What on earth is happening (WOEIH) - transcriptions 4 study: Statanism

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Pyramid of Power series in ONE zip file

The pyramid of power must collapse

Dennis promoting Mark Passio — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 05:01:14 GMT

Click below image for a good documentary series from Derrick Broze. Watch one video at a time and/or download select videos, by clicking below image.

CLICK ABOVE IMAGE TO GO TO VIDEO SERIES

The entire series can be downloaded in ONE big zip file, from my private data server. Simply click the button below, but be forewarned: the zip file builds dynamically and can take a long time to be created, as it is about 3.5GB.

Short and sweet. Nuf said.

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StatanCHRISTism going back millennia

Dennis promoting Mark Passio — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 03:23:12 GMT

Click to read cross-post

I thought this post also deserved to be placed on my WTF site, under this Statanism section.

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Statanism going back millennia

Dennis promoting Mark Passio — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 19:10:44 GMT

Entry video on youtube

The entry video explains the world’s main religious psy-op/propaganda, going back thousands of years; it also explains why religion and government are the same beast.

Below is WOEIH podcast #146, where Jay Parker talks with Mark Passio about modern mind control manipulation (a good documentary is at this green link about humanity’s poor treatment of animals, which Mark and Jay discuss); their discussion about mk-ultra makes the entry video seem like mild mind control by comparison. Also, suggest checking out other Jay Parker revelations in podcasts #17, #100, and #271.

In the below audio, Jordan Maxwell explains astro-theology and how the “Son of God” is based on the “Sun of God” …… religious psychological manipulation goes back farther than the entry video’s theory, which only covers early Christianity. Symbolism manipulates the subconscious more than most understand.

In the video below, Jordan Maxwell discusses some more common sense things about holy books and religion.

The Original Caesar’s Messiah

WritePharma Parable Publishing-stories with mystical meaning

Also, the below cross-post based on youtube’s “Decode Your Reality” discusses determinism, something that both Jordan Maxwell and religion says is true (even though confusing and disturbing)

The parable of, "Everything happens for a reason"

a year ago · 1 like · 2 comments · Dennis Gilmour, (780) 932-9105

Below, more from “Historical Rabbit Holes” on mental mind control

Below, “Sacred Logic” makes some good points too

WritePharma Parable Publishing-stories with mystical meaning

For newbies who think this level of mental manipulation isn’t possible, I suggest review the recent “vaccine” (genetic experimentation really) insanity in the post below:

Note: it is this website author’s opinion that our level of mental & reality manipulation is NOT totally possible by mere humans alone. Non-human consciousnesses are involved in the worldwide earth psy-op and it has been this way for at least as long as documented history.

The worldwide Coviet Union push

COVID-19 means “Certificate Of Vaccination digital IDentity” push, starting bigtime in 2019, in case some of my readers don’t know yet. Discovering the truth about the fake vaccine was a major wake-up call for me…

2 years ago · 2 likes · 2 comments · Dennis Gilmour, (780) 932-9105

More about waking from illusions

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Even in death, Charlie Kirk helps us understand the Truth

Dennis promoting Mark Passio — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 20:22:55 GMT

Entry video on youtube

Can you engage in force against yourself (ie battling your own erroneous thinking) to end violence against yourself and others?

The anarchist non-aggression principle is simply utilizing self-defensive force only (ie don’t initiate harm) versus the word “violence” phonetically alludes to the word “violate” (ie you violate others by initiating the harm).

In the entry video, I think Larken Rose does a good job philosophizing about the two different ways of thinking and where it leads.

Most just don’t get it at all. Simply put, there is only:

Legal violence, which you support if you believe in government
Lawful force, which you support if you know government is illegitimate

Technically, even in war, one of the “rules of engagement” is you are NOT supposed to shoot first, BUT you have the right to defend yourself and return fire, if fired upon. If governments followed this rule precisely, there would NEVER be ANY wars. Think about it, and see if you can wrap your head around that idea.

It is because that idea is hard for humans to understand that governments always rationalize & justify aggression as self-defense! Remember “weapons of mass destruction”???

Charlie Kirk was a big supporter of Trump. Below post shows how Trump is working for the globalists, despite his recent post that ALL vaccines are poison; that’s my current take anyway. We all want to be optimistic but……

Trump deserves to go to jail! But NOT for the 34 bullshit felony convictions ...

Trump is just as corrupt as any government/world leader, as he still pushed bullshit killer covid vaccines (ie operation warpspeed), despite TONS of evidence coming out it is an intentional bioweapon…

2 years ago · 2 likes · 16 comments · Dennis Gilmour, (780) 932-9105

Good summary of the issues by Matt Damon in the movie, “Green Zone”.

Wiki blurb about, "Green Zone"

Finally, Jean Nolan had some intelligent things to say about Charlie Kirk’s assassination

Max Blumenthal commentary on Charlie Kirk

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Entry video on brighteon.com

Path to liberty

Dennis promoting Mark Passio — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 04:02:01 GMT

The entry video talks about Lysander Spooner and Frederic Bastiat. I’ve previously done a post about Spooner, found below:

And I’ve recently come across Frederic Bastiat’s book, “The Law”, found below. A good short read.

The Law (Frederic Bastiat)

555KB ∙ PDF file

I’d recommend that my readers become familiar with the arguments of these intelligent and insightful men.

And, finally, let us NOT forget the 16th century’s Etienne de la Boetie. I appreciate the modern man continuing the original’s work, so I did a post about him that can be found below.

The fraud of government has been going on for a long time.

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Antichrist or Armageddon?

Authoritarian takeover

Dennis promoting Mark Passio — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 23:17:19 GMT

Covid was NOT the beginning of the fear-porn nonsense, nor will it be the last of their nonsense.

CLICK ABOVE IMAGE TO BE REMINDED ABOUT THE 2020 NONSENSE, ASSUMING YOU NEED A REMINDER OR PERHAPS YOU DON’T KNOW???

In the entry video, Peter Thiel indirectly refers to himself (ie anti-truth), while misdirecting regarding definitions about who the Anti-Christ really is.

Common definitions aside, Anti-Christ is not AI, nor humanity in general. It is one individual, and also many.

"Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many anti-christs; whereby we know that it is the last time.” (1 John 2:18)

Who might these many anti-christs be? The Bible refers to principalities and powers (Ephesians 3:10). IMHO, this refers to both:

More specifically, it refers to a way of thinking that infects everybody!

Does Peter Thiel know any of this or care? Probably knows. And probably doesn’t care.

As Greg Reese showed in his “Reese Report”, Thiel’s probably not even human. He sure talks and acts like a reptile, to me. Does he seriously think he can create immortal bodies?

The rich guy paused long and hard regarding the question about whether or not humanity should survive. Seems that he only wants those humans to survive who accept the “immortal body” he has planned for everybody.

For the full interview, see the Greg Reese post below, which inspired my own post today.

More from James Corbett regarding the Thiel interview

The Corbett Report

SHOW NOTES AND COMMENTS: https://corbettreport.com/antichrist-or-armageddon…

10 months ago · 132 likes · The Corbett Report

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Exposing the religion of the state

Dennis promoting Mark Passio — Wed, 28 May 2025 20:25:31 GMT

The Art of Liberty Foundation - Important News

I didn’t know Etienne de la Boetie2 was actually basing his work on a literal man named Etienne de la Boetie. The literal man lived centuries ago, but the same mind control techniques are used today!

This post is based on an interview here:

Drs. Sam & Mark Bailey Interview Etienne de la Boetie2

Drs. Sam and Mark Bailey became famous during “The Covid” by becoming some of the first classically trained doctors to begin challenging the official narrative effectively on social media. The Baileys have amassed over 350,000 subscribers and 18 million views on…

a year ago · 15 likes · Etienne de la Boetie2

I subscribe to both substacks and hope my readers choose to do so as well:

Etienne on substack

Dr. Sam Bailey on substack

Some key points from the video:

Etienne says the most powerful mind control technique is control of information; without alternative views to stimulate contemplation about the truth, it is much easier to control people.

I agree. People forget that Klaus Schwab threatened that they were/are planning a “cyber-COVID” to destroy the internet, post I did about it below.

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WritePharma Parable Publishing-stories with mystical meaning

The parable of, "Snoopy versus Baron von RichthoSchwaben"

Achtung…

2 years ago · Dennis Gilmour, (780) 932-9105

If they are successful at totally controlling & policing the internet, then there is already a 100% decentralized internet replacement platform available, post I did about it below.

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WritePharma Parable Publishing-stories with mystical meaning

Launching into the qortal platform of true free speech

Welcome to Worldwide Freedom Network, a freedom entrance portal into the decentralized qortal blockchain encrypted network that is technologically IMPOSSIBLE to censor…

2 years ago · 1 like · Dennis Gilmour, (780) 932-9105

Here is the Lysander Spooner book that Etienne mentioned.

No Treason (lysander Spooner)

795KB ∙ PDF file

Etienne's artofliberty avail in ONE zip

And here is a post that I did based on Spooner’s, “No Treason”.

Most of Etienne’s freely available/downloadable artofliberty.org information is available from my public share by clicking the button below:

The Corbett Report

How to Leave the Cage - #SolutionsWatch

SHOW NOTES AND COMMENTS: https://corbettreport.com/how-to-leave-the-cage-solutionswatch…

9 months ago · 13 likes · The Corbett Report

At the end of the video, Etienne says the truth is getting out. They can't hide it. He is optimistic. I say that the majority are still NOT aware, and the many who have awakened (especially since the 2020 nonsense) can often be put back to sleep and/or pacified OR shutdown by something like “cyber-COVID”, etc...

So again, suggest my readers consider qortal before that planned “cyber terrorist” attack.

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Original video on Archive.org

Trance-formation of America

Dennis promoting Mark Passio — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 03:29:52 GMT

In addition to the entry video, for more about Cathy O’Brien and her story, see her website trance-formation.com, where my readers can obtain her books about being a victim of extreme mk-ultra mind control.

December 2024 interview with Cathy O’brien.

Original video on bitchute

Conspiracy of Silence documentary.

Everybody is a victim of mk-ultra mind control, even if seemingly at lesser levels than Cathy. Our individual traumas are unique, but just as difficult in our own ways.

For more on mind control, click post below:

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Morality and disclosure

Dennis promoting Mark Passio — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 03:41:28 GMT

GOTO Introduction","action":null,"class":null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton">Skip preamble-> GOTO Introduction

There sometimes seems to be a bug that suppresses the picture-in-picture (PIP) feature when accessing this website indirectly through a link. The PIP feature is normally available in the bottom right corner of the above video.

Also, the substack app seems to suppress the PIP feature much of the time, so I don’t suggest using the substack app, but rather directly access this site through a web browser, WITHOUT clicking a link. Simply type whatonearthishappening.wtf into the browser URL and PIP should work.

Using the PIP feature is the best way to assimilate this site’s information, IMHO, because you can scroll the video with you, as you read along. NOTE: you must also have PIP feature turned on in the settings for your browser.

Download from WOEIH.COM

On Morality And Disclosure

146KB ∙ PDF file

ACTUAL PRESENTATION STARTS AFTER THE ORANGE IMAGE LABELED “START OF PRESENTATION”

NOTE: clicking the below underlined text links jumps up and down the Table of Contents (TOC). Please be patient, as there can be several seconds delay each way. 

Also note that clicking the underlined timestamp links will forward the video to that spot BUT you will have to manually re-position to the text spot you desire. 

Finally, there is a bug in the underlined timestamp links, because they only work properly on desktop and/or laptops.

1) (00:01:36) Presentation name

2) (00:06:29) Control of the masses prevents disclosure

3) (00:09:12) Background to disclosure

4) (00:18:45) No allegiance to truth prevents disclosure

5) (00:23:03) Authority versus truth

6) (00:24:03) False belief in authority drives the entire dynamic

7) (00:29:16) Authority: the false religion

8) (00:40:40) Sovereignty and self-mastery

9) (00:44:47) Following natural law will bring disclosure

10) (00:47:07) Definition of natural law

11) (00:52:51) Conscience and natural law

12) (01:01:35) Buddha's encouragement

13) (01:02:10) If truth is our religion, disclosure will come

INTRODUCTION

Mark Passio, who some of you have seen in the lobby at his table this weekend, is an independent researcher, public speaker, radio talk show host, conference organizer and freedom activist from Philadelphia, right here in Pennsylvania.

Mark has undertaken the task of assembling vast amounts of research in the areas of metaphysics, occultism, spirituality, symbology and consciousness studies.

In 2007, Mark began presenting the information in the form of a presentation series entitled, What on Earth is Happening, with the intention of bringing the implications of this body of knowledge to a greater public awareness.

In 2010, Mark began hosting his own weekly internet radio show, also called What on Earth is Happening. And that is something that you can access on your computers. It is live every Sunday on the Oracle Broadcasting Network.

Mark is also one of the co-hosts of Free Your Mind, the Philadelphia-based conference on consciousness, mind control, and the occult. And it is my pleasure this afternoon to introduce him, Philadelphia's own Mark Passio.

Well, I want to say thanks to everyone involved at MUFON for hosting this great conference and inviting me to speak. And I want to thank you all for being here today.

(00:01:36) My presentation today is entitled Morality and Disclosure.

Moral issues involved in the continued cover-up of extraterrestrial phenomenon. Let's jump right in.

As Peter said, I host a show called What on Earth is Happening. This is also the title of my website, whatonearthishappening.com. There's a tremendous body of material there. I highly encourage everyone to check it all out.

I'm also one of the co-hosts of the Free Your Mind conference, conference. We started this back in 2011, had a great event in Philadelphia, and we're going to be hosting Free Your Mind 2, a conference on consciousness, mind control, and the occult. This is coming up this April 2013 here in Philadelphia.

We already have 20 speakers lined up for this great event, and for more information, you can visit freeyourmindconference.com. There are also tons of posters and flyers at my table. Please take one on the way out.

Audience speaker: “I want to add that Alfred Webber and Asadio, I mean Andrew Bishaka are also very well known in the UFO community”.

Mark: “Yes, in the exo-politics movement as well, yes” So we'll be having a lot of crossover and overlap”.

What my presentation is about today is not any of these four paradigms. If anyone believes that the solutions lie in politics, religion, scientism, or the “new age movement”, you're going to be sorely disappointed by my lecture here today, because that is not what this is going to be about. And these I consider boxes for consciousness to keep consciousness confined.

Well, what the lecture is really going to attempt to get at the heart of is something that smashes all of these paradigms, and that is the truth. We have to really go further than what our comfort level wants to allow us to take in. And so you're going to be hearing some things today that may make you feel uncomfortable.

George Orwell said that if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. So again, there may be some things that take you out of your comfort zone here today.

For those who know me and know my presentation style, my tact is not one of gentleness oftentimes. It is straight ahead. And I don't believe that there's any time for baby spoon feeding information to people. We've come far too far to the precipice for that. And there's not enough time to do that. We need to take the wrecking ball approach, as I call it, and shatter the illusions and shatter the lies, and just put it out there plainly for people. And if they accept it, they accept it, and if they reject it, well, that's on them. But the truth cannot be unheard. So I'm here to plant seeds, if nothing else.

I ask people not to fall into the mind state of what I call emotional mind control. And this is attempting to gauge the veracity or the truthfulness of information simply based on how it makes you feel.

