For starters, yes, there is no "government." I've said that many times before, though not in my recent rants. But allow me to respond to a few specific points: 1) "If you violently resist State actors, "blowing their damn heads off" as Larken suggests in "Tolerating Tyranny", you only eliminate the State as a concept in the head you blew off." True, but the purpose of resorting to violence against fascists in a certain situation is not to persuade them of anything, but to stop a particular act of oppression. I would assume that Brock isn't suggesting, for example, that an intended victim of the Third Reich had any obligation to persuade all of Germany of the immorality of Naziism before having the right to defend himself, or that defending himself would somehow be bad, because the Nazis would use it as pro-statist propaganda (which they would). The question is, at what point does the attempt to rationally persuade give way to self-preservation and enforcement of liberty, no matter what the thugs or the masses think? (Oddly, this exact debate occurs in my novel, "The Iron Web.") But note that Brock is not responding to me shooting someone, but to me posting an article. In other words, attempted persuasion is what I was doing. Understanding the right to defend against attackers, even when they call themselves "authority," and even when most people view the attack as somehow righteous and legitimate, is at the HEART of giving up the belief in the state. 2) "Remember, the State actor is just a man; your resistance to the State actor may be just, but it is de facto initiation of violence against the State (a non-acting concept) and therefore harmful to the state. In the end, the State actor may have created a liability on the part of the state, but your violent resistance offset the liability, and then some." I must admit, I don't know what that meant. First of all, defensive force is not "initiating" violence against anyone. Second, you can't initiate violence against the state, because (as Brock already said) it doesn't exist. 3) "Unfortunately, the only call to action Larken gives is to hole up in your home and ambush State actors that come calling." Now that was just plain dishonest. I said nothing of the sort. But people should have the MEANS to resist. If state thugs comes to haul your children away, I wonder what response Brock would advocate. Let them, but complain a lot? Rearrange who you do business with? The point is, there comes a time when, regardless of what anyone else thinks, people who value freedom have to have the ability--and that means the physical means (e.g., a gun) and the mental means (i.e., the will to use it)--to enforce justice themselves. Most of what I write about resistance is in the hopes that it might help some people acquire the WILL to at some point resist tyranny. (And when I tell them to get a gun, it's so they have the tools for doing so.) 4) "I would have hoped for Larken to advocate non-violent resistance like he has practiced." And I do, in a lot of instances. But "non-violent" resistance alone rarely accomplishes anything. And in a sense, non-violent resistance actually legitimizes the state. Who, for example, would engage in non-violent resistance against a purse-snatcher? And how much good would it do? The most effective, moral response starts with slugging the guy who took the purse, and giving the purse back to its rightful owner. To allow his violence to go unchecked is to, at least in one sense, CONDONE it. And the same is true of the state. To passively submit to the violence of the state implies that it somehow has MORE of a right to oppress you than you do to resist it. The myth of "authority" is the idea that political rituals can bestow upon some people the RIGHT to rule. It is that belief that gives the state its pretend legitimacy. To say that the so-called state does NOT have the right to rule you IS to say that its violence is illegitimate, and that RESISTING IT IS JUSTIFIED. The two are flip sides of the same thing. To say, for example, that the "cops" have no right to randomly stop people, while also implying that people have no right to RESIST such oppression, is contradictory. There are often practical reasons why resistance to the state's mercenaries in a given situation would be a bad idea, but understanding the moral legitimacy of resistance is essential to understanding individual liberty. 5) "Specifically, use your influence in the market to de-legitimize the State." How productive will it be to try to use market forces to topple the state, when it can forcibly steal trillions of dollars a year, and can fabricate out of thin air as much pseudo-money as it wants? I'm all for people being as state-free as they can, but that is never going to defeat tyranny, especially when most people LIKE tyranny (when it's called something else). 6) "Larken says, "buy a gun". Great advice, but from whom? An FFL holder? That pretty much defines counter-productive. Instead, buy from a private source." While I think a private source would be better, what's counter-productive about doing it from a gun store? When you pull the trigger, bullets will still come out.

Larken, thank you for your comments.  While I know you have advocated non-violent means under other cover, the two opinion pieces I cited did not – as stand-alone pieces, they explicitly describe violence as the direct action, maybe not of choice, but of concern.

While you are certainly correct that one cannot initiate violence against a non-entity, I must point out that I did not say the State does not exist.  In fact, I spared no length describing the fact that the State absolutely exists in billions of minds as a wholly-owned, non-acting concept.

Compare that to the identity some sports fans have with their favorite team.  Who hasn't heard someone who watched the game in his living room with a six-pack and nachos say, "we got beat," as if he has a personal stake in the franchise.  In a very real sense, he does have a personal stake: he owns a mental concept of the franchise and judges the value of that concept by the performance of the physical team out on the field.

Since he owns that concept, to a certain extent he judges his own self-worth by the value of that concept.  If we could peer into another person's head, we could rank everyone on a scale running from "disinterested" through "fan" and "big fan" to "unhealthy" or even "insane" based on the weighting they give a team's performance on their own self-worth.  Since we cannot peer into other's heads, we can only guesstimate that weighting based on their reactions to external events. 

