Freedomain Radio

Stef has made very convincing arguments for why political action will fail to get results for us. However, I think i may have found an exception to the rule. After reading "The Fountainhead" (A real must-read book), I realised that instead of voting for politicians who shrink government, there could be a new type of politician - one that we haven't seen before. What if a man like Elsworth Toohey was elected to office? Imagine this: a president gets into power and openly grants massive amounts of power and money to all special interest groups at a rate that keeps them very happy. This president does everything that he needs to stay in power as far as the argument from effect is concerned. In practice, he complies with the ideal statism politician. However, here is the twist - the president intentionally removes the veil of legitimacy of the state. He openly admits that the state is evil (and him with it), and erodes the moral justifications for the state.

This is a man who fully accepts the arguments from freedom, but chooses the opposite because he is a nihilist. This is the old trick of "Dress in your enemy's clothes and say bad things in their name". Ideally, he should act like a magnet for all of the intellectual parasites in society, and only once he has them on his side should he begin this new honesty.

Every week, he delivers a friendly and charming address to the people outlining his most recent statist activities. He will then calmly tell people the economic, moral and practical issues that will result from his statist activities. Finally, he will tie it all together with nihilism to suggest that people deserve these consequences, but in an insultingly light and almost joking kind of way. It will be good if he can illustrate these points by showing lots of hidden camera footage of back-room deals between his politicians and the education union or some corrupt business, and then still ensure that their deal goes through. Then, he can laugh lightly and suggest that it is hopeless to expect to change anything. He will ask, "Why am I telling you this? Well, I believe that society has matured. Ideas like freedom and morality are now thankfully becoming outdated. The new man of society understands that we..." and so on. If there were a pleasant and charismatic socialist president revealing some of the darkest evils of that ideology, and then saying "so what? You don't believe in morality anyway," then that could be completely and perfectly erase the government's moral legitimacy.

So... who's with me? Elsworth Toohey for President?

Would the pain and suffering that such policies would lead to alleive the guilt associated with encouraging the man who enacted them, no matter what the outcome?  In short, does the end justify the means?

If you are concerned about such pain and suffering, President Toohey would just be doing what his competitors would do. He wouldn't introduce new kinds of tyranny, only increase funding for special interest projects that have the same amount of pain and suffering. We all know what the inevitable effects of current state expansion will be - this will just accelerate the process, but in a way that forever shatters the veil of legitimacy of the state.

 I think he would just be denounced as evil by the other politicians and they would use the opportunity to once again moralize and say that we need a state to protect us from such evil people.

Ciscokid has a good point.... plus, what would a man have to do to get into a position where he could even be considered running for President.  What sort of promises would he have to make to what kind of people?  What kind of pain and suffering would he have to cause on the road to the presidency, as a local politician, congressman, senator, etc.?  I mean, I wonder what Obama's record is for policies he's began, supported, or rallied for.  How much destruction that's ignored by mainstream economists has he caused in his meteoric rise to the probably presidency?  How many times has he been bought by SOME special interest who wants to use the power of the gun to save the world?

I think you can't force people to see the truth.  No matter how bad things get, the state will always have an answer and people will believe it.  The only way to break the cycle is through the spreading of knowledge.

For it to work, Toohey would have to use the actions of other politicians as the basis for many of his arguments. He would have to illustrate his  point by showing secret camera meetings of corrupt politicians etc. He would plant 'enemies', politicians who publicly disagree with him and denounce him as evil. Then, he will have these politicians say foolish things in private and get themselves caught on camera. He will have what seem to be noble idealistic reformers laughing at the foolishness of the electorate while log-rolling or singing deals with shifty businessmen. When even the 'good' politicians are seen to be evil and corrupt, anyone who ever questions Toohey's goodness will be lumped in with all of the reformers who came before. You want people from all parties caught out. You want CNN to leak a back room conversation where the press secretary is coaching several Fox News people on how to pitch stories.

