“Legalized” Aggression
While most people probably imagine themselves to be “spectators” when it comes to authoritarian oppression and injustice, in truth nearly everyone is actually an advocate of “government” violence, in one form or another.
Anyone who votes, regardless of the candidate, or even verbally supports some “policy” or “program” of the “government,” is condoning the initiation of violence against his neighbors, even if he does not recognize it as such.
This is because “law” is not about friendly suggestions, or polite requests. Every so-called “law” enacted by politicians is a command, backed by the threat of violence against those who do not obey. (As George Washington put it , “Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force.”)
Most people, in their day-to-day lives, are very reluctant to use threats or physical force against their fellow man. Only a tiny fraction of the many personal disagreements that occur lead to violent conflicts.
However, because of their belief in “government,” nearly everyone advocates widespread violence without even realizing it. And they feel no guilt about doing so, because they perceive threats and coercion to be inherently legitimate when they are called “law enforcement.”
Everyone knows what happens if someone gets caught “breaking the law.” It may only be a “fine” (a demand for payment under threat of force), or it may be an “arrest” (forcibly taking someone captive), or it may even result in “law enforcers” killing someone who continues to resist. But every “law” is a threat, backed by the ability and willingness to use deadly force against those who disobey, and anyone who honestly considers the idea will recognize that fact.
But the belief in “authority” leads to a strange contradiction in how people see the world.
Almost everyone advocates that “law” be used to coerce others to do certain things, or to fund certain things. However, while advocating such violence, knowing full well the consequences to any who are caught disobeying, those same advocates fail to recognize that what they are advocating is violence.
There are millions, for example, who consider themselves to be peaceful, civilized people – some even proudly wear the label of “pacifist” – while advocating armed robbery against everyone they know, as well as millions of strangers. They see no contradiction, because the robbery is given the euphemism “taxation” and is carried out by people who are imagined to have the right to commit robbery, in the name of “government.”
The level of denial which the belief in “authority” creates is profound. When advocating “political” violence, people accept no responsibility for the results. Those who apply for “government benefits,” for example, are asking to receive loot forcibly stolen from their neighbors via “taxation.”
Likewise, applying for a “government” job amounts to asking that one’s neighbors be forced to pay one’s salary. Whether the person receives a direct payment or some service, program, or other benefit, he will usually accept the stolen property without the slightest hint of shame or guilt. He may otherwise be perfectly neighborly to the people whom he asked the state to rob.
In no other situation does such a strange mental disconnect occur, not only for the one advocating the act of aggression but also for the victim of it. If, for example, one person had paid an armed thief to break into his neighbor’s house and steal some of his valuables, and the neighbor knew he had done so, such neighbors would probably not be on friendly terms (to say the least).
Yet when the same thing is done using “authority,” via elections followed by “legislative” theft, neither the thief nor the victim usually perceives anything wrong with it.
Author’s personal note: I’ve lost count of how many people have expressed sympathy for me and my wife because we were imprisoned for not bowing to the IRS. But it never seems to occur to our non-anarchist acquaintances that we were caged by the very people they voted for, for disobeying commands which they advocated. As far as I know, not one statist we know has even noticed the schizophrenia and hypocrisy of actively supporting mass extortion (” taxation”) and then giving heart-felt condolences to the victims of that same extortion.
One can see the supernatural essence of “authority” in the fact that, among the people who will eagerly vote for their neighbors to be “legally” extorted and robbed, few would ask or pay mere mortals to do the same thing.
Few people would feel justified in hiring a street gang to rob his neighbors in order to pay for his own child’s schooling, but many millions advocate the same thing when they condone “property taxes” to fund “public” schools.
Why do the two feel so morally different to them? Because those who believe in “government” believe it consists of something more than the people in it. It is imagined to have rights that no mere mortal has.
From the perspective of the statist, asking “government’ to do something has far more in common with praying for the gods to do something than it does with asking people to do something. A statist who demands certain “legislation” would be horrified and offended if some group of average people offered to provide similar services.
Imagine if a street gang made the following offer to a local resident:
“We’ll do a shakedown of your neighbors and use what we get to pay for things you want, your kid going to school, fixing the roads, stuff like that. We have to keep a cut ourselves, of course. And tell us how you wish your neighbors would behave, and we’ll make sure they behave that way. If they don’t do what we say, we take their stuff or stick them in a cage.”
If average people made such an offer, they would be condemned for their attempted thuggery, but when the same things are proposed in a campaign speech by someone running for a position in “government,” and when such things are done in the name of vague political abstractions such as “the common good” or “the will of the people,” they are seen not only as allowable but as noble and virtuous.
When the politician says, “We need to provide adequate funding for our children’s education, and we need to invest in our infrastructure,” he is literally talking about forcibly taking money away from the people (via “taxes”) and spending it the way he thinks it should be spent.
Such aggression is accepted as justified when done in the name of “authority,” but recognized as immoral if done by mere mortals. This shows that, in the mind of the statist, “government” is something more than a collection of human beings. Paradoxically, the statist will insist that everything that “government” is allowed to do, and everything it is, comes from “the people.”
All belief in “government” requires the absurd, cult-like belief that, by way of pseudo-religious political documents and rituals (constitutions, elections, appointments, legislation, and so on) a bunch of mere mortals can conjure into existence an entity that possesses superhuman rights – rights not possessed by any of the people who created it.
And once the people hallucinate the existence of such a thing, they will eagerly beg that thing to forcibly control and extort their neighbors. People recognize that mere mortals have no right to do such things, but truly believe that the deity called “government” has every right to do such things.
Excuses for Aggression
Though “democracy” is often praised as the height of civilization, cooperation, and “getting along,” it is the exact opposite. Voting is an act of aggression, and loving “democracy” amounts to loving widespread violence and constant conflict.
Political elections are not about togetherness, unity or tolerance; they are about arguing over how everyone should be forced to behave and what everyone should be forced to financially support, via the control machine called “government.” The abundance of campaign signs littering lawns prior to every election are not the sign of an enlightened, free society; they are the sign of a mentally and physically enslaved society, bickering over which slave master they want holding the whip.
Every single person who votes (Democrat, Republican, or third party) is attempting to put people into power who will carry out large-scale extortion (”taxation”) to fund various “government” programs. Any candidate who suggested doing away with all such robbery entirely – repealing all “taxes” – would be ridiculed as an extremist kook.
All voters attempt to empower a gang that they know will commit mass robbery, yet none of those voters accept any responsibility for doing so. They know what their candidates will do if put into power. They know what the consequences will be to any who then disobey the commands of those politicians, but the belief in “authority” makes the voters psychologically incapable of recognizing that what they are doing is advocating widespread violence.
In fact, notwithstanding the traditional mythology and rhetoric, no one who believes in “government” actually wants it to be administered with the so-called “consent of the governed.” If it were actually done via genuine consent, it would mean that each person’s political preferences would be imposed only upon himself, unless others happened to advocate the exact same agenda.
Obviously, the goal of the voter is not to compel himself to financially support things he likes, nor is it to control his own choices and behaviors; the goal of every voter is always to use the mechanism of “government” to coerce other people into making certain choices, funding certain things, and behaving in certain ways.
Indeed, the individual statist sometimes has a fairly lax view of his own obligation to obey the myriad of political commands (”laws”), feeling that he is competent to rely on his own common sense and judgment regardless of “the law,” while at the same time feeling that everyone else needs to be controlled and micromanaged by “authority.” He believes that he himself is trustworthy and moral, and can make his own decisions, and that the purpose of the “law” is to keep everyone else in line.
The degree to which different voters want “authority” controlling others varies significantly. The Constitutionalist wants the federal “government” to force others to fund only those things specifically designated as federal matters by the u.s. Constitution.
The “progressive,” on the other hand, wants “government” to force others to fund all sorts of things, from art, to defense, to caring for the poor, to education, to retirement programs, and so on, ad infinitum.
But while the two types of voters may differ in the degree and types of aggression they support, they do not differ in principle: they have both accepted the premise that “authority” has the right to forcibly extort money for “government” functions that are deemed necessary; they differ only on what counts as “necessary.”
The thinking of almost every statist is paradoxical. On the one hand, statists know that every “law” they condone is a command backed by a threat of violence. They are fully aware of the things that are done to any “law-breaker” who gets caught, but the average statist, when asked, will vehemently deny that he condones the initiation of violence against his neighbors.
On a practical level, the statist knows that any “political” agenda he supports will, if enacted, be administered by whatever level of intimidation or brute force is necessary to obtain compliance from the people. Yet the average statist, while being fully aware of this, will also exhibit a huge logical disconnect, refusing to admit that he is openly and directly advocating the forcible extortion and coercive control of millions of innocent people. The reason for this is that the statist believes that the entity called “authority” has the right to rule, and as a result, when it commits violence, it doesn’t count as violence.
As long as the violence is done by those claiming to be “authority,” who are imagined to have an exemption from the usual rules of morality (don’t steal, don’t assault, don’t murder, etc.) even those who are the most ardent proponents of various “taxes” and other “laws” can continue to imagine themselves to be peaceful, compassionate, non-violent people. Some even imagine themselves to be pacifists. (Because everything “government” does is done via force, or threat of force, there is no such thing, and can be no such thing, as a statist pacifist. While obviously not all anarchists are pacifists, all true pacifists are anarchists.)
There are many ways – a few of which are addressed below – in which otherwise decent, virtuous people condone aggression and assault, intimidation and robbery, because they believe that it is perfectly allowable for the superhuman, mythical deity known as “government” to commit such acts, and therefore believe that it is perfectly moral and virtuous for them to ask “government” to commit such acts.
Charity Through Violence
The typical statist is profoundly schizophrenic, being both completely aware, and completely unaware, that he personally advocates the widespread use of violence against others.
A dramatic example of this would be those who view themselves as loving and compassionate for supporting “government” programs to help the poor. What they are literally advocating, via their support of “welfare” programs, is a massive extortion racket, in which many millions of human beings are robbed of billions of dollars via the threat of being caged.
Proponents of such “charity through violence” imagine themselves to be virtuous and caring because of what the needy may receive, while completely dissociating themselves from the threats, intimidation, harassment, forced seizures and imprisonments which they know occur and which they know are essential to any “welfare” program.
