I stumbled on FTL about a month ago, and in that time i've managed to listen to almost all of the shows from July '08 and July '09. I like a LOT of what Mark and Ian have to say, it's really a perspective that i didn't know was out there. Previous to listening to the show my feeling on government was...fuck 'em. My feeling was, i can live my life mostly free and i can't do shit to change the government anyway, so why worry about politics, or striving to be 'fully free' for that matter. I never thought of 'changing the system from outside the system'. I'm a very hard sell and take my time to digest anything someone tells me, even if it seems cut and dried. I wasn't quite ready to move to NH just yet, but i was listening to upwards of (3) two-hour shows per day (...why do they say 'heading into the second hour 40 minutes into the show, and say that it's a 3-hour show when each show is 2hours and 1 minute?)
I think the capstone of their whole viewpoint is the "government will come and take your house or come and arrest you if you don't pay your property taxes, therefore you don't own your property, therefore you are not free" type argument. I think this is airtight, and as simple as it is, it is a very provocative argument that can really stimulate thought and conversation. It's amazing how something so obvious could have such a potential effect on the masses.
Ian has said many times that government simply would not have the ability to deal with 5% non-cooperation, and i really like the imagery that this calls up in my mind. Keene central booking overloaded with people of all ages brought in for petty crimes...not enough handcuffs to go around...a handful of Barney Fife types looking through a manual of police protocol for direction, eventually throwing their hands up and after pursuing all other avenues, giving in to logic and reason.
It's unfortunate though that this can never become a reality. What this movement represents is extremely important in my opinion, but Mark and Ian cannot suppress their extremist, alienating viewpoints for more than a week or two, so it's likely that anyone who is initially drawn to it will eventually drift away. You will never get 1 in 20 people will never volunteer to be a part of an organization that advocates fucking little kids and putting automatic weapons in the hands of convicted murderers. Maybe those two things are a shock to you (they shouldn't be) but they were both openly discussed on FTL last July.
Now i understand the entire scope in which these things were brought up and that i will likely be shunned as "liberty minus 1" for thinking that stating openly that fucking a 10 year old child is wrong or at the VERY LEAST highly counterproductive. I do understand that FTL =/= The Free State Project, however they are almost one in the same to someone like me (who found FTL first). The Free State Project is too important to let it be jeopardized by retarded statements like: "i'm a murderer...do you want 'them' to come in and rape and murder my family and for me to be defenseless!?!?" (to paraphrase Mark). Ya, i do Mark, you fucked up buddy, you had a part in killing a guy, that was your one bad, kay? To throw your own words at you (from a debate on whether or not to legalize meth) "YOU MADE A CHOICE, YOU DEAL WITH THE CONSEQUENCES" Sure there are murderers that could be trusted with guns (i think you actually ARE one) but why the fuck would anyone want to try to figure out which ones can be?
Now for Ian...so 10 years from now, you and Julia have a beautiful daughter, she goes out for a ride on her bike and i pull up to her and ask if she likes chocolate and tell her to get in the car and she says ok...then i court her for an afternoon and buy her all of her favorite things and tell her how she can have all of this all the time if she comes to see me once a week. Then i go out and recruit 25 johns and get little Julia Jr. to come by my house the following week. They take care not to hurt her too bad, but run a train on your daughter for the better part of 8 hours - DOUBLE (one in the ass, one in the va-jay-jay), DOUBLE ANAL, TRIPLE PENETRATION (one in the ass, one in the 'mouf, one in the va-jay-jay), ASS TO MOUTH, BUKAKKE (ritual drinking of semen), CREAMPIES - i film it all and sell it for $50 per DVD. Don't worry, it's legal in your world - she's signed up for it and there are no laws against it. According to you, this world is the only one in which people are free. No laws have been broken, just your daughter is scarred for life (but has enough cash to buy ice cream for a whole month!), and you have no legal recourse. This is a good thing, yes?
Sure, murderers can get guns, and people fuck 10 year olds anyway, and YES the fact that these things are illegal create black markets in which people are harmed. However...most reasonable people would argue that these things are INTRINSICALLY BAD. Taking one potentially negative thing away does not make for much of an improvement. Would scraping the mold off of a rotten tomato make it any more palatable??? Maybe there is a minority of people who would say that it would, but nobody would say that it could be mistaken for fresh produce.
Obviously i've become pretty passionate about many of the ideas discussed on the show (in a very short time) for me to take the time to come and post this. I do understand that you had a very long and circuitous argument leading up to the whole "adults should be able to fuck third graders" comment, but i don't believe there is any argument that can be made in favor of this. There is no way of knowing how many closet pervs would come out of the woodwork to have a crack at little Juila Jr. if it were made legal. It could be ten, twenty, fifty times the amount of people previously thought.
Now it's not just that i want to debate these things, or make my dislike of them known it's that - THE FREE STATE PROJECT IS TOO IMPORTANT TO LET YOU PONTIFICATE ON RETARDED ISSUES LIKE THESE ON AIR. You guys are shooting yourselves in the foot by talking about things like these. It's verbal masturbation, it makes YOU feel better but nobody wants to hear it. I mean really. I understand that there will always be divisive issues within groups (see: titties in Keene, 7/28/09) but these are the types of things that will turn potentially interested parties right off from the whole thing. Next time you think that say...mentally handicapped children should have the right to consent to be dissected on television for the promise of a Spongebob doll - do me a favor and give it an extra day and talk with someone else about whether or not to bring it up on air.