I have no doubt that all the Grover Norquist acolytes will be just fine surviving in a rugged wilderness setting where they must provide themselves with food and shelter, but on the off chance they don't and are tempted to come begging back to our depraved socialist nightmare world asking if someone could please whip them up a batch of foie gras, they should show they are acting in good faith by situating their libertarian utopia on an island or in the middle of a vast, impassable desert. This will firmly establish that they have the courage of their convictions.

We can check in on them in twenty years and see how their free-market paradise is coming along.

Just think of how many tens of BILLIONS of dollars shareholders would save by not having to pay these incompetent boobs multi-million dollar salaries, or equally rapacious "golden parachute" severance packages. That alone would probably be sufficient to jump-start the economic recovery right there.

And considering most of them pay negligible, if any federal income tax, it's not like it would be a losing situation in that regard, either.

Not to mention the fact that, given how ill-equipped most of these folks will be when it comes to "living off the land" in extremely primitive conditions (unless of course they manage to dupe a small army of skilled construction laborers to their cause), I expect roughly half to expire the first winter, only to become fodder for the remaining survivors - think of The Donner Party, but on an epic scale.

Yeah, I could totally live with this scenario...

But can't they move to Alaska? I don't want them in the Rockies.

no, they just secede!

alaska independence party, anyone? militia movements? stars and bars?...

http://www.christianexodus.org/

http://www.christianexodus.org/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=2&func=fileinfo&id=8

They are more than welcome to abandon the island any time they like. I'm sure we can find somebody else to sweep up and bus these dirty tables.

I'm still good for Greyhound tickets for those of you who want to join the Free State Project, in case you've forgotten. Don't let the door hit you in the ass and so on...

The vast majority of rural state conservatives are hoping to play out the Turner Diaries and the Left Behind series.

Just settle down, dear. I'll bring you a new copy of "Red Dawn" and some Vaseline, and leave you alone for a while.

Tell the libertarians to move to Winnipeg and freeze their anti-government asses off during the first cold hard winter while they refuse all assistance.

Comprende?

*Scowls*

Won't miss a one of those incompetent pricks.

Why not give them the former Confederacy instead? Many of them are already there anyway. They can use the book of Leviticus as their constitution, put a Wal-Mart on every corner, place the Ten Commandments in their courthouses, and give every citizen over the age of five a gun. All the rest of us ask is that any resident of Dixie who wants to leave their Christopia can do so, no questions asked, and anyone from the rest of the states can emigrate there. A win-win situation for all, especially since we get to keep the Rockies.

Instead of the green zone being in Baghdad it will be in DC. Enjoy the bureaucracy that will define you!

Equality or Freedom. Each negates the other. The irony is libertarian socialism.

See ya, wouldn't want to be ya!

And now the bonus round: Suppose you've got a billion hard-earned dollars that you accumulated by running your own business, and everybody else on Earth except you dies all at once. Now, what can you buy with your money? That's right, nothing.

Money is only worth something in relation to other people. It is a formalized system of placing value on what are essentially social interactions. Thus the libertarian fixation on autonomy and self-reliance is essentially a solipsistic fantasy wherein people who enjoy great privilege imagine that they do so on the basis of their own efforts or through some inherent superiority and not because they simply happen to enjoy a favorable trading position in the current market. They claim to support the morality of Social Darwinism because they imagine that they are the "fittest" who are destined to Survive. In spite of all evidence to the contrary -- because the people most capable of surviving outside the elaborate network of economic transactions that sustain modern life are generally the poorest, least modern cultures of all, people who have not forgotten how to exist at a subsistence level. I have yet to meet a single libertarian who would last two weeks fending for themselves in the wilderness.

Finally, "free markets": the periods of greatest economic prosperity in this country correspond to the periods of greatest government investment in the citizenry. Thanks to the New Deal and the G.I. Bill, the "Greatest Generation" of the post WWII era enjoyed an unprecedentedly high standard of living, and pumped their additional buying power back into the economy in a period of record consumption. They purchased houses, educated themselves and their children, and moved en masse from unskilled labor to skilled labor positions.

By contrast, the periods of "Free Market" mania, such as the twenties, the eighties and the current period, are all characterized by short-lived boom times (for the investor class) followed by disastrous economic downturns when the bubble economies generated by unregulated speculation inevitably burst. The idea that unregulated markets automatically lead to greater prosperity for the population at large has been proven wrong again and again, but the wealthy (and their sycophants, who delight in imagining that they will one day join the ranks of the wealthy) continue to promote this fantasy because it serves their narrow short-term interests.

But seriously, prove me wrong. Go off away from all these weak fools who are holding you back and prove how tough and independent and self-made you are. Just don't ask for an ambulance to come get you when you get sick. Or for well-maintained roads to allow you to leave your little enclave. Or a police force to protect you from marauding bands of cutthroats and thieves. The rest of us "socialists" will be back here living in the world where we pay a portion of the income we generate with our labor in order to have access to services from which we all benefit.

Oh and personally, as writers go, I think Brett Easton Ellis paints much more accurate pictures of the direction society is heading.

Paraphrase from the beginning of Ayn Rand's Capitalism: the unknown Ideal "we are not conservatives, we are radicals for capitalism."

I consider myself an objectivist and I think that conservatism as a political philosophy is absolutely wrong and un-American. This country was founded by a radical extremist movement. And what we need is more radical extremism of the right kind, not more of pundits who use the term "radical" perjoratively.

Ayn Rand was against the Libertarian party from the beginning.

The part of her novel she wanted realized was that those who use their minds recognize their own value and reject altruism. She was against any attempt to create a real-life Galt's gulch and she said so in writing. The gulch project in the novel is a response to the US becoming irretrievably fucked.

Conservatives, Libertarians, and especially anybody talking of abandoning America for the hills are not Objectivists.

And I agree with Piekoff's support of Democrats. It is crucial to punish the Republican party for its unholy affair with Jesus, the original communist.

@27
I just WROTE that novel. It's called Nikolai and is out from Dark Roast Press.