Because of this bizarre selective denial, those who believe in “government” can be totally aware of the brute force by which such “laws” are implemented, while being seemingly unaware that they themselves are condoning such brute force, when they demand such “laws.”
The belief in “authority” is what allows for this strange psychological contradiction, as it convinces the advocates of wealth redistribution schemes that the victims of “legal” extortion have an obligation to cooperate, and that the use of violence against those who do not pay “their taxes” is therefore justified. As a result, the basic measure of morality and virtue is turned completely on its head, with “welfare” advocates viewing themselves as compassionate for advocating violent theft, while viewing as despicable criminals any who try to avoid or resist that violence.
Similarly, advocates of “Social Security,” a Ponzi-style wealth-redistribution scheme, imagine themselves to be caring and compassionate. Blinded by their belief in “government,” they fail to recognize that they are not only forcing people into what is (falsely) represented as a “government”-run retirement scheme, but are also adding insult to injury by insinuating that people cannot and should not be trusted to plan for their own futures.
It takes a serious disconnect with reality for someone to vehemently support coercing people into participating in an “investment” program which invests in nothing and has no assets, and which has a return far worse than most real investments (and actually does not guarantee any return at all) and then to feel noble and charitable for having forced people into such a scheme. (Not only is there no Social Security “account” – individually or collectively – that is “paid into,” but the U.S. Supreme Court (in Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603) has made it clear that no one has any contractual rights to any Social Security “benefits” at all, regardless of how much they may have “paid into” the system, and that Congress can cut off any or all “benefits” anytime it wants.)
Advocates of Brutality
Quite often throughout history, heinous oppression has been supported by the people, in part because the people were unable to recognize evil as evil when it was committed in the name of “law” and “authority.” If the people truly believe that “government” has the right to rule, as almost everyone now believes, all sorts of authoritarian “solutions” will be supported, or at least passively accepted, by most people.
For example, many Germans in the 1940s, who themselves would never commit or condone private intimidation or assault, much less murder, nonetheless eagerly supported the idea of a “legislative,” “government”-approved and “government”-administered “solution” to the so-called “Jewish problem” (as Hitler called it). It was officially sanctioned, and done via “law,” so the people imagined themselves to be blameless for whatever happened, even if they vehemently advocated it.
Americans today; suffering from selective denial, are quick to righteously condemn what other violent, oppressive regimes have done but slow to recognize that, as a result of their own belief in “authority,” they too condone widespread draconian brutality, in the name of “law.” Even when oppression goes beyond mere threats and intimidation, and leads to constant, widespread, open violence and brutality, most people, as a result of their belief in “authority,” are still unable to recognize it as evil.
An obvious example is war. The nationalism that is so strong in authoritarians blinds them to the absolute evil which they condone and support in the name of “national defense.” In many cases, this blindness is intentional. Politicians and conservative voters alike complain when the blunt realities of war are shown to the American people. They want to wave their flag and cheer for their team, enthusiastically participating in the pack mentality, but they do not want to have to actually see the real-world results of what it is they support. They can be persuaded to proudly “support the troops,” and believe in a supposedly righteous war in the abstract, as long as they are sheltered from having to see the carnage – blood, guts and body parts – which their “patriotism” is causing.
Though love of one’s “country” is still portrayed as a great virtue, the truth is that the killers on both sides of every war, including those who fought for the most brutal, ruthless regimes in history, have been motivated by the feeling of righteousness that nationalistic pack mentality gives them.
War could not happen at all without soldiers putting their devotion and loyalty to their own gang, tribe or “country” above doing what is right. “Patriotism” and the belief in “authority” are the two key ingredients to war. The easiest way to dupe basically good people into committing evil is by portraying acts of aggression and conquest as “fighting for one’s country.”
While rulers have long been practicing mind control over their subjects, in many cases the mind control of those who believe in “authority” is self-inflicted. They want to believe in “their country,” and in some righteous, abstract principle, some ideal, some noble cause (e.g., “spreading democracy”), without having to think of what is happening in simple, literal terms.
It is easier to support mass murder when it is called “war,” and more so when it is called “national defense.” When it is cloaked in authoritarian, pack-mentality terminology, it allows its proponents – and those actually making it happen – to imagine themselves to be supporting something brave and righteous.
While individual soldiers may truly believe they are fighting for a noble cause, it is impossible to be a “good guy” and be at war with an entire country, as discussed previously, The way “governments” wage war is never justified, and never moral, as it always involves widespread violence against innocents. But that is a fact that nationalists, left and right, refuse to see.
Another example of modern draconian brutality, “legally” committed in the “free world,” comes from the campaign of violence known as “the war on drugs.” In the name of trying to stamp out a habit – not violence, or theft, or fraud, but a mere habit – millions of nonviolent, peaceful, productive human beings have been assaulted, terrorized, and caged.
Enforcement of “narcotics laws” occurs in a particularly brutal, vicious way, with paramilitary invasions of private homes being commonplace, and many-year imprisonments for victimless “crimes” being abundant. And the advocates of the “war on drugs” are well aware, not only of the overtly violent enforcement actions but also of the fact that the only measurable effects have been higher prices for certain mind-altering substances, more crime committed to pay for such substances, violent conflict between rival sellers of the substances, and more funds, weapons, power, and “legislative” permission for those who wear the label of “authority” to harass and assault innocents.
Even if it actually worked, and eliminated or significantly reduced the use of certain drugs, such brutality would be absolutely unjustified and immoral. But even though it has utterly failed to get an inch closer to the stated goal, many “conservatives” enthusiastically cheer for more harassment, terrorism and violence. (To add hypocrisy to fascism, most of those “conservatives” drink alcohol: an act morally identical to the behaviors they want “authority” to violently stamp out.)
And while millions of lives continue to be destroyed by that brutal, draconian crusade, many statists eagerly blame the victims, by declaring that they “broke the law” and therefore deserve whatever is done to them.
So, to the supposedly moral and responsible “conservative,” even if a person has harmed no one, and committed neither force nor fraud, if he has simply disobeyed the arbitrary decrees of his masters, he deserves to be assaulted, caged or killed. And, of course, such “conservatives” view it as unforgivable if one of the targets of such fascist thuggery decides to fight back.
From the twisted, delusional viewpoint of the devout nationalist authoritarian, it is noble and virtuous for state mercenaries to violently assault, and attempt to kidnap and cage, a productive, peace-loving pot-smoker, but heinously evil for that pot-smoker to use violence to defend himself against such aggression. Such is the insanity caused by the superstition of “authority.”
Forced Benefits
Statists often defend “taxation” by arguing that the forced confiscation of wealth by “government” becomes retroactively justified when some of the confiscated money is spent in a way that benefits the one from whom the money was taken, or at least benefits society in general.
For example, a statist may argue that if someone drives on a road that was funded in part by money taken from that person, or indirectly benefits from others being able to use the road, then that person should not complain about having been “taxed” to fund it. Ignoring the true nature of the situation, statists miss-characterize this as simply paying for services. No one would make a similar argument when “authority” is not involved.
Suppose, for example, that a restaurant delivered a meal to someone who had not ordered it, and then sent over armed thugs to collect a hundred dollars from that person. If the person, after being extorted in that way, chose to eat the meal, no rational person would argue that that would make the restaurant’s actions morally acceptable.
Yet that is exactly analogous to the usual view of statists: that if someone benefits from “government” services, he should not complain about “taxes.” The unstated premise is that “legal” robbery is perfectly legitimate, as long as “authority” afterward provides some benefit to the one who was robbed. And it seems to make little difference to statists whether such a “benefit” is only indirect, or is horrendously expensive, or is combined with all sorts of other things which do not benefit the person at all, or which the person morally opposes (e.g., funding war, or abortion, or some religious or anti-religious agenda).
This is because statists believe that ultimately it is the prerogative of those in “authority,” not of those who earned the money, to decide how wealth should be spent, and that, as long as the ruling class claims to be robbing and controlling the people for their own good, the peasants have no right to resist whatever coercion and violence the masters deem necessary.
Violence for Protection
An offshoot of the notion that “government” providing “benefits” retroactively justifies all manner of theft and extortion is the patently ridiculous argument that it is necessary for the people to be forcibly controlled and robbed so that “government” can protect them from the bad people who might otherwise forcibly control and rob them.
This absurd, contorted rationalization is quite common, whether the discussion relates to an authoritarian military or domestic “law enforcement.” And statists rely on fear-mongering to bolster such lunacy, making dire predictions about all the unpleasant things they theorize would occur if the people were not forcibly robbed via a massive authoritarian extortion racket.
Again, such silly arguments are never made in situations where “authority” is not involved. No one would accept a claim that it is okay for a restaurant to force someone to pay for food he did not order, on the grounds that otherwise the person might starve. No one would accept a claim that it is okay for a builder to force someone to pay for a building he did not order, on the grounds that otherwise the person might be homeless. But even more ridiculous would be to claim that it is okay for one street gang to run a “protection” racket so that they have the resources to keep all the other dangerous street gangs out of their city.
Yet that is exactly the attempted justification for all “government”: that it must be allowed to commit aggression against everyone, so that it can protect them from others who might commit aggression against them.
Supporters of a strong police force or a powerful military – both of which are funded via forced confiscation of wealth – have accepted the premise that it is not only okay but necessary for people to be oppressed, controlled and extorted by “government” as long as it is done for their own good.
The fact that authoritarian “protectors” fail to prevent crime or war, and instead dramatically increase both via war-mongering and creating “illegal” markets, seems to go unnoticed by those who advocate defense via “government.”
Again, it is only because “authority” is imagined to have the right to commit aggression that anyone would ever make the inane argument that it is proper to initiate violence against people in order to “protect” them.
When in Doubt, Advocate Violence
Much of the time, people will even advocate a forcibly imposed authoritarian plan simply because they are not sure what would happen if they did not, or are not sure how something would be accomplished if people were left in freedom.
For example, if someone has a hard time picturing how a completely private road system would function, he will usually advocate a “government” plan, funded by coercion. If he is not sure how well free people could defend themselves without a standing army, he will likely advocate an authoritarian military solution, funded by coercive “taxation.” Those who believe in “government” advocate violence by default.
All it takes is a little uncertainty and ignorance to cause the average person to advocate a coercive “government” plan for just about anything.
