People are flawed, so they must be controlled by people.
"Laws" are good and necessary, even though I disagree with some of them.
Crime exists, so The State is necessary to stop crime- even though The State has been around for thousands of years and crime still exists.
It's not wrong (theft/"taxation", kidnapping/"arrest") if government does it.
And on and on it goes.
Sometimes the stupid hurts.
But, I try very hard to have patience with statists. Because I care and I believe their lives will be better if they stop being so stupidly inconsistent and self-contradictory. Some days, though, I think "Are you even listening to yourself?!?"
Without those inherent contradictions, statism simply ceases to be. It evaporates to be replaced by something else. It is replaced by anarchism, voluntaryism, or whatever you wish to call it. It's like a breath of fresh air to those who finally allow themselves to breathe.
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Ah, the State. My folks had to remove two trees whose roots were growing into their piping. They had to get a permit, of course. The permit requires that they replace one of the trees. I gave my dad a sympathetic, "Who the hell are they to force you to plant a tree on your own property", and he starts to defend them. Defends the idea that property which he bought with income he was taxed on, which he paid a sales tax on, which he pays a property tax on every year, is not his to do with as he pleases.
ReplyDeleteOf course, my dad is a functionary for a particularly corrupt federal agency, and my mom is a public school teacher, so if they ever took the red pill I suspect the cognitive dissonance might melt their brains. Still, I try to wake up the people I love.
Yeah, I also try, but when people get their money by working for the State they are highly motivated to support it against all reason and to not see the contradictions.
DeleteYeah, I never seem to wake any family members up. I've also got a cousin who is a cop, another cousin who is a soldier, and a brother who is a MSM talking head, so my family is full of people who actively harm society for a living. They make a lot of tin foil hat jokes about me.
DeleteI love the blog, Kent. I've been a libertarian for quite some time. I've been in the minarchist camp, but your writings and those of a few others have been nudging me closer and closer to the dark side. Keep up the good work. Guys like you and Will Grigg are truly doing God's work.