This is a really dangerous path to go down and too many people judge information this way. The truth makes us feel uncomfortable. The truth often insults us. It is combative in many ways, because we are very attached to illusory perceptions that we don't want to let go of. And if you're gauging information's truthfulness based on your emotions, it's not a good way to do it.

Now, don't get me wrong. Emotions are incredibly important. But we can't let that guide where we're willing to go as far as truth is concerned.

I gave a presentation back in 2010 entitled, “Don't Count on Disclosure”. This was my first foray into the ufology field. I gave it at the Philadelphia UFO Awareness Day, hosted by Pennsylvania MUFON.

The subtitle of the lecture was “Reasons Not to Expect Official Disclosure in Any Way that Resembles Truth”. And in this lecture, I talked about the powers that be, their reasons for not wanting disclosure getting out.

This included, utmost, of primary importance, the continuity of control. That is what this is ultimately all about, in case anyone has not figured that out yet.

(00:06:29) This is about maintaining control over the human population.

The existing power structure does not want to relinquish that control.

It is about the perpetuation of the fossil fuel-based energy scarcity fraud, and it is a fraud. Energy is all around us and available in unlimited quantities if we only know how to tap into that real work of nature. And it is a lie that we are here and everything is scarce, that is there to keep fear going. And only when you're in fear are you able to be controlled. So that's another reason for this continued cover-up.

It is also about the continuation of the cover-up of true human origins, as some speakers have actually talked about here today and yesterday. And this is because if you keep someone's origins from them, their true origins, they're also more apt to be controlled by you.

It's ultimately about the suppression of consciousness, which I'm going to be talking about a lot here today. And this is a presentation more about consciousness and how it is connected to the UFO phenomenon and what drives the continued cover-up at a psychological level, at the dynamic of mind.

So ultimately the embargo on disclosure is about the suppression of consciousness and human imagination. I closed that lecture with moral considerations of the disclosure topic, and that's what the remainder of this presentation is going to be about. It's going to attempt to answer two primary questions here today.

Why does the cover-up continue? This is about causal factors. If we don't understand causal factors, we are powerless to solve any problems that we may encounter. We have to get to the root fundamental reasons, the root causes. Then we can understand why the effects are manifesting. And who is truly responsible? Who holds the most moral culpability involved in the embargo on disclosure?

So I'm going to talk about the Roswell incident as a case study. to get at the psychological dynamics at play in this famous incident. We're all familiar with this incident, and I'm in no way the authority on it by any means. But again, I'm attempting to look at this not from the nuts and bolts perspective, but from the perspective of what psychological dynamics are underlying this incident within the human mind.

(00:09:12) So let's give some background on the event (Roswell).

July 2nd, 1947, a saucer-shaped craft crashes on the Foster Ranch near Corona, New Mexico, not far from Roswell Army Airfield. July 3rd, William Mac Brazel, the foreman of the Foster Ranch, the site of the crashed debris, finds the remains of the crashed saucer.

Pieces were spread out over an area more than half a mile long. Everyone who Braswell showed the pieces of the wreckage agree that it was unlike any material that they had ever seen on earth.

On July 6th, Braswell showed pieces of the wreckage to Chavez County Sheriff George Wilcox. Wilcox calls intelligence officer Major Jesse Marcel of Roswell Army Airfield. Marcel drives to the sheriff's office, he inspects the wreckage, and he reports to his commanding officer, Colonel William Blanchard. Blanchard then orders Marcel to proceed to the ranch with Brazel and collect as much of the wreckage as possible.

On the 7th, Marcel and Sheridan Cavett of the Counter Intelligence Corps collect wreckage from the crash site. On the 8th, in the morning, Marcel and Cabot arrive back at Roswell Army Airfield with two carloads of wreckage from the crash site. Marcel accompanies the wreckage on a flight to Fort Worth Army Airfield.

July 8th at noon, Colonel Blanchard at Roswell AAF orders Public Information Officer Lieutenant Walter Howe to issue a press release telling the country that the Army had found the remains of a crashed flying saucer.

Again, as Stephen just alluded to in his lecture previously, the embargo was almost ended at Roswell. We came very close to getting disclosure then and there as a result of this event and this press conference, this press release.

On July 8th in the afternoon, it only took a couple of hours, General Clements McCullen in Washington, D.C., ordered General Roger Ramey at Fort Worth, this was Blanchard's commanding officer, to quash the flying saucer story by creating a cover story, a cover-up, and to send some of the crash material immediately to Washington, D.C.

July 8th, in the afternoon, Roger Ramey held a press conference at the 8th Air Force Headquarters at Fort Worth, in which he announced that what had crashed at Corona was in fact a weather balloon, not a flying saucer. And to make his story more convincing, he showed the press the remains of a damaged weather balloon that he claimed was the actual wreckage from the crash site at the Foster Ranch.

July 8th in the evening, some evening newspapers, including the Chicago Daily News, Los Angeles, Herald Express, San Francisco Examiner and Roswell Daily Record, carried the initial flying saucer version of the crash event.

The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune were morning papers, so they carried only the weather balloon cover-up story after being sold that version of the events via the Fort Worth press conference.

On July 8th, search groups of soldiers were sent to meticulously scour the debris field at the Foster Ranch, removing all traces of evidence that there had ever been a crash there, that anything had ever occurred there.

Unknown to Major Jesse Marcel and most of the other military officers that were involved in the events of the last few days, the main body of a crashed saucer had already been recovered by a military retrieval team. A few days earlier, and a few miles from the Foster Ranch debris field. That was simply the debris from the craft, but the main body of the wreckage was found elsewhere.

Approximately a mile from the main crash site of the saucer itself, they found several bodies of small humanoids and also recovered them.

After reporting his discovery of the Foster Ranch debris field, Mack Brazel was held in military custody for a little over a week. Following this period of detention, Brazel repudiated his entire initial story. He completely changed his tone and, you know, didn't want anything to do with the event after the military had him for a week.

He refused to talk about the incident even after his release, even with his closest friends. He remained in so much fear following this incident that he claimed that if he ever found anything else unusual, he wouldn't talk about it with anyone. He would remain completely silent. And there you saw a newspaper clipping talking about Brazel's harassment.

Let's talk further about the intimidation factor that went on during this event. Marion Strickland, a neighbor of Mac Brazel, was ordered by military officers to tell anyone who asked her about the material that was recovered from the Foster Ranch debris site, that there was absolutely nothing special about it in any way whatsoever, and that there was no excitement or curiosity on the part of the local people about the material. They wanted her to just lie and cover up the incident.

Brazel told Marion that he was under severe emotional stress after his detainment by the military, and that while detained, he was threatened that if he opened his mouth regarding the incident, that he would be thrown in a jail cell indefinitely.

Sheriff George Wilcox, who Brazel brought the initial debris to, and his wife, Inez Wilcox, were paid a visit by military police following the incident.

They told George and Inez that if they ever told anyone anything about what they had seen, not only would they be killed, but that their entire family would be killed. George was very shaken up by this, and he resigned as the sheriff of Chavez County shortly thereafter.

Inez tacitly accepted that the whole incident was being kept quiet for reasons of, “national security”, and remained silent about the event thereafter, feeling that it was in the best interest of the country not to talk about it.

You know, as we know, the whole cliché national security can mean whatever they want it to mean. They just slap that label on anything they don't want us to know about and expect us to just swallow it because they said it's for national security.

Glenn Dennis, a mortician who witnessed some of the bodies that had been retrieved from the crash site, was told by two military officers, if you open your mouth, we'll bury you in the desert, and they'll be picking your bones out of the sand. He was told that to his face by military MPs.

Roy Danzer, a local plumber who saw one of the dying beings from the crash on a stretcher at the Roswell Base Hospital, was told by a military officer, we'll know if you talk. We’ll know who you talk to and you will simply disappear.

A government by and for the people, sure.

Members of the public and even law enforcement officers, again like George Wilcox, they were told that their families would be in jeopardy if they talked about the Roswell incident.

During their efforts to silence eyewitnesses to these events, military officers made it abundantly clear that they were completely willing to murder children. They were completely willing to murder children if those whom they ordered to remain silent disobeyed them and spoke out about what they had witnessed.

You're living in a free country, sure.

Let's look at the psychological dynamics and behavior involved in these events. What do they, what characteristics do they encompass?

Well, we see fear. We see secrecy. We see deception. We see disinformation campaigns being waged. We see intimidation, a lot of that. We see outright violence and threats of violence. We see cowardice on the part of the people who simply back down when the threats are made.

(00:18:45) And ultimately, the overall dynamic is that there is no allegiance to truth. And that's the main crux of the problem.

Now with all of these being the main psychological driving dynamics of an event like this, and I would suggest to you that this is simply a microcosm of the entire UFO alien phenomenon. This paints a broad picture, but an accurate way of what the overall phenomenon entails, as far as human psychological dynamics are concerned.

Can't you just imagine that our star brothers and sisters are just so anxious for us to show up in their backyard with those being the primary dynamics at work among the human race? I mean, I'll bet you they can't wait to greet us with open arms.

So let's look at another dynamic involved. And I have two prizes to hand out to the audience during this section for correct answers to a couple questions I want to be posing to you. I'm going to be posing to you.

At the bottom down here, we have Matt Brazel and the public, you know, who want the truth brought out about this, who wanted to know what it was about at first. But Matt brought the initial debris wreckage to Sheriff George Wilcox, okay?

Then, Wilcox contacted intelligence officer Jesse Marcellin. And from there, he reported the finding to his commanding officer, Colonel William Blanchard. Blanchard made the initial contact to a military press, and he wanted the military to report the finding honestly at first. So he contacted, he commanded Lieutenant Walter Howe to initial that initial honest press release.

But then Roger Rainey ordered Blanchard to stand down and not report the finding honestly, and he held the press conference to the media that gave the cover-up story, the weather balloon nonsense.

He was under orders from General Clements McCullen in Washington, D.C. So, can anyone tell me what we're witnessing here? What is this structure that's going on? What is this dynamic that we're seeing here? Anyone?

Yes.

Okay, it's a pyramid scheme, but what dynamic are we talking about? What's taking place within the individuals who are all seemingly deferring to those who are above them?

Chain of command was the gentleman's response. And that is close, but it is not correct.

Most people think of this structure as the chain of command. A free DVD with two lectures from the first “Free Your Mind Conference” to anyone who can tell me what it really is.

Chain of control.

Close.

It is a chain. I'll give you that hint. It starts with chain of. But what are we looking at, really?

Chain of deception.

No.

It involves that. Anyone else?

Chain of mind control.

You're getting closer. You're getting warmer. What? No. For what reason?

You're real close, Bob. You're very close.

When you're passing the buck, what are you really doing?

But if you're advocating that responsibility and truth to someone else, what are you doing to them who are above you?

You're relinquishing your control to the next person.

By doing what? By doing what to the people above you?

Giving them the responsibility.

So no one has hit upon the word.

So I'll continue and I'll give you the answer here. And when you hear it, you'll really, hopefully it will be an aha moment. It is not the chain of command, but it is in fact the chain of obedience.

(00:23:03) That's what you're seeing at work, psychologically. These people are obeying those who they consider in a superior position to them and deferring to them instead of being honest to themselves and to the truth.

So... Can anyone for another DVD, free DVD, I'll tell you what, I'll give you, the prize will be both of them and you can give the other one to whoever you want, okay?

What's at the top of this chain of obedience? What is the psychological dynamic that drives the whole thing? Fear.

Not fear, but it's part of the dynamic.

What's really going on inside the minds of the individuals if you really think about it and you're honest with yourself about the answer?

Deception. Trust. Illusion.

For someone to be obedient, what must their belief system entail? A belief in what?

Authority.

Who said it? Who said it? Authority. Here you go.

Well, you can give them whoever you want, okay?

(00:24:03) It is the belief in authority that drives this entire dynamic.

The belief that someone else is in charge and in control of you. And that's what is driving the dynamic of no allegiance to truth. The belief in authority is ultimately what keeps the embargo of the truth of this entire phenomenon going. And that may come as a shock to some people.

This is where our world really is at right now. It is under this dynamic, under total control by people who we don't really know who they are and most of us don't really understand their agenda. They work from the shadows and they are amassing and gathering all of the energy of this world to them, okay, in a totalitarian fashion because they have capitalized on people's belief in authority. And they had built this pyramidal structure, just as we saw in the dynamic with Roswell.

And their entire modality of control, their methodology of control, is based upon occult knowledge. Now, when people hear the word occult, things go off in their head because this word has been co-opted and controlled. Mind control is at work through words to associate words with other meanings that they really do not have.

The word occult only means hidden. It comes from the Latin verb. We're going to talk a lot about the meaning of words. The Latin verb occultare means to hide, to conceal, or to keep secret.

The two dynamics that keeps this chain of obedience going, that keeps it perpetuated, is hierarchy and compartmentalization. Hierarchy, or the chain of obedience, and compartmentalization, you keep things in seemingly disconnected areas of interest and areas of operations so that one hand that is working on one part of the project does not know what the other hand that is working on the other part of the project is doing.

That is how they are able to keep knowledge occulted or hidden from view.

It is a pyramid scheme, and it is a scheme that is based upon obedience. It's not about the chain of command. Command implies power. Ultimately, we are advocating our power to the individuals at the top by being obedient to their immoral commands and not following the truth.

This is a religion, and that is another thing that people will maybe find shocking to them. The word religion comes from the Latin language as well, from the verb religare in Latin, which means to tie back, to hold back, to bind, or to thwart from forward progress. That is what the word religion means.

Now, it's very interesting that that the word religare in Latin can also mean to reunite, to bring back together again. So religion has, in its etymology, in its etymological root, has a dual meaning. And we have to look into the dual nature of religion to really understand this.

See, there are two kinds of religion. There is false religion, and then there is true religion. And again, please don't think about this in terms of world religions like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, etc. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about a belief system, okay?

False religion is a belief system that is based in illusion, while true religion is based upon truth.

False religion ultimately ties us, again, the word coming from religare, to tie or to bind. It ties us with illusion and deception in believing in things that are not real. It thwarts our progress in consciousness. It holds us back from the truth. And ultimately it binds us from evolving as a species.

Conversely, in the sense that it reunites, true religion ties back illusion and deception out of our lives. It ties back the lie. It thwarts the progression of tyranny. It reunites us, reunites us with our true divine essence. The spark of the divine that is within us all. And true religion does bind something and it binds all forms of evil at work in our lives.

(00:29:16) Authority is a false religion.

The belief in authority, let me say that again emphatically, is a false religion. If you believe in this concept, you are a believer in a false religion and you are under mind control. And I don't care who that offends. The truth cannot be unheard. That is the way that it is. That is not my opinion. This is about taking you out of your comfort zone if you believe in this religion. It's one of the two universal religions along with money, that keeps humanity back from forward progress and consciousness and is ultimately keeping us in a prison here on Earth, a prison of the mind.

The religion of authority is based upon the illusion and falsehood that some are masters who may set arbitrary dictates which are not based in morality and which are enforced by violence, while others are slaves who have a moral obligation, “To obey” the arbitrary dictates that are set by the masters. That is what the belief in authority is. It is not my opinion of what it is. That is what it is. And this is a falsehood. It does not exist in reality. It is an illusion. It is a mental construct of an imbalanced mind and an imbalanced psyche.