This is not how people behave in their day-to-day lives. The average person does not go around initiating violence against everyone he meets because he is not sure that everyone he meets will otherwise behave properly and make the right decisions. But that is precisely what most statists do via “government”: they advocate the widespread, forcible control of millions of human beings, simply because they are not entirely sure that people, if left in freedom, would spend their money the way they should, treat others the way they should, find peaceful, effective solutions to problems, etc.
By way of the superstition of “authority,” statists can comfortably advocate the violent subjugation of their neighbors, simply because they are not quite sure how their neighbors would otherwise behave.
And those who crave power exploit that fact to their advantage. All the politician needs to do, in order to get support for an authoritarian power-grab, is to tell the public that things might not work very well if he left people in freedom. He does not even need to wait until someone actually does something dishonest, or malicious, or negligent, or otherwise destructive. All he has to do is suggest the possibility that if the people are left in freedom, bad things might happen.
Because advocates of “government” violence do not recognize “law” as violence, the threshold at which they will support an authoritarian, coerced “solution” is very low. Those who crave power can simply suggest that some “plan” might help someone somewhere, and many people will condone “legal” violence based upon that premise alone.
A lot of “government” violence is based upon guesses about what might happen as a result of what people might do. For example, much of the state coercion done in the name of “environmentalism” is based upon the idea that the state must forcibly control the choices of everyone because otherwise people might make choices that contribute to global warming, the end of the rain forests, the extinction of animals, and so on.
Few people, acting on their own, would commit aggression based upon a guess about possible indirect consequences of the non-malicious, non-violent actions of others. Yet that is commonplace in “government” policy.
As another example of advocating “government” violence by default, consider the practice of forcibly preventing foreigners from setting foot anywhere in an entire “country” without the written permission of the ruling class of that “country.” Such immigration “laws” create something akin to the war mentality, where an entire demographic category of people is criminalized and demonized, and subjected to acts of aggression, based upon concerns about what some of those people might do.
People opine that many “illegals” are criminals, or come into the country just to receive ‘benefits.” Regardless of how often such allegations are accurate, the result is that all “illegals” – anyone who is in the country without the permission of the politicians – are forcibly controlled. This is the result of pack-mentality guilt by association. It should go without saying that using violence against one person because he is of the same race, or from the same country, or in some other way similar to someone else who has actually caused harm, is utterly unjustified.
Of note, the attempts by “government” to quell “illegal immigration” also result in aggression being perpetrated against many “legal” residents (as well as “illegals”) at “border patrol” checkpoints, many of which are not even at the borders. To stop and question everyone driving down a road because someone might be there “illegally” is precisely the kind of unjustified aggression commonly committed by “government” agents and rarely committed by anyone else.
This violence-by-default can also be seen in the intrusive searches and interrogations of anyone who attempts to fly on a plane in the “land of the free.” For the owner of a plane to put conditions on anyone who wants to ride in his plane (and this would also apply to a train, a car, or anything else) is very different from a third party forcibly preventing anyone from riding on any plane anywhere in an entire country unless the would-be passengers first subject themselves to questioning, searches of their luggage, and even strip searches of themselves, by the agents of the third party.
People would never tolerate any private individual behaving this way (with the attitude of “I’d better force my will on everyone else, just in case”), but for agents of “authority,” the tactic is commonplace. And people imagine it to be legitimate. In fact, they often demand that “authority” do such things.
In their day-to-day lives, non-violence is the “default” type of behavior for most people. While there are occasional physical conflicts, most people go to great lengths to avoid them, not only by trying not to start a fight but also by trying to defuse tense situations.
Even when a fight does occur, both sides usually end up walking away. Each day, billions of people find ways to peacefully coexist, even when they have significantly different viewpoints, beliefs and attitudes. But that is in their personal lives. When it comes to “politics,” violence is the default. Every voter, to one extent or another, seeks to have his own views and ideas forcibly inflicted upon everyone else, through the mechanism of “government.”
The default is not to let others “do their own thing,” or to try to get along peacefully; the default is to advocate aggression against absolutely everyone, by way of the authoritarian coercion called “law.” There is a mind-bogglingly huge disconnect between what the average person views as “civilized behavior” on an individual basis, and what he views as legitimate and civilized when it comes to the actions of “authority.”
It is difficult to imagine anyone behaving in his personal life the way voters behave when it comes to “politics.” Such a person would constantly be robbing others, friends, and strangers alike – of huge sums of money to fund things he deems important, as well as using threats, physical force, and even kidnapping to coerce others into making whatever decisions he thinks would be best, for his victims or for society in general.
In short, anyone who acted in his private life the way all statists act in the “political” arena would be immediately recognized as a thug, a thief and a lunatic. But doing exactly the same things via “government,” advocating mass extortion and thuggery, is accepted by most as something that normal, civilized people should do.
In fact, they sometimes refer to voting as a duty, as if it is actually immoral to not advocate the coercive controlling of one’s neighbors. Amazingly, and ironically, the only people who do not advocate constant widespread violence and coercion via “government” – anarchists and voluntaryists – are usually viewed by the majority as being weird, uncivilized and dangerous.
How the Myth Defeats Virtue
Almost all parents routinely send their children two completely contradictory messages: 1) it is inherently wrong to steal, hit, bully, etc., and 2) it is good to obey “authority.”
Almost everything that “authority” does constitutes bullying: using violence or the threat of violence to control the behavior of others and take their property. Every “authority” figure, from a school teacher to the dictator of a country, not only coercively controls his underlings on a regular basis but also speaks and acts as if he has the absolute, unquestionable right to do so.
So the teacher is always forcibly imposing his will on the students while at the same time telling them that it is wrong for them to forcibly impose their will on others. It is the ultimate example of the hypocritical message “Do as I say, not as I do.”
If children were raised with the idea that it is inherently wrong to steal, hit, bully, etc., why would there be any societal need for them to also be taught “respect for authority”? It only trains them to be easier to manage and control, which is of benefit to those who seek dominion over them (whether parents, teachers, or politicians), but does not train them to be any more civilized, compassionate, or humane. It does exactly the opposite, as the Milgram experiments demonstrated.
In short, children are taught how to be civilized human beings, and then taught an insane superstition which overrides and renders obsolete everything they were taught about being civilized. This bizarre paradox can be seen all over the place in modern society.
The average person would feel shame and guilt if he stole a hundred dollars from his neighbor, but has no qualms about advocating, by way of voting, that “government” take many thousands of dollars from that same neighbor.
The average person will hold a door open for a stranger but will, at the same time, advocate that that same stranger have much of his life forcibly controlled via “the law.” The superficial politeness and consideration most people exhibit is rendered meaningless and worthless by the massive levels of state coercion and aggression that they advocate.
Even the Nazis had proper table manners, said “please” and “thank you”, showed proper etiquette and were generally courteous, when they were not committing mass murder.
There is a dramatic contrast between how nearly all statists treat others in their personal lives and how they advocate that “government” treat others via “the law.” Millions of people who would be very reluctant to physically hit another human being nonetheless proudly condone the violent subjugation or outright murder of thousands of people. They call it “supporting the troops.”
Some statists even say that they oppose the war but support the troops. This is comparable to saying that one opposes rape but supports rapists. Because “government” troops always use coercion and violence against innocents, in addition to whatever defensive force they use, “supporting the troops” necessarily means supporting oppression. But because of pack mentality and an emotional attachment to one’s fellow countrymen, many people try to disassociate “the troops” from what it is that all “troops” do.
As another example of how the belief in “authority” distorts perception, many “welfare” recipients openly admit that, given the choice between accepting voluntarily donated gifts from people they know and receiving something that “government” forcibly took from a complete stranger, they prefer the latter, because it is, in their mind, the less shameful of the two options. The fact that anyone would ever prefer accepting stolen property over accepting compassion and generosity shows just how profoundly the belief in “authority” warps people’s sense of morality.
In short, every statist – everyone who believes in “government” – deceives himself into believing that he is a good person who supports good things and opposes injustice, hallucinating in himself a respect for his fellow man, while at the same time advocating that his fellow man be forcibly controlled, extorted, imprisoned, or even killed.
The “authority” superstition is burrowed into the minds of the masses so deeply that they can advocate evil on a massive, nearly incomprehensible level, while still imagining themselves to be charitable and compassionate. They demand that “government” do things they would never dream of doing on their own. They imagine themselves to be non-violent, civilized, enlightened beings while routinely advocating that all of their neighbors be robbed and forcibly controlled, and put into cages or killed if they resist.
In truth, mankind’s superficial charity, compassion and civility is nothing but a cruel joke when compared to what almost everyone will do, or what they will ask others to do, in the name of “authority.”
Many parents and teachers regularly repeat what is perhaps the most basic rule of humanity, sometimes called “The Golden Rule”: Treat others the way you want to be treated. However, none of the teachers, and almost none of the parents, who spout that rule actually live by that rule, because, by way of “authority,” they advocate that extortion and coercion be inflicted upon everyone they know.
“The Golden Rule” is essentially a formula for anarchy: if someone does not like to be dominated and forcibly controlled by others, he should not advocate that others be dominated and forcibly controlled. If one wants to be left in peace, he should leave others in peace. If one desires the freedom to run his own life, he should allow others the freedom to do likewise.
To put it bluntly, advocating aggression against others, including via any form of “government,” is utterly incompatible with being a charitable, considerate, compassionate, kind, decent, loving human being. And the only reason so many otherwise good people continue to advocate widespread constant aggression via “government” is because they have been duped into accepting the lie that there is a creature called “authority” that is not bound by the moral standards that apply to human beings.
“Liberal” Cowardice
To be blunt, people want “authority” to exist because they themselves are immature cowards. They want an all-powerful entity to impose their will on others. This takes different forms in different varieties of political advocacy, but the basic motivation is always the same.
The “liberal,” for example, resents reality. He does not want a world in which suffering and injustice are possible. But instead of doing what he can as a human being, he wants a “government” to do it for him. He wants some magical entity to make sure that everyone, himself included, is fed, housed, and taken care of, no matter how lazy or irresponsible they are.
Instead of trusting human beings to take care of each other, he wants a superhuman “authority” to guarantee housing, food, health care, and all sorts of other things, for everyone. He wants it so badly that he refuses to accept the obvious truth that no such guarantee is ever possible, and that if mere mortals do not take care of themselves and each other, nothing else will take care of them.
