Red Pill, Blue Pill, Clear Pill, FREE PILL

I am fully #freepilled now.

Yesterday, while cleaning the kitchen, I listened to an episode of the Tom Woods show. This is something I frequently do while performing any comparatively mindless task—after all, one of his promo lines is “become a smarter libertarian in just 30 minutes a day.” I might as well try to to do just that while I am cleaning or weeding the garden.

In this particular episode, Woods is speaking to a psychologist (who happens to be a libertarian) and asks him, in essence, What personality traits lead one to become a libertarian? After all, very few people even know what libertarianism is, and of those who do, many are frightened by it, do not understand it, or revile it… Naturally, this set me to thinking about that question as it pertains to myself.

In one way, the thought of how I have far I have traversed along the political spectrum throughout my lifetime bugs me a little. An analogy as to why bubbled up in a memory from high school in the 80s…

Back in those days, the teen tribes were not just jocks, druggers, and the other typical groupings we all know. There were also strong tribes based on musical tastes: punks, metalheads, new romantics, Deadheads, etc. Naturally, each tribe had its related attire.

Among their peers, teens are the most social humans on the planet. Friends and social circles are everything to most teenagers, so it is natural for some to go through “phases” in which they join, and follow the dress and deportment of, a particular social tribe. Heck, for a while, I kind of dressed like a mod—blazers and striped collared shirts I bought at the Salvation Army, skinny ties, and even occasionally a fedora. You can laugh if you want, but I looked sharp. (Okay fine, here’s a pic of me from that time period.)

Aaaaannnnnyway…

To the extent that anyone was describable in this way—in terms of the teen tribe of which they were a member—most became whatever they were fairly organically. But there was one guy I know who, over the course of a few short years, appeared to choose, very deliberately, to switch from one extreme to another.

When I first met him (he was the brother of a friend and did not go to my school), he was solidly a new romantic. Think of a Duran Duran video if you want the look. He had everything working—the light-colored suits, the hat, the whole deal. (Frankly, he did look pretty snazzy.) His sister (my friend) was way into Duran Duran at the time, so it made sense. But then, the next time I saw him (at a party), he had completely changed. He was a punk, and he sure had jumped in with both feet—the colored mohawk, the piercings, the clothes. If you recall the look, you know how extreme a change it was.

My middle-aged memory has me a little fuzzy on the next phase, but I think it was metalhead. And then finally, at another party less than a year later, he had become a nicely dressed born-again Christian. He asked a bunch of us to sit on the floor and hold hands while he prayed. Then he spoke in tongues.

Each phase seemed to last under a year, and the changes were so complete that it was jarring. I do not begrudge him any of these choices—his life is his own, and I have no idea what was going on in it. But I do recall that in my more more judgmental teenage frame of mind, the changes seemed less organic and more deliberately chosen—arguably even contrived.

That thought has stuck with me as I contemplate the ideological journey I have taken. Each step in that journey has been organic and rooted in deep contemplation and careful study of first principles. Indeed, if I had to sum it up to someone in an elevator, I would say this:

After intentionally leaving behind the default leftism with which I was raised as a child, I began a careful study of the core principles undergirding the opposing political movement. This naturally first led me to the more mainstream manifestation of that ideology (call it limited-government conservatism), and then, as I studied even deeper, to the less mainstream but “purer” manifestation of those principles: libertarianism. But then, finally, (as happens to a lot of libertarians), once I carried those principles all the way out to their logical conclusions, it became inescapably clear that no form of involuntary governance is morally permissible, and that there is no form of “democracy” that solves this problem. The only remaining moral choice was some flavor of libertarian anarchism.

I am totally fine with this journey. My conclusions are not whimsical—they are based on more than two decades of research and mind-grinding philosophical exploration. But for some reason, now that I have not only traversed the whole right side of the political spectrum, but fallen off its rightmost edge, I am suddenly reminded of that guy from high school.

Moving into a camp somewhere on the right side of the spectrum is common enough. These days, it’s called getting red-pilled—becoming aware of just how crazy the left (and our globalist overlords) are and moving rightwards as a result. The crazier the Matrix of the 2020s gets, the more people are choosing the red pill, and the faster their transitions are.

