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'''Nathan Larson''' is a candidate for the 1st District of Virginia Congressional race in 2008 and a member of the State Central Committee of the [[Libertarian Party of Virginia]].
'''Nathan Larson''' is a former Democrat, candidate for the 1st District of Virginia Congressional race in 2008 and a member of the State Central Committee of the [[Libertarian Party of Virginia]].
 
==Formative years==
Larson began as a socialist, influenced by his parents who were Democratic Party activists. He frequently argued with conservatives on local electronic Bulletin Board Systems in the early 1990s. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Bill Clinton, and delighted in annoying Republicans by extolling Clinton's many virtues.
 
Circa 1997, Larson also became convinced of the need for world government, seeing it as the logical conclusion of arguments that government is needed to protect rights and resolve disputes peacefully. He joined the World Federalist Association and became involved in its Partners for Global Change program, where he learned to influence the political process by writing letters to officials and newspapers in support of the International Criminal Court, United Nations funding, and similar issues. He gained notoriety by speaking before the Boards of Supervisors of Culpeper County and Prince William County to request that the UN flag be flown above a municipal building on United Nations Day.
 
In 2000, Larson became a business major at George Mason University and thus was required to take an economics class. He chose the innocuously titled "Economic Problems and Public Policy," taught by [[minarchist]] [[Thomas Carl Rustici]]. Taken aghast by the arguments presented by Nathaniel Branden in the required readings, that education and other services should be privatized, he began preparing to make spirited counter-arguments in class. Larson was ultimately persuaded by the empirical evidence suggesting that such services would be improved by a cessation of government involvement in them. He joined the Libertarian Party, but continued to push for world government, believing that if police, courts, and defense are necessary at local, state and federal levels, there was no reason why they should not be needed at the global level.
 
In 2002, Larson was elected to the GMU Student Senate on a cannabis reform platform. Initially, he called for legalizing hemp so that it could be sold for its medicinal and industrial uses, with the taxes helping to support GMU, which was then facing funding shortfalls. In the fall, he introduced a bill to memorialize the Virginia House of Delegates to decriminalize its possession for recreational purposes as well, arguing that it would improve safety on campus by re-directing police officers' efforts to stopping violent crime. The bill passed, but was later ruled by the Student Supreme Court to have been pocket vetoed. Larson later came to regret having compromised his principles by not calling for GMU's complete privatization.
 
Larson left the Libertarian Party circa 2003 for religious reasons. He had joined Faith in Christ Community Church in Orange, Virginia, a non-denominational church led by a Prince William County homicide detective, that advocated a strict interpretation of the Bible. This included a belief that certain crimes against morality (such as adultery) were commanded by God to be punished by death; and that drug use was "pharmakeia," the word translated as "witchcraft" in Galatians 5:20. Larson began having serious doubts about this religion in 2007, and ultimately went completely atheist in January 2008, as he began applying certain logical arguments from his Formal Methods and Models computer science class, to religion. Specifically, "modus ponens" notes that "If P, then Q. P.  Therefore, Q." Larson noted that the evidence of Christianity's truthfulness often relies on prayers having been answered, which might be phrased, "If Christianity is true, then prayers are answered." Yet, the converse is not necessarily true. That is, occurrence of Q – that which was prayed for coming to pass – does not mean that P is true; there could be alternate explanations, such as chance; or the believer's confidence that it would happen leading him to take effective measures in support of that goal; or, in the case of prayers for healing, simply the placebo effect. And indeed, when prayers are not answered, religion always provides an alternate explanation, such as it not being God's will, or the petitioner regarding iniquity in his heart. Ultimately, Larson viewed the evidence as being inadequate to support continued belief.
 
Thus, in 2008, Larson rejoined the Libertarian Party and announced his candidacy for Representative for the 1st District of Virginia. He scrambled to get on the ballot, successfully gathering 1,000 valid signatures in a frenetic, last-minute effort assisted by advice and encouragement from the Independent Greens of Virginia. He was subsequently nominated by the LPVA and endorsed by the Indy Greens. Initially, his plan was to focus on electoral reform, particularly the replacement of elected legislatures with "liquid democracy," which is essentially a fusion of proxy voting with direct democracy. He thought that the chances for reform would be increased by a system whose outcomes more closely reflect the will of the majority.
 
Influenced by the Indy Greens (and his own experience with four-hour-a-day Northern Virginia commutes) to focus on transportation as well, however, he began reading the [[Independent Institute]] tome, ''Street Smart: Competition, Entrepreneurship, and the Future of Roads'', in order to sharpen his arguments for privatization. Impressed with its quality, Larson began reading other Independent Institute books, soon taking an interest in anarcho-capitalism. His Google searches on the subject led to reading books by Tannehill and Rothbard; this in turn led him to the many books of the von Mises Institute, including those by Hoppe and others advocating an end to government involvement in national defense. Ultimately, Larson began to view the state as unnecessary, and competitive markets as a far more effective safeguard against abuse than majority rule. He switched his campaign to an anarcho-capitalist theme, seeking to convince the electorate to support a peaceful transition to anarchy. He viewed it as desirable to get the majority of citizens to back this reform, rather than violently overthrowing the government, since a populace still desiring government might seek to re-establish it even if anarchy were temporarily achieved. However, as time went on, Larson began viewing the prospects for successful persuasion as dim, particularly given the government's advantage in outreach caused by its ability to indoctrinate millions of youth into statism through the taxpayer-funded educational system. And he began viewing the numerical majority's ability to forcibly impose government as overstated, since in the outbreak of war or revolution, a better measure of power is not sheer numbers but available resources (including money), effective strategy, etc. But in the event of asymmetrical warfare, the latter might trump the former.


==External links==
==External links==

Revision as of 14:03, 16 July 2008

Nathan Larson is a former Democrat, candidate for the 1st District of Virginia Congressional race in 2008 and a member of the State Central Committee of the Libertarian Party of Virginia.

External links

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