The liberal views the world as a continuation of the classroom, where there is always an “authority” in charge and in control who will make sure that the good kids are rewarded and protected from the bad kids. Each child is told what to do and taken care of, and all that is asked of him is that he does as he is told. He is expected to bear no responsibility at all for his own well-being, except through his obedience to the “authority.” He does not provide his own food, or his own shelter, or his own protection, or anything else. He Simply has faith that “authorities” (e.g., teachers and parents) will provide for him. He is raised in a setting which bears no resemblance to reality and is taught to look to “authority” for all of his needs.
And the liberal continues to do exactly that long after he leaves school. He speaks of each person having a “right” to housing, food, health care, and other things, as if some giant tooth fairy is obliged to make such things magically appear for everyone. The nature of reality, though it stares him in the face every day, is too disturbing for him to acknowledge, because it is so different from the world he grew up in, where “authority” was responsible for everything. The “government” programs supported by “liberals” are a manifestation of their own delusional terror of reality and refusal to see the world as it is.
They fear uncertainty so much that they try to hallucinate into existence a superhuman entity (”government”) that can somehow overcome all the uncertainties of reality and create an always safe, always predictable world. And when the mythological savior not only fails to fix the world but makes everything far worse (as happened with the collectivist regimes of the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, and many others), the “liberal” still refuses to let go of his blind faith in the omniscient, omnipotent god called “government.”
A simple analogy makes all “liberal” political theory collapse. If a hundred people were shipwrecked on an island, what would it even mean to say that everyone there has a “right” to food, or that everyone has a “right” to health care, or the “right” to a job, or the “right” to a “living wage”?
If, for example, someone has a “right” to housing, and housing comes only from the knowledge, skills and efforts of other people, it means that one person has the right to force another person to build him a house. This is exactly what happens in a larger context, when “liberals” advocate that some people be forcibly robbed via “taxation” in order to provide “benefits” for others.
The notion that people, by virtue of their mere existence, are entitled to all sorts of things – things which come into being only as the result of human knowledge and effort – is delusional. The logical result of this supposedly loving and compassionate viewpoint is violence and slavery, because if one’s “need” entitles him to something, that means that it must be forcibly taken from anyone else who has it or can produce it, if he will not supply it willingly.
The fact that such a short-sighted, animalistic attitude (”collectivism”) is portrayed as a “progressive,” compassionate philosophy does not change the fact that it is, in reality, indistinguishable from the “philosophy” of rats and cockroaches: regardless of who produced something, if someone else wants it (or claims to “need” it), he should forcibly take it. (The Communist Manifesto expresses this as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”)
Of course, there is a fundamental difference between suggesting that people who have wealth to spare ought to voluntarily help the less fortunate, and advocating that violence should be used to make things “fair.”
“Government” programs are never about asking people to help each other; they are always about using threats and aggression to force people to do certain things and behave in certain ways. But the myth of “authority” allows “liberals” to advocate widespread, constant violence and intimidation, while still imagining themselves to be caring and compassionate.
In essence, what political “leftists” want is an all-knowing, all-powerful “mommy” to force people to share and play nice, and they ignore the fact that there is no such thing, and that imagining such a thing only adds violence, suffering and misery to society.
“Conservative” Cowardice
As much as political “liberals” want a giant mommy-state to protect and take care of everyone, political “conservatives” want a giant daddy-state doing the same thing. The results are slightly different, but the underlying delusion is the same: the desire for an all-powerful “authority” to protect humanity from reality.
The “right-wing” delusion focuses less on motherly pampering and hand-holding, and focuses more on fatherly protection and discipline. “Conservatives” want “authority” to be used to create a big, powerful protection machine, and to firmly impose morality upon the population, which they imagine to be necessary for the survival of mankind. Their denial of reality is just as strong as that of the leftists.
Again, the island analogy demonstrates the point well. If a hundred people were shipwrecked on an island, who would imagine that forcing most of them to serve and obey a “protector” would be necessary or useful? And who would imagine that letting one or two of them forcibly impose their morals on the rest would make such a group more virtuous?
A conservative “daddy” form of “government” is the equivalent of a disciplinarian father, who acts as protector of the family from outside forces (the equivalent to a “government” military), and protector of each member of the family from others in the family (the equivalent of domestic “law enforcement”), and the one who keeps “undesirables” away from the family (the equivalent of immigration “laws”), as well as the enforcer of morality, who punishes family members who disobey the rules.
This last item equates to “laws” against pornography, prostitution, gambling, drug use, and other habits and behaviors which, although they do not constitute force or fraud against anyone, are thought by many to be destructive – physically, morally, or spiritually – to those who engage in them.
But trying to forcibly impose morality is more damaging than the behaviors themselves. Aside from the fact that no one has the right to forcibly control the nonviolent choices of another, it is also horribly dangerous to set the precedent that it is okay to use violence to stamp out unseemly or distasteful behavior. Once such a premise is accepted in principle, human society will be a constant war of everyone against everyone.
There will never be a time when everyone shares the same values and viewpoints. Peace and freedom cannot exist if every difference of opinion, and every difference in lifestyles or behaviors, leads to violent conflict via “government” coercion. Civilization, a state of peaceful coexistence, is not the result of everyone believing the same thing, but of people agreeing to refrain from initiating violence, even against people who do not believe the same things.
“Conservative” statism, just as much as the “liberal” version, guarantees perpetual strife and conflict because it seeks to override free will and individual judgment with the so-called morality of a ruling class, whose first principle is forced conformity and sameness.
Of course, violence cannot create virtue, even if it sometimes creates obedience, so all attempts by “authority” to coerce people into being moral and virtuous are doomed to fail, and ultimately do nothing but increase the levels of violence and conflict in society.
True Tolerance
The belief in “authority” is so strong that many people automatically associate disapproving of something with wanting to have “government” make it “illegal.” In their private lives, most people would never dream of resorting to violence against every person they encounter who has a habit or lifestyle they find unpleasant. Nearly everyone, on a regular basis, tolerates choices and behaviors from others that he does not approve of.
Of course, to “tolerate” something merely means to allow it to exist (i.e., to refrain from trying to forcibly stamp it out); it does not mean to condone it or approve of it. True tolerance is what allows people with different viewpoints and belief systems to coexist peacefully.
Ironically, “tolerance” is often used by statists as an excuse to engage in intolerance. For example, if an employer chooses not to do business with someone based upon that person’s race, religion, sexual orientation, or some other general characteristic, some call that “intolerance” (which it is not), and then advocate that “authority” use the force of “law” to coerce the employer to hire whomever “authority” thinks he should. And that is intolerance, because it amounts to refusing to allow a person to make his own choices about who to associate with and who to trade with.
This is only one of many examples of how the belief in “authority” exacerbates differences, and introduces violence where it would not otherwise occur. There are several non-violent ways in which people can discourage behavior they disapprove of.
Consider the example of a business owner who refuses to hire blacks (which, as repugnant as it may be, is not an act of aggression). Those who find such a policy offensive could boycott the person’s business, or speak out against his practices or beliefs. Instead, the common response to such a situation is for statists to petition those in “authority” to force supposedly fair and enlightened choices upon everyone.
The same holds true for many other societal problems. The fight over whether same-sex marriage should be “legally” recognized or “outlawed” is nothing but a competition in intolerance from both sides. It is not justified to forcibly prevent two men from saying they are married, nor is it justified to force anyone else to recognize such a relationship as “marriage,” The notion that everyone has to have the same idea of what constitutes marriage (or anything else) is a symptom of conformity-fascism.
Likewise, “obscenity” laws seek to forcibly limit what people may read or view. “Narcotics laws,” as well as much of what the FDA does, constitute attempts to forcibly limit what substances people may ingest. “Minimum wage laws” try to forcibly control what two people are allowed to agree upon. “Anti-discrimination” laws attempt to force people into making deals and associations they do not want to make. “Laws” such as the “Americans with Disabilities Act,” are attempts to use force, in the name of “fairness,” to control what services people can offer, such as shutting down a business if the owner cannot afford to install a wheelchair ramp.
All such “laws,” all such acts of “authority” and “government,” are acts of aggression, the exact opposite of tolerance. It is absurd to try to force people to be nice, or fair, or compassionate, not only because aggression is inherently wrong but also because there will never be only one idea of what is nice, fair and compassionate.
To have millions of people constantly fighting over the sword of “authority,” each hoping to forcibly impose his view of “goodness” upon everyone else, has been the direct cause of most of the violence and oppression in history. Though it may seem counterintuitive, this fact is historically indisputable: most of the evil committed throughout history has come from attempts to use “authority” to accomplish good things.
The constitution of the Soviet Union, for example, described an “authority” which was to treat everyone equally, regardless of race or religion, occupation or sex, and to preserve the individual rights of all citizens in their economic, political and social lives. The “rights” enumerated in the Soviet constitution included freedom of speech and freedom of religion, the right to work, the right to rest and leisure, the right to housing, the right to education, the right to health care, and the right of citizens to be cared for in their old age, among other things.
The real-world result of that noble-sounding experiment, however, was constant, violent repression, harassment and intimidation, economic enslavement, forced suppression of thoughts and opinions, widespread poverty, and the murder of tens of millions of human beings, many via intentionally orchestrated starvation.
The constitution of the People’s Republic of China is very similar to that of the Soviet Union, and the results were similar as well: widespread violent repression and tyranny, as well as mass murder. (The attempt by Chinese “authorities” to use the violence of the state to reduce population growth has had particularly horrendous and deplorable results.)
Tyrants have always professed to have the noblest intentions for what they do. But even good intentions, when added to the belief in “authority,” always result in immoral violence, sometimes to an almost incomprehensible degree. Even without all of the historical examples, it should be obvious that trying to achieve compassion and fairness, love and virtue, cooperation and brotherhood, by way of authoritarian aggression and violence, is insane, and that “government,” by its very nature, as a tool of forcible control, can never and will never lead to justice, peace and harmony.
It is also worth noting that the political left and right are both enamored with the concept of “equality,” with the political right pushing for “equality under the law,” and the left pushing for equality of outcomes. But neither actually wants true equality, because they both exempt the ruling class from such “equality.”
True equality rules out all “government,” because a ruler and a subject obviously can never be equals. What statists actually want is equality among the slaves, but enormous inequality between the slaves and the masters.
This again shows that they view “government” as being superhuman, because it never occurs to them, as they push “equality for all,” that the equality should also include the politicians and the police.