The biggest manifestation of this universal world religion called the belief in authority is called government. Let's look at the etymology of the word government for a moment. Government comes from the Latin verb gubernare, which can often be rendered as guvernare, with a change in the internal B becoming a V. But since there's no V in classical Latin, it is most often seen as the verb gubernare. And this is the root of gubernatorial, relating to governor, or governing.

Gubernare means to control in Latin. The second part of the word ment comes from the Latin noun mens mentis, which is the root of our word mental in English. It means mind. By its very etymological definition, the word government itself means mind control, literally to control the mind.

All forms of government, the belief in authority, is mind control. Sadly, however, most human beings erroneously teach the false religion of authority and unquestioning obedience to it as virtues to our children, instead of instilling in our young the truth about what this hideous dogmatic belief system called authority actually is. And what it actually is is the path to every form of evil and annihilation that we ever witness on this planet.

As only a cursory study of even modern human history will attest to. This is what authority gets you. People giving their minds, their bodies, and their souls over to seemingly charismatic leaders who will promise them anything as long as they will follow them and obey their orders. And this is what the obedience ideology ultimately leads us. Whether you want to accept that or not, get a good hard look, that is where the chain of obedience leads you, to a grave. And we've seen it over and over and over again throughout history.

And this has everything to do with the UFO and alien phenomenon because the same thing is happening in the mind. Someone is conceding to someone else who they believe is an authority. They're going against truth, and ultimately that's where it gets you in the end.

If you don't want to look at it from a historical perspective, look at it from a psychological perspective. Study the Milgram experiments that were conducted in the early 1960s by Yale psychologist Dr. Stanley Milgram.

He conducted mock psychological experiments to find out how many people would be willing to administer a lethal electric shock, a lethal electric shock, to another human being, if they were incrementally ordered to do so by an authority figure.

We think of ourselves as so moral as individuals. But let's look at what this psychological mock study shows because all of the people being shocked were actually actors. The people who were doing the shocking were actually the test subjects. They weren't really administering real shocks, of course, because they would have killed the other person. But they were trying to see how far they could push people to do something that was immoral.

Shockingly, pun intended, regardless of sex, age, economic class, cultural or religious background, almost 70% of all test subjects obediently followed their orders and went all the way to the lethal dosage of electricity.

Seventy percent of human beings, if commanded to do so by an authority figure, were willing to murder another person if commanded to do so, just because they perceived them as an authority.

This experiment was reconducted in the late 1990s. The results were the same. Nothing had changed.

Whenever belief in and obedience to authority supersedes allegiance to truth and morality on a mass scale, the entire population ends up in a prison of its own making.

And ladies and gentlemen, whether you have really come to recognize this in your own mind or not, this is where we are. This is where we are.

And if we want to get out of that cage, we have to free our mind and stop believing in illusion. Because the police state of total control is at our doorstep. They have the population under a state of hypnosis, resembling sleep, in a state of unconsciousness. And the Big Brother state is looming fast. The shackles are getting ready to go on.

The thing that ultimately drives this is ignorance. Because so many people are brainwashed by mass media and are willing to believe what they're told if they perceive it to be coming from authority figures.

Same dynamic at work in Roswell.

People just completely abdicating their own personal responsibility to tell the truth to someone they consider superior to them.

The solution for this problem is the development of consciousness, which is working upon ourselves. These are the components of our consciousness. The actual manifestations of our consciousness are our thoughts, our emotions, and our actions.

It is ultimately about doing work upon yourself to bridge these three components of consciousness and to unify them. Such that as we think, so we feel, so we act. And there is no contradiction between these three modes of consciousness. That we cannot be torn apart from within. That we cannot be made to do something that we don't truly believe in, that we feel badly about doing, but we'll do it anyway.

That's oppositional consciousness.

The goal is to bridge these three modalities and bring them into unity consciousness. It has been called the body-mind-spirit connection. And ultimately, this is the solution.

The type of knowledge that we ultimately need is that each and every one of us alive on this planet are sovereign beings. Sovereign beings. Let's look at the root of the word, the roots of the word sovereign for a moment.

In Latin, super, which the first part of sovereign comes from, again, you could re-render a V in classical Latin as a B or a P often. Super in Latin means above. And regnum, the root of reign, is rulership or control.

So super regnum, sovereign, means one who is above being ruled, who is above being controlled by another. Or in other words, one who is not a subject or a slave. And that is all the word sovereign means. It means not a slave. That's what the word sovereign means, not a slave. I am a sovereign being.

I am not a slave. You are all sovereign beings. None of you are slaves. Whether you understand it or not, that is the truth. It can never be any other way. Someone can only claim that it is another way and others may accept the validity of their claim even though it is not valid. It is completely invalid.

There are no masters, or slaves, and there can never be. There can only be a claim to that and an acceptance of it by someone else, but it is always a lie. We are all sovereign under the Creator, whether we recognize it or not.

Sovereignty, therefore, is the rulership of the kingdom of oneself. You're not ruling anyone else. You are the ruler of the kingdom of you, whereby one's thoughts, emotions, and actions, their consciousness, exists in a state of unison, non-duality, non-contradiction, non-opposition.

Sovereignty is about self-ownership, recognizing that you own yourself, you own your consciousness, your mind, body, and spirit. No one else owns it.

Stop giving it away to other people. That's where we get into trouble. That's where all the problems of this world are ultimately generated from, is giving away our power to other people who we think have our better interest in mind, and often all they're about doing is controlling for their own selfish interests.

(00:40:40) Sovereignty is ultimately about self-mastery.

Thomas Jefferson, I believe, said it best. He said that if a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never it was and what never will be.

You can look at it mathematically, for those who are a bit more left-brained, and I'd come up with this little equation to help people understand the dynamic.

The presence of truth in the lives of the people of a society is always inversely proportional to the presence of tyranny in that society. That symbol in the middle means inversely, it means proportional to. Okay, proportional to, and that's the inverse.

So if you have tyranny, you don't have truth. If you have truth, you don't have tyranny. It's that simple. It's an equation. This is a law in nature. It always works like that everywhere. It's a natural law.

The dynamic at work that is keeping people from the recognition of this knowledge is the abdication of their personal responsibility. And I should have put on the slide, the attempted abdication of personal responsibility, because you cannot really abdicate your own personal responsibility. Again, like the claim of authority, it is only a claim that you can do that.

In actuality, in reality, you cannot abdicate your personal responsibility. You're always responsible for your own actions and behaviors.

Many people want to give up their own personal responsibility to choose between right and wrong action to someone else, someone they consider superior to them, who would make that decision for them. They imagine that somehow this could absolve them of their personal responsibility to make right choices. Not only is this abhorrent and deplorable, it is actually impossible, as each individual is always personally responsible for the choices they make and the actions they take, regardless of their belief otherwise, of their belief otherwise, not the truth.

See, the problem ultimately is rooted in the belief in illusion, that we can do things that we cannot do. Human beings are real good at this. They believe that they can do all sorts of things that they can't do and that they have no right to do.

See, this is what happens when we believe in illusion. You can believe you're going to fly off that cliff all you want. But you're going to go down and hit the bottom. And that's where we're at as a species.

The belief in illusion is the root of the problem. And the root of the solution lies in simply abandoning belief systems that do not serve us and that hold us back, or in other words, abandoning religions.

Soren Kierkegaard, the philosopher, said that there are really only two ways that humanity is ever fooled. One is to believe that which is not true, and the other is to refuse to accept that which is true. And I would go farther than Kierkegaard, and I would say these are the only two reasons ultimately that humanity experiences self-inflicted suffering.

We refuse, we want to believe in illusion, believe in things that are not true, and refuse to accept the truth into our lives. That's why we're going deeper and deeper into bondage and tyranny as a people.

So I don't want to leave on a negative note. I want to present the opposite side to this. What is actually the solution?

You know, we really need to grasp and understand. What's the key out of that cage? What's the way out? So let's look at that dynamic.

(00:44:47) The way out is the understanding of natural law.

And again, if this were understood, you wouldn't have people who are willing to continue to embargo the truth about anything, let alone the UFO and alien phenomenon.

They would do their obligation and practice their allegiance to the truth and they would tell the truth about what they have discovered. But unfortunately, people don't understand this dynamic of natural law. And let me just clear this up before we go any further. When I'm using the word natural here, this is another word that has been co-opted by mind control techniques.

Natural has zero to do, nothing to do, with the theory of Darwinian macro-biological evolution, or what certain Darwinists call a “natural order”. Nothing to do with that at all. And I cannot emphasize that enough. It is, in fact, the exact inversion of that.

This is about morality. This is about the definitive knowledge of the difference between right and wrong is what this is about. And then choosing the right action over the wrong action. Because this natural law is what ultimately gives us the results of what we have chosen. It's what puts forward the manifestations into our lives of the factors that we have set into motion through the causes called our choices, okay?

So natural, the dictionary definition of natural is inherent, having a basis in nature, reality, and truth, not made or caused by humankind.

The word law, the dictionary definition, an existing condition which is both binding and immutable. That means it is in effect at all times and places, and it can not be changed, just like gravity or electromagnetism. These are natural laws. They work the same way at all times and places. They are binding, whether we recognize them or not, and man does not have the power to change the presence of those laws. They are always in effect.

I give a working definition for natural law in a practical sense.

(00:47:07) Natural law is universal, non-manmade, binding and immutable conditions that govern the consequences of our behavior. It governs the consequences of behavior.

I have recently stopped calling this natural law in some of my lectures and talks and switched over to the terms universal spiritual law. Because that's what it ultimately is, and I think that paints a clearer picture instead of using the co-opted term natural.

Many will recognize these as the laws of cause and effect, if we are scientifically inclined. Effect invariably follows cause. All effects or manifestations have causes that precede them. For every action, there exists an equal and opposing reaction. We've all heard that.

In the New Age movement, we may have heard them as the laws of attraction. The energy that we emit is the energy that we attract. What we are putting out is what we receive back. The universe is like a mirror in that regard. It is reflecting back to us that which we put out into its field of energy.

As you think, feel, and act, so shall you be.

This is another example, way that the law of attraction has been expressed. And it's ultimately saying the same things as natural law or universal spiritual law.

Karma, it has been called, or moral law, that we reap what we sow. And it has been expressed beautifully, magically, as the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself.

It's really as simple as that. It doesn't really go beyond that. And I could just say that and say goodnight, everyone. If people were practicing that truly in their own lives, there would be no problem. But unfortunately, we don't want to accept that truth into our minds and into our hearts.

Natural law is about the objective differences between right and wrong. When it comes to right and wrong, there are no shades of gray. It's all one way. That's another very difficult thing for people to hear because our society is so ensconced in the lie in the religion called moral relativism, which will take us down the path to destruction.

There is a difference between right and wrong. It's objective and definitive. Right is that which is correct, that which is based in truth. And wrong is that which is incorrect, that which is not based in truth. That's why we use the term right and wrong, meaning both moral or true, whether it's correct or not.

Moral is right. If it is in harmony with natural law, then it is right. If it is in opposition to natural law, then it is wrong. And here's what we mean by in harmony or in opposition to natural law means.

Actions that are based in a right, if we have the right to do it, the action does not result in harm to other sentient beings. But if it is wrong, if it is immoral, if it is incorrect and not based in truth, then the action that is based in that dynamic results in harm to other sentient beings.

It is that simple, but we really need to understand that. We need to know what a right is and what a right is not. This is part of the difficult part of this dynamic. Most people don't understand what a right is and what a right is not because they don't understand definitively the objective difference between right and wrong, unfortunately.

It's best to understand what rights are in the apophatic sense. Many will have never heard that term before. What it means is in the negative. By describing what something is not, and through describing what it is not, coming to a clearer understanding of what it is.

Okay, so it's affirmation through negation. The elimination of no negatives. It's your reasoning by way of elimination of no negatives. That's called the apophatic inquiry method to get to truth.

Know which actions are not rights because they cause harm. There's too many rights to list. We have infinite numbers of rights of what we can do and create.

But there's a very short list of things we may not do because they cause harm. That's the things we really need to understand. Are we causing harm and suffering to another? Then it's not a right.

The truth regarding rights is not dependent on numbers or population. Doesn't matter how many people you have. Natural law holds true in all times and places and all numbers of population.

Rights that do not exist for an individual, and this is key, cannot be created or granted to any other individual or group of individuals.

See, we think we have the right to create governments and give them rights that individuals don't have. And that's impossible. It can't be done. Again, people can claim that they can do it, but it will never make it true.

(00:52:51) The way out is ultimately about the development of conscience, which is coming into the full knowledge of what natural law is about and how it operates.

Conscience comes from the Latin con, meaning together, and the Latin verb sciere, the root of the word science, meaning to know. You put them together, conscience means to know together. It is knowledge. Conscience is knowledge. That's something many people will not have heard before either.

Conscience is knowledge. It is the definitive knowledge of the objective difference between right and wrong. And it's common sense, or it should be. Unfortunately, we have lost contact with common sense. And therefore, many of us are not exercising conscience.

Now, exercising conscience is when action comes into play. Because when you're exercising your conscience, you're willfully choosing right action over wrong action, once you've come to know the definitive difference between right and wrong.

That's how you exercise conscience. So this is what wisdom is. Conscience, the development of conscience, is coming to a level of understanding because you're acquiring knowledge about right and wrong. Then you're applying it in the world. That's called the exercise of conscience. Okay? And that's what wisdom really is.

This is a hard one for most people to swallow, but it is also true. By the very definition of the term, of the phrase, if someone is following orders it is an impossibility for them to be exercising conscience. You cannot be exercising conscience if you are advocating your personal responsibility to know and live truth to someone else, if you are simply following their orders.

It cannot be done. You could believe you can do it, but once again, that will never make it the case. And we saw where the belief in authority... and the abdication of personal responsibility to make right choices ultimately leads us.

Gerald Massey, the Egyptologist, said that they must find it difficult those who have taken authority as truth rather than truth as authority.

We can't continue to make justifications, which comes from the Latin noun jus meaning right, and the Latin verb facere, meaning to make or to create.

Justifications are attempts to create rights. Rights cannot be created by man. Rights come from the creative force in the universe regardless of what you want to call that. You can call it God, you can call it Allah, you can call it Buddha, you can call it Christ, Christ consciousness. I don't care what you call it. That's up to you to make a one-to-one connection with that intelligent creative force that is what we are all part of.

But you cannot create a right. It is impossible. Rights are inherent to creation. Justifications are feeble, tiny, puny human attempts to create rights that do not exist.

I was just following orders is never a valid excuse or justification for immoral behavior, as we saw in Roswell with the cover-up and then the intimidation and threats of violence that were made against witnesses. And I'm sure they would say, I'm just following my commanding officer's orders.

Well, that's never a valid justification for immoral behavior, and it should never be accepted by anyone as some sort of a valid excuse for immoral behavior. An order follower is even more morally culpable than an order giver. Now, that does not absolve the order giver of their moral culpability. I didn't say that.

What I did say is that the order follower is always more morally culpable than even the one who whispers in their ear and tells them it's okay to go and do the immoral act, because the order follower is always the one who is actually taking the action.

The order giver isn't doing the action. The order follower is doing the action.

The theft of truth that constitutes the UFO embargo, the embargo on truth about the UFO and alien phenomena, the theft of truth about something this world changing and life transforming regarding extraterrestrial life and technology actually constitutes a crime against all of humanity, and no justification should ever be accepted when offered by the perpetrators of this crime.

