Politics is a Barnacle on our Ship of Progress

After I made some anti-political statement on e-mail, I got a reply from a friend. He said, "Doogie for President, Congress and Senate!" 
I answered: 

Thanks, but no thanks. The best we can do is ignore politics and spend our energy working, studying, and playing with our close family & friends. That's what matters. That's what is the answer.
People always ask, "okay, I agree government is evil and we need to get back to the free market, but HOW?" The answer is, "it's a multi-generational project". We have to build a better tomorrow through our children.

Once a majority (or even a decent-sized minority) of humankind recognizes a mistake, whether moral or practical, it does not and can not go back.
No one will ever again believe that the world is flat (I'm speaking of sane people and the Western world that came out of the Enlightenment).
No one will ever again be able to say "it is proper that a wife obeys every command of her husband, and he should beat her if she disobeys".
No one will ever again treat children as property to be disposed of.
 No craftsman will ever again think that it's smart to beat their apprentice about the ears for getting something wrong.

We're only a couple hundred years into these kinds of ideas. The Enlightenment was horribly crushed by the World Wars. We are just now beginning to see the light again. Barely.

No teacher will ever again try to beat or "spank" knowledge into a kid. The reward / punishment model of child-rearing and education may work okay for training dogs, but we need a "love and intelligence" model for dealing with children. We're barely getting started on that idea.

No one will ever again proclaim that human beings can be bought and sold as property, like cattle. We're still working on that as well; we may not have chattel slavery any more, but taxpayers are "50% slave" because our labor and property gets syphoned off to the warfare / welfare redistributionist state. 

These things might still happen, but no one will do it openly. No one will argue for the legitimacy of these wrong-headed ideas.

Once humankind has a "big realization" and starts to discuss it and write books about it, you can figure another couple centuries before the idea spreads throughout the population. So, Laissez Faire ideas (pro-property and anti-coercion) started in 18th century Europe, and Divine Right of Kings was soon thrown in the dustbin of history. But the idea is moving forward in fits and starts. 3 steps forward, 2 steps backward - because so many people are benefitting from the idea of "we need a powerful authoritarian central hierarchy to protect us from thugs on the street and greedy bastards in business". So, we create the world's biggest mafia to protect us from the mafia.

This new idea of a society shaped not by central planners, but by free individuals trading ideas, products, and services has caught fire in some intellectual circles (see here), and is very slowly moving into the general population. (Check out this free mp3 book, "The Market For Liberty" written by a husband & wife team. Very cool.) It will be another two or three generations before the idea will take hold, and then people will look back at our governments and just shake their heads and say, "how could anyone have believed such things, couldn't they see how obviously wrong-headed this idea was"?

So, we progress very very slowly. It's not inevitable (as Marx theorized), but a few good people can move the ball forward. We have to stop sending our kids to the state schools. That's one primary step. Teach our children well. Not with carrots and sticks. We need to learn how to recognize coercion everywhere. And point it out. Even within ourself. Government is a faulty, fake, lying relationship. And we need to get all of that type of fakeness out of our everyday relationships.
We need to stop using aggression, dominance, threats, and other coercion in our own lives, especially when it comes to children. The only reason people think government is "normal life" is that they grow up immersed in a sea of coercion and dominance.

Once the world brings forth a generation where most kids are raised with love and intelligence, these kids will grow into adults who do not recognize any dominant social structures like states or gangs. They will trade ideas, goods, and services in a free and non-violent marketplace. Society's "leaders" will be those who have earned respect by being the best and the brightest. We will vote for these "leaders" by purchasing their ideas, products, and services. These leaders of art, industry, and science will write books and give lectures to spread their ideas and opinions, not club people over the head and put them in prison.

Humankind won't be perfect. The world won't be a utopia. But we will be finished with "opinions at the point of the gun". And we will never look back.

Thanks for listening,
Rick Doogie

"The place to improve the world is in one's own heart and head and hands." Robert M. Pirsig
 The Story of Your Enslavement - YouTube