December 27, 2018
December 31st — last chance for 2018 deduction
A libertarian America seems distant. Signs point the opposite way. Statist candidates keep winning. Statist laws proliferate. What kind of idiot thinks a libertarian America is even possible, let alone about to dawn in 2019? Well…
Jim Babka and I are those idiots.
Jim Babka
Perry Willis
Jim and I have written a document called The Plan: How to create a libertarian America in as a little as ten years using resources that already exist.
That title probably strikes you as another bit of insanity. What resources could we possibly be talking about that…
- Already exist?
- Are sufficient to create a libertarian America in as little as ten years?
Well, we’re talking about 12 studies that establish the following startling facts…
- 30 million Americans already self-identify as libertarians.
- Another 30 million hold mostly libertarians positions on the issues.
Those numbers mean…
- There are roughly as many libertarians as there are left-statists and right-statists.
- There are enough potential libertarian activists and donors to equalize with the Left and Right.
But there are a few problems…
- People on the Left and Right are active, while the libertarians are mostly dormant.
- We don’t know who all the libertarians are, or where they are.
We’ll start solving both problems in 2019. We will begin…
- Locating the 30-60 million (for those who already self-identify as libertarian this may be as simple as asking people, “Are you a libertarian?”)
- Activating them to do libertarian work
The Plan describes how that will be done, and what the people we activate will do to create a libertarian America in the next ten years. You’ll begin seeing The Plan after New Year’s day. 
But you may wonder… Are the 30-60 million libertarians the same kind of libertarian you are? No. We think they break down into three broad categories…
Small government libertarians are people who take the libertarian position on enough issues to land in the libertarian sector of a Nolan Chart quiz (like our Political Conscience Test). Rand Paul and Gary Johnson are examples. There are tens of millions of small government libertarians. 
Limited-state libertarians think The State and tax-funding should be limited to police, courts, and national defense. We think there are millions of these people.
Voluntaryists believe all governmental functions can be better provided without a State or taxation. This type probably numbers in the tens of thousands.
So the question is…
How do we make the 30-60 million libertarians be more like YOU!
I started arguing for the following strategic principle all the way back in the 80s…
Discovery before persuasion.
Notice the words carefully. It does NOT say discovery instead of persuasion. It says discovery before persuasion. In other words…
- Focus first on discovering people who already agree with you.
- Try to persuade people who disagree only after you’ve run out of discovery opportunities.
That’s what Jim and I are proposing to do. First, we’ll find out who and where all the libertarians are (the discovery phase), and then we’ll start trying to persuade them to do two things…
- Become active
- Move in a voluntaryist direction
This is where the Zero Aggression Project comes in. The ZAP part of our operation will both discover libertarians, but also work to move them in a voluntaryist direction, by teaching them about the Zero Aggression Principle. And…
We’ve developed some powerful new tools to achieve this purpose!
You’ll see a new Zero Aggression Project website in January! It will…
- Have a new look plus new and improved navigation
- Be optimized for small screens
- Offer powerful new tools
We hope to have your continued participation and increased support in the year ahead. Can you get 2019 off to a great start by making a year-end contribution, or starting or increasing a monthly pledge? Your donations are tax deductible, and midnight December 31st is your last chance to get such a deduction for 2018. We’ll use your money to…
- Locate the 30-60 million libertarians.
- Activate some of them to do libertarian work.
- Move them in a voluntaryist direction by teaching them about the Zero Aggression Principle.
Please make your year-end donation or monthly pledge.
ZAP The State and have a nice day,
Perry Willis
Co-creator, Zero Aggression Project
Perry,
SIGN ME UP! I am a Libertarian node in the 6 degree law. I was the 2012 Ron Paul for president chair in my then home town of Ramona, Ca. Still in touch with most of them as well as some of Idaho Libs. I will pass this on to them and my republican friends. I just told them all about the Convention of the States if the Clinton Foundation, C!A and FBI provocateurs are not incarcerated. Its now or never. At least I can look myself in the mirror and say at least I tried if we lose the Republic.
Tom.
Author
Are you a subscriber to the Zero Aggression Project mailing list? If not, that would be a good place to start in terms of participating in and following this work. Check out our sister organization too, Downsize DC. Follow both on Facebook. Lot’s more details on The Plan are coming after the New Year.
I’m energized by the lack of academics in the millennials. They are so ignorant as to be virtually “blank slates”. The public indoctrination system (public schools) has produced an illiterate generation, confused and barely politically conscious. They inarticulately repeat slogans of little substance. They want quick, easy solutions, preferably delivered by authorities, but not if it inconveniences them.
Does this make them “teachable”? Given the choice of self-governance or sacrifice to authoritarianism, what will they choose? Will they chose self-responsibility or self-denial? Will they be sovereign or serve sovereigns?
More literate Germans and Italians in the ’30s chose to worship authority, to subjugate themselves, to believe in superstition and personality over reason and reality. They deluded themselves. They sacrificed their minds, their conscience, their individuality and physically attacked all who did not. Like zombies, they blindly destroyed others and themselves, following orders. Will it happen here, in the US Empire, in the police state? Is it already too late? Or can we wake up the political zombies so they may free themselves?
