Whether you’re talking to the pro-choicer, the pothead, or the gun enthusiast, all of these people want the government to stay out of their pet issue.  Pro-choicers don’t want an abortion to be a two week process any more than the pothead wants buying an ounce of weed to be a two week process or the gun enthusiast wants buying a gun to be a two week process.  Virtually everyone has a libertarian viewpoint on at least one issue.  Screaming “STATIST” at them and treating them like crap for supporting entitlement programs, the never ending list of wars my country has begun, or wanting to put up a US-MX border fence is not going to win them over, even incrementally.

Wherein I agree and add my own perspectives to George Donnelly’s “Statists are not the Enemy.” I’ve seen a ton of unnecessary libertarian wankery directed at him re: the post and the thing is that he’s right. Attacking statists (instead of attacking statISM) is ridiculous and ain’t gettin’ us anywhere. Not only does it turn people off, but it becomes too easy to make the jump from “this system sucks” to “these people suck.”

No, they don’t suck, they just have opinions that are different from ours. There’s a lot of common ground to be discovered between statists and anarchists. I’ve seen Facebook articles linked by some of my biggest bleeding heart commie Facebook friends AND some of my most hard-L libertarian Facebook friends.

Funny thing is this: they often make the same damn commentaries on the pieces. If liberals and libertarians are coming together without even knowing, think of how strong of an alliance could be built if we actually TRIED TO BUILD ONE WITH THEM.

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