Greetings Steemers!
Now that I have a few posts up, made a couple dollars, and understand how things work around here, let me properly introduce myself to the community. I'm Kush Freeman, I'm not a whole lot over 30. I'm a CBD entrepreneur in the Colorado hemp market. But how did I get here?
When I was younger I was raised in a family that was primarily conservative. But party politics were not held in high regard in my parents' household. Rights were. I learned very young that voting never really mattered that its only purpose in that time was to prevent the state or the other party from taking freedoms. (Just like Spooner said) I was raised to understand the importance of liberty and what it means to defend one's family and that a firearm is the only thing that can efficiently do that against other men. I was taught that the state will always be coming for something and that one always needed to be aware of whats going on in the world because things that happen in far away places can have a dramatic effect on my life. Things have certainly changed (voting) but we are still talking about the late 80s and early 90s. When I turned 18 rather predictably I joined the Army. Like many other Americans, I woke up one morning and seen 911 and thought it was a real attack on our nation. I figured I was smart enough and strong enough to make it and I joined. So I shipped off to Ft. Lost in the Woods, MO to start my basic training. Prior to that I took an oath, an oath to the constitution. I was still a conservative at the time but the seeds of an anarchist had already been planted. I took that oath very seriously, to many others it was just this thing we had to do but to me it really meant something. But it wasn't the piece of paper that spoke to me, it was a symbol of the preservation of rights that mattered to me at that time. I later learned this was also false but I digress.
I did my basic training and AIT at Lost in the Woods as mentioned, I graduated from this training as a young 12B which is pretty much infantry with explosives. I went to Airborne school in Ft. Benning, GA and when I completed my training there I was shipped of to my duty station at Ft Carson with 3rd ACR. I was there for a short amount of time before being promptly shipped off to Iraq. We arrived in Kuwait in late march 03 and it took about another month before we actually got into country in Iraq. When we finally made it to Ar Ramadi, posted up and began running ops I was absolutely shocked. My thoughts were "This is it?" Now I wasn't sure what exactly to expect my knowledge about the middle east in general was minimal at best. I knew it was a poor country and that it was covered in desert and that it was hot as fuck. All this was true. What I did expect was a sophisticated enemy that was smart and sneaky like the VC in Nam. This was not true. I seen an enemy that had to take pop shots and throw grenades and RPGs or take a few shots with an AK before running away. Now I'm not trying to say no soldiers or marines or other servicemen or women never encountered enemies who coordinated their efforts. But I did not. I would talk with my family on the phone and they would report to me what the media was saying about stuff back home and it was all wrong as fuck. As the months went on we had finally established facilities and had access to satellite tv. I started watching the media myself whenever I could. CNN, FOX, it didn't matter all MSM spin. One night I was sitting out on guard duty watching the desert sky. I was thinking about the whole situation and none of it made sense, or at least none of what the Federal government or MSM was saying anyway. Nothing I seen matched up with what was being said. America took over Iraq, took control of all the resources. It's not a mystery that truckloads of gold were taken, the photos are floating around on the net. As time went by none of this sat well with me. I completed my tour of Iraq and then chose not to re-enlist. I didn't hold anything against the army but my main reason for not re-enlisting was simple. The army doesn't decide what the army does. The government does, and all the government does is fuck everything up. We even managed to ruin the sand in the desert.
When I finally got out of the army my belief system in everything was completely shattered. I rejected pretty much anything I was ever told about everything. I rejected religion, I rejected the edicts of government, I rejected popular opinion, I rejected anything passed down through "society" or the system. I decided everything was bullshit and that I was going to figure out everything on my own. This is when my journey to anarchism really began. I had always gotten in trouble in school for not caring what this supposed authority was or why I had to be its slave. I always hated being forced to do anything I didn't want to do, Now I don't mean this in a childish way like I don't want to eat my broccoli, I mean this in a very real way like I'm not going to rat my friends out to the cops for selling a bag of weed in the park after class because someone told a teacher. I don't want to sit in this boring ass class that's putting me to sleep when there is a beautiful day happening outside, why can't we learn something challenging out there? I started digging around on the internet as the years went by, but I now realize I chose a wise mindset. I didn't just choose to believe that anything anti-state must be true. In fact my approach was exactly this. "There are 3 sides to every story, their side, their side, and the truth." This is probably the single most important decision I've made in my life. Rather than just agreeing with one side of a story I learned to read all the points of view on a given situation and this taught me how to discern whatever truth is available there for myself. The first place I started was Iraq. Nothing anybody said about it made sense. I seen a people that couldn't even take on the local police department. But somehow I was supposed to believe that some poor people from a desert cave with box cutters organized and carried out a extremely sophisticated organized attack against the most powerful nation in known human history? I wasn't buying this bullshit. The first serious piece to my anarchy puzzle was "9/11 is an inside job!" This was back in 05, I most certainly was late to the party but that painted a far better pretext of invasion than WMD's that nobody found. Telling statists that the government lied about 9/11 at that time was perceived the same as if you walked up to somebody and unexpectedly punched them in the face. This was when I got to wear the title of a "Truther." I found it funny that people were always shitting on the truth.
