As I stated in my intro, I grew up a conservative. This meant that I was pro-war, even when I was not entirely sure what the war was about. It didn’t seem to matter much, what mattered was “supporting the troops” and “being proud of my country.” Now, I’m not going to bash troops or be some kind of pinko commie, so cool your jets.
Some of my earliest memories of war was watching the CNN coverage of the first Gulf War. We watched endless coverage of green tinted night vision video of missiles being launched and things blowing up. We tied yellow ribbons around our trees and the antenna of the family minivan. We were proud of our soldiers and proud that our nation was at war.
As I got older, America always seemed at war, and with the exception of some of our involvement in Bosnia (that was a Clinton war) we always seemed to support it. When I watched the towers fall in 11th grade I felt the same desire to invade somewhere and take revenge as everyone else did that day. My college days were spent writing letters to the editor in support of invading this country or that and making bumper stickers that said “War for Oil? Who Doesn’t Want Cheap Gas?”
The only war I might have been opposed to was the Vietnam War, and that was only because my favorite singers were hippies. It’s hard not to sympathize with really good musicians. (Though shockingly I never became a pinko commie like them.)
Those are some embarrassing years for me.
I’m not entirely sure when I was introduced to the Non-Aggression Principle or NAP. It may have been a gradual change, it may have been after listening to one or two Tom Woods podcasts. I honestly don’t remember. All I know is that now I am totally on board with the NAP and because of that I don't support offensive or pre-emptive wars anymore.
But it isn’t just aggressive war that I oppose, it’s all forms of aggression.
State aggression takes its form as taxation, the prosecution of victimless “crimes”, compulsory public education, business regulations, inflationary practices, et al.
Social aggression can be as subtle as racism, sexism, or other forms of bigotry. It can also be as obvious as rape or abortion.
The NAP even extends into my personal life and how I relate to all people, including my own children. I have learned to see people in a new light, much of the “Us v Them” attitude has gone out of my life. I no longer see people as one group or another, but as individuals deserving of at least my respect as humans. Even growing up I believed all human life had value, because every person is made in the image of God, but it seems I never had any problems with bombing them into oblivion. Now I see every person as a neighbor and potential economic ally.
Is the NAP biblical? Isn’t Anarchy just chaos? Doesn’t Romans 13 say we should have a government? Who would build muh roads? All of these questions and more I hope to answer over time.
There is a meme out there that says something along the lines of “I became a libertarian when I was introduced to the NAP, I became an anarchist when I realized there are no exceptions.” This is pretty much true for me.
In my next post I’ll explain the NAP and what it means to me.