I recently stumbled across a great article by Stefan Molyneux entitled, “The Gun in the Room“, over at LewRockwell.com. I highly suggest reading the whole thing. The first paragraph is as follows:

One of the most difficult – and essential – challenges faced by libertarians is the constant need to point out “the gun in the room.” In political debates, it can be very hard to cut through the endless windy abstractions that are used to cover up the basic fact that the government uses guns to force people to do what they do not want to do, or prevent them from doing what they do want to do. Listening to non-libertarians, I often wish I had a “euphemism umbrella” to ward off the continual oily drizzle of words and phrases designed to obscure the simple reality of state violence. We hear nonstop nonsense about the “social good,” the “redistribution of income,” the “education of children” and so on – endless attempts to bury the naked barrel of the state in a mountain of syrupy metaphors.

The article then goes on to explain how every political debate can be boiled down to pointing out the gun in the room. If someone supports taxes, point out the gun in the room. If someone supports the war on drugs, point out the gun in the room. The list goes on. Molyneux uses the public school system as a good example. The debate is not about whether or not public schools are a good thing, but rather, whether or not I am allowed to disagree with the idea of a public school system without the fear of being shot. This is not the case. If I do not believe that publicly funded schools should exist and, in turn, do not pay my property taxes I will be shot. Sure, that outcome may not be immediate, but it will happen when the government tries to take my house and I am prepared to defend it. So the next time you are in a political debate with someone who hates liberty, simply point out the gun in the room and urge them to take out all the bullets. Then, you might be able to get somewhere with them.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 3:13 am and is filed under Big Brother, Freedom, Liberty, Police State, The Gun in the Room. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.