What Roy Moore and Doug Jones Tell Us About the Nature of the State and Ourselves

On iState.tv, you won’t find much in the way of news about elections, but today I am going to make an exception to my self-imposed rule not to cover elections. I am going to talk about the election yesterday, the special Senate Election in Alabama that pitted Roy Moore against Doug Jones.

If you pay even peripheral attention to the news, you know by now that Roy Moore was the heavy favorite to win the Alabama election, because Alabama is a deep red state. It is deeply ‘conservative.’ The only way that Roy Moore could lose is if the Democrats could find dirt on the guy, especially dirt that involved something that countered Roy Moore’s ostensible Christian morality code.

Well, they did – they found a number of women to come forward and claim that Roy Moore had made inappropriate sexual advances towards them, with one woman claiming he did this when she was 14 and he was in his 30s.

Last night, December 12th, 2017, the scandals paid off, and Doug Jones won a narrow victory over Roy Moore, making him the “duly” elected Senator of Alabama. A lot of people, even a lot of my libertarian, and even anarchist, friends are celebrating Doug Jones’ victory and expressing great moral outrage that anyone would even consider voting for Roy Moore given the “fact” that he’s a child molester, or words to that effect.

This moral outrage coming from my libertarian and anarchist friends seems oddly placed. First of all, Roy Moore was accused, not convicted, of making inappropriate sexual advances towards girls ranging in age from 14 to 17, when he was in his 30s. If true – that is IF true (because there’s never been a trial and there’s never been an admission by Roy Moore that any of this happened), then he’s a sexual predator, but he’s still not a child molester. He’s a teen molester. There is a significant difference between a 14 year old girl and even an 11 year old girl. Not that I’m condoning teen molestation, of course.

Convicting this man before the full facts have come out, is to essentially advocate for the creation of a culture that  creates a dangerous standard, that merely being accused of sexual “inappropriateness” is enough to finish you. Be very careful the power you are helping to enable, because it could someday come back on you, or on someone you support.

For many of you, the fact that Roy Moore really is a borderline theocratic Christian probably makes it much easier for you to help in enabling this type of culture, where individuals are destroyed through accusations alone.

Before any of the scandals ever broke, I was more than bothered by, what seemed to me, a disturbing trend to blend Christianity with statecraft. I would, and still do, consider Roy Moore a borderline theocrat, and I have no love for theocracies, of any flavor.

For people who feel fundamentally threatened by the re-emergence of theocracy, I can see why, for them, Roy Moore would be far more of a potential threat to them than Doug Jones.  After all, Doug Jones is a far-left statist who stays as far away as he can from any kind of expression of Christian values in state affairs.

While I am not cheering on the potential re-emergence of theocracy, I am not actually as threatened by it as I am by the continuing emergence of progressocracy, the new religion of the far left, where the state is the rock-solid center of the universe and where people should be disarmed, left vulnerable to the power of the state by any means necessary.

At least in Roy Moore’s theocracy, I can hold on to some of the tools of self defense should these theocrats come after me. In Doug Jones’ progressocracy, I will face considerably more regulations as I attempt to stay in business. I will have to pay increasingly more, through the ever-lovely tool of persuasion called forced coercion, for the ever-increasingly bloated welfare state that people like Doug Jones want to build.

I could also face potential kidnapping for merely expressing my own religious views outside of the privacy of my own home. I could also face more penalties for the crime of being white, or not being un-racist enough, not being as embracing of homosexuality or other cultural beliefs and practices the progressocracy approves.

Doug Jones represents, to me, far more of a threat to my personal preferences than does Roy Moore, subjectively so.  And this is where I am getting into the real point of why I chose to talk about an election today.

Roy Moore represents a very real threat, through his voting alone, voting that passes real bills that trigger real orders that we know full well will have real people willing to strap on a gov-issued gun and carry out those orders.

He threatens people that have certain preferences, such as those that choose to live a homosexual lifestyle, or atheists who would wish not to see God injected into the public schools (never mind that public schools are a pox on everyone’s liberty, but I digress).

Roy Moore will attack certain people directly through his voting and the chain of action that eventually leads potentially to their door step. For those people, the people who fall under the disfavor of Roy Moore, I can see why they would want to believe the worst of this man and why they would feel a sense of relief that he lost last night.

But Doug Jones too, as I already outlined, represents a very real threat to a different set of people, a set that, unfortunately for me, I happen to belong to. I am a Christian. I am a gun enthusiast that believes gun ownership, one that is not so directly threatened by state guns, is one of the key bulwarks that keeps the thugs in check.

I am an entrepreneur who would rather not face so many regulations, who would rather not see so much of my money stolen from me, only to fund wars and welfare programs.

So, yes, it would be natural for me to feel far more threatened by Doug Jones’ win than by a Roy Moore win, and yes, I do feel disappointed that Roy Moore lost, not because I like him (I really loathe him for lots of reasons) but because I don’t believe (rightly or wrongly) the man’s votes will threaten me as directly as Doug Jones’ votes will.

I understand my reaction to this election is not based on any moral high ground, or any objective truth, outside of a reasonable assumption that Doug Jones will vote for legislation that will more directly threaten me and against legislation that might take more direct threats off of me.

I understand that many of my libertarian and anarchist friends, because of their own preferences, would feel far more threatened by Roy Moore, and legitimately so. But their position has no greater a sense of high morality than mine does, and their preferences have no more claim to objective truth than my claims do, and vice versa.

