Parrish Miller
Millions of American citizens voted for a man who used the slogan “Make America Great Again” and unfortunately that man won, leaving the Oval Office to be run by an egotistical reality star and a troubled administration. In order to even try to arrive at some sort of middle ground it is important to understand when America was great to begin with. The first post I read happened to be the exact question I was asking and I completely agreed with every point he made. The blogger I discovered is a libertarian web designer from Idaho named Parrish Miller. His main source of income is designing web sites; but he has also held various positions that led to his development of certain opinions including work as a policy analyst, blogger, journalist, digital media manager, and social media marketing consultant. In addition to his past positions influencing his thoughts, the most important factor that shaped how he feels about the government is his past involvement with politics in Idaho. Miller served as a Delegate from Ada County to the Idaho Republican State Convention in 2010 and as an Alternate in 2012 and 2014. He also served as a Director on the Board of the US Patriot Club from 2010–2011 and as a Director on the Board of the Ada County Tea Party (formerly known as Tea Party Boise) for many years. He states that he immediately resigned from each position once he realized that government is an “unnecessary evil and that the initiation of force is always wrong.”
Miller is not only a fan of “fighting the state” using his words on a digital format, but also frequently voices (and has voiced in the past) his opinions in courtrooms and public forums. He testified before Idaho State legislative committees on numerous occasions on topics ranging from state nullification to healthcare to our right to keep and bear arms. He is also a proud member of the Republican Liberty Caucus, the Idaho Second Amendment Alliance, the National Association for Gun Rights, and Gun Owners of America. Meaning he has an insight on a conservative point of view and is authorized to speak on it, but in the same token his views are drastically and refreshingly different from the typical conservative. Some of his stances are as follows: pro-gun, anti-war, pro-free market, pro-immigration, pro free trade, pro free movement of individuals, pro-freedom of association, pro-criminal justice reform, and anti-death penalty. These stances and his involvement with these different organizations profoundly shape his opinions and give his voice and tone an overall rebellious feel.
His blog is called “Hating The State” and it is very indicative of his feelings about any form of government. Miller only has four posts on this blog and each one is centered around the theme of rebelling against statism and ‘american exceptionalism’. The first post was in January of 2015 and the most recent one was from April of 2016 and since there are only two in between, he is not posting on this site regularly. With his first post, titled “Why I hate the state (and became an abolitionist),” he sets the tone for the rest of the pieces. Miller uses his own form of bathos that leans more to the intellectual side by displaying his knowledge of scholarly words like fallacies and pragmatic, but in the same paragraph he let readers know that he “will blister his thumb”pushing a button that would end the State immediately. The author keeps his diction, for the most part, highly intellectual while he unabashedly condemns the American government. The post starts out with him establishing how his childhood and background shaped the conservative views he used to have in order to give readers a frame of reference for how he has arrived at his opinions. Miller’s candor is explicit in his phrasing; in sentences like this “Fox News made sure I knew how dangerous the world was without ‘Murica to protect me,” he shows his disdain for many of the ideas that Republicans publicly and privately support.
The best sentence that sums up another of his blog posts is aptly titled “Again? When was America Great Before?” is “The history of America is a history of slavery, conscription, war, genocide, disenfranchisement, inequality, scandal, and torture.” He devotes a paragraph to each of the atrocities listed and references past and current injustices. His tone is extremely critical of America and its’ government style particularly and it comes across in every post. The second post that shares this sentiment is titled “Why I hate the state (and became an abolitionist)” and he delves into how exactly he is not a conservative and how he adamantly disagrees with the notion that America should be blindly worshipped and followed.