Although an unscientific poll, I have observed that vast swathes of people in North America give their State concept a similar weighting that is unhealthy, bordering on insane.  I observed a lower level of statism in Asia, but a higher level of weighting given to the "tribal hierarchy" concept.  In Europe, class hierarchy is given the higher weight.

But back home, you must know you are absolutely surrounded by people with a personal stake in "Team America".  Their self-worth has an unhealthy tie to the value of their State concept.  They don't give a hoot about the bureaucrats, politicians, buildings, tanks, airplanes, roads, parks, or any of the rest of it, except to consider it all (people included) property of their State concept.

If you harm the property they assign to their State concept, even in self defense, they don't care about the physical harm.  They only care about the harm to the value of their State concept, and the effect it has on their self-worth.  So, even if you are completely morally justified in violent resistance against a State actor, in the minds of "Team America" you are the aggressor.

You asked why resistance to a burglar is considered OK, but resistance to a tax collector is not; that's the reason.

Now, you can imagine all sorts of lining up for the boxcar scenarios where you will be perfectly justified in using all the violence you want to defend yourself.  I would never disabuse you of that notion, as I would be a rabid tiger in the same situation.

But, whether by firing squad, starvation in the camp, or in your imagined gun battle, the only possible out come is you being dead.  You will be dead, your kids will be dead, your wife will be dead, and your dog will be dead.  And, bonus, "Team America" will be cheering on the fox hunt until you are dead.

Even if you temporarily win the gun battle, it's Pyhrric.

Rather, Plans A – Z should focus on avoiding those scenarios.  Unless you find yourself in one of those situations right now, as you read this, they are completely avoidable.  To deny that is to embrace fatalism where the outcome of the scenario is already determined, so a person's willingness to violently resist is a complete non-issue.

However, if the doomsday scenarios can be avoided non-violently, then violent resistance is not the only option nor is it the moral option.  The people coming out of the rallies you described with the "call-to-not-really-action" know that there is an array of non-violent, direct actions they could take today to change the foreseeable future.  They have no excuse for leaving any action undone if they feel it has the slightest possibility of avoiding a situation where suicide or surrender are the only two options.

It is not blaming the rape victim to say beforehand, "look, if you go down that dark alley, dressed like that, there is little or no chance you will come out the other end unviolated."

We seem to be arguing over two different things. Of course, being morally justified in combat doesn't make someone bullet-proof. Righteously resisting tyranny by force usually results in dead resistors, which is not my goal (whether I'm the resistor or someone else is). 

My goal is to get enough people to see that 1) initiating violence is immoral, even if it's called "law," and; 2) using force in self-defense, even against aggressors wearing the label of "authority," is moral. If enough people understood that, resistance would be not only justified, but effective.

One cannot de-legitimize the state without destroying the myth of "authority," and without exposing "government" as the initiatory violence it is, and without also demonstrating that resist against aggressors is justified (whether it is a good idea practically or not). In other words, you can't believe that the state is bogus AND that disobeying it and resisting it is a sin.

I don't think there's enough difference of opinion to have an argument.  If there is a difference, it is that I do not believe that you will ever sway the Statist to recognize your moral justification for defending yourself from the State.  By definition, the Statist holds an immoral, contradictory view of human interaction; what possible mechanism would allow a Statist to afford you a morally consistent envelope of operation that he cannot even conceive?

There is no moral or ethical barrier to the depravity a State actor is willing to visit on anyone he or she feels has resisted the State.  There is no moral or ethical barrier to the depravity a Statist is willing to condone.  There is only the fear of facing prosecution for their own actions, and the economic barrier of having the physical resources required to maintain their repugnant charade.

In your own case, not one of the State actors gave a hoot about the money – it was all about "you must obey, slave."  In the DOJ's press release, it is clear the important part of your conviction (besides jail time) was the forced filing of returns; the fines and taxes were almost afterthoughts.  Is there any doubt that, were it not for a fear of legal ramifications, the judge and his prosecutors would have sodomized and executed you on the spot?  You were lucky they let you live to get a trial.

If State actors were deprived of the resources they need to continue their malicious ways, then their influence becomes nil and the encouragement of the Statists is irrelevant.  It has the double blessing of not requiring a recognition of your moral justification of defending yourself and removing the power to initiate violence against you in the first place.

But, any method for accomplishing this goal by expecting homo economicus to rise up en masse and act in contravention of his own personal interest is doomed to failure.  Violent resistance before the State is economically disarmed is most decidedly against the personal interest of homo economicus.  After the State is disarmed, there is no need for violent resistance.

The trick is to align the economic incentives so that actors disregard the State in their transactions.  Although you pooh-poohed the idea (disingenuously, I might add), that is the one thing you can guarantee every person from the smallest child to the most rabid Statist will do, with no need for direction or persuasion, if they see a personal advantage in it.

The good news is, all the heavy mental lifting proving the personal economic advantages of a Stateless society has been voluminous over the past decades.  All that remains is for you and I to encourage our trading networks to become Stateless by example.

Will that happen?  I dunno.  But, I heard your buddy Stephan Molyneux make a salient point yesterday on a related question: how on earth can you expect a class of Super-Patriot to form and maintain a government that will stay within its bounds if you do not believe those same people will make basic economic choices in their best interest?