Sam is a hero!

[fatcat]

[youtube=425,350]X4XhhTF7vRM[/youtube].

[Evil Muppet]

So, you reject people with principles as a matter of principle?

I have seen people who claim to have principles and they may do so but they also like some of the basic principles that are required to all decent people in society.   They lack some of the basic core principles like integrity, responsibility, compassion, judgment.  They simply parade around like the old hypocritical church ladies, simply adopting principles as a way to impress a group of half-wits and look down upon everyone else. 
 
You also have many people who will judge someone's actions according to its adherence to a political ideology first.  They then usually stop there and do not consider whether the actions are a wise course of action.

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. 

[jeffersonish]

Until anyone shows me even a correlative link that Sam has increased any sort of freedoms, I'll rest my case.

http://www.keenesentinel.com/articles/2009/05/17/news/local/free/id_356129.txt

"Meanwhile, Miller said he has already convinced about 10 of his fellow inmates to join the Free Staters when they’re released from jail."

[fatcat]

That's good news, but whats that got to do with increased freedom?

Benefit to the NH liberty movement? No doubt. I never claimed Sam wouldn't influence any other people or recruit new libertarians to the cause, i just claimed that whatever he does won't have any tangible or statistically significant effect whatsoever. Getting people to work towards freedom is not the same as getting freedom. A lot of Civ dissers seem to have a complete mental disconnect between trying something and achieving it.

The FSP gets over 100 sign ups every year, does this mean every year NH is 20% freer?

Is 10 new people really going to make a tangible difference to a movement that supposedly have 500 active members? Let's say Sam does a tour of NH jails and gets 10 new members every month for the next year, thats only 120 members a year, and I'm pretty sure the birth rate and immigration rate of statists outweighs that. So Sam could spend his entire life in jail just to keep up with the curve.

Or maybe some people would say, each of those 10 people might get 10 more people so there'll be a snowball effect. Well that maybe, I severely doubt it, but lets run with the possibility.

Sam in jail for a month, recruits 10 "new" free staters. 10 of them recruit 10 more in the next month, making 100. 100 makes 1,000. 1,000 makes 10,000, 10,000 makes 100,000, 100,000 makes 1,000,000.

So in 12 months the entire of New Hampshire should be freestate project members, or not, since the majority of people are statists and I've never seen any evidence, any historical precedent that you can get anything but a tiny minority to be libertarian.

Also theres volumes of evidence to show that the FSP has exponential negative growth from its starting point, and that the growth seen at the start isn't sustainable, i.e. the amount of people joining this year is less than 2 years ago and less the 2 years before that. The though the whole concept of a snowball is, the more people who get involved, the more and more people should get involved on top of that, so the snowball argument is not one any NH libers should be embracing.

[Jetfire]

You gotta free the minds of the people before you can free the people from the state.
You gotta figure out what works best and what doesnt.
I think the change is gonna be extreamely slow though.

[fatcat]

I think the change is gonna be extreamely slow though.

Most sense spoke in this thread yet.

[Jetfire]

But even if its only a snails pace I would still fight for change as much as possible then sit back doing nothing.

[blackie]

The problem is that NH isn't moving towards more liberty yet. NH is still moving in the less liberty direction, the same as everywhere else.

[fatcat]

The problem is that NH isn't moving towards more liberty yet. NH is still moving in the less liberty direction, the same as everywhere else.

This knocks Dave off the top place for most sense spoken in this thread.

People need to wake the fuck up from optimistic future land, and realize the direction things are actually going.

If you don't want to leave the US, then fine, NH is a good choice, but on a global list it doesn't even make the top 5.

US fed expanding in Afghanistan, US fed expanding socialist programs, US fed printing and borrowing even more money than ever before.

So much of this shit is built on debt and currency devaluation, the momentum is so strong even if the country as a whole decided to move towards liberty, it would take years to get into a reasonable situation.

As it stands both the Fed and NH state level are getting worse in overall terms of liberty.

[jeffersonish]

fatcat, what you said was he wasn't a hero. Am I wrong? I don't think so.
That isn't contingent on a particular advance of "more freedom"
More people working for freedom is an advance. It might end up fruitless, but if you are of the mind that one must do what they can to advance liberty or wonder what might have been, then Sam is doing what he needs to do. In the process, he is inspiring others which is obvious from his recruitment success.

Looking more like a hero all the time despite your debbie downer posts.

[Evil Muppet]

Recruited ten people in the county jail.  What a feat.  Pretty soon we will have all the drunks, wife beaters and shoplifters on our side.      With an army like that we can take over the world.  Of course I'm sure they can't be any more unreliable and flaky than some of you anyways.   

