Hello Steemit Community,
My name is Steven Kiley. I’ve been an anarchist for two years now. Through countless run-ins with law enforcement, an abusive upbringing, and a public school education, I was destined to be the typical brainwashed statist. Despite these facts, it has always been in my nature to test and challenge boundaries and paradigms, especially when they are contradictory. Even though I had the natural inkling to be an anarchist, at such a young age, I had no idea what a real anarchist was, nor would I have had the mental maturity to accept and embrace the responsibilities and principles inherent to anarchy.
Despite my rebellious nature, I was a conservative republican for most of my life. My mom was a swing-voter, my father was apolitical, and my extended family on my mother’s side was hardcore republican. I took most of my political lessons from my grandfather, which is what naturally lead me into conservatism, along with my Catholic upbringing. Once I reached adulthood, things started to change for me. As a free-thinker, I was bothered by the fact that republicans and democrats never seemed to actually disagree on anything when all was said and done. It’s like the rivalry was purely for the cameras, but on paper, they both wanted to advance state power and control. Eventually I became disillusioned with the party after the voter mandate that got all of the ‘tea-party’ republicans elected, failed to initiate the change we had hoped for. Instead, those elected simply conformed to their new roles in DC and failed to stand up for liberty.
As a result, I started seeking alternative pro-liberty minds to converse with. I had always been aware of the Libertarian Party, and of course Ron Paul, but I had never taken them seriously or invested much time in understanding their positions. After some serious debates for about a year or so, I finally conceded that I, in fact, had the contradictory positions on almost every political issue to date. It was a no-brainer at that point to jump completely into libertarianism. I was comfortable there, on my libertarian high horse for a few years. I had all the moral positions ironed out, and could debate liberals, while being called a conservitard or debate conservatives while being called a libtard. I was happy with that. If I’m upsetting both sides, I must be doing something right! Then another point of view completely blind-sided me…
Just when I thought I had found the ultimate logical position anyone could take on what it means to be free and what role government must play, I was thrown a curve-ball by my brother who was serving in the military at the time. Keep in mind, he had the same upbringing as myself, but the military had changed him in a much more aggressive way than my transition as a civilian. My brother and I would Skype almost every night and talk about the world, play video games, and troll online. Right around the time Edward Snowden had released classified intel to Wikileaks and fled Hawaii, my brother’s demeanor just changed. It was like a switch had been flipped. My brother went from conservative, proud to serve, red-blooded, American to discontent, fuck the system, anarchist.
I honestly didn’t know how to take it at first. I thought he was trolling and just trying to get a rise out of me. The sign that he truly had deep convictions for his new-found beliefs came when he started sending me links to YouTube videos of Stefan Molyneux. Aside from that, he became depressed and held the people he worked for in the worst contempt. A year later, he was out and back in the states living with me. Despite his insistence that the ‘libertarian answer’ wasn’t the right answer, I resisted his anarchist philosophy as that of some deranged individual. It took many months to battle it out, and a few viewings of Stefan’s materials that we would argue over, but eventually it just clicked.
Me: “Imagine Michael (My brother), if everyone in a given area wants a government, and is willing to pay taxes to fund it, run it, and provide services…why and how can you describe that system as immoral or evil?”
Michael: “Dude, if it’s completely voluntary, it’s not government!”
The lights in my head never lit up so quick in my life…He was absolutely right. Why, after all those videos, several weeks worth of debates and arguments, had that single sentence just did what everything before it could not?
From that day forward, I demanded we start from the beginning and compare libertarianism to anarchism. We ironed out every scenario and applied logical, consistent principles to each. The lesson was clear: Anarchy is the only moral solution to the human condition. Government, in any form, in order to fulfill its’ services as demanded by ‘the people’, must first necessarily extort and violate their rights in order to ‘protect’ them. The state is just men and women. How can men and women, acting as the state, possess rights/powers that any other individual does not? How can an individual who does not possess such rights/powers for themselves, delegate them to someone else? How can someone living peacefully on his/her property be forced to submit and comply with these powers if they are considered free, independent individuals?
And that my friends, is how I freed myself from the mental bondage of the state. My brother showed me the door, but it was up to me to turn the knob and walk through.