They need to be held to account for this crime. The researcher David Icke has this to say on justifications:

“Accept responsibility for yourself and your actions, thoughts, and words. You alone make choices. You alone are answerable to the consequences of your behavior. The feeble excuse that your boss required it, the establishment expected it, holds no truth or justification.
“What is the point of even having principles, if you allow others to dictate your behavior? At the end of the day, you will judge your performance and the contribution you have made to creation. It will not be based on what another expected of you or what you did because you felt trapped”.

This is not a justification and should not be accepted as an excuse. We're all ultimately responsible for our actions.

One of the ways out is through an apology, and I call this the cosmic apology, the apology on the level of the species, to admit that we were wrong, that we have done wrong, and that we have allowed wrong to be committed in our midst and in our name.

A large part of the crisis in consciousness which we are currently facing is due to the fact that most people are not only unwilling to admit their own wrongdoing, but also unwilling to stand up and call others on their wrongdoing.

True forgiveness. I wanted to have something about forgiveness in here, because it isn't about punishment. As long as this embargo comes down, we can forgive. We don't have to necessarily punish people for what they've done, as long as they're willing to come forward, tell the truth, and admit responsibility.

In new age circles sometimes you have this false notion of forgiveness. And again, making an apology is a source of strength. It's not a weakness. Admitting that you're wrong is a source of strength, not weakness. Because you're coming into harmony with truth, and that's where all power really comes from.

But true forgiveness is often misunderstood. It does not mean that continuing to excuse the willful commission of wrongdoing an infinite number of times. That's not what forgiveness is. This is a false notion of forgiveness and unconditional love.

That is naivete at best and cooperation with evil at worst. We have to call people and hold them to account on their wrongdoing and be strong enough to stand in the truth and do that.

A sincere apology starts with the willingness to tell the truth. That is where true forgiveness and reconciliation must begin.

With the willingness to tell the truth. And we can't do that unless we develop true self-respect. Self-respect, people use the word respect when, you know, talking about their relationship to another person. It has nothing to do with another person.

True respect has everything to do with one's self. It comes from the Latin prefix re, meaning again, and the Latin verb spectare, meaning to look at.

So what respect actually is, is taking another look, looking at again. But what it ultimately is, when we do this upon ourselves, is taking another look upon ourselves and reevaluating what our belief systems have been all about and whether they have been on the side of truth and justice and peace and order and harmony in the universe.

So that's the device that's going to get us out of this mess. Not any piece of technology. You want the device that's going to solve the problems that we're facing as a species? There it is. It's called a mirror. Develop a deep relationship with one. Take a look at oneself. Take a look into the self. And we need to reevaluate what our mental positions and staying confined and staying attached, our attachments have been, okay? That's what we need to reevaluate and that's a process of respect that is internal.

(01:01:35) The Buddha once said that, “There are only two mistakes that one can ever make on the pathway to truth: not starting and not going all the way”.

I know this presentation has probably stretched your mind and gotten you to maybe take a look at someplace where you maybe were uncomfortable to take a look at before, and it brought up some things that may be uncomfortable. But that's where the truth leads, to go past your comfort zone and to go all the way. I'm going to wrap it up right here.

(01:02:10) Regardless of what anyone's religion may happen to be, government, money, official world religions, scientism, military, New Age movement, whatever it is, we need to stop attempting to make our religion, the truth, and what we need to do is start making the truth our religion.

When we do that, then we will wake ourselves up, and we will step into the light, and the chains of bondage that have bound this world for so long will start to fall away.

We will ascend the ladder to higher consciousness, and in doing so, we will step out of this world hand-in-hand together and join with our brothers and our sisters in the realm of the infinite.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your kind attention.

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Mark of the Bankocracy

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Summary of Episode 3 - The Fed Independence Lie

March 5, 2025. The third installment in The War for Bankocracy series will post at 7 pm ET this evening, in theory HERE…

a year ago · 44 likes · 10 comments · John Titus

Jean Nolan interviews Dick Allgire about the Fed

Full video on youtube

Mike Adams is an intelligent guy, who also has a few things to say about money.

The Health Ranger's newsletter

Gold prices surge toward $3,000 amid global shortage and dollar collapse fears

In a dramatic shift in the global financial landscape, gold prices are on the brink of hitting an unprecedented $3,000 per ounce, driven by a perfect storm of a global gold shortage and mounting fears over the dollar's declining value. Analysts and market experts are pointing to a combination of market manipulation, increased demand for physical gold, a…

The Mar-A-Lago Accord, Restructuring US Debt and Reseting the Global Monetary System

a year ago · Mike Adams

People, in general, are woefully ignorant regarding how money works, and yet it dominates our lives. This is not good! I am educating myself and strongly recommend my readers do so as well.

Here’s all you really need to know:

Full video on youtube

Sarah’s Report

The global financial system will likely reset or fundamentally change this year. What shape it will take will depend on many factors including factors outside the control of the United States. The Mar-A-Lago Accord outlined below by NewsTarget.com based on Mike Adams interview with economist Martin Armstrong and other sources outlines recent financial m…

a year ago · 14 likes · 2 comments · Sarah Westall

Below, archaix interviews a former metals expert that seems to confirm “Sarah’s report” above:

I’ll end the post with an audio about the shenanigans of the current monetary system; the speaker’s book(s) is/are below.

How I Clobbered Every Cash Confiscatory Government Agency

552KB ∙ PDF file

How I Clobbered Part 2

322KB ∙ PDF file

Quotes leading to Passio's "Two Masks"

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America: Republic or Democracy?

The limited choices the state gives its slaves

Dennis (redpilloftruth.com) — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 00:06:22 GMT

Doug Casey's take: Republic vs Democracy

Being totally free of the state’s tyranny is NOT treason, according to early American lawyer Lysander Spooner

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Can the state do other than just hit ya?

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WritePharma Parable Publishing-stories with mystical meaning

The parable of, "Hit me baby, one more time"

2 years ago · 1 like · Dennis Gilmour, (780) 932-9105

What people forget, or probably more accurately don’t understand, is that these governance issues are “universe-wide” issues that are being worked out in human history.

Clif High has been tracking the “aliens” for many years now

Clif High: our non-human rulers

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Original video on brighteon

Show government the man they want, and government will find the crime!!!

Dennis (redpilloftruth.com) — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 04:00:14 GMT

Rules for thee and not for me, is the mantra of government.
Like Mark Passio says, “Government IS slavery: is now, always has been, and forever shall be.”

If this video about political persecution of Bitcoin proponent Roger Ver does NOT prove the above two bullet points, I am not sure what else to say.

Free Roger Now petition

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No Treason - Lysander Spooner

Dennis promoting Mark Passio — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 08:56:39 GMT

Lysander Spooner No Treason

2.14MB ∙ PDF file

The Articles' of Confederation Explained

As an introduction to late American lawyer Lysander Spooner’s opening words to his book, “No Treason”, I suggest watch the below Star Trek clip to the point where Kirk READS THOSE VERY WORDS!

Just propaganda in science fiction, or did Gene Roddenberry know more than he let on???

I suggest Claude William in the clip above symbolically represents early America and Captain Kirk represents modern America. Both are deceived. Why?

Because Claude William did NOT fully understand what a 100% voluntary & free society should look like, just like early America. Similarly, Kirk was just as deceived, just like modern America.

Alicia’s Newsletter

Under the Articles of Confederation, each state was entitled to send a delegation of at least two and no more than seven representatives to Congress, but each state was entitled to just one vote…

2 years ago · 1 comment · Alicia Lutz-Rolow

The Yangs (ie Yankees, as per the episode) had their holy book called, “Eve Plebnista”. But Eve Plebnista was actually the US Constitution, created on Omega IV by parallel development (according to Spock).

However, this Plebnista book/document/constitution ended up enslaving Omega IV, including the Comms (ie Communists), AND Kirk and the United Federation of Planets too!

Kirk represents modern America, just as enslaved as Claude William, early America. Early America might have been marginally freer, but she did NOT last long. The so-called “nation” is now more enslaved than a black man was still enslaved, even shortly after the constitution was ratified, for the sakes of “freedom” and “justice” for all.

I’m afraid Randy Travis was in error, when he sang “America Will Always Stand”.

WritePharma Parable Publishing-stories with mystical meaning

The parable of, "America will always stand"

a year ago · Dennis Gilmour, (780) 932-9105

The scales of justice & freedom in America … she’s blindfolded alright and can’t see worth a shit!

The Freedom Scale

Government and Slavery Have Much in Common

Cover page | Preface | Introduction 1 | Introduction 2 | Introduction 3 …

2 years ago · 24 likes · 21 comments · Christopher Cook

Since this book, Eve Plebnista, was called their “holy” book, it is a subtle symbolic reference to religion, the Bible specifically, IMHO.

Religion is a mind controlling paradigm, enslaving minds worldwide, because it is based on subjective, relativistic, beliefs, NOT objective, absolute, natural law.

Government is the modern day controlling “religion”, replacing the invisible Originator-Creator-Oversoul.

Alicia’s Newsletter

Conned by the Constitution

The Constitution has failed to protect our lives, liberty, and property…

2 years ago · Alicia Lutz-Rolow

I say this Star Trek episode is symbolic of our planet. Isn’t the “yang Kirk” (ie modern America) now enslaved by manipulated constitutions and laws as much as “Comm Russia/China” (ie pretty much the rest of the world)?

Alicia’s Newsletter

A Republic, If You Can Keep It!

The Democratic Republic of North Korea, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the People's Republic of China, and the United States of America all claim to be Republics, but in reality, each is an oligarchy controlled by international bankers and Wall Street corporations…

2 years ago · 1 like · Alicia Lutz-Rolow

Everybody is enslaved by the commands (ie laws) of the master ruling “religious priest” class called politicians (even called “ministers” — prime minister, health minister, etc…). And they themselves are slaves of the banksters, who are slaves of mind controlling non-human negative energy vampire beings.

WritePharma Parable Publishing-stories with mystical meaning

The parable of the negative entities feed on us

Tempers flare when the Enterprise crew and Klingons are pitted against each other by an alien entity. This episode is from Season 3, called “Day of the Dove”. The “evil” Klingon Kang represents our so-called “ego” mind. Let’s associate this with the left side of our brain. The “good” Kirk represents our “spiritual” mind. Let’s associate this with the…

2 years ago · Dennis Gilmour, (780) 932-9105

Yes, I think Roddenberry knew more than he let on.

Now for a quote from the opening page of Lysander’s book:

The Constitution says:

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
The meaning of this is simply: We, the people of the United States, acting freely and voluntarily as individuals, consent and agree that we will cooperate with each other in sustaining such a government as is provided for in this Constitution.

In the book, Spooner goes on to explain that, while not directly stated, this is the intended meaning of the constitution. A good and short read. I recommend it.

Wise quotes by Lysander Spooner

Not many Americans realize what that means. Do you freely, voluntarily, AS AN INDIVIDUAL, consent to income tax? No? Since the constitution allows you to ignore ANY LAW, unless you individually, and freely, and voluntarily consent, ON THAT INDIVIDUAL BASIS, you simply inform your government of your constitutional right and ignore filing.

Well, you may think, the government can’t individually negotiate tax requirements for 300 million Americans. That’s not practical. They don’t have the resources. Exactly!

The government has to assume implied consent and push it on everybody. Lysander Spooner covers that too in the book, the mind control tactic of implied consent behind their entire bullshit legal system.

Yes, the IRS might try to intimidate you. Yes, some corrupt or ignorant judge might insist you are obligated to obey their commands, claim your interpretation is wrong, and get some order-followers to throw you in jail.

Are you prepared to defend your rights under your Creator, which the Declaration of Independence talks about too?

Cory Endrulat on true natural law versus human law

Larken's-The Most Dangerous Superstition

Click below image for lots of great freedom interviews by Cory

CLICK ABOVE IMAGE TO GO TO CORY ENDRULAT’S “END OF SLAVERY” SUMMIT

When should you shoot a cop (by Larken Rose)?

WritePharma Parable Publishing-stories with mystical meaning

GET OFF YOUR KNEES AMERICA!

The parable of K.O.G. = U.S.A (the republic NOT the corporation)

If tomorrow all the things were gone I worked for all my life And I had to start again With just my children and my wife I thank my lucky stars To be living here today 'Cause the flag still stands for freedom And they can't take that away And I'm proud to be a…

3 years ago · 1 like · Dennis Gilmour, (780) 932-9105

THAT MEANS STOP THINKING CLEVER ACTOR DONALD TRUMP WILL SAVE YOU!

WritePharma Parable Publishing-stories with mystical meaning

Trump deserves to go to jail! But NOT for the 34 bullshit felony convictions ...

Trump is just as corrupt as any government/world leader, as he still pushed bullshit killer covid vaccines (remember operation warpspeed?), despite TONS of evidence coming out it is an intentional bioweapon. Also, Trump never talks about ending the 1913 Fed act, which made America slaves to the international banksters, since the Fed is a privately owned…

2 years ago · 7 comments · Dennis Gilmour, (780) 932-9105

BECOME THE INSPIRING AMERICA YOU STARTED OUT TO BE!

WritePharma Parable Publishing-stories with mystical meaning

The parable of MATGA (make America truly great again, by getting rid of ALL slave mentality that believes in ANY politician)

New UISOA flag = United International States of America, because legally a "person" is defined as a corporation (ie composed of many people). It can also mean ONE person. Therefore, State = one (single) person AND State = ONE (many) person. One AND many, at the same time, literally and metaphorically…

3 years ago · Dennis Gilmour, (780) 932-9105

P.S. I agree with Larken Rose in the videos below, who summarizes ALL politics pretty well, IMHO

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Start writing today. Use the button below to create a Substack of your own

All 11 podcasts about the Superstition in one post

Dennis promoting Mark Passio — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 07:06:44 GMT

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Part 4b - A different kind of Rules

Dennis promoting Mark Passio — Sun, 21 Jul 2024 17:26:27 GMT

Larken Rose The Most Dangerous Superstition

2.49MB ∙ PDF file

A different kind of rules

Without a belief in government, communities would almost certainly develop rules which, at first glance, might resemble what are now called laws. But there would be a fundamental difference. It is both legitimate and useful to write down and publish, for all to see, statements about the consequences of doing certain things.

People in one town may, for example, make it known that if you get caught stealing in their town, you will be subjected to forced labor until you pay back your victim threefold for what you stole, or the people of some neighborhood may make it known that if you are caught driving drunk there they will take your car and roll it into a lake.

But while such decrees would constitute threats they would be fundamentally different from what are now called laws for several reasons

The ones actually making the threats, the ones who decided what retribution they personally would feel justified in inflicting on those who harm or endanger their neighbors, would alone bear the responsibility for making and carrying out such threats.
The threats would not require any election or consensus. One person or a thousand people jointly could issue a warning in the form of: if I catch you doing this, I will do this to you. The threats would not be seen as the will of the people, but only as a statement of the intentions of those actually issuing the warning.
The legitimacy of such threats would be judged not by who made the threats, but by whether the threatened consequence is, in the eyes of the observer, appropriate for the crime committed. No one would feel any obligation to agree with, or abide by, such a threat if they deemed it to be unfair or unjustified.
Such warnings would not pretend to alter morality or make up any new crimes, nor would anyone imagine such warnings to be legitimate simply because they were issued, the way people now view authoritarian laws.

