Free Liberal

Coordinating towards higher values

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Pauline Gated Communities

by Micah Tillman

"Pauline" is the word they use to describe the New Testament epistles written by St. Paul, so I guess the same would go for these:

http://www.paulville.org/

Sorry if other people have noticed this before. I was just made aware of it. (h/t Freddoso)

Banding together is a nice idea. Where the banding-together ends and the hunkering-down begins is what I haven't figured out yet. (Says the guy who was homeschooled all the way through high school, and thinks it was a good idea.)

Not that hunkering down is always a bad thing. It's just nice to not have to look at the world as something in the face of which you need to hunker.

Of course, such a view of the world (the "No Need to Hunker Here" view) may be an illusion. I'll let you decide.

-MT

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Comments

I think the separatist impulse is incorrect for two main reasons.

First, liberty is no better achieved by removing libertarians from society. Instead of thinking, "oh, that nice guy next door is a libertarian," John Q. Public knows libertarians as "those weird people who live in the compound." Libertarians in the compound will become even more removed from society and have greater difficulty relating to other Americans. Only by engaging the culture will libertarians be able to change it.

The second argument against Libertoid Town relates to the mistaken belief that people on the inside will be more free. The compound is itself an attractor of government attention! But, the community will miss out on those gratifying interactions with a heterogeneous population. Society would not be better off if everyone was a *radical* libertarian. There is a character type associated with such beliefs and living amongst such characters would not be optimal. Libertarian gov’t yes, but not populated by people consumed with a single value.

If libertarians could set up a libertarian governments in a small country, that would likely be a better option.

# posted at by Kevin D. Rollins

I'd rather it was the statists that lived in the compounds, irrationally fearful of the "lawlessness" outside (as well as the wickedness of the other statist compounds), with the majority of people (libertarians and the non-ideological) living generally peaceful, productive lives in a state of relative freedom.

# posted at by DASawyer

Hmm, the American colonies were "separatist." There were waves of separatists in the 19th century. There were communes in the 20th century. And Waco, too.

Same as it ever was. The grandiose impulse seems to keep coming back.

To each his or her own, of course.

-RC

# posted at by Robert Capozzi