This is when the evolution of ideas began. I debated my points of view on the internet and it forced me to do more and more and more research so I could back up my points of view. This is when I realized that liberals and conservatives were pretty much brainwashed. It didn't matter how much I knew or what facts and evidence I was able to present or how well I could present it, they were only willing to believe the talking points they were fed from whatever news stations they watched. Then I started watching news stations and tailored my arguments around specifically destroying MSM narratives. This was rather entertaining for a while. But one day my father called me and told me to check out this website and give it a listen. That website was infowars. I started listning to Alex Jones. Much of what he said sounded really out there to me but at the same time it made a lot of sense. But I didn't just take Alex on his word either. I researched everything he talked about. I learned about operation paperclip, operation northwoods, mk ultra, rex 84, and much much more. I read very concerning government documents that were real and signed by senators or members of congress. This painted a very different picture about what the state was doing behind the scenes. I watched all the AJ dox and researched them as well. I started networking with We Are Change, I even managed to get into contact with Luke and I talk to him on my personal account from time to time on social media. This lead me to the Ron Paul movement. I started watching RP vids and began listening to what he was saying. I learned the value of the knowledge of not just economics but the correct school of economic thought that ran counter to mainstream keynesianism. This lead me to the most important people that I've ever met. Grassroots libertarians and anarchists.
I was totally a 2012 Paulbot. I was happy to be part of what was going on but by this time I knew too much about the system. I knew about Clinton hits, I knew the power of forces unseen, I knew about rigged elections, I knew the function of the electoral college, I knew the power of the influence of the mainstream parties, I knew about the power of MSM, I knew RP was the last good chance America had to save itself. As I watched the debates I figured RP was going to be dismissed and derided as crazy and then be misrepresented by the media. I was right. I figured there would be delegate fuckery. I was right. And just like that I watched influence move RP out of the chances to win the election and the day that Ron's run was over was the day that America died. I realized that a new course was chosen for us and it wasn't one of hope and change and freedom. I was right about that too. This is the day I said fuck the system. Fuck the system right up its stupid ass. The system isn't broken, its working just fine. This destroyed any remaining hope that the system could be used by the people for the people. This put me on the path from libertarianism to anarchism. Then big money started being legalized in politics. We quickly became a fascist nation openly, although I won't be foolish enough to say that corporatism started in this decade. Now I started looking to people in the movement in my feeds who preached liberty and had a really good handle on what they were talking about. This eventually lead me to anarchist content. That content lead me to philosophy books which I started reading, Spooner, Hayek, Ludwig Von Mises, Hazlitt, Hoppe, and more.
After some philosophical background, I was able to make much more sense of what I seen in Iraq. It was after I read these books that I realized I witnessed something beautiful in Iraq outside the bubble of american influence. I witnessed spontaneous order. I witnessed true capitalism. I never understood why the markets were bustling so hard when I was there. It was my favorite place to roll through on patrol. I never understood why people where able to always be building something so quickly there. How could that happen with everyone being so poor? But when I had the understanding that there was no state present there to get in the way of the citizens engaging in commerce, that realization hit me like a brick wall. As soldiers we weren't there to hold guns to people's heads and tell them to behave, quite the contrary. We didn't give a fuck about anything the iraqis did that didn't pertain to our mission. We weren't looking for drugs, we weren't there to be police to engage in domestic affairs. There was no state. The Iraqis were literally told one day "The government is gone, the Americans are here." I never had to go through the minarchist phase because I had this experience. This is how I made the differentiation between the sub-ideologies of anarchism. Other people wish to live in other types of societies and I take no issue with that, so long as it doesn't force me into a society I want no part of. America could learn much from the iraqis. Although much chaos was happening in their country as a result of invasion and occupation, the largest statist arguments I've seen are just false. But I have more than a philosophical opinion about why they are false. I was able to witness with my very own eyes that these advocations for statism because popular statist rebuttal are just flat out wrong.
So now today, I'm a proud Anarcho-Capitalist. I'm still reading philosophy, I'm still engaging people on social media, I write articles for Liberty Hangout, I host my own Podcast on my own website and on Liberty Hangout as well, I write articles here on Steemit, I'm a cannabis activist, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a decentralized society advocate, I'm an anarchist, I'm a veteran, I'm still someone who holds the preservation of human rights in high regard, I'm someone who understands the state is full of shit, I'm someone who has learned for themself much truth about the world we live in, I'm someone who wishes we could all live free, I'm someone who is going to do something about it. Will you join me?
-Kush Freeman