Big or Small, Left or Right, the State Is Evil
Each and every person who advocates “government” in any form – whether liberal, conservative, moderate, independent, communist, fascist, constitutionalist, or any other flavor – believes that representatives of “authority” should, on a large scale, commit acts which, if done by anyone else, would be widely recognized as unjust and immoral.
All statists believe that the people who make up “government” have an exemption from basic human morality, and not only may do things which others have no right to do, but should and must do such things, for the (supposed) good of society. The type and degree of aggression varies, but all statists advocate aggression.
In statist mythology, the political “left wing” and the political “right wing” are opposites. In reality, they are two sides of the same coin. The difference lies only in what the different voters hope those in power will do with that power. But in practice, “left” and “right” politicians all engage in wealth redistribution, war-mongering, centralized control of commerce, and numerous coercive restrictions upon the behavior of their subjects.
As “right-wing” and “left-wing” states approach complete power, they become utterly indistinguishable from each other. Hitler’s supposedly “far right” regime and Stalin’s supposedly “far left” regime were virtually identical. Whatever the original stated purpose of either, the end result was complete power and control for the politicians, and complete helplessness and enslavement of everyone else.
Being allowed to choose between the political “left” and the political “right” provides the people with exactly as much power and freedom as allowing them to choose between death by hanging and death by firing squad. And adding an independent third party only adds the option of death by electrocution. As long as the people bicker only about which gang should enslave everyone (also known as “democracy”), the people will remain enslaved.
Ironically, statists of all political stripes lament the influence that “lobbyists” and “special interests” have over politicians, ignoring the fact that every voter is a special interest, and every campaign contributor is a lobbyist. Once people accept the premise that “government” has the right to forcibly micromanage society, perpetual competition between groups, each throwing money and favors at politicians to try to get their way, is inevitable.
It is silly to advocate authoritarian control (”government”) only to then complain about the unavoidable effect of authoritarian control: people trying to buy influence. Politicians can be bought only because they have the power to sell, and they have the power to sell only because people believe in “government.”
State power will always be used to serve one person’s agenda at the expense of another (how else could coercion be used?), making the idea of “government corruption” redundant. Every statist wants “government” to forcibly impose his will on others, but dubs it “corruption” if someone else’s agenda wins out. The hypocrisy is astounding.
Likewise, conservative pundits, on talk radio and elsewhere, sanctimoniously chastise liberals for advocating the forced redistribution of wealth, while the pundits do exactly the same thing for slightly different purposes. To criticize welfare while supporting corporate subsidies, or to criticize attempts to legislate “fairness” while supporting the “war on drugs,” or to criticize liberal plans to nationalize industry while supporting a giant, forcibly funded “government” military (which amounts to nationalizing the protection industry) shows a complete absence of philosophical principles.
At the same time, it is equally hypocritical for liberals to righteously condemn “right-wing” warmongering while supporting a giant, intrusive, vicious extortion racket (”taxation”), or to complain about the “intolerance” of the “right” while advocating all manner of authoritarian behavioral controls.
In truth, there is NO real difference between the philosophical principles of one statist and another, because they both accept the premise that a ruling class, with the right to control and rob the population, is necessary and legitimate. The only argument after that is not one of principle, but simply a debate over how the loot should be distributed and what choices should be forced upon the peasants.
There is no such thing as a tolerant liberal or a tolerant conservative because not one of them tolerates people spending their own money and controlling their own lives.
It is true that the degree of evil and the types of immoral aggression advocated vary based upon the different styles of statism. Constitutionalists, for example, advocate relatively low levels of robbery and extortion (”taxation”) and advocate that only certain, limited activities and behaviors should be controlled via threats and coercion (“regulation”).
But every power which any constitution pretends to grant to any legislature is a power not possessed by mere mortal individuals. Who would bother writing into a constitution a line pretending to delegate to certain people a right already possessed by everyone else?
All such “grants of power,” and any document purporting to create a “government” or empower any “legislature” to do anything, are attempts to issue a license to commit evil.
However, as should be patently self-evident, no person or group of people – regardless of what documents they create or rituals they perform – can grant to someone else moral permission to commit evil. And putting supposed “limits” on such permission does not make it any more sane or legitimate.
In short, to advocate “government” is always to advocate evil.
Liberals and conservatives both insist that someone needs to be “in charge,” because that is the reality they were raised in: the only thing required of them was that they remain obedient to authority. From that training, they have little or no idea what to do if left to their own devices, if no one is telling them what to do. So they refuse to grow up, and try to hallucinate into existence a superhuman “authority.”
Paradoxically, even though there is no earthly species above human beings, they seek to fabricate this superhuman entity out of nothing but human beings, and then try to bestow upon it superhuman qualities, rights and virtues.
The entire concept is delusional, but it is shared by the vast majority of people the world over, who refuse to accept the fact that there is no shortcut to determining right and wrong, that there is no magic trick which will make truth and justice automatically prevail, that there is no “system” that can guarantee safety or fairness, and that everyday mortal human beings, with all of their deficiencies and shortcomings, are the best and only hope for civilization.
There is no tooth fairy, or Santa Claus, or magical entity called “government,” which can make an immoral species behave morally, or make a group of imperfect people function perfectly. And the belief in such an entity, rather than being merely pointless and ineffective, drastically increases the overall stupidity, conflict, injustice, intolerance, violence, oppression and murder in human society.
Nonetheless, most of those indoctrinated into the worship of “government” would rather cling to their familiar, horribly destructive, heinously evil, profoundly anti-human superstitions than grow up and accept the fact that there is no one above them, that there is no giant mommy or daddy to save the day, that they are at the top, and that each of them is personally responsible for deciding what he should do and then doing it.
Sadly, they would rather suffer the hell of perpetual war and total enslavement than face the uncertainty and responsibility that comes with freedom.
The belief in “authority” negates and overrides nearly all of the positive effects of religious and moral beliefs. What most people call their “religion” is empty window-dressing, and what most people tout as their moral virtue is irrelevant, as long as they believe in the myth of “authority.”
Christians, for example, are taught things such as “If someone strikes you, turn the other cheek,” “Love your neighbor” (and even “Love your enemy”) and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Yet every so-called Christian who believes in “government” constantly forsakes these principles, advocating constant aggression against everyone – friend and enemy, neighbor and stranger – via the cult of “government.”
To put on a show of being pious, religious, compassionate, loving and virtuous, while “voting” for a gang that promises to use violence to control the actions of everyone you know, is the height of hypocrisy. To refrain from personally robbing one’s neighbor, while pushing for someone else to do it, is both cowardly and hypocritical. Yet almost every Christian (and every member of every other religion) does such things on a regular basis, by way of “political” advocacy.
As mentioned before, faith in “government” is a purely religious belief. As such, the vast majority of those who wear the label “atheist” are not actually atheists, because they believe in the god called “government.” They do not recognize it as a religious belief, of course, but their belief in that ethereal, superhuman savior of mankind (”authority”) is as deep and faith-based as any other religious belief.
Ironically, atheists are often quick to point out the destruction that has been committed throughout history in the name of religion, but fail to notice the gruesome results of the god they bow to: “government.”
The atheists are absolutely right to point out that when churches were the accepted “authority” – the organizations thought to have the right to forcibly control others – many of them committed large-scale, heinous acts of terrorism, torture and murder. But what most modern atheists fail to realize, despite the clear evidence staring them in the face, is that they are members of the most destructive church in history, the church of “government,” which has managed to wreak havoc, death and destruction on a level far beyond what even the most vicious churches of the past did.
For example, over the span of two hundred years, around one or two million people were killed in the religious wars known as “the Crusades,” In comparison, in half that amount of time in the twentieth century, over a hundred times as many people were killed by the “progressive policies” of collectivist “governments.” Advances in technology no doubt played a large role in the increase in deaths, but the point is, whether the mask of “authority” is worn by a church or a state, the superstition is horribly dangerous, and the results horribly destructive.
The fact that so many atheists eagerly condemn one form of the superstition, while vehemently advocating it in another form, shows an amazing degree of selective blindness.
Often those most critical of oppression via “religion” are some of the most devout “true believers” in the god called “government.”
No objective standard
Again, in the eyes of those who believe in “government,” there is a world of difference between acceptable individual behavior and acceptable “government” behavior. When an individual steals $100, it is seen as an immoral crime; when those in “government” steal trillions of dollars every year, it is seen as acceptable.
If the average individual prints his own $100 bill, and goes out and spends it, that is seen as fraud and counterfeiting – an immoral act akin to theft. When “government” gives “legal” permission for the Federal Reserve to do the same thing, but with trillions of fiat, out-of-thin-air “dollars,” that is seen as acceptable, even useful and necessary.
While various “governments” have declared that the average man is not “allowed’ to possess firearms, the mercenaries of “government” are allowed to have guns bombs, fighter jets, tanks, missiles, and even nuclear warheads.
Ironically, such weapons – with the exception of nuclear weapons – are routinely put into the hands of the very same people who, before they became mercenaries for the state, were prohibited from possessing firearms.
In other words, when those individuals use their own judgments, some politicians declare them to be untrustworthy, and too much of a danger to society, to be trusted with a five-shot revolver. But when those same people are blindly following orders, obeying the chain of command, those same politicians declare that they can be trusted to have assault rifles, sniper rifles, grenades, mounted machine guns, tanks, fighter jets, bombers, heavy artillery, and countless other tools of large-scale destruction.
In addition to the huge chasm between what the masses perceive to be acceptable individual behavior and acceptable “government” behavior, the public sense of when “government” has gone “too far” seems almost random. The standards by which average individuals are judged are simple and constant: if they steal, defraud, assault, or murder, that is bad. But the measure of right and wrong for “government” seems largely arbitrary.
For example, it is now widely accepted that “outlawing’ alcohol would be unjustified, but “outlawing” marijuana – and using wide-spread, constant violence to enforce that prohibition – is legitimate. As an even more bizarre contradiction, most people would be rightfully offended if “government” attempted to coerce everyone into picking up litter in his own neighborhood, but most accept it as legitimate when “government,” via the military “draft,” coerces people into going to another country to either kill people or die.
Bizarrely, this most heinous example of forced labor – forcing people to go to halfway around the world to murder complete strangers – was even committed by a “government” whose own rules (i.e., the Thirteenth Amendment) prohibit “involuntary servitude.”