Instead, such warnings would simply constitute statements about what those making the threats believe to be justified. Therefore, instead of being in the authoritarian formula of we hereby make the following illegal, the warnings would fit into this template. I believe that if you do this, I have the right to respond in this way.

Many people, having been trained into authority worship, would be terrified of such a non-centralized, free-for-all method of human interaction. But what if, the statist will ask, someone writes a threat that says, if I don't like your religion or your hairstyle or your dietary choices, I'll kill you. Examining that question in the context of a society still suffering from the superstition of authority, and in the context of a society without such a belief, shows just how dangerous the authority superstition really is.

It is true that in the absence of the belief in government, an individual could threaten violence in unjustified situations. The point is not that everyone will automatically think and behave properly if there are no rulers, but that such malicious tendencies in human beings would be far less dangerous and destructive without the belief in authority to legitimize them.

For example, compare what happens when some individuals vehemently oppose alcohol consumption and when authority forbids it. It is possible, if unlikely, that an individual in a stateless society could on his own declare, I consider consuming alcohol to be a sin, and if I find out you've been drinking, I'm coming to your house with a gun to straighten you out. Any person who did so would almost certainly be persuaded, if not by polite reasoning, then by the threat of retaliatory violence that he should not carry through on his threat and should stop making such threats.

Obviously, one person could not, by himself, inflict oppression upon millions of beer drinkers. Even among others who also considered drinking alcohol to be a sin, even if it was a majority, few would feel justified in trying to forcibly impose their views on others.

Whether they recognized that such aggression is unjustified or whether they were simply scared of what might be done to them if they tried, either way, violent conflict would be avoided. In contrast, suppose a group of people wearing the label of government declared alcohol to be illegal and created a heavily armed gang of enforcers to hunt down and imprison any caught possessing alcohol.

Since that actually happened, there is no need to theorize about the results. With the promise of fixing most of society's ills and with public support, the U.S. ruling class enacted alcohol prohibition in 1920. Alcohol consumption continued, slightly reduced, and there immediately sprang up a black market in alcohol production and distribution.

A hugely profitable but illegal market led to violent conflicts, a jump in organized crime and other crime, and widespread corruption in government, as well as brutal attempts to crush the alcohol trade. Seeing the actual results of Prohibition, a majority of the people soon opposed it and demanded the repeal of the 18th Amendment, which authorized Prohibition at the federal level. And of course, after prohibition ended, all of the related violence, government violence and private violence, ended.

In this example and countless others, it can be seen that, left to their own devices, most people will not try to forcibly impose their preferences upon others, but will go out of their way to avoid violent conflicts. However, if there is a government that people can use to coercively inflict their values upon others, they will gladly beg it to do so and feel no shame or guilt for having done so.

If every person who made or attempted to enforce a threat or rule, as it might be called, had to take personal responsibility for having done so and had to assume the risk himself, very few people would be so eager to threaten their neighbors. But given the vehicle of authority, everyone who believes in government threatens all of his neighbors on a regular basis and accepts none of the responsibility and assumes none of the risk for having done so. In short, the belief in authority makes everyone who believes in it into a thug and a coward.

Organization Without Authority

Having mentioned the ways in which human society would change absent the authority myth, it is equally important to note the things which would not change. For some reason, some people seem to think that anarchy, a society without a ruling class, equates to every man for himself, with every person having to grow his own food, build his own house, and so on. The implication of such a belief is that human cooperation and trade occur only because someone is in charge.

Of course, this is not the case and never has been. People trade and cooperate for mutual benefit, as can be seen in the many millions of businesses and transactions which already occur without any government involvement.

Supermarkets are examples of highly organized, amazingly efficient means of distributing food, which involve many thousands of individuals, none of whom is coerced into participating, but each of whom does so for his own benefit. Everyone from the farmers to the truck drivers to the stock boys to the checkout clerks to the store managers to the owner of entire store chains does what he does because he receives personal gain for doing so.

No one is legally required to produce one bite of food for anyone else. And yet hundreds of millions of people are fed and fed well with a large variety of food products of high quality, but at a low price by what is essentially an anarchistic system of food production and distribution.

This is the result of human nature and simple economics. Where there is a need for some product or service, there is money to be made providing it. And where there is money to be made, there will be a number of people or groups of people competing for that money by trying to make products that are better and cheaper.

Such a system, which is really no system at all, automatically punishes those whose products are inferior or too costly and rewards those who find a way to provide people with what they want at a better price. And giving up the authority myth would not hamper that in the slightest.

In fact, the authority superstition is constantly interfering with people who attempt to organize for mutual benefit by throwing taxes, licensing requirements, regulations, inspectors, and other legal obstacles in the way.

Even laws supposedly intended to protect consumers usually do nothing but limit the options available to consumers. The end result is that many businessmen who otherwise would have to focus on making a better product at a better price instead focus on lobbying those in government to do things which handicap or destroy competing businesses.

Because the mechanism of government is always the use of force, it can never help with competition. It can only hinder it. In other words, rather than being essential to an organized society, the myth of authority is the biggest obstacle to human beings organizing for mutual benefit.

Defense Without Authority

Those who insist that government is necessary often raise the issue of defense and protection, claiming that society without government would mean that anyone could do anything, there would be no standards of behavior, no rules, no consequences for those who choose to commit theft or murder, and that society would therefore collapse into constant violence and mayhem.

Such concerns, however, are based on a profound misunderstanding of human nature and of what government is and what it is not. Defending against aggressors requires no special authority, no legislation, no law, and no law enforcers. Defensive force is inherently justified, regardless of who does it and regardless of what any law says. And having a formal, organized means of providing such defensive force for a community also does not require government or law.

Each individual has the right to defend himself or defend someone else. He may choose to hire someone else to provide defense services, either because he is physically unable to defend himself or just because he would rather pay someone else to do it. And if a number of people chose to pay to have an organization of trained fighters with the weapons, vehicles, buildings, and other resources they need to defend an entire town, the people have that right as well.

At this point, most believers in government will protest, saying, that's all government is. But that is not the case. And this is where the difference becomes apparent. What an individual does not have the right to do, what no group of people, no matter how large, has any right to do, is to hire someone else, individual or group, to do something which any average individual does not have the right to do.

They cannot rightfully hire someone to commit robbery even if they call it taxation because the average individual has no right to steal. They cannot rightfully hire someone to spy on and forcibly control the choices and behaviors of their neighbors, even if they call it regulation.

Those in a stateless society would feel justified in hiring someone to use force only in the very limited ways and in the very limited situations in which every individual has the right to use force to defend against aggressors.

In contrast, most of what the so-called protectors in government do is commit acts of aggression, not defend against them. Some of what is now classified as police work, in fact, all of what the police do that is actually legitimate, noble, righteous, and helpful to society, would exist without the authority myth.

Investigating wrongdoing and apprehending actual criminals, meaning people who harm others, not merely people who disobey politicians, would continue without the authority myth, as something that almost everyone would want and would be willing to pay for.

This is demonstrated by the fact that there are already private detectives and private security companies, in addition to the protection services of government that everyone is forced to fund. There would be only one difference, though it is a major difference.

Those doing the job of investigating and protecting, in the absence of authority superstition, would always be viewed as having exactly the same rights as everyone else. While presumably they would be better equipped and better qualified to do their jobs than the average citizen, their actions would be judged by the same standards that the actions of anyone else would be judged, which is not at all the case with so-called law enforcers.

Private protection providers would also judge their own actions, not by whether some authority had told them to do something or whether their actions were deemed legal by government, but by whether those actions, in their own personal view, were inherently justified.

Not only would an excuse of just following orders not convince the general public, but the agents themselves could not, even in their own minds, use such an excuse to evade responsibility for their actions, because no one would be claiming to be an authority over them.

Non-authoritarian police, if they would even be called that, would be viewed very differently than government agents are now. They would not be seen to have the right to do anything that any other person did not have the right to do. They could only go places, question people, use force, or do anything else in situations where anyone else would be justified in doing the same thing.

As a result, the average person would have no reason to feel any nervousness or self-consciousness in their presence, as most people now do when in the presence of law enforcers. People would feel no more obligation to submit to questioning or searches or anything else requested by private protectors than they would if some stranger on the street made such requests. And if a private protector became abusive or even violent, his victim would have the right to respond the same way he would if anyone else was behaving that way. More importantly, the individual who resisted aggression from a private protector would have the support of his neighbors if he did so, because his neighbors would not be imagining any obligation to bow to someone because of any badge or any law.

The best check against a defense organization becoming corrupt or out of control is the ability of customers to simply stop paying. Obviously, no one wants to pay for some gang to oppress him, but most people also do not want to pay a gang to oppress someone else either. As much as the average person wants to see thieves and murderers caught and stopped, he also wants to see to it that the innocent are not harmed.

If the customers of some private protection company discovered that their protectors were harassing and assaulting innocent people, the type of behavior they were hired to prevent, the customer base would instantly disappear, and the thugs would be out of business. And if, in the absence of any claimed authority, the thugs decided to try to force their former customers to keep paying, the backlash from the people would be swift and severe, as no one would feel any legal obligation to allow themselves to be oppressed.

A non-authoritarian protection system would also lack another particularly ludicrous aspect of nearly all government forms of defense. It is standard not only for governments to force people to fund defense schemes, but to refuse to even tell the people what they are funding.

The U.S. government, and in particular the CIA, though many other agencies also engage in secret operations, has spent decades and trillions of dollars, much of which still remains unaccounted for, on operations its customers, the American people, are prohibited from knowing about.

Indeed, anyone who tried to tell the American people what all they are funding would be imprisoned, or worse, for causing a breach of national security. With nearly unlimited power, nearly unlimited funds, and permission to do all of its deeds in secret, it is utterly absurd to imagine that the military and the CIA would only do useful, righteous things.

Indeed, more and more, the American people are learning that the CIA has for decades engaged in drug running and gun running, torture, assassination, buying influence with foreign governments, installing puppet dictators, and all sorts of other destructive and evil practices.

Even President Harry Truman, who created the CIA, later said that he never would have done so if he had known it would become the American Gestapo. Any private company that offered protection or defense services would get no customers at all if its sales pitch was, “If you give us huge sums of money, we will protect you. We just won't tell you what you're paying for, and we won't tell you what we do or how we do it.”

The only reason government gets funding based on such a ridiculous premise is because it gets its money through violent coercion, not voluntary trade. The people are not given a choice of whether to fund it or not.

There is another preposterous aspect of protection via government, which would never occur with private defense and protection providers. Under the guise of gun control and other weapons laws, authoritarian regimes often forcibly prevent the people from being able to defend themselves while making the ridiculous claim that it is being done for the safety of the very people being disarmed. Those in power know full well that a disarmed public is a helpless public, and that is precisely what tyrants want. The idea that a person who does not mind violating laws against theft or murder is going to mind violating weapons laws is absurd.

Crime statistics and common sense both demonstrate that passing a law against private weapon ownership will affect only the law-abiding, with the result being that the basically good people will end up less able to defend themselves against aggressors. And that is exactly what politicians want, because they have the biggest, most powerful gang of aggressors around.

Needless to say, if someone is looking for protection against aggressors, he will not voluntarily pay a company to forcibly take away his own means of self-defense. Furthermore, violent clashes between the police and civilians would obviously be reduced or non-existent if the people could simply stop funding any protectors that became aggressors.

For example, much of the racial tensions and violence in U.S. history were the result of white law enforcers oppressing and abusing black civilians. Rather than law acting as a civilizing influence, it was used as the excuse for violent aggression. Given a choice, the inhabitants of a black neighborhood obviously would not have voluntarily paid to have racist, sadistic white thugs intimidating and assaulting them on a regular basis.

Many other violent clashes in the U.S. and elsewhere have also been the result of people upset with what their ruling class was doing to them. This would include the massacre of thousands of protesters at Tiananmen Square by the Chinese army in 1989, the killings of several anti-war protesters by the National Guard at Kent State in Ohio in 1970, and so on. More and more often in the United States, public demonstrations and protests over government policies end in authoritarian attacks against protesters with tear gas, batons, tasers, rubber bullets, and so on.

Obviously, no group of people would willingly pay for a gang that forcibly stops those same people from speaking their minds. More importantly, the motivation behind such protests is almost always displeasure with what government officials are doing against the will of the people, at least some of the people.

If each person was allowed to spend his own money instead of being forced to fund a centralized authoritarian agenda, there would be no reason for most of this type of protest and the resulting clashes to occur at all.

A non-authoritarian protector would do only things that he and his customers viewed as justifiable, which would probably be spelled out in contract form, where the protector agrees to provide specific services for a specific fee. Compare this to the standard government version of protection. We will forcibly take as much of your money as we want, and we will decide what, if anything, we will do for you.

Most people want aggressors stopped and the innocent protected. In a free market, the way for a company to succeed is by giving customers what they want. Unlike government, if a private defense company had to rely on willing customers, it would have a huge incentive not to be careless, wasteful, abusive, or corrupt.

If people could take their business elsewhere, there would always be a competition to see who could provide actual justice most effectively. For a private protection company to succeed, it would have to demonstrate to its customers that

It is very good at figuring out who is guilty and who is not.
It is very good at making sure that the innocent are not harassed, assaulted, or slandered.
It is very good at making sure that the truly dangerous people are caught and prevented from doing further harm.
It is very good at making sure the victims of crimes receive whatever restitution is possible.
It is very good at making it so that those who have done something wrong but do not need to be completely removed from society are put into an environment where their attitude and behavior can actually improve.

In contrast, government prosecutors specialize in always demonizing the accused and always have an incentive to get convictions or the coerced confessions known as plea bargains, regardless of the guilt or innocence of the accused.

Government courts constantly release people who still pose an obvious danger to others while keeping millions of people locked up who have harmed no one. The government prison system, because of how prisoners are degraded, abused, and assaulted by guards as well as other inmates, makes frustrated, angry people into people who are even more frustrated and angry, making innocent people into criminals, and making criminals into worse criminals. And the American people are coerced into funding that destructive system, whether they want to or not.

Another important point is that in the case of a private protection company, if one protector becomes abusive, the reputation and career of every other protector depends upon exposing and routing out the thug.

In contrast, it is now universally understood that government police forces will first and foremost protect their own. When one cop is caught doing something corrupt, illegal, or violent, almost without exception, all of the other cops will help to cover it up or defend it.

They function based upon gang mentality because the people who are forced to pay their salaries are not the people they actually have to answer to. Like most government employees, they answer to the politicians and view the general public as cattle, not customers.

In contrast, the general public would view private defenders as their friends, their allies, and their employees, and more importantly, as their equals. They would not view them as an authority they must grovel before, nor as a constant potential threat to be feared.

Everyone, including the hired protector, would recognize that the protector has no more rights than anyone else. Everyone would know that if a hired protector ever committed theft, assault, or murder, he would be viewed and treated exactly as any other thug would be viewed and treated.

A genuine protector who defends liberty and property not only does not require a belief in authority, he requires an absence of that belief. One who imagines himself to have the right to forcibly control everyone else, even if only in a limited way, is going to treat people accordingly. The law enforcer who hands out tickets for obscure infractions, detains and interrogates people without just cause, and seems always looking for a reason to interfere with people's daily lives, is not a protector and deserves no respect or cooperation.

