In a one-sided monologue, it's pretty easy to make almost anything sound convincing. One can carefully talk around weak points in his argument, make things up, use vague rhetoric, euphemisms and obfuscation to mask logical or moral errors, completely leave out inconvenient points or topics, and so on. Imagine how lame a criminal trial would be if cross-examination was not allowed. There would be two monologues, and the jury would have to just guess which one was true. Often it's only when a witness can be challenged, questioned, and pinned down that dishonesty and/or mistakes can be revealed. In almost every movie or TV show about a trial, the exciting part is where the bad guy gets tripped up in cross-examination, and his lie unravels.

Likewise, the standard political mythology that we were all taught can sound pretty convincing on its own, as long as the listener doesn't think too much about it, or ask any inconvenient questions. But, as many readers of Freedom's Phoenix are well aware, when statists are "cross-examined" about what they actually advocate and believe, that's when things get interesting, and sometimes downright insane.

Well, it's high time that the respected, credentialed, statist academia be cross-examined about the authoritarian propaganda they continue to feed to generation after generation. And I just launched a Kickstarter project to do exactly that. It's called "Government on Trial," and it includes sending a few basic questions to at least a hundred professors of law, civics, sociology, philosophy, and other related fields of thought, publishing their responses (or their failure to respond), and then inviting them to live debates, which will also be made publicly available.

Now, I don't want to brag--well, maybe I do--but I don't know very many people with more experience than I have when it comes to cross-examining advocates of statism. Both the initial questions, and the format for the live debates, will be designed to get right to the heart of the matter, and leave no room for escape or obfuscation. To debate some average statist Joe, and make him stammer, evade, dodge, contradict himself, freak out and run away, can be somewhat entertaining, but isn't much of an accomplishment. However, to get the people who teach "political" mythology, including at the college level, to do such things, I think that would get a lot of people's attention. And I hope that a debate with instructors and professors will, for the most part, end up being more precise, more substantive, more civil, and more enlightening, than arguing with some random loud-mouthed Facebook troll. After all, if anyone can give a decent argument in favor of "government," it should be those who teach such things in "institutions of higher learning." So check out the link below for a further explanation of the project. And if you deem it worthy, please support it and spread it around. It's high time the high priests of statism were subjected to cross-examination. I promise it will be something worth watching.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1919817865/government-on-trial

(P.S. The actual cover letter and the questions to be asked will be posted there in the next couple of days.)