Being the glutton for punishment that I am, I went back to that bastion of fake anti-corporatism, that endless well of statism masking as progressivism, that community of liars and illiterates known as the Thom Hartmann Forum.  I post there as Lysander Spooner as well.  Some of the topics I bring up are the Nationalist theory of the Union vs. The Compact Theory, are monopolies a free market phenomenon?, Austrian Business Cycle Theory, the 2nd Amendment, the fake cuts in the government proposed by fake Rightists that enrage fake Leftists, etc.

My conclusions are that every progressive on the forum is either a liar or can read English.  I have one guy telling me that the Supremacy Clause means that every law passed by the Federal Gov't is by definition Constitutional.  I have other guys preaching about the evil of monopolies but will not confront the fact that not only is the government a monopoly, it is the source of "private" monopolies.  It's as Tom Woods as said:  a third grade level conversation.

To top it off, you have the owner of the Message Board, Thom Hartmann (America's #1 Progressive Radio Host) stating things like:

The "middle class" is the creation of government intervention in the marketplace, and won't exist without it (as millions of Americans and Europeans are discovering).

In actual fact, there is no such thing as a "free market." Markets are the creation of government.

Governments provide a stable currency to make markets possible. They provide a legal infrastructure and court systems to enforce the contracts that make markets possible. They provide educated workforces through public education, and those workers show up at their places of business after traveling on public roads, rails, or airways provided by government. Businesses that use the "free market" are protected by police and fire departments provided by government, and send their communications - from phone to fax to internet - over lines that follow public rights-of-way maintained and protected by government.

And, most important, the rules of the game of business are defined by government. Any sports fan can tell you that football, baseball, or hockey without rules and referees would be a mess. Similarly, business without rules won't work.

Which explains why conservative economics wiped out the middle class during the period from 1880 to 1932, and why, when Reagan again began applying conservative economics, the middle class again began to vanish in America in the 1980s - a process that has dramatically picked up steam under George W. Bush.

What's the moral of the story?  Don't waste your time with liars.  Unless you want to hone your own arguments.  I hope that the ThomHartmann forum represents the last of the die-hard socialists and left-liberals.

In my opinion, the only people that can be persuaded to liberty are honest people; regular Joes who are seeking the truth and answers to their questions.  I'd rather try to convince an honest Nazi or Commie, that a dishonest sandal-wearing, North Face jacket wearing, Whole Foods shopping, self-righteous liberal, or some Sean Hannity listener who thinks that the conservative movement is somehow about small government and the Constitution.

P.S. Word 2003 doesn't recognize statism as a word.  Interesting.