That does not exactly describe me, of course—I have been on “the right” for decades. But people in general are used to such transitions. Even when they do not agree with your politics, so long as you are somewhere in the accepted binary paradigm of left vs. right, they know what to make of you.

But the gears grind to a halt when you tell people you’ve become an “anarchist.” It’s outside the Overton Window. Any shade of difference within the window makes sense, but when you become an anarchist, they react as if you’ve put on some sort of crazy costume. Most have never heard of it, or if they have, they don’t understand it…so it must be some sort of weird contrivance.

Libertarians who have gotten there know that it’s nothing of the sort. An inside joke sums it up: What’s the difference between a minarchist and an anarchist? About six months. Once you have reached the point where the logic of classical-liberal principles takes you to the belief that only an extremely limited government is morally justifiable, the door is open. The only thing you need in order to walk through that door is to the realization that those conclusions actually led you to anarchism, but you were just afraid to admit it. So for those six months (or however long), you clung to that little piece of flotsam called government, because that’s what we’ve all been trained to do from childhood. It’s all we’ve known.

Anarchists know what it’s like on the other side of that door. The logic is inescapable: once you have seen it, you cannot unsee it. To everyone else, it’s Crazytown, and anyone who lives there must be choosing to act crazy for some reason.

All this talk of labels—minarchists, anarchists, etc.—grates on my ears a little bit. It’s not a pose, a label, or a costume that you choose. It’s not an act of teen rebellion. Getting to this point involves a set of philosophical realizations. If you know, you know.

And I have decided that this set of realizations needs its own pill.

For those of you who are not aware, or are only tangentially aware, there are a lot of “pills” out there in modern parlance:

Blue-pilled:
Being on the political left, or being gullibly stuck in the belief that the mainstream narrative is actually true. (Often one and the same.)

Red-pilled:
Being on the political right, or moving there especially after realizing that the mainstream narrative is fabricated garbage.

Black-pilled:
Becoming despondent and pessimistic once one has realized just how fake the fabricated narrative is…and that behind it is a rabbit-hole of infinite depth.

White-pilled:
Becoming optimistic in spite of—and in defiance of—all the reasons to be black-pilled.

There are other pills too. To be orange-pilled is to be super into Bitcoin. Other colors—green, gray, etc.—are variously defined, and have not caught on as much. And I am sure there are others out there that are in use to varying degrees.

A “clear pill” was also probably inevitable in all of this. Here is an Urban Dictionary definition:

The final phase of awareness of the human condition. The peace of mind you experience when you accept that no matter what crumbles and falls around you in this world due to the corruption and degeneracy of Man, you are the master of your own mind and your soul belongs to God.

That feels like a level of optimism and enlightenment beyond even the white-pill. I like it!

However, I strongly believe that the realizations that lead to libertarian anarchism are a standalone phenomenon that deserve their own pill. Since libertarian anarchism takes you off the edge of any political spectrum, it is appropriate to break free of the use of colors to describe each pill. The choice, then, is obvious…

It has to be the FREE PILL.

It is tempting to create a long, careful definition that covers all the bases of the philosophical realizations of, and that lead to, what is generally called anarchism. But for our purposes here, that won’t do—we just need something short and sweet.

To be free-pilled is to come to the realization that

No matter what any government says or does, you and every other human are always in a condition of natural freedom, and any initiation of force—even by a government—is a morally impermissible violation of that freedom.

This is the state-of-nature argument turned on its head: You are always in a state of nature. The state of nature IS REALITY. It is government that is the artificial imposition.

After everything I have seen and thought and learned, I am now #freepilled.

The red pill, as it turns out, only takes you part of the way out of the Matrix. It’s like one of those dreams where you think you have awoken, but you’re actually still dreaming. When you take the free pill, you actually wake up, walk out the door, and find that the whole world looks a bit different than it did the day before.

Now that I have, there is no going back. It may be a bit less populated here, but the sky is a clearer blue and the grass is a brighter green than I have ever seen before.

And I look forward to the day when I see you there.

adapted from pixabay