbal Vol. Verbal is a software engineer, college professor, corporate information officer, life long student, farmer, libertarian, literarian, student of computer science and self-ordering phenomena. Archived columns can be found here. FTC-only RSS feed available here. There are…

No Hitting! – Full Book

No Hitting! A Short Guide on Why Spanking is Unnecessary by Skyler J. Collins, Published 2015 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Paperback ($6) and other digital formats found here. Preface Here it is, my third published work and second written entirely by myself. Everything Voluntary: From Politics to Parenting was an anthology I…