[fatcat]

fatcat, what you said was he wasn't a hero. Am I wrong? I don't think so.
That isn't contingent on a particular advance of "more freedom"
More people working for freedom is an advance. It might end up fruitless, but if you are of the mind that one must do what they can to advance liberty or wonder what might have been, then Sam is doing what he needs to do. In the process, he is inspiring others which is obvious from his recruitment success.

Looking more like a hero all the time despite your debbie downer posts.

If you read what I typed way back when, I clearly said that I don't class someone as a hero just for engaging in personal sacrifice.

There are guys who cut their own balls off, are they heroes because of what they're doing? What if they cut their balls off for freedom? Are they heroes then?

No.

Obviously it matters whether you achieve what it is you're trying to do, not just how much you sacrifice to do it.

He's certainly brave and dedicated in being willing to go to prison for his beliefs, but I think he's also misguided, and probably irrational if he's chosen to waste his time in such an unproductive manner when there is little evidence to suggest it will make a tangible difference, and much evidence to suggest that it will achieve nothing but wasted effort.

If a guy who jumps off a building thinking he can fly, I think it actually matters whether they achieve what they attempt. On one hand you have an extremely impressive act, on on the other hand you have a sorely misguided waste of life.

What Sam's doing might be admirable for his dedication, but not for what he's actually achieving.

I do not believe recruiting more people to waste their time for an unachievable goal is worthy of hero worship.

[jeffersonish]

fatcat, what you said was he wasn't a hero. Am I wrong? I don't think so.
That isn't contingent on a particular advance of "more freedom"
More people working for freedom is an advance. It might end up fruitless, but if you are of the mind that one must do what they can to advance liberty or wonder what might have been, then Sam is doing what he needs to do. In the process, he is inspiring others which is obvious from his recruitment success.

Looking more like a hero all the time despite your debbie downer posts.

If you read what I typed way back when, I clearly said that I don't class someone as a hero just for engaging in personal sacrifice.

There are guys who cut their own balls off, are they heroes because of what they're doing? What if they cut their balls off for freedom? Are they heroes then?

No.

Obviously it matters whether you achieve what it is you're trying to do, not just how much you sacrifice to do it.

He's certainly brave and dedicated in being willing to go to prison for his beliefs, but I think he's also misguided, and probably irrational if he's chosen to waste his time in such an unproductive manner when there is little evidence to suggest it will make a tangible difference, and much evidence to suggest that it will achieve nothing but wasted effort.

If a guy who jumps off a building thinking he can fly, I think it actually matters whether they achieve what they attempt. On one hand you have an extremely impressive act, on on the other hand you have a sorely misguided waste of life.

What Sam's doing might be admirable for his dedication, but not for what he's actually achieving.

I do not believe recruiting more people to waste their time for an unachievable goal is worthy of hero worship.

No, cutting his balls off would be pointless. I wouldn't even have a positive purpose. I think the difference is simply our definitions... I think someone who attempts to save the girl from the bully at his own peril and gets both of them beat up instead is still a hero. You don't. I think we can leave it there.

[fatcat]

No, cutting his balls off would be pointless.

And I think what Sam is doing now is pointless.

I think someone who attempts to save the girl from the bully at his own peril and gets both of them beat up instead is still a hero. You don't.

How is cutting your balls off in protest any different from setting yourself on fire in protest, or going to jail in protest. Shit, people set themselves on fire for plenty of causes, so why deny the hero label to someone who thinks self-castration will get support for liberty?

Also the saving a girl from a bully analogy is a dud one.

Sam isn't doing anything to directly personally benefit anyone else. He's putting faith in an unproven methodology with the hope of it increasing freedoms somewhere down the line.There have been hundreds of other people like Sam in America. The vast majority achieve little to nothing.

Sam is in no means remarkable in the level of sacrifice or the amount of media coverage he has recieved.

There is no reason to think he will change anything more than any of the others, or the hundreds of people who have been murdered by police, or the dozens who have been murdered and it being capture on film, or the hundreds who were abusively tazed, arrested, strip searched etc etc.

[Riddler]

I think someone who attempts to save the girl from the bully at his own peril and gets both of them beat up instead is still a hero. You don't. I think we can leave it there.

bad analogy POLICE have been alerted:
the bully can & will get beaten and/or stopped.
noble cause EVERYONE will get behind.
some jackass protesting his right to film a courtroom lobby?
BIG FUCKING YAWN
i couldn't give a shit less (as most sane people) the ''right'' for a person to videotape a court lobby.
COURTROOM?
dif. story.