Politics is Stockholm Syndrome
(My Clovis News Journal column for March 14, 2014)
I confess: I'm not very interested in politics. Who is campaigning; who holds which office; "laws" being proposed or passed. It all feels like chasing my tail.
So I'm not going to waste much time or effort petitioning government's representatives and enforcers to respect my life, liberty, and property.
Perhaps it's necessary, as self preservation, to know what politicians are up to. It would also be necessary to know what a wild boar was up to after you let him in your living room. But why would you ever tolerate either situation? Why believe replacing one wild boar with an interchangeable wild boar could solve anything?
If I moved into your neighborhood, dictating how you were permitted to live, earn money, and use your property- enforcing my will at the point of a gun- would you put up with it? I sincerely hope not!
To pacify you I might schedule an election- give my permission to poll a sample of your neighbors in an attempt to change the way I use your life and property as you might prefer. What if I ignored your requests? You could elect others, who promise to use your life and property in a way which makes you less uncomfortable, to replace me. How is that different?
Would you instead laugh at my attempts at control and invite me to do a nosedive off a windmill? Rather than trying to decide how much of your property I am entitled to take, would you fight to keep it? When I send my hired guns- hired from among your family and neighbors for a percentage of the take- to collect on my behalf, how would you respond?
Imagine I survived my insolence, and three hundred years from now the system through which the torch of control had been passed was still operating. I never had any business running your life, nor do those who came after me have any legitimate authority over the lives of your descendants, no matter how long it has been going on. Nothing changes that.
Would your descendants defend the legitimacy of "their system", saying it is the best one possible? Would they believe "we" are the government; embracing rulers and bureaucrats and relinquishing essential liberty by holding elections to choose who gets to violate them for the next few years.
"We are the government"? Try to do things government employees do with people's lives, liberties, and property and see how long you get away with it. Those who are permitted, under their own rules, to do those things don't tolerate competition, and Stockholm Syndrome keeps their captives complacent.
That, in a nutshell, is politics.
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Tuesday, April 15, 2014
"Death to the IRS and its employees"
Wishing they would all die isn't the same as actively making it happen. No, I am not suggesting you go out and start hunting IRS employees. But doing so is no more wrong than defending yourself from any other violator of your property, so it doesn't bring my condemnation, either.
The IRS has the "authority" of the mugger: "Your money or your life!" uttered at gunpoint. So anyone who kills an IRS agent who has made "official" contact is no more guilty than anyone who manages to "get the drop" on a mugger in a back alley.
Unfortunately, the IRS agent has a huge and violent gang, along with the idiotic and ignorant support of our neighbors. Or, if not "support", at least the ignorant belief that the IRS employee is doing something that doesn't deserve death. But theft is theft- it isn't "better" or less evil if it is committed by a person with an office.
And, even if you have the right to do something, it isn't always the smartest thing to do. In the current statist climate, defending your life, liberty, and property from these thieves would probably be suicide.
IRS employees could make it right in an instant by walking away from the "job" and by never stealing again. In that case they should be left alone unless they break their word. I'm willing to forgive.
But, I will never condemn any person who defends his life, liberty, or property from violators of any sort.
And here's a related post from Libertopia.
The IRS has the "authority" of the mugger: "Your money or your life!" uttered at gunpoint. So anyone who kills an IRS agent who has made "official" contact is no more guilty than anyone who manages to "get the drop" on a mugger in a back alley.
Unfortunately, the IRS agent has a huge and violent gang, along with the idiotic and ignorant support of our neighbors. Or, if not "support", at least the ignorant belief that the IRS employee is doing something that doesn't deserve death. But theft is theft- it isn't "better" or less evil if it is committed by a person with an office.
And, even if you have the right to do something, it isn't always the smartest thing to do. In the current statist climate, defending your life, liberty, and property from these thieves would probably be suicide.
IRS employees could make it right in an instant by walking away from the "job" and by never stealing again. In that case they should be left alone unless they break their word. I'm willing to forgive.
But, I will never condemn any person who defends his life, liberty, or property from violators of any sort.
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And here's a related post from Libertopia.
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