I'm at the Students For Liberty regional in Arizona, and here's what I just witnessed:

A student panel about how to get the word out about liberty.

A group of economics professors talking about the economics of a free society.

The student panel included some great ideas on branding, messaging, how to win arguments, relevant cognitive biases, and how to get broader appeal for libertarians. It could be construed as folk activism - but it was smart and sophisticated and the same ideas could be tapped for structural activism.

The tenured, older economics professors basically each got up and ranted about freedom and how great it is. It was pure passionate rhetoric, no nuance, all preaching to the choir - the worst kind of folk activism.

The contrast was enormous. The first was inspiring, the second was depressing. But the combination was very inspiring - because the bad was 2 generations older than the good.

I think I liked this post of Will's because I'm a hardened old cynic who likes nothing better than to show that some superficially warm-hearted and helpful activism is actually naive, short-sighted, and playing right into the hands of the powers-that-be. We all have our pleasures in life:

Some people were really ticked off by my Twitter avatar post, and I can see why. I guess it’s bad enough to accuse people of empty moral posturing. It’s another thing to accuse people of empty moral posturing that helps the people who worked like crazy to start an unjustified war in Iraq. So let me say that I completely understand the impulse to express solidarity with Iranians who seek freedom. I feel it very strongly myself, but I also don’t trust it. Why not?

Because I realize that I have no idea what I’m talking about. I don’t understand Iranian politics very deeply. I will now proceed to make some mistakes that prove this. For example, I did not know until this episode that Mousavi was Prime Minister of Iran for many years under Khomeni, which pretty much guarantees he’s no angel. I did not understand anything about the internal divisions within the Council of Guardians and the Assembly of Experts. Indeed, I still don’t completely grasp how these various bodies are related to each other. What I gather is that that Khameni and Ahmadinejad are aligned against former Prime Minister Mousavi and former President Rafsanjani (who is now the head of the Assemby of Experts, the body that chooses the Supreme Leader. Thank you Wikipedia). I don’t really grasp whether Mousavi and Rafsanjani are in it together, or are in a “the enemy of my enemy is a friend of mine” sort of thing, or what. As far as I can tell, the ruling axis got worried A’jad might lose the election, botched the vote-rigging, but validated the result anyway. I don’t know who would have won had the vote been counted (I think this remains quite unclear), but in any case, it seems clear enough that Ahmadinejad is staying in power despite a pretty transparent flouting of the rules of an already deeply anti-democratic constitution. This provided a great opportunity for the anti-Khameni/Ahmadinejad faction to encourage a popular uprising, which I am sure is fueled by real discontent with the current regime. And much of this discontent I am sure is surely rooted in an authentic desire for a more liberal and democratic Iran.

Is that what we get if the Mousavi-Rafsanjani axis comes to power? A more liberal and democratic Iran? I honestly don’t know, and I don’t think many people do. I do know that these guys are deeply embedded in the larger status quo power structure, have had power before, and their records don’t look so good. They may well represent improvement, but I don’t honestly know that. As far as I know, the outpouring of desire for change that we see so clearly on YouTube is being exploited by one faction of the Iranian ruling class to depose another.
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I think it is rather unwise to underestimate the strategic savvy of the opinonmakers at the Weekly Standard and Fox News. It is not “paranoid” to think they are in fact talented at shaping American popular opinion and then bringing it to bear to achieve their political aims. The correct description of the events in Iran continues to elude me. Perhaps I have been ideologically blinded to the obvious. All I can say is that given what little I know, it is not obvious. But it is quite clear to me that the story of a people yearning for freedom and rising up to demand their rights as citizens who are then crushed by an evil authoritarian regime that will do anything to achieve its evil ends… it’s clear to me that this story is useful to a certain faction in the ongoing debates about U.S. policy toward Iran. It may be that this story is the true story. But I don’t honestly know that it is, so I think it is prudent not to assume it is–especially given the fact that this narrative does play into the hands of the most dangerous people in American public life.

A-fucking-men, my brother. As I wrote in the comments, responding to someone who said "If folks want to, in a simplistic way, express "solidarity" with a simple ideal, "free and fair elections" so be it. No big deal."

I disagree. There are short-term and long-term problems with naive activism. In the short-term, their act may lead them to feel they have "done their duty", and to not do things that are more effective. But more importantly, this sort of response just reinforces the behavior of naively channeling one's desire to make the world better into superficial and ineffective strategies. And that is a powerful enemy of achieving real change through strategies that focus on results, not just easy ways to feel good."

As a hedonist, I'm usually in favor of easy ways to feel good. But not when it perpetuates a status quo that I loathe.

I admire the Free State Project movement in many ways, and think it is a fabulous way to realistically improve liberty. However, I have serious doubts about how much they will be able to do. Here is why.

The larger a government is, the worse it works. The smaller it is, the more accountability there is, the more people can connect to it, etc, so the better it works. The larger it is, the harder it is for a political movement to change, the smaller, the easier. The problem here is that the FSP is targeting change in exactly those portions of government which need it the least! They are targeting state and county level change - when the federal government is the real problem. They have picked a state with very small population, which is receptive to their beliefs - which means it already has a much more efficient state government than most. Political bodies of the size which the FSP can influence are small enough that they already work relatively well.

Now, the FSP has picked a political level which it believes it can actually influence. This is great. This is much better than the nationwide Libertarian Party, wasting its efforts for a meaningless few percent of the vote. Realistically, even if your influence is likely to be modest, it surely must be correct to try to change that which you can actually change. And even small governments are often very non-libertarian, and have lots of room for improvement. So I am not criticizing their approach - merely expressing worry that the impact will be limited. (A limited impact is still an impact).