The Power In Accepting When You Are Wrong
One of the things I love the most about Anarchists and Libertarians is their rare ability to be wrong. To be able to change their mind. There’s a lot of other more obvious and dynamic attributes to love about my brothers and sisters in Liberty, but the subtly powerful ability/willingness to be wrong and to change is the one thing I may appreciate the most.
I say this because, unless you had some incredibly conscious, badass free-thinking parents, you found your way to the tenets of Liberty on your own. I literally only know one girl who is second generation Libertarian. Almost all of us are the first in our families to these unpopular beliefs. We had to seek them out.
Which means not only were you not taught them, but what you WERE taught stood in direct contrast to what you believe now. You had to change your mind. You had to be wrong.
More than likely, you had to be wrong somewhat publicly. Because many of us that are now Anarchists and Libertarians aren’t shy about our beliefs, and weren’t before either. I know I wasn’t. I have been politically and philosophically vocal since I was a teenager. I was a proud “Constitutional Conservative.” I started going to the Iowa caucuses with my Dad when I was no more than five or six. Of the five elections of my adulthood I have voted for one of the two main parties twice. I was the lead for The Campus Republicans in a college wide debate in 2004. For my age, I was very well read and extremely well spoken. Just as I am now, I was calm and cool in a debate and just fine with taking the unpopular position (there weren’t very many people in the audience stumping for the Republican team during that debate in 2004). I was a “proud American,” a Nationalist to my core, and if you really wanted an LOL, my very first life plan was to be in the military and then become a cop. I always wanted a smaller, less powerful government, but I still believed in the concept that government and nation states were necessary. All that to say, there is a very vocal Daniel-the-Statist in my past.
I am not alone in this. The Liberty Movement is full of people who looked inward and realized their values and morals didn’t match the reality of their politics. This is from both sides. Some of the people I look up to and learn from the most come from the Left. Carey Wedler—a prominent Anarchist voice on social media—was a YouTube “Obama girl.” Others were riding for Bernie as recently as 2016. Droves of ex-conservatives like me. But at some point, they all had to look past the political theatre into the reality of what actually is. Then they had to be wrong. And that’s not easy.
This stands in direct contrast to… well, pretty much everyone else. Most people’s beliefs are based primarily on repetition. You don’t have to look too hard to see that their beliefs are just a carbon copy of their parents’ or their pastor or their Che Guevara T-shirt wearing college professor who told them, “Capitalism is evil. Eat the rich.” For every one person who’s a staunch Christian or Muslim or Republican or Leftist as a result of research and thorough cross examination of conflicting ideas, there’s fifty that are just regurgitating what they’ve been told by authority figures they’ve never bothered to question. This is how it goes when one is taught what to think rather than how to think.
Not only are they indoctrinated, they’ll defend that indoctrination like the Alamo. They cannot and will not be wrong. Looking back from afar, I CANNOT imagine how exhausting it must be defending one of the two designated camps. You’re constantly flying into a rage over the littlest slight by the other party, while at the same time actively ignoring the endless stream of shitty things done by your own (party). Being right and winning matters more than morals and logic. I have friends who will rage post about anything, and I mean ANYTHING the Republicans or Democrats have done that they consider wrong, but I won’t hear one goddamn word when their own party openly violates whatever it is they claim they believe in. It’s so blatantly obvious I don’t understand how they take it seriously and think others can’t see right through their mental gymnastics. It would be comical if it wasn’t so sad and dangerous.
When people who cannot be wrong pick a side, and then decide that their side must win at all costs… There’s almost nothing you can’t get them to believe or do. No matter how asinine or contradictory. This has never been more publicly on display than it is today.
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There’s a focus on consistency and simplicity in the Liberty Movement that is so starkly different than mainstream politics that many outsiders just get confused. It doesn’t fit into the neat boxes they’ve been indoctrinated with. Our politics are shockingly simple:
The Non-Aggression Principle: All interactions should be voluntary and based upon consent. There should be no exceptions for those who call themselves government.
The principles of Natural Law: Life and Property. I have no right to your life and property, and you have no right to mine.
