I love the idea of @AdamKokesh to abolish the federal government. Since people have much less control of that level of government it involves much more abuse of power and is much more hated. So it's our best chance to seriously reduce the size of government. While we can tell statists that everything they want from government can still be done by the states. So the barrier of entry towards voting for Adam will be much lower than voting for a totally voluntary society. And I think we should try everything to bail water out of the boat to buy time before it sinks. Partly because when government fails there's no reason to assume a voluntary society will follow.
But we should never let our goals, no matter how good, allow us to betray our principles. That is corruption! And how dictatorships start, when the means are justified by the ends. And I'm afraid Adam Kokesh has already been corrupted by his own campaign. Much of this can be found in his debate with Larken Rose:
The plan is primarily about giving him power, he will become the curator of government property.
I see serious problems with his plan to abolish government:
- Much of the government is like having baked a cake, you cannot get the original ingredients back afterward. So trying to disentangle the mess looks like a massive risk to me, what if you can't? It's going to be very tempting to say, "it turns out to be more complicated than I thought, so I'm going to need some extra time.". Especially when the CIA is telling you how they'll make your murder look like an accident and replace you with some statist.
- Giving yourself that kind of time and power gives your enemies all the time in the world to whip up fear and try to influence you.
- Government is creating misery every day, whatever suffering you cause by abolishing it 'too quickly' will be less than the misery created by letting it fester.
- Where possible (like the military) parts of the federal government should be returned to the states. But this needs to be determined beforehand. Not after you've gained personal control of these resources.
- The whole plan has to be completed instantly, with a single executive action, I see two ways of doing that:
a. Give all employees a share in the organisations they work(ed) for (share = (monthsWorked - monthsSinceLeave) / totalEmployeeMonths) as a replacement for their pension. Which they where expecting to get. The debt will be divided over the states. If they do useful work they can keep doing it and their share will be worth something. If it's worth nothing they should be happy we don't punish them for being parasites.
b. Sell off all federal property in auctions, use the money to pay off the debt. Government employee's won't like it, sucks for them. Remaining debt or funds will be divided over the states.
- Adam throws out so much empty political rhetoric:
- "I'm being attacked", when he's criticized. This looks like Adam is trying to control other people's behavior.
- "We should unify", unity is an illusion, often created by the repetition of rituals. Again it looks like an attempt to get people who disagree to just shut up.
- "If you're an anarchist or voluntarist, I think those terms are synonymous", they're really, really not. Anarchism is the outcome we want, voluntarism is the principle. Communists and others are anarchists as well, they want a different (impossible) road to get there. Why would we associate with these people?
- "We need to clean up the mess that happens when people withdraw their support for government", what mess? The mess is continuously being created by government. Stopping that free's everyone to start healing society, solving problems and cleaning up messes. Why would we centrally control this process?
- "End the anarchist/minarchist debate once and for all, cannot happen, people will always disagree on things. Some still believe in Zeus or flat earth.
- "Okay can you do that voluntarily, at the community level", the state level is not voluntary. I thought the whole benefit of this plan was that people could keep their illusions of government violence by holding on to the state level.
- "Get the idea of voluntarism out front", that's the whole point of Larkens criticism, this campaign doesn't promote the values of voluntarism. It's just about knocking the top off government evil. Adam fails to respond to this argument entirely.
- He compares his plan to the revolution, but that was based on people picking up guns and fighting the authority. Very different from using the political system of the ruling class.
- "Lets work together for the cause of freedom", opposite to the meaning of his words, which is: "do what I want". You work together with people on issue's you agree with. When you don't agree enough people should do their own thing.
- "You're misrepresenting", no he's presenting his view of reality.
- "No politician is going to stand in our way", governments murder millions of people every year to keep their power. They've shown with Trump that the political process means nothing to them, they just use it as a way to justify their power. The US has stopped being a union since the southern states' constitutional cession from the union was met with mass murder. Of course they will stand in our way.
- "We have to get our hands dirty, so much money has been shuffled around, we have to correct that", this smells like giving up principles to achieve goals, which is corruption. Just be honest that the end result won't be in line with your principles, but at least closer.
- "I think there's a false divide between principle and pragmatic", again ignoring the criticism, Larken is arguing that your plan cannot work, it is very much a practical argument. Many people in government have the best of intentions. One of the reasons they produce results opposite to what they want is that they use the wrong means. The means do matter, the ends don't justify any means.
- "The Grand Canyon should be public property", how selfish of you to use government for that. If people really want that they'll support a funding campaign to buy it and maintain it as a park. Why should your opinion be so important?
- "The idea that voting legitimizes government is insane", from a purely rational standpoint that may be true, but we should consider what it looks like for statists
I've known Adam as someone always open for discussions and he's been doing a lot of debates. That's very good. But from the empty political rhetoric I conclude he's already been corrupted.