The “political zombies” of 1920s Europe developed in a social context, of which the writer seems unaware. Let me clarify it.
Europe had recently bankrupted itself fighting a war over unpaid government debt, that was the biggest war in history. Survivors were left poorer than before. A devastating influenza pandemic had killed millions of folks who lived through the war. Harvard-linked American intellectuals were backing an ideology called Eugenics, which held that there were insuficientlly-evolved humans holding the rest of Humanity back, and those insufficiently-evolved folks had to be blocked from reproducing, in order to prevent a recurrence of the 1918 Pandemic. Nazi Germany imported US-trained lawyers to translate Eugenics-linked laws into German, creating the Nuremberg Laws within 1 year of taking power. The fear that hidden genetic defects caused diseases to emerge, that spread to healthy people, led millions to believe that it was necessary for the State to control marriages and child-bearing, so that “experts” could root out these genetic threats to the public heath. This statism scam became powerful, precisely because it lacked any basis in fact. Belief that “experts” could prevent another pandemic, drove the centralization of power. The “experts” were never asked to prove any of their theories correct, before the power was handed over to them.
We now know that the Eugenics theories were totally false. Genetic evolution in humans had long ago been replaced by Cultural Evolution. Ideas spread by persuasion, represented most of the human behaviors since before written histories began to be written. A genetic change requires lifetimes to spread. A cultural change can assimilate and spread an idea, as rapidly as people can discuss the idea. It was the genetic diversity of the human population that led to a proliferation of ideas, as people began specializing in whatever interested them. But none of this rational thinking could stop a slickly-packaged lie from “zombifying” frightened people into surrendering first their liberties and then their lives, by the millions, in what eventually became the Second World War.
The “political zombies” of 1920s Europe developed in a social context, of which the writer seems unaware. Let me clarify it.
Europe had recently bankrupted itself fighting a war over unpaid government debt, that was the biggest war in history. Survivors were left poorer than before. A devastating influenza pandemic had killed millions of folks who lived through the war. Harvard-linked American intellectuals were backing an ideology called Eugenics, which held that there were insuficientlly-evolved humans holding the rest of Humanity back, and those insufficiently-evolved folks had to be blocked from reproducing, in order to prevent a recurrence of the 1918 Pandemic. Nazi Germany imported US-trained lawyers to translate Eugenics-linked laws US laws (that underwent about 40 years of court challenges here) into German, creating the Nuremberg Laws within 1 year of taking power. The fear that hidden genetic defects caused diseases to emerge, that spread to healthy people, led millions to believe that it was necessary for the State to control marriages and child-bearing, so that “experts” could root out these genetic threats to the public heath. This statism scam became powerful, precisely because it lacked any basis in fact. Belief that “experts” could prevent another pandemic, drove the centralization of power. The “experts” were never asked to prove any of their theories correct, before the power was handed over to them.
We now know that the Eugenics theories were totally false. Genetic evolution in humans had long ago been replaced by Cultural Evolution. Ideas spread by persuasion, represented most of the human behaviors since before written histories began to be written. A genetic change requires lifetimes to spread. A cultural change can assimilate and spread an idea, as rapidly as people can discuss the idea. It was the genetic diversity of the human population that led to a proliferation of ideas, as people began specializing in whatever interested them. But none of this rational thinking could stop a slickly-packaged lie from “zombifying” frightened people into surrendering first their liberties and then their lives, by the millions, in what eventually became the Second World War.
This cultlike belief that “experts”, people who had created airplanes, electric power, radios, cinemas, and microscopes, were somehow entitled to rule the rest of us, rather than teach their ideas to the rest of us, drove the entire zombification process. Authoritarians may prove easier to persuade of the benefits of Liberty, once Libertarians start providing more of it.
Bob: “Authoritarians may prove easier to persuade of the benefits of liberty, once Ls start providing more of it.”?? Statists are not going to be moved by reason or reality to be non-authoritarian. No matter how badly their violence fails, 10s of millions dead and 100% failure rate, they won’t learn, saying “Next time” or “It wasn’t done right”.
American of the 1800s provided more liberty than any nation ever before and more prosperity. By your claim, this should have converted the statists “en masse”. Instead, they invented the Prussian indoctrination method (get’em young), aka, public ed.
“Cultlike beliefs” are no threat in a free country, a non-state, a society that rejects authoritarianism. Why? Enlightened people can’t be fooled by lies or “bad ideas”. Rational thinking will always triumph over emotional arguments in a non-superstitious society.
I’m afraid I’m not as erudite as previous writers. My needs are simple: less government and control, more freedom of choice, more fiscal responsibility by our so-called representatives. Not so simple to achieve. I talk to a few people in my small community, but most either aren’t interested or cling to their ingrained beliefs. We’ll keep on keeping on!
There are some big battles I *would* love to see won first: An end to funding for any action that is morally objectionable to a plurality of taxpayers – My first two nominations would be abortion providers and aid to dependent dictators, but unjust wars would be likely included very shortly to this list, as well. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/25/majority-oppose-taxpayer-funding-abortion-despite-/
These are great ideas. I am totally on board with this plan.
This is the most enlightened comments section I have ever read.