You have the absolute right to defend that Life and Property, as do I.
No victim, no crime. The arbitrary laws of the State are morally invalid.
Individual Liberty versus Collective Control.
The enforcement of prohibition is almost always worse than what’s being prohibited.
None of these foundational principles rely on “but what if…” or “this time it will be different,” or “but it’s necessary,” or any of the endless streams of justifications and mental gymnastics necessary to validate the tyranny of political authority to oneself. We want to boil everything down to its simplest form.
“A = A.”
Since the ethos is so simple, Libertarians are much harder to categorize by the superficial differences that are so successfully used to divide us in conventional politics. In my nearly 15 year journey in the Liberty Movement I’ve seen such a fantastically diverse group of people share the same politics. We’ve got pink-haired lesbians, we’ve got bearded white guys with gun stashes living in the mountains, we’ve got absolute hedonists that proclaim the joys of drugs and hookers, and we’ve got one of the godfathers of the movement, Tom Woods, who’s so straight-laced he won’t even allow swearing on his podcast. Doesn’t matter. At one point before they got “Zucked,” there was a prominent Instagram page called Libertarian Atheist, and another called Anarcho Christian, and they both followed each other and shared much of the same content. As I mentioned two weeks ago, what one believes about God and the afterlife is their business and their business alone.
This diversity within the movement would be an impossibility in the identity politics of today, where you’re expected to subscribe to the tribalism that’s used to define you (Muslim, atheist, gay, rich, poor, etc.)
“You ain’t black if you don’t vote [Democrat]!”
We understand a powerfully simple concept: Just because you don’t like it, doesn’t mean no one should be allowed to do it.
You don’t have to do drugs to oppose prohibition.
You don’t have to like guns to oppose gun control.
You don’t have to smoke cigarettes to believe in someone’s right to smoke.
You don’t have to be gay to believe in gay marriage. (Hell, you don’t even have to morally APPROVE of homosexuality to believe in someone’s right to marry whomever they wish.)
Just because you’re not rich, doesn’t mean NO ONE should be allowed to be rich.
Just because you don’t eat meat, doesn’t mean NO ONE should be allowed to eat meat.
Just because you don’t engage in sex work, doesn’t mean an adult should be caged for selling their own body.
…and the list goes on.
It’s really simple. You don’t have to forcibly make the world into the image of what you think is righteousness.
This last part isn’t going to be well liked, but it’s true. I know some incredibly intelligent Conservatives and Leftists. Some are scary smart. But for every one of them, there’s a legion of dumb-dumbs who believe the EXACT. SAME. THING. I don’t know many dumb Libertarians and Anarchists. They are there, I am sure, I just don’t know any myself. Because of how suppressed these ideals are, it takes a level of intentionality and perseverance to seek them out. Nearly every one of them that I know personally is more well read than average and can articulate the HOW and the WHY of their position. They’re comfortable researching past the headlines. When you stand outside and against the system, you don’t get to be lazy. You will be berated and challenged every time you voice your opinion and you will not have the multitude on your side. But there’s a strength that comes with it; of believing in something that is simple, logical, and moral; of choosing reason over emotion: of sticking up for the freedom and rights of people you don’t agree with or even like. It’s powerful.
And it all started with a willingness to confront hard truths. A willingness to look in the mirror and say, “I was wrong…” And then go do something about it.
“Being willing to change allows you to move from a point of view to a viewing point—a higher, more expansive place…”
-Thomas Crum
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Afterword: This article may be about how the inability to be wrong feeds into political indoctrination, but that same rigidity often manifests itself in one’s personal life. How many relationships fall apart because someone wasn’t willing to be wrong?How many businesses fail because they couldn’t evolve with the markets? How many countless people are walking around trapped in stunted versions of themselves because of stubbornness and the refusal to change? The costs get very high in society, culture, and individually when one is so dedicated to being right they refuse to even accept the possibility they could be wrong.
Do you have a hard time admitting it if you’re wrong? What do you think holds you back?
Or, if you’re one of the people who’s overcome this and challenged core beliefs, let us know what tools you’ve used.
And of course any other questions or comments, let us know below!