This Is Our Time to Do Something Big

Something worthy of 'this great and sombre stage' (DN 2.0)

Cover page | Preface | Introduction 1 | Introduction 2 | Introduction 3 |

(Part I) Why: 1.0 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 1.10 | 1.11 | 1.12 | 1.13 | 1.14 | 1.15 | 1.16 | 1.17 | 1.18 | 1.19 | 1.20 | 1.21 |1.22

(Part II) What: 2.0

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Part II
A HUMAN SOLUTION

Chapter 2: WHAT

The stage is set. The players are all in place.

We, the protagonists of this drama, have learned a hard truth—one which no protestations, wishful thinking, or gnashing of teeth can overcome:

Government cannot be kept limited.

The lessons of history and the bright light of logic are quite clear on that point.

We have further come to understand that even the most limited government, if it is involuntarily imposed, is morally illegitimate. No legislation can change this fact, nor can any legerdemain evade it. The forcible imposition of any form of governance is an impermissible act of violence against the human person.

The antagonists of the play know this too. Yet they do not decry it, for this selfsame phenomenon of involuntary governance is the source of their power and wealth. It is the vehicle for their exploitation and control of the rest of us. And as we have recently discovered, to our great and abiding misfortune…there is no limit to what they will do to us in pursuit of that exploitation and control.

Once upon a time, we would have insisted that the pathway out of this darkness lies in more voting. In policy fights in government capitals. In some long-awaited leader.

Today, we know better. We can say with confidence, as Sherlock Holmes would have said, that “This great and sombre stage is set for something more worthy than that.”

A worldwide movement 

We are not the first to have these realizations. We are part of a long train of classical-liberal thought going back more than 2,000 years.

This school of thought—rooted in natural law and championing the rights of the individual human person—reached a philosophical apotheosis in the Enlightenment. A century later, it achieved its political zenith with the establishment, flawed though it may have been, of the American constitutional republic.

But the classical liberal project did not stop there.

In the nineteenth century, men like Lysander Spooner and Auberon Herbert took the baton from the American Founders, just as they in their turn had taken it from Locke, the Levellers, and the natural lawyers of the seventeenth. These new thinkers began carrying the principles of classical liberalism to their logical conclusions and discovered that in order to be true to those principles, human consent must be fully respected.

In the twentieth century, Milton Friedman’s son David wrote an early theoretical treatise on how this might be accomplished while still maintaining stability and peace. Murray Rothbard, Linda and Morris Tannehill, and later Hans-Hermann Hoppe and numerous others followed with their own work: exploring partial implementations of these concepts in the past and present and then explaining, in illuminating detail, how fuller implementations might work in future.

Making it happen

Here in the twenty-first century, we have moved from the theoretical to the practical. The goal is no longer simply to theorize about how we might actuate our principles in the real world. The goal now is to actually do it.

While most of the world is arguing about which monkey gets to rule the monkey cage, visionaries, entrepreneurs, and activists are asking a different question: how do we construct a bridge from where we are now to a world in which human consent is actually respected? Quietly, largely out of sight of the mainstream, a worldwide movement has arisen and is pursuing that objective.

The goal, in the current parlance, is called exit and build. 

To exit from the control, dominion, authority, or actual territory of involuntary governments, and to build parallel institutions, communities, and jurisdictions in which people can enjoy greater levels of freedom and independence.

There is are many different efforts underway, each with its own take on the same objective: to be free, to the greatest degree possible, from nonconsensual authority and control. To have order without overlords.

The state is what we are trying to escape. The state is also what will try to keep us from doing so.

Thus, this movement is faced with a variety of questions.

Should we try to achieve complete independence all at once, or proceed with an incremental approach? Should we negotiate with existing states or go it alone?

Should we start with territory and then invite members? Start with a community and then acquire territory?

Each effort has its own unique answer.

A couple of years ago, I began formulating my own concept. It wasn’t even a fully conscious effort at first—something just started bubbling up. Over time, it slowly began taking shape, and now, with the framework concept in place, it is time to start putting flesh on the bones.

Naturally, this concept of a distributed nation shares some aspects in common with other efforts in this movement. But it also occupies is own unique part of the landscape.

In order to develop the concept and understand how it ought to work, we first must spend a short time exploring that landscape…

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