The underlying problem, however, is that there exists an organization, the Legislative and Executive Branches of the US Government, that has the power to decide in critical basic human living matters what millions of people can or cannot do.

The power given to this organization by the mass of people who continue to view this power as being legitimate, and the masses of people willing to wake up every day, strap a gov-issued gun on, and go out and enforce the edicts of that organization, is the root of the problem.

It is absolutely understandable that even among people who believe that the power to affect so deeply the lives of millions is not legitimate and should not be allowed, let alone the people who don’t believe this form of coercive governance is needed anymore (whether or not it ever was), will react emotionally, viscerally to the result of this election.

As I exclaimed in the earlier points, the two men represent different direct threats to different sets of people. These two men are levers, nothing more. Who and what these men are matters little if you are on the gov gun end of a lever that one of these men have pulled.

It matters little to me the ‘character’ of the edict givers if one of the willing enforcers of this organization’s edicts shows up at my door with a gun to force my compliance, or worse, force me to ‘peacefully’ go into a cage.

Participating in moral outrage directed at Roy Moore, though, is, in my opinion, to aid and abet the myth that maybe, possibly ‘we’ can get this whole coercive governance model right if we just get people of ‘good’ character to write the edicts.

How much would it matter to you if Roy Moore was actually guilty and he was the one that cast the deciding vote on banning people from marrying people they want to marry? And you happen to be one of the people affected? It would matter not one iota. All that matters is what levers are pulled and how many people are willing to carry out the edicts that those pulled levers issue.

On that front, yeah, I’m very disappointed Roy Moore lost, because I perceive (rightly or wrongly) that Doug Jones is far more of a dangerous lever that could far more profoundly affect my life than Roy Moore is.

To be sure, they are all threats to my ability to live more freely as I wish to live. And no, this is not a lesser of two evils comparison. Even if Roy Moore were to threaten me less than Doug Jones, there is no moral high ground for me in wishing that the state picks on me less while it picks on others more.

It is merely a pragmatic realization that Roy Moore, based on my understanding of the reality around me at this time and place, seems to offer less of a direct threat to my ability to live more freely the life of my choosing than Doug Jones does.

But I cannot, will not go out and cast a vote for someone on that ground, because I am fundamentally opposed to empowering Roy Moore to target people in other groups, and I recognize that empowering one person because they won’t target me, while they target others, only aids in perpetuating the system of coercion that, regardless of whether Roy Moore or Doug Jones would have won, is an ongoing hindrance to my ability to more freely live the life of my choosing.

It is a system that, on a daily basis, sets forth chains of events that lead individuals to hunt down and cage, and, when caging is met with resistance, attack, with deadly force, thousands of people every day who have not committed any crimes that hurt any other human being directly.

It is a system that, on a daily basis, sets forth chains of events that lead individuals to launch missiles, release bombs, pull triggers with the intent of killing people who had done no initial harm to themselves. There is no lesser of two evils, there is only a pragmatic realization that certain political camps will less directly threaten certain groups of people and more directly threaten other groups of people.

What this election shows us, in spades, is that even among the libertarian and anarchist crowd there is still this instinctive fear of the power of the state, a fear that is not unfounded, but is a fear that need not govern us. Don’t let’s pretend Roy Moore is more evil, is more contemptuous than Doug Jones, or vice versa. They both intend on doing bad things to people in the name of what they believe is the good of the whole.

Own your preferences, don’t hide behind selective moral outrage. If you fit into one of the groups that Roy Moore might more directly threaten, I understand your predilection to jump on board the “wow, thank God they stopped the child molester” narrative.

If you fit into one of the groups that Doug Jones might more directly threaten, I understand your predilection to work to give Roy Moore a pass and dismiss the allegations against him (even though they look pretty damning).

I am owning my preferences here. Roy Moore may indeed be a sexual predator chasing after young girls. I won’t convict him of that without considerably more proof than I’ve seen before. I also won’t give him a pass and dismiss these allegations. But who and what he is, as it might affect my life, is ONLY a lever, a lever that might potentially trigger edicts that might possibly not directly threaten me. That’s it.

Even if NONE of the accusations ever surfaced, had I lived in Alabama, my actions would have been the same. I would tend to favor a Roy Moore election, deep down, but I would not have participated in the election, nor would I have worked in any way to help Roy Moore win.

The reason behind this refusal to participate in the blood sport of politics is simple. I realize that while Roy Moore might not be directly threatening me, he’d be directly threatening others. Like Doug Jones, he is smug enough, arrogant enough, psychotic enough to assume that he should be able to be the type of lever puller that triggers edicts that lead people with guns to hunt down and attack others for violating their own preferential behaviors, even if the targets did not take any action that directly harmed others.

I am willing to bet that many of my libertarian and anarchist friends feel the same way as I do, whether they have identified with a target group of Roy Moore or a target group of Doug Jones.

Don’t let’s pretend any ‘side’ has the high ground, don’t let’s pretend that people don’t have a reason to wish Roy Moore had won EVEN IF HE ATE BABIES!

At the end of the day, all of these narcissistic men and women in that organization have metaphorically eaten a lot of babies. The only question you have is this: what lever is that immoral psychotic going to pull and what is on the gov gun end of that lever?

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Contributed by Paul Gordon of iState TV.

Paul Gordon is the editor of Istate.tv and co-host of numerous podcasts including VisPrivus, Lulzilla and Full Auto. He is also the publisher of a local digital newspaper, the Tioga Freedomist