It is clear that the limits of what “government” is allowed to do, as far as the general public is concerned, are not based on any principle whatsoever. One reason people, throughout the world and throughout history, have been so slow to resist tyranny is that, as long as the growth of tyranny is slow and steady, the tyrants are never seen as having “crossed the line.” This is because, without any underlying principles by which to gauge right and wrong, there can be no line to cross.
The belief in “authority” is completely incompatible with any moral principles, precisely because the essence of the belief is the idea that those in “authority” are not bound by the same rules of conduct as their subjects.
Logically, how could the subjects ever feel justified in dictating standards of behavior to their masters? And if “taxation” (forced confiscation of wealth) increases from 62% to 63%, how could any statist on principle declare that any line had been crossed, or that “government” had overstepped its bounds?
There can be no principled objection to robbery unless it is an objection against any level of robbery, even if “legal.” If 1% forced confiscation of wealth by “government” is legitimate in principle, then so is 99%, Either the rulers own the people, and have the right to take as much as they please, or the people own themselves, and the rulers have no right to forcibly take anything from them.
There can be no principle anywhere in between. How could there be? What possible rational basis could there be for holding the belief that 46% slavery is good, but that 47% slavery is bad? How could there be any principled line anywhere in between 0% and 100%?
When the violence of “government” becomes too widespread, too arbitrary, and too vicious, statists very slowly begin to question it. But there are no real principles guiding how they judge the righteousness of the actions of the ruling class.
Once it is accepted that one group of people has the inherent right to commit acts of aggression against others, there is no objective standard for limiting such a right. If “government” can require people to have a “license” to drive to the comer store, why can it not require people to have a “license” to walk down the street? If it is legitimate for “lawmakers” to demand that private firearms be registered and regulated, why is it not also legitimate for them to demand that all forms of speech and expression be registered and regulated? If it is okay for politicians to create an enforced “government” monopoly on delivering letters (as the U.s. Postal Service has), why is it not okay for them to create an enforced “government” monopoly on telephone services?
The reason “government” is always a slippery slope, constantly pushing away from freedom and toward totalitarianism, is that once someone accepts the premise of a ruling class, there is no objective basis whatsoever for applying any limits to the powers of that ruling class. There can be no rational moral standard for saying that a certain person has the right to commit acts of aggression – theft, intimidation, assault and coercion – but that he may commit such acts only to a certain degree, or only if “necessary.”
For slaves to concede that they are the rightful property of someone else, only to then claim that there are limits on what their owners may do to them, is a logical contradiction. For a subject to accept any master (including one called “government”), and to then imagine that he – the subject – will decide the extent of the master’s powers, defies logic and reality. Yet that is what all believers in “representative government” seek to do.
In short, those who believe in “authority” have accepted, on the most fundamental level, that they are owned by someone else: the people claiming to be “authority.” Having accepted that idea, they then proceed to beg their masters for favors. In doing so, however, the people are continually reinforcing the idea that ultimately it is up to the masters what will be done with the subjects.
The one constant message that echoes throughout the entire “political process” is this: “Here are the things that we, the people, ask that you, the rulers, allow us to do.” The implicit message underlying all political action is that the only power the people have is the power to whine and beg, and that, ultimately, it is always up to the masters what will happen, To push for any change in “the law” is to accept that “the law” is legitimate.
In contrast, if an armed driver was accosted by a carjacker with a knife, the driver would feel no need to lobby the aggressor, to beg him to give his permission for the driver to keep his own car. If the driver had the means to forcibly repel the attacker, he would have every right to do so. To ask for something is to accept that the decision is the other person’s to make.
To ask those in “government” for a bit more freedom is to admit that it is up to them whether the people may be free or not. In other words, to ask for freedom is to not be free, but to accept one’s subjugation to someone else. Consider what an oxymoron it is for a person to claim to have an “unalienable right” to do something, and then to ask the politicians for their legislative permission to do that thing.
The belief in “authority” ultimately leads even those who imagine themselves to be ardent pro-freedom advocates to condone their own subjugation. No matter how loudly they “demand” that the politicians change some “law,” those who claim to love freedom while still suffering from the “authority” superstition merely reinforce the legitimacy of the ruling class’s control over them, by implicitly agreeing that the people need the ruling class’s “legislative” permission in order to have the right to do anything.
The Effect of the Myth on Freedom Advocates
“Government” itself does no harm, because it is a fictional entity. But the belief in “government” – the notion that some people actually have the moral right to rule over others – has caused immeasurable pain and suffering, injustice and oppression, enslavement and death.
The fundamental problem does not reside in any set of buildings, or any group of politicians, or any gang of soldiers or enforcers, The fundamental problem is not an organization that can be voted out, or overthrown, or “reformed.” The fundamental problem is the belief itself – the delusion, superstition and myth of “authority” – which resides in the minds of several billion human beings, including those who have suffered the most because of that belief.
Ironically, the belief in “authority” dramatically affects the perception and actions even of those who are actively fighting against a particular regime. The superstition drastically alters and limits the ways in which dissenters “fight” oppression, and renders nearly all of their efforts impotent.
Furthermore, on the rare occasion that a particular tyrant is toppled, one form of oppression is almost always replaced by another – often one that is even worse than the prior one.
Instead of fighting against a non-existent beast, what “freedom fighters” need to do is to recognize that it is not real, that it does not exist, that it cannot exist, and then act accordingly. Of course, if only a few people overcome the superstition, they will likely be ridiculed, condemned, attacked, imprisoned or murdered by those who are still firm believers in the myth. But when even a significant minority of people outgrow the superstition, and change their behavior accordingly, the world will drastically change.
When the people actually want true freedom, they will achieve it without the need for any election or revolution. The trouble is, almost no one actually wants humanity to be free, and almost no one opposes oppression in principle.
To wit, the effects of the myth of “authority” remain intact even in the minds of most people who consider themselves to be rebels, nonconformists and free-thinkers. During their teenage years, many people go through a period of apparent rebelliousness, which consists mostly of doing whatever those in “authority” tell them not to do: engaging in smoking, sexual promiscuity, drug use, wearing different clothes or hairstyles, getting tattoos or body piercings, and so on.
As such, their actions are still controlled, albeit in a backward way, by the myth of “authority.” Instead of obeying for the sake of obeying, they disobey for the sake of disobeying, but still show no signs of being able to think for themselves. They behave like angry children instead of complacent children, but still do not behave like adults.
And in most cases, their natural desire to break the chains of “authority” does not last long, they “outgrow” their anti-authoritarian tendencies, and gradually transform back into “model citizens,” i.e. obedient subjects.
For example, the supposedly radical, anti-authoritarian hippies of the 1960s more or less became the new “government” in the United States with the presidency of Bill Clinton. Even the “peaceniks” whose mantra was “live and let live,” when given the opportunity to become the new “authority,” chose to forcibly meddle with the lives of others as much as or more than their predecessors did, including via military conquest.
Likewise, those in “Generation X,” the “MTV” crowd, and so on, have always focused their efforts on putting people who agree with them into power, instead of working to actually achieve freedom. There is a fundamental difference between having complaints about a particular ruling class, and recognizing and opposing the insanity of “authority” in principle.
In short, in all the various societal manifestations of so-called rebelliousness and non-conformity, almost none have actually escaped the myth of “authority.” Instead, they have merely attempted to make a new “authority,” a new ruling class, a new “government,” a new centralized machine of coercion through which they could forcibly subjugate and control their neighbors.
In short, nearly all so-called “rebels” are phonies, who pretend to be resisting “the man,” but who really just want to be “the man.” And this should be expected, if one starts with the assumption that there should and must be an “authority,” and that a “government” exerting control over a population is a legitimate situation, why would anyone not want to be the one in charge?
Each person, by definition, wants the world to be the way he thinks it should be, and what better way could any person accomplish that than by becoming king? If someone accepts the notion that authoritarian power is valid, why would he not want it to be used to try to create the world as he wants it to be? This is why the only people who truly advocate freedom in principle are anarchists and voluntaryists – people who understand that forcibly dominating others is not legitimate, even when it is called “law,” and even when it is done in the name of “the people” or “the common good,”
There is a big difference between striving for a new, wiser, nobler master, and striving for a world of equals, where there are no masters and no slaves. Likewise, there is a big difference between a slave who believes in the principle of freedom, and a slave whose ultimate goal is to become the new master. And this is true, even if that slave truly intends to be a kind and generous master. Even those who advocate a relatively limited, benign type of “government” are advocating against freedom. As long as people believe in the myth of “authority,” every downfall of one tyrant will be followed by the creation and growth of a new tyrant.
History is replete with examples, such as Fidel Castro and Guevara, who portrayed themselves as “freedom fighters” just long enough to become the new oppressors. They were no doubt quite genuine in their vehement opposition to the oppressions which they and their friends suffered from, but they were not opposed to authoritarian oppression in principle, as clearly demonstrated by their behavior once they obtained power themselves. This pattern has been repeated over and over again throughout history, with the resentment of one tyrannical regime becoming the seed of the next tyrannical regime.
Even Hitler’s rise to power was due in large part to anger at the perceived injustices and oppressions inflicted upon Germany via the Treaty of Versailles. Of course, as long as the rebels suffer from the superstition of “authority,” their first priority, once they have overthrown one “government,” will be to set up a new one. So even acts of great bravery and heroism, among those who still believe in “government,” have accomplished little more than replacing one tyrant with another.
Many have been able to recognize and oppose specific acts of tyranny by specific regimes, but very few have recognized that the underlying problem is not who sits on the throne; the problem is that there is a throne to sit on.
The same failure to recognize the real problem occurs in more mundane, relatively peaceful “reform” as well. In the U.S., for example, a large portion of the population is perfectly able to see the injustices resulting from the “war on drugs,” global warmongering, and other violations of civil rights committed by Republican tyrants.
However, not recognizing the belief in “authority” as the real problem, the solution proposed by those who recognize such injustice is to give the reins of “government” to Democrat tyrants instead. Meanwhile, another large portion of the population is perfectly able to see the injustices resulting from heavy “taxation,” “government” micromanaging of industry, wealth-redistribution schemes, citizen disarmament (”gun control”), etc.