You want a president who hints that power is evil, but that it is practical. And you want society parroting that line with him, until they finally see him delivering a speech that openly admits his nature.

Think about it this way: if Ron Paul is bad because he legitimises the state, then his opposite must be better because he delegitimises the state. And, the politicians who are somewhere in between are just people who make things worse while covering it up or blaming others, which doesn't really help our cause at all. At the very least, we want the state to be correctly identified as the source for so many social problems and corruption.

I think a more disruptive president would be a president who suddenly pulls a completely new and blatantly absurd ideology out of his ass, and tries to make it the new official statist doctrine.  That kind of president would be to statism what the Flying Spaghetti Monster is to religion.  His propaganda would clash with the old propaganda and anger the rest of the political class, and the contest between the two ideologies would reveal the absurdities of both.

I like your thinking. What sort of ideology did you have in mind?

How do you avoid people saying "nonsense, we must go back to how it was under Clinton. That worked well..."?

I like your thinking, but wouldn't it be much easier to start by taking over the government of some small town and pass all kinds of draconian laws? The aim could be to grab national headlines. Something similar to:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90149577

http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?ID=413006&r=0&Category=9&subCategoryID=0

They are already pulling out the potentially potent 'bazookas' in broad daylight.

http://www.denverpost.com/economy/ci_9892265

Some lawmakers expressed doubts Tuesday about the wisdom of the federal government's plan to prop up mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with one Republican senator complaining it was tantamount to writing a "blank check" to save the troubled companies.

Paulson defended the plan as a "bazooka" that federal officials could hold in reserve but would probably not have to use because it was so potentially potent. Its mere existence, he testified, should give confidence to the financial markets that the government was standing behind the firms.

Anything, as long as it's absurd yet comparably plausible to the current dogma.  For example, he could blame the countless failures of government on a secret conspiracy among the lower-level bureaucrats to screw stuff up.  He could make people vote collectively on what kind of food to eat for breakfast.  He could claim that politicians are a master race, immune to the vices of human nature that make the average man prone to murder and violence in the absence of the politicians' guidance.  He could claim to have magical road-building powers.

lol ok i see where you're going. My preference for Ellsworth is that he obviously evil rather than crazy. By identifying himself as "Evil" and then continuing 'business as usual', he would be linking the status quo with evil. The worst fate any intellectual/politician/public figure could experience is for President Ellsworth to endorse their policy with a sly sadistic smile. Basically, this is just reverse psychology so that people choose Ellsworth's opposite. I just love the idea of him initially appearing normally populist/statist, gathering all of the evil and corrupt intellectuals and politicians around him, and then taking the whole bunch down with him when the public figures out that he is advocating their policies in the name of evil. Imagine the impression he would leave on the young people by mandating a new series of textbooks and curriculum for the entire public school and college education systems. He could teach people:

"These are the principles that run society. Yes, they are evil, but you can't win against us so just accept it. The Austrian economists are correct in predicting that (X) will occur if we do (y). Since our goal is to increase government power and control, the obvious solution is to intervene more."

In order to be more effective, his message needs to be contrasted by a pure antithesis - a good side in the battle against his evil. The good side will appear as "Anti-Ellsworth" textbooks and messages slip into the curriculum, based on pure free market principles. We need to create a new dichotomy between good and evil, between freedom and tyranny, with both sides of the cause being honest. This education push would have to be combined with massive bribes to the education unions.

The final piece of the puzzle is a hero to match the villain Ellsworth, someone for all of the anti-Ellsworth people to get behind and identify with. Not a politician. Most likely a businessman, a humanitarian of some kind, a celebrity, someone who just oozes goodness and is unfairly targeted by President Ellsworth. Remember this: in a world where the news is fairly dull and boring, an exciting and dramatic story with heroes and villains is exactly what will captivate people's imaginations. This entire exercise is nothing more than a high end public relations stunt.

If this was a movie I'd watch it. It would be like the anarchist version of Stephen Colbert on steroids. Someone write the screenplay.