Peace & Freedom 101: the opposite of authoritarian is libertarian

There should be little doubt why the left-right hatred in America today has gotten so senselessly violent that people not only screech obscenities back and forth at each other but now routinely bloody one another with guns and stones and sticks and fists and knives: It comes from the top. It's politics as usual.

The Democratic and Republican Parties have identical agendas: To use the legalized monopoly on force held by the massively overreaching, corrupt, dictatorial federal government to coercively impose their own beliefs on everyone else. Neither side can stomach the worldview of the other so they're willing to use violence to both stop the other's agenda and to impose their own.

During Election 2016, more than ever before, we're seeing this escalating ideological warfare with both sides being equally wrong. It makes no difference what names are used to define themselves or "the others," whether the political right is traditionalist fundamentalist conservative Nazis or the left is radical liberal extremist Marxists. They both require supporters with authoritarian mindsets and are therefore both destructive of freedom, liberty, rights, prosperity and peace.

Neither side seems to realize that the real "top," The State under which they live, is a criminal monstrosity with a fascist economic policy, a socialist domestic policy and an imperialist foreign policy. People who pick the Republican or Democratic side of this monster are choosing the same monster. If one side were to "win" and impose its will on the other the state would then simply impose its own will on the "winner." It's why there can never be a winner so long as the monstrosity state continues to feast on everyone equally.

The only possible path toward regaining the freedom, liberty, rights, prosperity and peace already lost is to stop feeding the beast. It thrives on the hatred, the rage, the vitriol, the malicious ideological warfare that fails everyone equally.

When two gangs of authoritarians fight each other, whether they're the Crips and Bloods or the Gambinos and Bonannos or the Socialists and Fascists or the Democrats and Republicans the authoritarians are guaranteed to win and everyone else is guaranteed to lose. That's because it's a perfect divide-and-conquer storm for the cabal of government elitists who rule us. The longer Americans stay divided the more the DC Thugs keep taking everything from all of us – equally.

This election cycle self-identified socialist and independent-turned-Democrat Bernie Sanders claimed to have the answer: State Socialism. All kinds of "free" stuff for everyone, taken from the "rich" and given to those most likely to vote for him and donate to his "revolution" which was never explicitly identified but almost certainly involved turning the US into some dystopian form of European-style "Democratic Socialism."

There are many problems here.

1. There is no such thing as "free;" someone somewhere must make whatever it is that they or others want.

2. Bernie Sanders, having endorsed the Democratic side of the American One Party Democratic-Republican Political System, i.e., Hillary Clinton, means that he is now part of The System.

3. Socialists advocate that companies should be worker owned and managed but they seldom explain how they actually create or acquire such companies. The desperate rulers of the failing Socialist Democratic People's Republic of Venezuela, or whatever they call themselves, recently "seized a factory of the U.S. company Kimberly Clark Corporation" while euphemistically calling the grab "the Great Sovereign and Safe Supply Mission" and blaming the administration's failings on "right-wing opposition and mainstream media." (Does all of this sound familiar?)

4. If socialists simply claim that the government is just stealing back what was originally stolen from "the people" they're still stealing and are otherwise accomplishing little more than changing one gang of thugs for another gang of thugs.

5. If "libertarian socialists" believe in the non-aggression principle they would still seem to need bankers, financiers, investors, shareholders, entrepreneurs and other money people to buy or create their worker owned and operated businesses. That would present insurmountable problems for...

6. Some socialists contend that "all property is theft" and don't believe in "hierarchical structures."

7. Finally, to those statists who tell libertarians "If you hate government so much why don't you move to Somalia" libertarians can now respond, "If you love government so much why don't you move to Venezuela?"

But back to Election 2016. With both Clinton and Trump ("The Criminal" and "The Crazy") burdened with the worst likability and trustworthiness rankings in the history of the One Party System the formerly ridiculed, marginalized, ignored Libertarian Party with its pair of former governors Gary Johnson and William Weld has emerged as the most level-headed alternative that voters have.

Regardless what authoritarian-based progressives and conservatives claim, libertarianism, as a social and cultural philosophy, is the only truly tolerant, accepting, inclusive belief system capable of bringing that freedom, liberty, rights, prosperity and peace back to America that everyone says they want but won't give up their own obsessions with coercion, intimidation and fraud in order to get it.

The Modern American Libertarian Movement with its non-aggression principle offers a society in which everyone can live as they choose as long as they're willing to surrender all legalized justification for aggression. It means if socialists think property is theft they have a right not to own property, if they're opposed to hierarchical structures they're free to stay out of them, if they believe in worker-owned businesses they're free to create them, but in every case they must leave everyone else alone to pursue their own peaceful beliefs.

The same is true for everyone else. Conservatives must leave the non-coercive progressives alone as well. If they can't do that then both are no better than the other side of the same authoritarian beast they claim to hate so much.

Of course there will always be those, as there are in every society, who want to do harm to others. That's why libertarians understand that neither their nor anyone else's philosophy can be utopian in the real world. The only just laws in a truly free society are those that criminalize initiated violence, threats of violence and fraud against others while those others retain the right to use defensive force against that initiated violence.

Ultimately there are only three fundamental ways for people to acquire what they need or want; by earning it, by stealing it, or by accepting it as a gift. Earning and gifting are legitimate; stealing is not..

What so few people fail to get is that there's no actual difference between a Fascist-Nazi-rightwing jackboot and a Marxist-socialist-leftwing jackboot. Jackboots, like all boots, come as a matched pair, one Left and one Right. The only way out for all is the libertarian non-aggression principle.