But, not recognizing the belief in “authority” as the real problem, the solution proposed by those who recognize such injustices is to give the reins of “government” back to Republican tyrants. And so, decade after decade, the machine of oppression changes hands, while individual freedom, in all aspects of life, continues to dwindle. And still, all that most Americans can even contemplate as a solution is yet another election, or another political party, or another lobbying effort, in the hope of begging the ruling class to be more wise or benevolent.
Some people, seeing the disaster caused by the two-party system, blame “extremism” for the negative effects of “government.” They surmise that if people would only support a form of coercive control somewhere in between the “far left” and the “far right,” things would improve. Such people claim to be independent, open-nminded and moderate, but in reality are merely general advocates of oppression instead of being advocates of a particular flavor of oppression.
The “left” and “right” are merely two masks which the one ruling class wears, and making a new mask which is a compromise between the other two will have no effect whatsoever upon the nature of the beast or the destruction it causes. Taking a position halfway between “left-wing” tyranny and “right-wing” tyranny does not result in freedom; it results in bipartisan tyranny.
Among those who vote Democrat or Republican – or for any other party – no one recognizes the underlying problem, and as a result, no one ever gets any closer to a solution. They remain slaves, because their thoughts and discussions are limited to the pointless question of who should be their master. They never consider – and dare not allow themselves to consider – the possibility that they should have no master at all. As a result, they focus entirely on political action of one kind or another.
But the foundation of all political action is the belief in “authority,” which is the problem itself. So the efforts of statists are, and always will be, doomed to fail.
Unfortunately, this is also true of the less mainstream, supposedly more pro-freedom “political movements,” including Constitutionalists, the Libertarian party, and others. As long as they think and act within the confines of the “government” game, their efforts are not only completely incapable of solving the problem but actually aggravate the problem by inadvertently legitimizing the system of domination and subjugation which wears the label of “government.”
The Rules of the Game
Even most people who claim to love liberty and to believe in “unalienable” rights allow the superstition of “authority” to drastically limit their effectiveness. Most of what such people do, in one way or another, consists of asking tyrants to change their “laws.”
Whether activists campaign for or against a particular candidate, or lobby for or against a particular piece of “legislation,” they are merely reinforcing the assumption that obedience to authority is a moral imperative.
When activists try to convince politicians to decrease “taxes,” or repeal some “law,” those activists are implicitly admitting that they need permission from their masters in order to be free, and the man who “runs for office,” promising to fight for the people, is also implying that it is up to those in “government” to decide what the peasants will be allowed to do.
As Daniel Webster put it, “There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern; they promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”
Activists spend huge amounts of time, money and effort begging their masters to change their commands. Many even go out of their way to stress the fact that they are “working within the system,” and that they are not advocating anything “illegal.”
This shows that, regardless of their displeasure with those in power, they still believe in the myth of “authority,” and will cooperate with “legal” injustice unless and until they can convince the masters to change the rules – to “legalize” justice.
While the intended message of dissenters may be that they disapprove of what the masters are doing, the actual message that all political action sends to those in power is “We wish you would change your commands, but we will continue to obey whether you do or not.”
The truth is, one who seeks to achieve freedom by petitioning those in power to give it to him has already failed, regardless of the response. To beg for the blessing of “authority” is to accept that the choice is the master’s alone to make, which means that the person is already, by definition, a slave.
One who begs for lower “taxes” is implicitly agreeing that it is up to the politicians how much a man may keep of what he has earned. One who begs the politicians not to disarm him (via “gun control”) is, by doing so, conceding that it is up to the master whether to let the man be armed or not.
In fact, those who lobby for politicians to respect any of the people’s “unalienable rights” do not believe in unalienable rights at all. Rights which require “government” approval are not unalienable, and are not even rights. They are privileges, granted or withheld at the whim of the master. And those who hold positions of power know that they have nothing to fear from people who do nothing but pathetically beg for freedom and justice.
However loudly the dissenters talk about “demanding” their rights, the message they actually send is this: “We agree, master, that it is up to you what we may and may not do.” That underlying message can be seen in all sorts of activities mistakenly imagined to be forms of resistance.
For example, people often engage in protests in front of “government” buildings, carrying signs, chanting slogans, sometimes even engaging in violence, to express their displeasure with what the masters are doing. However, even such “protests,” for the most part, do little more than reinforce authoritarianism.
Marches, sit-ins, protests, and so on, are designed to send a message to the masters, the goal being to convince the masters to change their evil ways. But that message still implies that it is up to the masters what the people may do, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: when the people feel beholden to an “authority,” they are beholden to an “authority.”
Those in “government” derive all of their power from the fact that their subjects imagine them to have power.
Legitimizing Oppression
The harder people try to work within any political system to achieve freedom, the more they will reinforce, in their own minds and the minds of anyone watching, that the “system” is legitimate. Petitioning politicians to change their “laws” implies that those “laws” matter, and should be obeyed.
Nothing better shows the power of the belief in “authority” than the spectacle of a hundred million people begging a few hundred politicians for lower “taxes.” If the people truly understood that the fruits of a man’s labor are his own, they would never engage in such lunacy; they would simply stop surrendering their property to the political parasites.
Their trained-in desire to have the approval of “authority” creates in them a mindset not unlike the mindset of a slave: they literally feel bad about keeping their own money and making their own choices without first getting the master’s permission to do so. Even when freedom is theirs for the taking, statists continue to grovel at the feet of megalomaniacs, begging for freedom, thus ensuring that they will never be free.
The truth is, one cannot believe in “authority” and be free, because accepting the myth of “government” is accepting one’s own obligation to obey a master, which means accepting one’s own enslavement.
Sadly, many people believe that begging the master, via “political action,” is all they can do. So they forever engage in rituals which only legitimize the slave-master relationship, instead of simply disobeying the tyrants. The idea of disobeying “authority,” “breaking the law,” and being “criminals” is more disturbing to them than the idea of being a slave.
Those who want a significantly lower level of authoritarian control and coercion are sometimes accused of being “anti-government,” an allegation most vehemently deny, saying that they are not against “government” per se, but only want better “government.”
But by their own words they are admitting that they do not believe in true freedom, but still believe in the Divine Right of Politicians and the idea that a ruling class can be a good and legitimate thing. Only someone who still feels an abiding obligation to obey the commands of politicians would want to avoid being labeled “anti-government.”
Since “government” always consists of aggression and domination, one cannot be truly pro-freedom without being anti-”government.” The fact that so many activists reject that label (”anti-government”) shows how deeply ingrained the superstition of “authority” remains, even in the minds of those who imagine themselves to be ardent advocates of individual liberty.
One particularly fascinating phenomenon is worth mentioning here. Outraged by authoritarian injustice, but still unwilling to give up the “authority” superstition in themselves, many in the growing freedom/militia/”patriot” movement continue to seek, or claim to have found, some “legal” remedy which will persuade tyrants to leave them in peace.
Over the years, one theory after another has surfaced alleging the existence of some secret “government” form, or some “legal” trick, or some official procedure, which can free an individual from the control of “government.”
Sadly, this demonstrates only that such people are still doing nothing more than looking for a way to get permission to be free. But the road to true freedom has never been, and will never be, a new political ritual, a new “legal” document or argument, or any other form of “political” action.
The only road to true freedom is for the individual to let go of his own attachment to the superstition of “authority.”
The Libertarian Contradiction
Perhaps the best illustration of how the belief in “authority” warps thinking and gets in the way of achieving freedom is the fact that there is a “Libertarian” political party. The heart and soul of libertarianism is the non-aggression principle: the idea that initiating force or fraud against another is always wrong, and that force is justified only if used in defense against aggression. The principle is perfectly sound, but trying to make it a reality via any political process is completely self-contradictory, because “government” and non-aggression are utterly incompatible.
If the organization called “government” stopped using any threats or violence, except to defend against aggressors, it would cease to be “government.” It would have no right to rule, no right to “legislate,” no monopoly on protection, and no right to do anything which any other human being does not have the right to do.
One excuse for libertarian political activism is the claim that society can transform from its current authoritarian arrangement into a truly free society only if it does so slowly and gradually. However, that has never happened, and never will happen, for a very simple reason: either there is such a thing as “authority,” or there is not. Either there is a legitimate ruling class with the right to rule everyone, or each individual owns himself and is beholden only to his own conscience.
The two are mutually exclusive paradigms. It is impossible for there to be an in-between, because whenever there is a conflict between what “authority” commands and what one’s individual judgment dictates, it is impossible to obey both. One must outrank the other.
If “authority” outranks conscience, then the common folk are all the rightful property of the ruling class, in which case freedom cannot and should not exist. If, on the other hand, conscience outranks “authority,” then each person owns himself, and each must always follow his own judgment of right and wrong, no matter what any self-proclaimed “authority” or “law” may command. There cannot be a “gradual shift” between the two, nor can there be a compromise.
Trying to convert libertarianism into a political movement requires a mangled, perverted hybrid of the two options: the idea that a system of domination (“government”) can be used to achieve individual freedom. Whenever a “libertarian” lobbies for legislation or runs for office, he is, by his own actions, conceding that “authority’ and man-made “law” is legitimate.
But if one actually believed in the non-aggression principle, he would understand that the commands of politicians (”laws”) cannot trump that principle, and any “law” that is contrary to the principle is illegitimate. This goes for the idea of “unalienable rights” as well.
If an individual has an inherent right to do something, then, by definition, he does not need any permission from tyrants to do it. He does not need to lobby for a change in “legislation,” and does not need to try to elect some master who will choose to respect his rights.
Anyone who actually believes in the principle of non-aggression – the underlying premise of libertarianism – must be an anarchist, as it is logically impossible to oppose the initiation of violence while supporting any form of “government,” which is nothing but violence. And libertarians cannot be Constitutionalists, as the Constitution quite plainly (in Article I, Section 8) claims to bestow upon some people the right to initiate violence, via “taxation” and “regulation,” among other things.
The principle of libertarianism logically rules out all “government,” even a constitutional republic. Anyone who tries to describe a “government” which commits no acts of aggression will describe, at best, a private security company.
Nonetheless, so many people have been so thoroughly trained into the authoritarian mindset that even when they can see the obvious moral superiority of living by the non-aggression principle (the basis of libertarianism), they still refuse to give up the absurd notion that the right to rule (”authority”) can be used as a tool for freedom and justice.
