Book Review Of Adam Kokesh’s “FREEDOM!” – TDV Week in Review: August 17th, 2014
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Is Freedom! really all Adam Kokesh has made it out to be? As the media blurb for the activist-philosopher's first book contends:
The wisdom within these pages has the power to unlock our potential as a species and establish an enduring civilization based on peace, self-ownership, and nonviolence.
You, as a free, beautiful, independent human being with inalienable rights, own yourself! You can do what you want with your own body and the product of your labor. All human interactions should be free of force and coercion, and we are free to exercise our rights, limited only by respect for the rights of others. Governments rely on force, and force is a poor substitute for persuasion. When you learned “don’t hit,” “don’t steal,” and “don’t kill,” it wasn’t, “unless you work for the government.” Governments frighten us into thinking we need them, but we are moving past the statist paradigm and rendering them obsolete.
This book will empower YOU to be more happy, free, and prosperous, while putting you in a position to help shape our destiny.
Is Adam Kokesh right? Is this the book which will unlock the minds thus far untouched by the global awakening? Unfortunately, I can think of many, many people who would disagree. Adam's book is merely libertarian propaganda, some might argue. One liberal friend of mine I told about the book told me the following:
"Maybe we could create a law to ensure appropriate doses of liberty per individual (based on weight of course), but, oh wait, I forgot, laws only demean one human's right to exchange products (gold, fists or phials of Murray Rothbard's semen that you purchased online with bitcoins) with another human."
If I knew that Murray Rothbard's semen was going to be brought up, I definitely would have never handed Adam's book to this individual. Another liberal friend of mine told me the following:
"I studied geopolitics in political science and the world is only ready for a certain amount of freedom and would you rather our elected politicians pick that level or terrorists from other places? Personally, I'd rather take my chances on a George W. Bush or a Barack Obama than some guy named Ahmad Hussein Osama Aboosamra or something."
and Another:
"Justin, wtf – I am sick of your Ron Paul cult, make everything legal, let the poor fend for themselves wild west anarchy BS. Since you love yourself and liberty so much why don't you cast a gold [expletive] out of your [expletive] before I punch you in the face. Mining gold and bitcoins isn't going to help anybody. It'll only pollute the world. But you don't care, with your 'the earth's going to have a problem in 4.5 billion years when the sun burns out crap.'"
So…there are a few people who did not appreciate my passing on of Freedom!
For those of you who listen to Our Very Own Special Show (OVOSS), you might be familiar with Ryan Taylor, the co-host. He is not the sharpest tool in the shed nor the most motivated. He definitely has no entrepreneurial spirit whatsoever. But he is a great guy and is very, very fertile. I offered to condense Adam's Freedom! down to a book report for our show so we could hear his opinions on it and he was repulsed. Not because he had plans to read the book, as I had asked multiple times, but because there was no way he was going to sit through a ten minute book report. "No F**#$ing way," he ensured. So, yet another failed attempt to bring wisdom to the unawakened.
What makes Freedom! stand out among all of the other countless books, e-books, et cetera published on this topic is its simple, yet dense format. Kokesh argues why the worst of the world exists, placing most of the blame on government. Government spends money on war, prison and all other violent means to coerce the individual. Government doesn't only do bad things, Kokesh admits. This good, however, is more of a byproduct of the humanity within the individuals in the bureauracy than the bureaucracy itself.
In a way, while the book touches on most topics libertarians hold dear, it does so with a minor update. It is a new language for a modern libertarianism. The concept in a way has been simplified for times more complex than ever before. Libertarianism, in Kokesh's apparent definiton, is love of freedom and liberty.
By the time I began my interview with Adam Kokesh about his book Freedom! for OVOSS, I felt I had known him awhile. His kind, open-hearted demeanor and concern for my comfort all shone through as I entered into his home in Los Angeles, California. We recorded this interview, and discussed in detail his book Freedom!
What struck me about Adam is that he was not a politically-minded libertarian. We did not talk about Ron Paul nor the gold standard nor why business owners have the right to refuse service to blacks. For the sort of modern libertarianism in Freedom!, while knowing political and historical facts, events and philosophies goes a far way in terms of street cred (though not as far as being thrown in prison as Adam has many times over), feelings and emotions play a larger role than perhaps ever before. There is this subtle undertone, constant throughout Freedom!, that if we only surrender ourselves to ourselves and learn to simply live one moment to the next as upright individuals, with no predisposition to grovel to authority (implied or explicit), everything will be just fine. We'll be living freely. With the absence of fear – Love. Freedom! can help billions. Kokesh is right – his many months in solitary confinement and prison led to many fruitful epiphanies. He's laid them to tree here for you and me. As Andrew Olding writes:
This book is up there with Batiat's "The Law" and Hayek's "Road to Serfdom." This is a truly amazing and easy to understand explanation of Anarchy, Voluntaryism, and Libertarianism.
Regards,
Justin O'Connell, Head Researcher
Justin O'Connell is the Head Researcher at Dollar Vigilante and Chief Executive Officer of GoldSilverBitcoin. He is also the author of the first full-length bitcoin book, Bitcoinomics, and administrator of the Bitcoinomics website. Justin is also a co-host at Our Very Own Special Show, a lifestyle podcast about music, news, life and other topics. He lives in San Diego, California. His writings mostly deal with gold, silver, bitcoin, technology and culture.
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On to the review…
Monday August 11
WHY THE LIGHTS OF AMERICANS ARE DIMMING
Wendy McElroy on the end of America.
Sometimes people persist for the sheer joy of creation, for the fulfillment of doing work they love. Because that's when the magic happens, when neurons snap in your brain and fingertips tingle with excitement. Most of the time, however, people walk away, refusing to become a pawn in a rigged game. Or they become so hollowed out that the passion within dies and dampens the spark of life. Society is impoverished and life rendered less remarkable with every single departure because society is only the sum total of the individuals who comprise it.
Tuesday August 12
THE SHIFT IS HAPPENING: ANARCHY GOES MAINSTREAM
Is anarchy going mainstream? Jeff thinks so.
I have alluded for years that a shift in consciousness is happening and will continue to happen. Many called me crazy and said that it would never happen. Well, it's happening!
Wednesday August 13
EXCLUSIVE VIDEO FOOTAGE OF DOUG CASEY FROM 1980 – WHAT HE GOT RIGHT, WRONG AND WHY
Jeff analyses predictions by Doug Casey, circa 1980.
In the early 2000s, Doug Casey put me down a path in the liberty world that I am still on today. I consider him in many ways to be a mentor much like Jeffrey Tucker looks upon Murray Rothbard. Or Lew Rockwell looks upon Ludwig von Mises.
Thursday August 14
WAR ON POVERTY? MORE LIKE WAR OF POVERTY
Nickeling and diming you is what governments do…
Thankfully, government has stolen trillions of dollars from naive humans who mistake themselves as "citizens." For an example of the danger tents and the people who inhabit them pose, please watch while government protects its taxpayers from tents and crushes the spirits of the 70-year-old man who had the audacity to live in a humble home in the forest. Local bureaucrats seem to think he belongs in a city pissing on your apartment complex or small business entrance.
Friday August 15
CNBC LAUGHS AT BULLISH GOLD PREDICTION. A SIGN OF AN IMPENDING RISE?
Ed Bugos on the gold market.
Our forecast for gold today is for it to get to $3-5k by 2017. I have raised this target from my original call of $2700 owing to the unexpected actions of the Fed. My original target assumed that the unsound monetary policy would have been abandoned by then. Instead it was expanded and compounded and amplified.
