It seems to me that a common consensus among many people here is that Stefan is wrong to so completely disregard those who are alligned with much of the pro-freedom belief system, but differ greatly in some approaches and conclusions.

It seems that the case put forward is that:

Coming together based upon agreements will be more effective than splitting based upon disagreements,

Anyone who is getting some vital parts of "the message" out is a valuable player,

It is damaging to the promotion of freedom to make incendiary statements which may convince people to wihdraw their support from such valuable players

Please let me know if I have missed or mischaracterized anything.

i think there is quite some disagreement on the question. for my position see this article (esp. the last section) nd for other positions see the responses to the article

that said, it's hard to say in terms of principles, a case-by-case approach may be better. I mean, I found the anti-immigration ads by Ron Paul terrible and i don't think they had a good effect on the way people perceive libertarianism (and Stef was more right about this than I was)

i think the the main question is: do people progress to more hardcore libertarianism through more 'moderate' forms of libertarianism?

more later

k, the problem is that if somebody is getting out some vital part of the message it may undermine other vital parts of the message, but at the same thing it seems rare for people to make a big leap to anarcho-capitalism all at once, and so 'intermediate' positions seem useful

there of course is a moral side to this question as well.

also important is the balance between intellectual understanding/education and populism, the us vs. them spirit ('we' being everybody who doesn't profit from government) The latter is often underrated, I think.

I need more input to generate more output re this topic

dude, Stef is so close minded... he doesn't want Christians in his forum that's totally offensive.

All right.

All I'm really trying to undertand is:

For those here who disagree with Stef's approach to the political libertarians / minarchists / consitutionalists and think he should be taking a different approach:

What is wrong with his approach?

What approach should he be taking?

and

Why should he take a different approach than he does?

Woo-hoo! Sidetrack into discussion about one of the things on this board which has irritated me the most!

Static4367 wrote:

Stef goes off on lines of reasoning like: So your family is religious.. So they support the murder of non believers.. So your family wants to murder me...right?

"Christians / Jews advocate the murder on non-believers" has never been what Stef has put forward.

This is what is actually put forward:

Christians claim the Bible is the true guide to morality.
The Bible orders the murder of non-believers.
99+% of Christians do not claim it is moral to murder non-believers.
Therefore they are knowingly lying about morality.
Therefore they are corrupt.

Conrad wrote:

note though that Tyler was... pissed off that Stef repeatedly did not address his main point. this is an oft-used tactic by Stef: annoying somebody by not addressing his questions and then when the person gets angry claiming he was being defensive and from that point on, the whole discussion will be about the defensiveness of the person's behavior rather than on the ignored point by Stef

Tyler came to the board with the question: "Can one have a good relationship with religious family members?"

Through asking questions about the beliefs of Tyler's parents in relation to the teachings of the Bible, Stef illustrated that their beliefs were self-contradictory and therefore they were clearly lying about morality - exposing the real question: "Can one have a good relationship with morally corrupt people?" At every point the discussion was about Tyler's parents, which was what he came to the board to discuss.

Yes, Tyler got defensive, so much so that he contradicted himself. And that indeed was the issue in play: a refusal to accept reality even after it has been exposed.

BAL, Tyler freely admitted that his parents were mistaken. Stefan didn't have to "illustrate" that, because nobody--including Tyler--denied it. But how do you interpret that to mean that his parents are liars? In order to believe that, you have to equate being mistaken with being a liar. You're free to think that, of course, but it's certainly not the way most people think about the concept of lying; typically it requires the element of intent.

Tyler's parents have a belief about the nature of the universe, and it's one that's almost certainly wrong. Again, there's no question about that. Stefan made a number of claims, though, about what Tyler's parents believe, or what they advocate, or what they "subscribe" to. In fact he had no way of knowing any of this. He basically accused them using some pretty wild generalizations, and none of it was backed up by anything apart from his own bias against religious adherents. As far as Tyler indicated--and I see no reason to think he was lying--his parents were pretty mundane, kind people.

Is it a moral failing to be mistaken? I don't think that it is. I'm mistaken, you're mistaken, certainly Stefan is mistaken; all about a great many things. On some mistakes we'll come to know better, but for others we'll die with our errors. C'est le vie. The vast majority if the world's population is now, and has been throughout history, heavily religious and superstitious. Are they all vile, immoral, horrible people? Are they incapable of having meaningful, loving relationships with their families?

And if so, what does that say about all of us who, at some point in our lives, believed in and advocated similar things? I used to be a Christian, and I used to argue in favor of Christianity. I was wrong, and I understand that now. Does that mean that I never had any meaningful relationships? Does it mean that I didn't care about my family?

I feel like FDR has become a club where libertarians go for high-fives, and congratulations about how much more moral and enlightened they are than the rest of the world. The arrogance and judgmentalism, especially from Stefan, astounds me.

Mr. Lizzard...

That is a rather charitable version of things, one which may have been explained by Stef after the fact or somewhere else in FDR, but it most certainly is not what a casual glance at that thread reveals. The argument was never formulated that way, Stef said "your parents advocate my murder," not "if they do not, they are lying about morality or being Christians, thus corrupt."

Interestingly, if they DID advocate murder, according to that formulation, then they would NOT be corrupt...