A non-authoritarian protector, on the other hand, would be nothing more than a normal human being with the same rights as everyone else, though perhaps more often armed and better trained in physical combat than most. He would be viewed as the neighbor to call if there is trouble rather than the agent of a gang of thugs which first and foremost serves the ruling class.

And the job of protector, absent any special authority, power, or status, would mainly attract those who truly want to protect the innocent, but would not attract those who merely want the chance to exercise power and control over others, a human shortcoming which the job of modern law enforcement feeds.

This is not to say that private protectors would never do anything wrong. They would still be human, capable of bad judgment, negligence, and even malicious intent, just like everyone else. However, they would not have legal permission to do wrong and would have no system, no law, and no authority which they could blame for their actions or which they could hide behind to avoid the wrath of their victims.

If they ever acted as aggressors, retribution against them would be certain and swift. In a population that has given up the superstition of authority, any group of protectors which decided to become a group of extortionists, thugs, and tyrants would not be voted against or sued or complained about to some authority. They would be shot.

The only thing that allows for the prolonged widespread oppression of any armed populace is the belief in authority among the victims of oppression. Without that it is impossible to subdue or dominate them for long.

Deterrence and Incentives

Some assume that, if not for government, crooks would be free to do as they please without any repercussions. Again, this shows a profound misunderstanding of human nature and of what government is.

In truth, the belief in authority adds nothing to the effectiveness of any system of defense and protection. People who use aggression against others, such as assault, theft, and murder, obviously are not restrained by their own morality or respect for the self-ownership of their victims.

However, they may choose not to commit a particular crime if they imagine a risk of harm to themselves. That is called deterrent. And deterrence, by definition, do not depend upon appealing to the conscience of the attacker, but instead make use of the attacker's instinct for self-preservation.

To put it bluntly, the message which works on true criminals is not, do not do that because it is wrong. The message is, do not do that or you will get hurt. The supposed moral righteousness or authority of the threat against a would-be aggressor is irrelevant to the effectiveness of the deterrent. Whether it is a police officer, a dog, an angry homeowner, or even another thief, the only question in the attacker's mind is whether he is likely to suffer pain or death if he attempts to rob or attack someone.

Deterrence to other types of bad behavior, which are not so severe or blatant as theft or assault, also do not require authority. Some assert that without government inspectors and regulators, every business would be putting out shoddy, dangerous products. But such a claim is again based upon a profound misunderstanding of human nature and economics.

No matter how greedy or selfish a businessman may be, he cannot be successful in the long run if he sells products which do not please his customers. Someone who knowingly sells a defective product or tainted food will have few, if any, customers. The many highly expensive recalls which many companies voluntarily carry out, even for relatively trivial defects or problems, attests to this fact.

Unlike in the current situation, in which the power of government is used to prop up and protect irresponsible and destructive corporations, in a truly free market with informed customers and open competition, corruption and crime would not pay and businesses would be unable to insulate themselves from the consequences of their irresponsibility.

Government inspectors and regulators are driven by the incentive to impose fines on people and to enforce laws and regulations, regardless of whether they make any sense. In contrast, a system of private inspectors, which answers only to the people who want to know what is safe and which has no enforcement power, has no incentive to interfere with business or to make up things to complain about.

Businesses could voluntarily invite private reviews of their products or facilities, such as is already done by Underwriters Laboratories, UL, Consumer Reports, and others, in order to be able to show the public an unbiased opinion of how safe and reliable their products are.

Many companies do this today, on top of having to jump through all of the bureaucratic hoops which government put in their way. Many other matters could be handled in similar non-authoritarian ways.

Private building inspectors already used by many realty companies would have the job of determining on behalf of potential buyers how safe and sound a building is.

In addition to private inspectors, restaurants could simply invite potential customers to examine their facilities themselves. All of these actions would be voluntary. A business could choose not to allow any inspections, and potential customers could choose whether or not to patronize that business.

The fact that so many things are assumed to be problems for authority to handle is a sign of intellectual laziness. Customers want quality products, and businessmen who want to be successful must provide quality products. It is in the interests of both, therefore, to be able to objectively demonstrate the quality of the products being offered.

Contrary to the stereotype of the evil, greedy, profiteering businessman, the way to become rich in a free society is by providing products and services which actually benefit the customer. Almost all of the dishonest schemes that are profitable in the long term are those that are forcibly created or endorsed by government, such as the fractional banking scam, the legal counterfeiting scam called monetary policy, the litigation racket, and so on.

Even without government, there would occasionally be serious conflicts. For example, suppose a factory was dumping toxic waste into a river, killing all the fish downstream on the property of others, which would constitute a form of trespass and property destruction. The absence of authority would not preclude the victims from doing anything about it.

In fact, it may make it easier for them to do something about it. Instead of suing in a government court where the judge can be bribed into supporting the billion-dollar business, the response might be something more effective, even if it appears less civilized.

The people who live on the river may do something as simple as telling the factory owner that if he keeps allowing his pollution to flow onto their properties, they will physically destroy his factory. Obviously, there may be more polite, peaceful ways the problem could be solved, such as boycotts or publicizing the wrongdoing. Either way, the people can create an effective deterrent to improper behavior, especially when there is no government involved that can be paid off and corrupted.

Many campaign contributions now amount to little more than bribes to have government regulators look the other way. Likewise, government courts can easily find reasons to dismiss almost any lawsuit, thereby allowing wealthy individuals, the kind with real victims, to prosper.

The cliche of the greedy evil businessman often omits the fact that large-scale crimes are usually done with the cooperation of government officials. Without protection from government, even the most greedy heartless businessman would have a huge incentive to not anger his customers to the point where they stop buying his products or to the point where they react violently against him. Most people, most of the time, would be reluctant to use force, knowing that they alone would bear both the responsibility and the risks of doing so.

There would be a huge incentive to settle disputes and disagreements peacefully and by mutual agreement. When the belief in government is prevalent, on the other hand, there is no incentive to settle things peacefully, because winning the political battle poses no risk to those who advocate violence via government.

Without a ruling class to whine to, to legislatively impose some central agenda on everyone, people would be forced to deal with each other as rational adults instead of as whiny, irresponsible children. People would be far better served by attempts at cooperation and peaceful compromise than they are by fighting over who can get a hold of the sword of government.

When bullying and aggression are no longer recognized as legitimate forms of human interaction, human beings will, out of necessity, learn to play nice.

Anarchy in Action

While many people dread the thought of anarchy, the truth is that almost everyone experiences anarchy on a regular basis. When people go food shopping or browse at the mall, they are seeing the results of non-authoritarian mutual cooperation. No one is forced to produce any of the products offered. No one is forced to sell anything. And no one is forced to buy anything. Each person acts in his own best interest, and everyone involved, producer, seller, and buyer, profits from the arrangement.

All of the individuals benefit, and society in general benefits, without any coercion or rulers involved. There are countless examples of mutually voluntary, cooperative, peaceful, efficient, and useful events and organizations that do not involve government.

Nonetheless, though there are a myriad of readily available examples of how efficient, organized, and productive anarchistic interaction is compared to nearly all government endeavors, people still imagine that human beings interacting with each other as equals all the time would lead to chaos and mayhem. When cars meet at a four-way stop, or when people pass on the sidewalk, that is anarchy in action. Billions of times every day people take turns, leave room for others, and so on, without any authority commanding them to.

Sometimes people are inconsiderate, but even then, only very rarely does a serious conflict occur, anything more serious than a rude gesture or an angry word. Potential conflicts from very minor things to more serious matters happen billions of times every day, and in the vast majority of cases they are resolved without violence and without the involvement of any authority.

Even regarding more significant problems, people often find ways to reach mutual agreements. While organized, non-governmental methods of dispute resolution, using arbiters, investigations, and negotiations, can peacefully solve even major disagreements, most conflicts of interest never get that far.

Most people most of the time go out of their way to avoid or quickly settle potential clashes with others. Though some people would point to such things as an indicator of the inherent goodness of mankind, there is often another factor at work. Most people simply do not want the hassles and the stress that comes with confrontation, and especially do not want the risks that come with violent confrontation.

Many people turn the other cheek quite often, not necessarily because they are patient and loving, but simply to avoid being bothered with time-wasting, futile bickering. Many, when they encounter someone doing something obnoxious, simply let it slide because they have more important things to worry about.

There is, in most people, a strong tendency to get along, even if just for one's own benefit. And if there were no authority to run to, no giant mommy or daddy state to cry to, people would handle matters like adults far more often than they do now.

This is not to say that every difference of opinion would end peacefully and fairly without authority, but the availability of the giant club of government is a constant temptation to anyone who holds a grudge or wants to hurt someone else or wants to obtain unearned wealth via litigation.

If it were not there, fewer people would drag out or escalate disagreements or disputes. Whether because of charity, cowardice, or just a desire to avoid the headaches of a prolonged conflict, many people, even those who have a legitimate complaint against someone else, will simply let bygones be bygones and get on with their lives.

Even without such examples, it is utterly irrational to claim that people could not get along without government when everything government does, using violence and the threat of violence to control people, is the precise opposite of getting along. The notion that peaceful coexistence requires aggression and coercion is logically ridiculous.

The only thing that bringing authority into a situation guarantees is that there will not be a nonviolent peaceful resolution to the matter. When someone describes the society he wants to see, he will almost always describe a state of nonviolence, of mutual cooperation and tolerance. In other words, what he will describe is the complete antithesis of the violence and coercion of authority.

Yet, having been raised to imagine authority to be a vital and positive part of society, people still constantly try to achieve peace by way of war, try to achieve cooperation by way of coercion, try to achieve tolerance by way of intolerance, and try to achieve humanity by way of brutality.

Such insanity is the direct result of the people being taught to respect and obey authority.

Anti-authoritarian Parenting

Parenting is so often based on authoritarianism that many cannot even imagine what non-authoritarian parenting would look like. It is important to distinguish what effect losing the authority superstition would have on parenting.

It would not mean that parents would put no restrictions on what their children could do, nor would it rule out parents controlling children against their will in many situations. But it would dramatically change the mindset of both parents and children. These days, teaching children right and wrong and teaching them to obey are seen by most people as the same thing.

However, a parent can command a child to do something wrong just as easily as he can command him to do something right. Contrary to what authoritarian parenting teaches, the fact that a parent issued a command does not make it automatically right and does not make the child obligated to obey.

If, for example, a parent commands his child to shoplift, the child has no moral obligation to do so, and disobedience would be perfectly justified, though probably hazardous. Of course, the child might not understand that stealing is wrong if his parents told him to steal.

On the other hand, a parent may impose a necessary justified restriction on his child which the child does not like and does not believe is justified. In either case, the child is only obligated to do whatever he deems right. The alternative would be that he has a moral obligation to do what he deems is wrong which is impossible. And this is where the difference lies.

The authoritarian parent teaches the child that obedience in and of itself is a moral imperative regardless of the command, e.g., because I am your father and I said so. The non-authoritarian parent may also impose restrictions upon the child, but he does not demand that the child like it, nor does he pretend that such restrictions are just simply because the parent imposed them.

In other words, the non-authoritarian parent may see the need, because the child does not yet have the knowledge or understanding to be competent enough to make all of his own choices, to force certain restrictions upon a child regarding bedtime, diet, etc. but he does not claim that the child has any moral obligation to obey without question. The sooner the child can be taught the reason for the rule, the sooner he can understand why doing what his parent says will benefit him. Of course, that is not always possible, especially when children are very young.

The parent who stops the child from eating a box of candy is benefiting the child, who does not yet have enough understanding or self-control to serve his own interests. But to teach the child that he should feel a moral obligation to abide by rules which seem to him to be unfair, unnecessary, pointless, stupid, or even hurtful, just because authority told him to, is to teach that child the most dangerous lesson there can be, that he is morally obligated to put up with unfair, unnecessary, pointless, stupid, hurtful things if they are done by authority.

To avoid passing on the authority superstition, parents should never cite because I said so as the reason a child should do something. The parent should express that there are rational reasons for the restrictions even if the child cannot yet comprehend those reasons.

In other words, the justification for the rules is not that the parents have the right to forcibly impose any rules they want on their children, but that the parents, hopefully, have so much more understanding and knowledge than the children that the parents must make many of a child's choices for him until he becomes competent to make his own choices.

Even more important is how a parent controls his child's behavior towards others. It is extremely important to teach a child that it is inherently wrong to intentionally harm another person, except when necessary to defend an innocent. But if, instead of that principle, the parent teaches, obey me, and then commands the child not to hit others, he has taught the child obedience, but not morality.

If the child refrains from hitting others, not because he understands that doing so is wrong, but only because he was told not to, then he is functioning in the same manner as an amoral robot. He has learned nothing about being a human being. The short-term, practical result may look the same, i.e., the child refrains from hitting others, but the lessons learned are very different. When the child who is merely taught to obey grows up and some other authority tells him that he should harm others, he almost certainly will because he was trained to do as he is told.

On the other hand, the child who is taught to respect the rights of others and was taught the principles of self-ownership and non-aggression will not lightly abandon those principles just because someone claiming to be authority tells him to. Children learn by example.

If a child sees his parents always acting as unquestioning subjects of a ruling class, the child will learn to be a slave. If instead the parents demonstrate in their daily lives how to use and follow one's own heart and mind, the child will learn to do likewise. The child must understand that it is his duty not merely to follow the rules of being a good person, but to figure out for himself what the rules of being a good person are.

The standards which a self-owner lives by may still be described as rules, but the worth of such rules does not come from the fact that an authority issued them, but because the individual believes that such rules describe inherently moral behavior. This is not to say that everyone agrees upon what is moral, though there is wide consensus on some basic principles. But even with each person's behavior guided by his own imperfect, incomplete understanding of right and wrong, the overall results would be drastically improved compared to the authoritarian alternative, in which basically good people do things they know to be wrong because they feel compelled to do whatever authority tells them to do, as demonstrated by the Milgram experiments.

Again, though many people falsely assume that a society without a centralized rule-making authority would mean every man for himself, group cooperation and agreements do not require authority. And those children who spend their formative years learning to interact with different people of all ages on a mutually voluntary basis, instead of learning to blindly do as they are told, are far better equipped to form relationships and enter into joint efforts based upon agreement, compromise, and cooperation.

Such voluntary interaction can take place between two people, or between two million. Even the limited freedom experienced by Americans has demonstrated that even extremely complex industries can be based entirely upon the willing participation and voluntary cooperation of everyone involved. And history has also demonstrated that the moment a method of organization based upon centralized coercive control is used, such as occurs in so-called planned economy, productivity crashes and poverty and enslavement appear.

Yet most children are still raised in authoritarian environments, with the claim that that will best prepare them for life in the real world. In truth, it prepares them only for a lifetime of enslavement.

Halfway There

In any group of people that has given up the authority myth, whether they are just a small group of friends or the inhabitants of a town or the population of an entire continent, the frequency and severity of violent conflicts and acts of aggression inside that group will be dramatically lower than it is elsewhere, where most people, by way of voting and other political actions, advocate and perpetrate aggression on a regular basis.

However, though the individuals in such a group would have little to fear from each other, they still would likely have to deal with acts of aggression from those outside of the group who still adhere to the belief in government.

An individual whose mind has been freed but who still lives in a society plagued by the delusion of authority will be at constant risk of being the target of authoritarian aggression. Being free in one's mind, understanding the concept of self-ownership, does not necessarily cause one to be physically free.

