The Power of Resistance, Civil Disobedience, Non-Compliance

Dan Sanchez argues that it is the level of our resistance that keeps states in check and our liberties secure, not voting, revolution, or reform:

The only way to realize liberty in a principled, non-backfiring fashion will rely on potential resistance.

As argued above, state officers know that there is only so much the populace will stand for. They know that depredations outrageous enough will meet extensive physical resistance if enforcement is attempted. And they often decide the costs of trying to overcome such resistance outweigh the benefits of enforcing them; so they don’t even dare to try. Such government actions are effectively nullified or prevented without a shot ever actually being firedand without a vote being cast.

Now, imagine if the public felt about truancy laws the same way they feel now about outright child confiscation; about mass surveillance the same way they feel now about forced book-burning; about all gun restrictions the way they feel now about blanket gun confiscation.

The more successful that libertarians are in their educational work, the less tolerant will the public be toward their own subjugation, and the more will State encroachments on liberty be precluded or nullified by potential resistance. As the peaceful libertarian educational project marches forward, so too will the buffer margin of potential public resistance advance and induce the State to reverse-march.

The State may press its luck on some occasions and tyrannically try to call what it perceives as its victims’ “bluff”; and in response, potential resistance might become actual resistance. But it is absolutely vital that any such actual resistance is purely defensive over one’s person and property, is as passive as possible (e.g., civil disobedience and evasion), never violates the rights of bystanders or even aggressors (through disproportionate responses), and is only undertaken in a way that is supported by and invokes widespread public sympathy. And yet, if, through protests, strikes, online campaigns of expression, etc, the public unmistakably conveys to the power elite its profound ideological shift and its newfound resolve, such incidents will be few and far-between. In that case, even the dullards and knaves in the State will have to realize that there is no bluff, that their spell of false legitimacy is broken, that they are hopelessly outnumbered, and that they would be better off cutting their losses by either joining civil society or skipping town.

Bullets or ballots” is a false choice. Non-state potential resistance can make a difference, and, ultimately, is all that really has. Education, ideological change, and potential resistance—and not “defensive” voting and legislation—is responsible both for the liberties we still retain, and the liberties we will peacefully reclaim.