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NOTHING can make something evil into something
good
Beware of Tiger Larken Rose If some group can impose laws on me, and tax me, and regulate me, it's not my servant; it's my master.
May 3, 2008 - Whenever I attack the myth of the Divine Right of Politicians, and the notion that any constitution, election, or other ritual could give some people the RIGHT to rule the rest of us (aka "authority"), some people respond by saying that anarchy "will never work." First of all, anarchy is what IS. The only thing I'm suggesting is that we'd be better off if we stopped hallucinating something that isn't there. Again, it's a little like a primitive tribe that imagines a volcano to be a god, and keeps flinging unsuspecting virgins into it in an attempt to appease the gods. If I said to them, "Um, that's not a god; it's sort of a leak in the earth's crust," I suppose a few of them would say, "But our lives wouldn't work if we didn't appease the god of the volcano!" No matter how much you tinker with the rituals, as long as their thought process is based upon thinking that the volcano is a god, bad things will happen (especially to the people who get flung in). There are several logical disproofs of the legitimacy of "government." A very simple one, which I've mentioned before, goes like this: from where would "government" get the right to do things that normal people have no right to do? For example, where does the right to "tax" people come from? Since normal people have no such right, they can't possibly have GIVEN that right to someone else. Or, did a magic piece of parchment (the Constitution) alter morality, and suddenly make it so it was OKAY for SOME people to steal? No. In short, NOTHING can make something evil into something good, though the entire notion of "government" rests on the idea that that is possible. But again, people often respond to such things by saying that "anarchy" (a lack of a ruling class) wouldn't "work." They claim that, because of the malice and stupidity of people, we can't just be left to decide for ourselves what to do, or there would be violence and bloody mayhem! Such a response, however, not only misunderstands what I'm suggesting, but reveals an insane assumption behind the belief in "authority." The premise is that "government" is made up of something OTHER than people. After all, if the stupidity or malice of PEOPLE is what we're trying to get protection from, how on earth would giving SOME of those flawed people a lot more power help things? It wouldn't, and it doesn't. Consider the statement (which I often hear): "People can't be left to govern themselves." Oh, really? And just what SHOULD be governing us humans? A benevolent moose? A wise aardvark? Perhaps a committee of bol weevils? Since all "governments" consist entirely of PEOPLE (and not very good ones, at that), how on earth can there be a structure which removes the natural tendencies (good or bad) of people? To put it another way, if you had a big cage full of 100 rabid dogs, what form of "government" could you institute among them to make them all be nice? None, of course. And if you tied down most of them and filed their teeth down to dull stumps, while giving spiked collars to a few of them, do you think that would REDUCE the violence that would occur? Of course not. The unstrained ones would eat the restrained ones. Anyone could predict that. So why would we expect "government" in human society to somehow magically benefit the good instead of the evil? The fact of the matter is, "anarchy" is simply what is, while "government" is what will never work. People are constantly saying that we NEED some kind of "government" to protect individual rights. Yet history makes it undeniable that those acting in the name of "authority" have violated individual rights on a scale that private crooks could never hope to achieve. Yet even while trying to fight off a murderous, thieving monster calling itself "government," people will STILL insist that we "need" it to do something it obviously doesn't do. It's like having a wild tiger in your house for "protection." "Well, yes, it has eaten three of our kids, and it got my leg last week, but we NEED it for protection!" And why is that? "Because somewhere out there are tigers who would harm us!" Why don't people see how utterly insane that reasoning is? How on earth can we NEED to have something with the RIGHT to forcibly control everyone, in order to defend our freedom? How stupid can an idea be? Yet 99% of the population accepts it as an indisputable fact of reality. Yes, there are some stupid and/or malicious people who will, on their own, do nasty things to the rest of us, unless we do something to stop them. And we can use our rights of self-defense, either individually or in cooperation, to try to do something about that (which is not "government," and requires no special "authority"). What we can't do, and what we shouldn't try to do, is put together a group of people with super-human rights, and call them our protectors. People still try to reconcile the contradictions of the Founders, pretending that a "servant government" can actually exist, or that a group of people who protect rights and does nothing else could be called "government." If some group can impose laws on me, and tax me, and regulate me, it's not my servant; it's my master. (Duh.) And if something only protects my rights, it cannot tax, it cannot regulate, it's words are not "laws," it has no monopoly, and I can fire it any time I want; it's not "government." Oddly, Constitutionalists and other "limited government" folk use the same bad logic that communists always use: "Well, it didn't work THIS time, but that's just because they did it wrong, not because the theory is flawed." A theory that never works in reality is a BAD theory. "Government" never works, if a government "working" means that it only protects rights and freedom. It never has, and it never will, and as long as people keep letting wild tigers into their houses for "protection," they will keep paying a very steep price for their foolishness. Unfortunately, they put tigers in MY house and YOUR house too, so we have to pay the price for their foolishness as well. And that's the part that really annoys me.
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