However, it can make an enormous positive difference by opening up countless new means through which people can try to cope with, avoid, or even resist authoritarian attempts to control them. The individual who takes pride in being a law-abiding citizen has only one way to even attempt to achieve freedom, which is almost never effective, begging his masters to change their laws.

On the other hand, one who understands that he owns himself, owes no allegiance to any supposed master, and needs no legislative permission to be free has many more options. And the more people who have escaped the superstition, the easier avoidance or resistance becomes.

For example, even a small number of self-owners can create channels of commerce which circumvent the usual controls and extortion schemes imposed by governments. Ironically, this entirely legitimate and moral form of voluntary interaction is often referred to as the black market, or as doing business under the table, whereas the usual system of aggression, coercion, and extortion is viewed as legitimate and righteous by the believers in government.

In reality, the legitimacy of any trade or any other human interaction does not depend upon whether some authority knows about it and controls it, as the concept of black market implies, but depends only upon whether what occurs is mutually consensual.

Those who understand this can find many ways in which to circumvent or defeat attempts by government to coercively control and exploit them. Many acts of aggression done in the name of the law can be avoided or defeated fairly easily by a relatively small number of people if they feel no automatic moral obligation to do as they are told.

Of course, this is not always the case. If the gang-called government does anything well, it is exerting brute force, whether in the form of military actions or domestic law enforcement.

However, in almost all cases, most of the power wielded by those in government is the result not of guns and tanks and bombs but of the perceptions of their victims. If 99% of a population obeys the ruling class out of a feeling of obligation or duty to do so, the remaining 1% can usually be controlled by brute force, with the approval of the 99%. But if a more substantial percentage of the population feels no duty to obey, the amount of brute force needed to control them becomes enormous.

To wit, many of the inhabitants of the United States now surrender about half of what they earn in taxes at various levels, and most feel obligated to do so. But if a foreign power somehow invaded and conquered the land, imposing a 50% tax would be utterly impossible because the people would feel no moral, legal, or patriotic duty to comply. 200 million workers would find 200 million ways to use evasion, deception, secrecy or even outright violence to avoid or defeat such attempts by foreign thieves to enslave the people.

Today, there is only one gang capable of oppressing the American people, and that is the American government. This is because it is the one gang imagined by most people to have the right to coerce and control, regulate, and rob and extort, tax the American people.

A common concern among statists is that without a strong government to protect them, some foreign power would just come in and take over. But such fears completely overlook how large a role perception plays in the ability to oppress. An area of land the size of the United States inhabited by a hundred million gun owners, in addition to 200 million other people who would likely become gun owners if an invasion occurred, would be impossible to occupy and control by brute force alone.

History gives many examples, e.g., the Warsaw Ghetto in World War II, the Vietnam War, and the aftermath of the war in Iraq, of how even an enormous, technologically advanced standing army can be indefinitely frustrated by a relatively small number of armed insurgents. And a land inhabited by self-owners has another huge advantage, in that it is literally impossible for them to collectively surrender.

If there is no government pretending to represent the population and no one who claims to speak on behalf of the people as a whole, there is literally no way for them to give up without each and every individual surrendering. A good way to grasp the reality of the situation is to consider the matter from the perspective of the leader of the invaders. How would one even begin to try to invade and permanently occupy an area in which many millions of the inhabitants, who could be hiding anywhere, can kill anything within at least a hundred yards, as any decent hunter can do?

An aspiring tyrant would have a far better chance of gaining power over the people by running for office, thereby obtaining the perceived right in the minds of his victims to rule and control them.

Large-scale oppression, especially since the advent of firearms, depends a lot more on mind control than it does on body control. Those who crave dominion gain much more power by convincing their victims that it is wrong to disobey their commands than by convincing their victims that it is merely dangerous but moral to disobey.

No matter how much the people complain and protest, as long as the people continue to obey the law, the commands of the politicians, the tyrants have little to fear. As long as their attempts to control and extort are seen as legal acts of authority, and as long as the people therefore feel an obligation to comply, unless and until the ruling class change such laws, the people will remain enslaved in body because they remain mentally enslaved.

Ironically, many people still believe that a strong government is the only thing that can protect the people as a whole, when the belief in government is actually the only thing which can oppress the people as a whole. Brute force alone cannot do it on any large scale or for any prolonged period of time.

Even a gang with tanks, planes, bombs, and other weapons has no power to control an armed populace for long unless it first dupes the people into believing that it has the right to control them. In other words, only a gang, imagined to be authority, can get away with long-term oppression and enslavement.

As a result, government or the belief in it, instead of being essential to the protection of individual rights, is essential only for the prolonged and widespread violation of individual rights.

Ironically, even most of those who recognize government as the biggest threat to liberty today still insist that government of some type is necessary for protection. The belief in authority is so strong that it can convince otherwise rational people that the very thing which routinely robs, coerces, and assaults them is needed to protect them from robbery, coercion, and assault.

The fact that government has always been an aggressor and has never been purely a protector anywhere in the world at any time in history does not shake them of their cult-like belief in the magical powers and virtues of the abstract mythical entity called authority.

The Road to Justice

Many large-scale injustices in history would have quickly collapsed or never would have started if not for authority condoning and enforcing such injustices. The evils of slavery, for example, are often blamed on racism and greed. But authority played a huge role in making slavery economically feasible. If there was not a huge, organized network of law enforcers to capture escaped slaves and any who helped them escape, how long would slavery have continued? If freeing slaves was not illegal and thus immoral in the eyes of authoritarians, how much larger and more effective would the Underground Railroad have been?

It probably would not have been known as an underground anything if it was not illegal. The abolitionist movement consisted of people who thought slavery was immoral and who wanted the laws changed to officially declare slavery to be immoral and illegal.

If, instead of petitioning for a change in laws, the abolitionists were actively freeing slaves, the slave trade most likely would have collapsed decades earlier if it ever happened at all. Shipping slaves halfway around the world would be a very risky business indeed if the moment you landed your cargo might be forcibly liberated.

The problem is that most people believe that even immoral unjust laws should be obeyed until the law is changed. Clearly, this means that such people's loyalty to the myth of authority is stronger than their loyalty to morality, and doing what the masters tell them is more important to them than doing what they know is right, and mankind has suffered greatly because of it.

The ability of people to resist tyranny depends largely upon whether they accept the myth of authority or not. Those who can see the injustice committed by government, but who continue to believe that they must follow the law and work within the system, will never achieve justice.

On the other hand, those who do not view the political megalomaniacs as rightful rulers— those who do not feel an obligation to obey an immoral law, those who do not feel the need to treat what is actually a parasite class, a gang of political thieves and thugs, as untouchable, respectable, and honorable, have a far better chance of defeating legal tyranny. And most tyranny and oppression which has occurred throughout history was done legally.

There are many methods available to those willing to illegally resist injustice and tyranny, including everything from passive resistance to nonviolent sabotage to things such as assassination and other forcible resistance.

Depending upon the severity of the oppression and the individual's own values, conscience, and beliefs about when, if ever, the use of violence is appropriate, one may choose any number of ways to defeat tyranny. Some will simply try to stay under the radar, living in such a way as to avoid the attention of authorities and enforcers.

Some may choose open civil disobedience, such as hundreds of individuals openly smoking marijuana in front of a police station. Some may choose a more active but non-violent method, such as slashing the tires of police cars or destroying other property used to commit acts of authoritarian aggression.

Others may choose the method of openly violent resistance, such as occurred in the American Revolution. By analogy, the intended victim of a robbery, the non-governmental kind, may try to evade the thief, or outsmart him, or even kill him if it comes down to that, whatever it takes to avoid being victimized.

Likewise, those who recognize that legal evil is still evil and resisting it is still justified would not waste time on elections and lobbying politicians for a change in legislation. They would simply do whatever they could to protect themselves and possibly others from being victimized by such legal aggression.

Beyond a certain point, the more people who resist, the less violence is necessary to do so. If a local police force has a dozen narcotics officers, people whose main job is to commit acts of aggression against others who have committed neither force nor fraud, and several hundred civilians let it be known that they believe that they have the right to use whatever it takes, including deadly force, to stop any attempted kidnappings, home invasions, or similar acts of aggression committed by narcotics officers, the aggressors, the police, if they did not have any bigger authoritarian gang to appeal to for help, would simply give up to avoid being exterminated.

The deterrent effect, that works against private criminals, can work just as well against government criminals. In India, Mahatma Gandhi and his followers used widespread passive disobedience to undermine British control of that country.

Alcohol prohibition in the United States is another example of an immoral law that was basically disobeyed out of existence. The high levels of disobedience, along with the refusal of most jurors to give their blessing to the legal aggression, along with some acts of violent resistance, e.g. tarring and feathering revenuers, made the immoral law unenforceable.

The legislatures eventually repealed it in an attempt to save face, because having an unenforceable law on the books goes a long way toward destroying the ruling class's legitimacy in the eyes of its victims. Anywhere the people feel no moral obligation to comply with authoritarian demands, any legal acts of aggression can be ignored out of existence.

When the number of self-owners is smaller, however, sometimes violence is necessary to defeat legal acts of aggression. If only a few people recognize the illegitimacy of legal oppression, forcible resistance often backfires. Where there is oppression, there is always violence. It is usually one-sided, with the agents of authority committing most or all of the violence.

The man who passively cooperates while claiming to be against violence is in fact rewarding the violence of the state. When an act of aggression is committed, whether by authority or anyone else, nonviolence by definition ceases to be an option. The only question is whether the aggressive violence will go unchallenged or whether defensive force will be used to counter it.

Either way, violence will occur. Of course, the thieves, thugs, and murderers who declare their crimes to be legal, which every tyrant in history has done, will always brand any who resist them as criminals and terrorists.

Only those who feel no shame at being labeled criminals because they have shed the myth of authority and recognize that the term law is often used to try to characterize something as evil as something good have any chance at all of achieving freedom.

Again, somewhat ironically, the more people there are who understand self-ownership and the mythical nature of authority, and who are willing to fight for what is right and fight against what is legal but wrong, the less violent the road to true civilization, peaceful coexistence will be.

Side Effects of the Myth

Looking back in history, there is no shortage of examples of man's inhumanity to man, examples of oppression and suffering, violence and hatred, and situations and events which do not reflect well on the human race in general. And though many of the most blatant injustices in history were the obvious product of the belief in government... Such as war and overt oppression, many other injustices which are not usually attributed to government action would also have been impossible without the involvement of authority.

In addition to the example of whether slavery would have existed had it not been legally enforced as mentioned above, similar questions could be asked about the treatment of the American Indians.

If not for the authoritarian government edicts and the state mercenaries to enforce them, would there have been such a large-scale, concerted effort to exterminate or forcibly evict the natives from the lands they had inhabited for generations? No doubt there would still have been many smaller conflicts due to the clash of cultures and demands for farming and hunting lands, but would it have been in anyone's personal interest to engage in large-scale violent combat?

After open slavery was ended in the United States, at about the same time that legal slavery, the income tax, first came into being, racial tensions and violent conflicts continued.

Many believe that government then came along and saved the day. In reality, violent conflict between the races was encouraged by authority. For many years, racial segregation was forcibly imposed via laws. Ironically, racial tensions were later exacerbated further by government mandated integration, which sought to coerce people of different races and cultures to mix whether they wanted to or not.

Again, the result was violence. During the entire fiasco, some businesses and schools, if left in freedom, would have chosen segregation and some would have chosen integration. If not for government trying to forcibly impose one official policy on everyone, parents could simply have chosen which schools to send their children to, segregated or not. And shoppers could simply have chosen which businesses to patronize, segregated or not.

Not only was much of the violence committed against blacks done directly by government enforcers, the police, but even much of the privately committed violence was the result of anger over people being forced by government to deal with people of another race and culture.

It is silly to think that forcing people apart, or forcing people together, will make people happier, nicer, or more open-minded and tolerant. In neither case was the peace or security of either race served by authoritarian intervention. While it is impossible to say exactly how widespread or prolonged segregation and racism would have been without government involvement, it is common sense that if people of all races and religions are allowed the freedom to choose who to associate with, it at least makes it possible for very different cultures to peacefully coexist.

But when government gets involved and the debate is between forcing races to remain separate or forcing races to mingle, obviously some people will be angered either way, and rightly so. This is not to say that every point of view is equally valid.

The point is that people of vastly different worldviews, however wise or stupid, open-minded or bigoted, informed or ignorant their views may be, can usually coexist peacefully, even in close proximity, unless government gets involved.

Different people may not like each other, may not approve of each other's beliefs and lifestyles, and in fact may harshly criticize or condemn other cultures. But that does not mean they cannot peacefully coexist, with both sides refraining from violent aggression. But whenever government gets involved, the coercion inherent in all law makes certain that people will not just get along.

Another example of the indirect deleterious effects of government action is the fact that the violence associated with the drug trade, the production and distribution of illegal substances, exists only because of narcotics laws.

By outlawing a substance or a behavior, even when all of the participants are willing adults, the politicians create a black market, which not only has a huge profit potential due to limiting the supply, but creates a situation which specifically deprives customers and suppliers of any legal protection.

For example, if a drug dealer is robbed or assaulted by the police or by anyone else, he is unlikely to call law enforcers to help him. Outlawing something consensual, whether it be prostitution, gambling, or drug use, almost guarantees that the market will be controlled by whichever gang is the most violent or has paid off the most cops or other officials.

Again, a perfect before-and-after example of this was alcohol prohibition in the United States. When alcohol became illegal, it was immediately taken over by organized crime, which was renowned not only for its violence, but also for its ability to bribe government agents and officials. When alcohol became legal again, all of the related violence stopped almost instantly.

Despite that crystal clear example of the horrible results of enacting laws to prohibit vices, most people still support laws against behaviors and habits they find distasteful. As a result, the related violence continues. Instead of being recognized as a problem which exists because of government and its laws, it is still imagined to be a problem which government must fight against.

The same could be said of the infamous violence of loan sharks who deal with illegal gambling and the violence of pimps in places where prostitution is illegal. In such cases, even better than a before and after comparison is a side-by-side comparison.

Does gambling lead to more violence in Atlantic City where it is legal or in places where it is illegal? Does prostitution pose a bigger threat to all involved in Amsterdam where it is legal, or in all of the places where it is illegal? This is not to say that prostitution, gambling, and drugs, including alcohol, are good things, but that good or bad, introducing the coercion of government into the situation does not do away with such vices, but only makes them more dangerous for everyone involved, and often for people who are not involved.

Lest anyone still imagine that such vice laws are the result of good intentions, the politicians are well aware that gambling, prostitution, and illegal drug use still occur in government prisons. The politicians know full well that if even constant captivity, surveillance, random searches, and harsh punishments cannot prevent such behaviors in people who are kept in closely monitored cages, laws obviously cannot eradicate such behaviors from an entire country.

But they can and do supply tyrants with a ready excuse for ever-expanding power. And that is exactly why governments enact vice laws to begin with, to create crime where there was none, in an attempt to justify the existence of authoritarian power and control.

In a world without the myth of authority, many people, including this author, would still strongly disapprove of drug use, prostitution, and other vices, but they would be unlikely to support efforts to have such behaviors violently suppressed. Not only would they usually feel unjustified in advocating violence if they did not have the excuse of authority to hide behind, but they would be unlikely to want to provide the billions of dollars necessary to wage a large-scale violent campaign against such widespread activities.