There is a fundamental difference between arguing about what the master should do – which is what all “politics” consists of – and declaring that the master has no right to rule at all. To be a Libertarian candidate is to try to do both of these conflicting things. It obviously legitimizes the office the candidate seeks to hold, even while the candidate is claiming to believe in the principles of non-aggression and self-ownership, which completely rule out the possibility of any legitimate “public office.”
In short, if the goal is individual freedom, “political action” is not only worthless, it is hugely counter-productive, because the main thing it accomplishes is to legitimize the ruling class’s power.
The only way to achieve freedom is to first achieve mental freedom, by realizing that no one has any right to rule another, which means that “government” is never legitimate. It is never moral. It is never even real. Those who have not yet realized that, and continue to try to petition “the system” to make them free, are playing right into the hands of the tyrants.
Even petitioning for lower levels of “taxation” or “government” spending, or asking for things to be “legalized” or “deregulated,” or begging for other reductions in “government” control over the people, still do nothing to address the real problem, and in fact add to the real problem, by unwittingly repeating and reinforcing the idea that if the people want freedom, they need to have freedom “legalized.”
Political action, by its very nature, always empowers the ruling class and dissempowers the people. If enough people recognize and let go of the “authority” myth, there is no need for any election, any political action, or any revolution. If the people did not imagine themselves to have an obligation to obey the politicians, the politicians would literally be ignored into irrelevance.
In fact, the belief in “democracy” dramatically reduces the ability of the people to resist tyranny, by limiting the ways in which they resist it. For example, if 49% of the population wanted lower levels of “taxation,” but maintained their belief in “authority,” they could accomplish exactly nothing via “democracy.”
On the other hand, if even 10% of the population wanted no “taxation” at all and had escaped the myth of “authority” (including the “democratic” kind), they could achieve their goal easily by simple non-compliance. Using the U.S. as an example, if twenty million people – less than 10% of American “taxpayers” – openly refused to cooperate with attempts by the IRS to extort them, the ruling class would be powerless to do anything about it, and the infamous Internal Revenue Service, along with the massive extortion racket it administers, would grind to a halt.
It would be utterly impossible for 100,000 IRS employees to continually rob millions of Americans who felt no obligation to pay. In fact, it would be impossible for any agency to enforce any “law” which even a fraction of the public could disobey with no feeling of shame or guilt. Brute force alone could not achieve compliance.
Any large population of people that did not perceive obedience, in and of itself, to be a virtue, and felt no inherent duty to obey the commands of those claiming the right to rule, would be utterly impossible to oppress. Wars occur only because people feel obliged to go into battle when “authority” tells them to. (As the saying goes, “What if they had a war, and nobody came?”)
As long as the people car be duped into perpetually begging for freedom to be “legalized,” they will be easy to subjugate and control. As long as a person’s perceived duty to obey “authority” outranks his own personal beliefs and individual judgment, his beliefs and opinions are, as a practical matter, irrelevant.
Unless and until a freedom advocate is willing to disobey the master – to “break the law” – his supposed love of freedom is a lie, and will accomplish nothing.
Same as the Old Boss
Many have argued that society without rulers is impossible, because the moment one “government” collapses or is overthrown, a new “government” will instantly spring up.
In one sense, that is true. If the people continue to adhere to the myth of “authority,” after any upheaval of a particular regime they will simply create a new set of masters to replace the old set. But the reason for this is neither the necessity of “government,” nor the basic nature of man. What nearly all “freedom fighters” fail to realize, as they rail against tyranny and oppression, is that the underlying problem is never the particular people in power. The underlying problem resides in the minds of the people being oppressed, including the minds of most “freedom fighters.”
As long as the people accept the myth of “authority,” even open revolution will, in the long run, do nothing to reduce oppression. When one group of controllers and exploiters falls, the people will simply set up another. (Though few of those who wave their flags on “Independence Day” may realize it, the level of oppression under King George III, just before the American Revolution, was trivial compared to the current levels of “taxation,” “regulation,” and other authoritarian intrusion, coercion and harassment which routinely occur in the U.S. today.)
It is easy for people to see specific injustices committed in the name of a particular regime, but far more difficult for those same people to recognize that the root cause of such injustices is the belief system of the general public. History books are full of examples of long, bloody reigns of tyrants, followed at last by bloody revolution, followed by the anointing of a new tyrant. The type of tyrant may change – a monarch replaced by a communist regime, a “right wing” tyrant replaced by a “left wing” tyrant, an oppressive theocracy replaced by an oppressive “populist” regime, and so on – but as long as the belief in “authority” remains, so will oppression.
Even the most heinous examples of man’s inhumanity to man, committed in the name of “authority,” rarely persuade anyone to question the idea of “authority” per se. Instead, it leads them only to oppose a particular set of tyrants. As a discouraging example, much of the most fervent resistance to the Nazis came from the communists, who themselves advocated a form of oppression just as vicious and destructive as Hitler’s regime.
Due to their authoritarian mindset, the Germans had no chance to achieve peace or justice, as their entire national debate was concerned only with which kind of all-powerful rulers should be in charge, without even a hint at the possibility that no one should have such power. The public discourse has been similar throughout most of the world, throughout most of time, focusing on who should rule, instead of questioning whether there should be rulers at all.
A Mix of Wisdom and Insanity
In the late eighteenth century something very unusual occurred, something that seemed as if it might break the perpetual cycle of serial tyrants. That event was the signing of the Declaration of Independence. What made that event unusual was not that the people were rebelling against a tyrant – which had happened countless times before – but that the rebels expressed some basic philosophical principles, rejecting not just a particular regime but rejecting oppression in principle. Almost.
The Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution which followed some years later, were a combination of profound insight and glaring contradictions. On the bright side, the discussion of the time was not just about who would be in charge, but focused heavily on the concept of individual rights and limiting the power of “government.”
At the same time, the Declaration of Independence erroneously asserted that “government” can have a legitimate role in society: to protect the rights of individuals, However, this has never been true in practice, and cannot even be true in theory. As explained above, an organization which did nothing more than defend individual rights would not be “government” in any sense of the term.
The Declaration also spoke of unalienable rights, and asserted that “all men are created equal” (as far as their rights are concerned). But the authors failed to realize that such concepts completely rule out any possibility of a legitimate ruling class, even a very limited one. The very principles they expressed were then immediately contradicted by their efforts to create a protector “government.” One day they were declaring that “all men are created equal” (the Declaration of Independence), and the next they were declaring that some men, calling themselves “Congress,” had the right to rob (”tax”) everyone else (U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 1).
The American Revolution was the result of a hodgepodge of conflicting ideas, some supporting individual sovereignty, some supporting a ruling class. The Declaration asserts that when any “government” becomes destructive of individual rights – as every “government” always does, the moment it comes into existence – the people have a duty to alter or abolish it. Yet the Constitution claims to give to Congress the power to “suppress insurrections” (US. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 15).
This implies that the people have a right to resist “government” oppression, but that “government” has a right to violently crush them when they do. In short, the works of the “Founding Fathers” consist of a combination of profound wisdom and utter lunacy. In some places, they described quite well the concept of self-ownership; in others, they sought to create a ruling class. They did not seem to notice that those two agendas are utterly incompatible with each other.
The result of their efforts was, in one sense, a gigantic failure. The regime they created grew far beyond what both the federalists and the anti-federalists said they wanted. The Declaration and the Constitution utterly failed to keep “government” power limited.
The promise of a “government” that would be a servant of the people, protecting their rights but otherwise leaving them in peace, grew into the largest, most powerful authoritarian empire the world has ever known, including the largest and most intrusive extortion racket ever known, the largest and most powerful war machine in history, and the most intrusive and invasive bureaucracy in history.
In truth, the idea was doomed from the beginning. Perhaps the most valuable thing the “Great American Experiment” accomplished was to demonstrate that “limited government” is impossible, There cannot be a master who answers to his slaves. There cannot be a lord who serves his subjects. There cannot be a ruler who is both above the people and subordinate to them.
Unfortunately, there are still many who refuse to learn this lesson, insisting that the Constitution did not fail, the people failed – by not doing it right, by not being vigilant enough, or by some other neglect or corruption. Oddly, this the same excuse given by communists for why their flawed philosophy, when put into practice in the real world, always turns into violent oppression.
The truth is that any form of authoritarian control – any type of “government,” whether constitutional, democratic, socialist, fascist, or anything else – will result in a set of masters forcibly oppressing a group of slaves. That is what “authority” is – all it ever has been, and all it ever could be, no matter how many layers of euphemisms and pleasant rhetoric are used in an attempt to hide it.
The Contract Myth
The mythology surrounding the Constitution alleges that it served as a sort of contract between the people in general and their new “servants” in Congress. But there is not a shred of truth to that. One cannot, by signing a contract, bind someone else to an “agreement.” The idea that a few dozen white, male, wealthy landowners could enter an agreement on behalf of over two million other people is absurd. But the absurdity does not stop there.
No contract can ever create a right held by none of the participants, which is what all “government” constitutions pretend to do. The form of the document makes it clear that it was not an actual contract, but an attempt to fabricate out of thin air the right to rule, however “limited” it was supposed to be.
An actual agreement by contract is a fundamentally different thing from any document purporting to create a “government.” For example, if a thousand American colonists had signed an agreement saying “We agree to give a tenth of whatever we produce, in exchange for the protection services of the George Washington Protection Company,” they could be morally bound by such an agreement. (Making an agreement and breaching it is a form of theft, akin to going to a store and taking something without paying for it.)
But they could not bind anyone else to the agreement, nor could they use such an agreement to give the “George Washington Protection Company” the right to start robbing or otherwise controlling people who had nothing to do with the contract.
Additionally, while the Constitution pretends to authorize “Congress” to do various things, it does not actually require Congress to do anything. Who in their right mind would sign a contract which did not bind the other party to do anything? (In DeShaney v. Winnebago, 489 U.S. 189, even the U.S. Supreme Court officially declared that “government” has no actual duty to protect the public.)
The result is that the Constitution, rather than being a brilliant, useful, valid contract, was an insane attempt by a handful of men to unilaterally subject millions of other people to the control of a machine of aggression, in exchange for no guarantee of anything.
The fact that millions of Constitutionalists are desperately trying to get back to that, in the hopes that it can save their “country” if the people try it again – after it completely failed on the first attempt – is a testament to the power, and the insanity, of the superstition of “authority.”
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