Likewise, when you try and provide documentary evidence to an ideological opposite that refutes their side's position, no matter how irrefutable the evidence the other side will always find a way to rationalize it away. Studies and statistics and even someone's own words are often no match for cognitive dissonance.
So how does one go about changing minds when someone is determined to ignore the evidence if facts and history can't even seem to do the job? While I think going from conservative to liberal or vice versa is fairly unlikely (although it does happen occasionally), I think libertarians have a much better chance of winning people over to our side. Why is that? Because morality is on our side.
When you have morality on your side, you don't have to have troves of historical texts and a PhD in Political Science to argue the nuances of each and every policy debate. All you have to do is look for the gun in the room. How can you tell if some new law one of our politicians has dreamed up is right, just, moral, and beneficial? Just ask yourself, how many guns have to be pointed at people to make this law happen?
Libertarians will argue that if a gun has to be pointed at someone to make them comply with a law (do not eat, drink, or smoke this, Citizen) then the law is unjust. There is a big difference between laws that uphold and protect personal property -- either your home, business, or your own person -- like laws against theft and murder, and laws that serve to modify behavior in a way that government deems acceptable. As modern day philosopher Stefan Molyneux likes to say, "The law is just an opinion with a gun."
Let's take just one example, and it's one that I've written about before: Obamacare. How many guns are required in order to enforce this law? Well, let's just name the most prominent, egregious ones (let's pretend that Obama hadn't unconstitutionally and unilaterally waived some of these mandates, we're just speaking philosophically here). There is the individual mandate, whereby an individual is forced to purchase a product they might not want or even need (health insurance) or face fines enforced by the IRS. If you don't buy the product, then the State has the right to confiscate some of your property from you using the bullying arm of the IRS. As of now, supposedly there is no further penalty for not paying the fine but who really wants to find out about such things?
Next comes the employer mandate where any business with over 50 people must provide health insurance for their full-time employees. There you have another issue of "force" whereby the government is now holding a gun to the head of business owners across America and saying "You will provide this service even if it is detrimental to your business model and bottom line." It is violating rather than protecting private property rights by substituting the will and judgement of the State and its actors for the judgement of the business owner.
Lastly, there are the coverage mandates that Obama administration has declared that each insurance policy must cover to some degree. These include things like: maternity care (you know, for the 65 year old men who have been doing without all these years), mental health, pediatric services (gay people of America, rejoice!), outpatient services, hospitalization, and a few more. So now the State is pointing guns at insurance companies dictating to them how to run their businesses as well. And with all this gun-waving going around, somewhere in the process over a million people lost their previous healthcare coverage.
That's the funny thing is that trying to achieve something through the use of force and violence almost always produces the opposite effect. Afterall, what's the difference between sex and rape? You can achieve the same result, but one requires time and effort to cultivate the sort of relationship that results in a consensual act. The other requires no nurturing of feelings, just the brute force of one person on another person in a violent, non-consensual manner causing severe physical, emotional, and psychological damage. Using violence to achieve one's means will almost always produce unintended or opposite results of what one is seeking.
This is where libertarians and voluntaryists part ways with their Democratic and, yes, even Republican brethren. Through their belief in the Non-Aggression Principle, those who believe in liberty recognize that the initation of force by an individual or someone acting on behalf of an individual (like a government) to be unjust and immoral. The position of liberty is the only moral position out there. It is the only position that does not profess to want to wave a bunch of guns in the face of citizens worldwide to force them to comply with their views. Do some see this as utopic? Sure. But it's no more utopic than the notion that if we can just wave enough guns in the face society through the creation of thousands upon thousands of laws and regulations then we will finally create equality and justice for all. If we are all striving for utopia, which utopia is the one more worth pursuing? The utopia based upon peaceful, voluntary relationships and interactions advocated for by libertarians and other liberty loving individuals and enabled through the free market? Or the utopia based on forced compliance at the hands of the State which needs armies of people in uniform and with guns and badges to enforce their will?
If you just look for the gun in the room, it becomes easy to refute all the various harebrained schemes our politicians throw out at us without having to become an expert on each and every law. All it requires is that you ask yourself a few basic questions: Does the law require the initiation of force on the part of the State? Does the law benefit one group of people at the expense of another group of people? Does the law require taking something from one person and giving it to someone else to whom it does not belong? Does the law interfere with voluntary relationships entered into by mutually consenting adults? If the answer to any of these questions is 'yes' then the law is unjust and it must be opposed.
While a society based upon voluntary and peaceful interactions will not be the perfect society as there will always be bad actors in any culture, it will still be an inherently more moral society than any society currently being dreamed up by the powers that be in the Congresses and Parliaments throughout the world. As Tacitus once said, "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." And as we now know, the law is nothing but an opinion with a gun.