Even the most judgmental person would have both economic and moral incentives to leave others in peace, as well as the fear of retaliation from any he chose to commit acts of aggression against. Of course, open criticism of lifestyles and behaviors and attempts to persuade people to change their ways are a perfectly acceptable part of human society.

In fact, if people had to try to use reason and verbal persuasion to win people over, instead of using the brute force of government, perhaps the targets would be more open to listening.

At the very least, people would no longer turn an issue of bad habits into an issue of bloodshed and brutality, as happens now with all attempts to legislate morality. The flip side to the notion that if it's illegal, it must be bad is if it's legal, it must be okay.

Perhaps the biggest example of this is the fact that in 1913, the U.S. government not only legalized slavery via the income tax, directly and forcibly confiscating the fruits of people's labor, but also, by way of the Federal Reserve Act, legalized a level of counterfeiting and bank fraud which boggles the mind.

In short, the politicians gave bankers legal permission to make up money out of thin air and to loan such fake fabricated money out at interest to others, including governments. Though most people are unaware of the specifics of how such huge frauds and robberies occur via fiat currencies and fractional reserve banking, many people now have a gut instinct that the banks are doing something deceptive and corrupt. What they fail to realize is that it was government which gave the banks permission to defraud and swindle the public out of literally trillions of dollars.

Another particularly controversial example of how a debate of legality can trump a debate about facts and morality is the issue of abortion. One side lobbies for authority to make or keep abortion legal and then defends the practice based upon its legality. The other side pushes for abortion to be outlawed in the hopes of having the violence of authority used to prevent the practice.

In logical terms, the only relevant question, which is a religious, biological, philosophical question, not a legal question, is, at what point does a fetus count as a person? The answer to that question dictates whether abortion amounts to murder or is the equivalent of having a kidney removed.

However, instead of addressing the only question that actually matters, as complex and controversial as it may be, both sides usually focus instead on trying to get the violence of authority on their side.

As another example of legalized injustice, almost everyone is aware of how outrageous and irrational lawsuits have become, e.g. trespassing criminals successfully suing property owners after injuring themselves during a break-in. But they fail to realize that it is the decrees of government-appointed judges which allow it to happen at all.

In addition to government being able to legally steal from one person to give to another, government also creates via the current system of litigation, a mechanism whereby one person can directly and legally rob another.

Laws in the name of environmentalism are also used for immoral power grabs in both directions. With enough money, a company which is actually polluting, and thus infringing on the property rights of others, can trade campaign contributions for legal permission to pollute. At the same time, they can use environmental laws to crush competition by creating and enforcing a maze of environmental regulations, many of them unnecessary or counterproductive, sometimes idiotic, to keep smaller companies out of the market.

Additionally, politicians can use vague threats of environmental dangers as excuses to gain control of private industry, to control the behavior of millions, or to extort more money for their own purposes.

In many industries, success now depends less upon providing a valuable service at a reasonable price than it does upon obtaining special favors and preferential treatment from government. This can be in the form of direct handouts, e.g. grants or subsidies, political trading, e.g. no-bid government contracts, licensing schemes, such as in the medical industry, tariffs on international trade, regulatory control and favoritism, and many other means.

The results of all of these, higher prices, inferior products and services, fewer choices, and so on, is often assumed to be the result of the shortcomings of private industry instead of being recognized for what it is, the adverse consequences of authoritarian control over human interaction.

Major economic crashes are always the result of government tampering with commerce, credit, and currencies. Short of total physical destruction, the only way to destroy an entire economy is to meddle with the medium of exchange, the money, through legalized counterfeiting, via the issuance of fabricated credit and the issuance of fiat currency.

Most people, being ignorant of even basic economics, view inflation and other economic problems as natural, unfortunate, but unavoidable occurrences.

In truth, they are symptoms of large-scale legalized fraud and theft. Immigration laws give another example of indirect damage and secondary problems caused by government.

Aside from the obvious direct coercion involved, such laws cause other problems that would not exist otherwise, including:

The lucrative, often vicious racket of smuggling illegals into the country.
Illegals being easy targets for human trafficking and other forms of exploitation because they do not dare to speak out or to seek help, and
People being forced to live under tyrannical regimes because they cannot physically escape. And because illegals are already classified as criminals and often viewed as
undesirables simply for being in the country and receive neither respect nor protection from much of the citizenry, there is less of an incentive for them to otherwise behave in a law-abiding manner. Even many problems that seem to be non-governmental in nature exist because of some law.

Of course, there are and always will be instances of fraud and theft committed by unscrupulous individuals acting on their own. But most people are completely unaware of how many seemingly private swindles, schemes, and rackets are not only allowed by authority, but encouraged and rewarded by the laws of government, whether intentionally or accidentally.

Having no truly free market to compare it to, many continue to assume that state coercion is necessary when all it actually does is hinder and interfere with human productivity and progress. What might have been?

It is impossible to even begin to imagine in how many ways history would have been different if the superstition of authority had collapsed long ago. Obviously, the atrocities of Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, and many more would never have happened.

Furthermore, while there could still be violent regional, cultural, or religious clashes, large-scale wars simply could not and would not happen without soldiers blindly obeying a perceived authority.

If the enormous amount of resources, effort, and ingenuity that have been poured into mass destruction, war, had been put into something productive, where would we be today? If, instead of spending such a huge amount of time and effort struggling over who would have the reins of power and what that power should be used for, people had spent all those years being inventive and productive, what might the world now look like? What if every person had been allowed to support what he wanted, instead of having government robbing everyone and then having a never-ending argument over how those public funds should be spent? What if, instead of arguing over which centralized authoritarian plan should be forcibly imposed on everyone, people lived their own lives and pursued their own dreams? Who can even imagine how far humanity as a whole would have progressed by now?

This is not to say that without the belief in authority, personal conflicts would never arise. They would, and they would sometimes end in violence. The difference is that with the belief in government, they always end in violence, because coercion is all that government ever does. Whereas people, even people of very different viewpoints and backgrounds, can usually find ways to peacefully coexist, any situation which authority becomes involved in is automatically solved by force.

With the issue of same-sex marriage, what if, instead of an ongoing argument over what views and choices should be forced upon everyone, every church minister, every employer, and every other individual could decide for himself how to live, what he wants to call marriage, and so on?

With the issue of prayer in school, what if instead of government creating a hostile conflict by forcibly confiscating money from all property owners to fund one big homogenous public school system, each person, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, atheist, etc., was allowed to choose which schools, if any, he wanted to support?

This does not mean that people of different views would like each other or end up believing the same things. It does mean that without believing the same things, they could still peacefully coexist, a situation which government does not allow.

What if, instead of government agencies deciding what drugs and medical treatments it would legally allow people to try, and which practitioners would be licensed to practice, people could make their own choices?

In such a scenario, the business of providing customers with unbiased information about various products and services would flourish. Government solutions are always about politicians deciding how to deal with different situations and then forcibly imposing their ideas on everyone else. But it is neither morally legitimate nor effective on a practical basis to have politicians making everyone else's choices for them. And that is true of all sorts of aspects of human society.

What would the world look like if, for the past hundred years, instead of arguing over how to forcibly limit people's options, which is what every law does...people had spent their time and effort trying new ideas and coming up with new approaches to problems, each person having been allowed to devote his own time, effort, and money to whatever he personally chose to support.

What if, instead of a centralized system of forced wealth redistribution, government welfare, people had been left in freedom to decide for themselves the best, most compassionate ways to help the needy? Instead of a system that rewards laziness and dishonesty and breeds dependency, we might have a system that actually helps people.

What if instead of government forcing businesses to do whatever the politicians and bureaucrats declared to be safe, people could come up with new ideas and inventions, set their own priorities, and make their own decisions about how to best protect themselves?

What if instead of having a centralized control machine trying to force people to be fair, people could choose for themselves who to associate with, what deals to make, and so on?

Everything government pays for creates a conflict. Every public project, from grants given out by the National Endowment for the Arts to grants for certain studies or businesses, to schools, to parks, to everything else public, amounts to robbing thousands or millions of people in order to give the money to a few people.

Why would anyone expect everyone in an entire country or even a hundred people to all exactly agree on how their money should be spent?

What if, instead of many trillions of dollars in spending power being diverted and hijacked every year to fund the agendas of politicians and their bureaucracies, that wealth had gone into whatever things the people who earned the money actually cared about and wanted to support?

What if, for the last several thousand years, each person had minded his own business and not tried to use government to force his ideas and priorities on everyone else?

What if instead of a giant centralized monster violently limiting everyone's choices, everyone's options, everyone's creativity and ingenuity, trying to force conformity and sameness while draining the producers of their ideas and their wealth, different people and different groups had been trying new ideas and figuring out the best ways to solve problems and create a better world, guided by their own beliefs and values?

Sadly, the idea still terrifies a lot of people who still imagine that a world forcibly controlled by politicians would be more safe and civilized than a world inhabited by free human beings exercising free will and individual judgment.

The fact is that those people who put their faith in government to make things work, though they are by far the majority, and though they may mean well, are the problem. As a result of their indoctrination into the cult of authority, they continue to believe and push the profoundly insane idea that the only road to peace, justice, and harmonious civilization comes from constant, widespread coercion and forcible government controls, perpetual oppression and enslavement done in the name of law, and the sacrificing of free will and morality at the altar of domination and blind obedience.

As harsh as that may sound, that is the basis of all belief in government.

Accepting Reality

Statists often say, show me an example of where society without government, anarchy, has worked. Of course, since they are speaking of societies consisting almost entirely of thoroughly indoctrinated authoritarians, human society without a ruling class is rarely even contemplated, much less attempted.

Yet the statists use the fact that they have never tried true freedom, because the concept is completely foreign to their way of thinking, as proof that a stateless society wouldn't work. This would be akin to a group of medieval doctors who all use leeches for every ailment arguing, show me one case where a doctor has cured a headache without the use of leeches.

Of course, if none of them had ever considered any treatment other than leeches, there would not be an example of alternative methods working. But this would be a testament to the ignorance of the doctors, not the ineffectiveness of treatments which have never been tried. But the more important point is that anarchy is what is.

To say that society cannot exist without government is exactly as reasonable as saying that Christmas cannot occur without Santa Claus.

Society already exists without government, and has from the beginning. It has been the people imagining an entity with the right to rule, hallucinating a thing called authority, which has made the story of mankind consist largely of oppression, violence, suffering, murder, and mayhem.

Ironically, statists often point to the death and suffering which occurs when two or more groups are fighting over who should be in charge, label that as anarchy, and cite it as evidence that without government there would be chaos and death. But such bloodshed and oppression is the direct, obvious result of the belief in authority, not the result of a lack of government.

It is true that, compared to life under a stable, entrenched authoritarian regime, life in a country where the people are fighting over who the new authority should be, via rebellions, civil wars, one nation conquering another, etc., can be a lot more dangerous and unpredictable. As a result, people living in war-torn areas often wish only for there to be an end to the conflict, for one side to win and become the new government. To such people, a stable government may represent relative peace and security, but the underlying cause of the oppression committed by stable regimes and the bloodshed which occurs during struggles for power is the belief in authority.

If no one believed in a legitimate ruling class, no one would fight over who should rule. If there was no throne, no one would fight over it.

All civil wars and nearly all revolutions rest on the assumption that someone should be in charge. Without the superstition of authority, there would be no reason for such things to happen at all. By its very nature, government adds nothing positive to society. It creates no wealth and generates no virtue. It adds only immoral violence and the illusion that such violence is legitimate.

Allowing some people to forcibly dominate all others, which is all that government ever does, does not contribute to society one speck of talent or ability or productivity or resourcefulness or ingenuity or creativity or knowledge or compassion or any other positive quality possessed by human beings.

Instead, it constantly stifles and limits all of those things through its coercive laws. It is destructive and insane to accept the notion that civilization requires the forcible limiting of possibilities and the violent restraint of the human mind and spirit, that civil society can exist only if the power and virtue of every individual is forcibly overcome and suppressed by a gang of masters and exploiters, that the average man cannot be trusted to govern himself, but that politicians can be trusted to govern everyone else, that the only way for the morality and virtue of mankind to shine through is to crush the free will and self-determination of billions of human beings, and to convert them all into unthinking, obedient puppets of a ruling class and a source of power for tyrants and megalomaniacs, that the path to civilization is the destruction of individual free will, judgment, and self-determination. That is the foundation, the heart and soul, of the superstition called authority.

When people are ready to recognize that heinous lie for what it is and begin to accept personal responsibility for their own actions and for the state of society, and not one moment before, then true humanity can begin.

People can desperately wish for peace on earth until they are blue in the face, but they will never see it, unless and until they are willing to pay the price by giving up one tired old superstition. The solution to most of society's ills is for you, dear reader, to recognize the myth of authority for what it is, give it up in yourself, and then begin efforts to deprogram and wake up all of the people you know who, as a result of their indoctrination into the cult of authority worship, and in spite of their virtues and noble intentions, continue to support and participate in the violent, anti-human, destructive and evil oppression and aggression machine known as government.

The Punchline Revisited

Contrary to what nearly everyone has been taught to believe, government is not necessary for civilization. It is not conducive to civilization. It is, in fact, the antithesis of civilization. It is not cooperation, or working together, or voluntary interaction. It is not peaceful coexistence. It is coercion. It is force. It is violence. It is animalistic aggression cloaked by pseudo-religious, cult-like rituals which are designed to make it appear legitimate and righteous. It is brute thuggery disguised as consent and organization. It is the enslavement of mankind, the subjugation of free will and the destruction of morality masquerading as civilization and society.

The problem is not just that authority can be used for evil. The problem is that at its most basic essence, it is evil. In everything it does, it defeats the free will of human beings, controlling them through coercion and fear. It supersedes and destroys moral consciences, replacing them with unthinking blind obedience. It cannot be used for good any more than a bomb can be used to heal a body. It is always aggression, always the enemy of peace, always the enemy of justice.

The moment it ceases to be an attacker, it ceases to fit the definition of government. It is, by its very nature, a murderer and a thief, the enemy of mankind, a poison to humanity. As dominator and controller, ruler and oppressor, it can be nothing else.

The alleged right to rule in any degree and in any form is the opposite of humanity. The initiation of violence is the opposite of harmonious coexistence. The desire for dominion is the opposite of love for mankind. Hiding the violence under layers of complex rituals and self-contradictory rationalizations and labeling brute thuggery as virtue and compassion does not change that fact.

Claiming noble goals, saying that the violence is the will of the people, or that it is being committed for the common good or for the children, cannot change evil into good. Legalizing wrong does not make it right. One man forcibly subjugating another, no matter how it is described or how it is carried out, is uncivilized and immoral. The destruction it causes, the injustice it creates, the damage it does to every soul that it touches, perpetrators, victims, and spectators alike, cannot be undone by calling it law or by claiming that it was necessary. Evil, by any name, is still evil.

The ultimate message here is very simple. All of recorded history screams it, yet very few have until now allowed themselves to hear it. That message is this: If you love death and destruction, oppression and suffering, injustice and violence, repression and torture, helplessness and despair, perpetual conflict and bloodshed, then teach your children to respect authority, and teach them that obedience is a virtue.

If, on the other hand, you value peaceful coexistence, compassion and cooperation, freedom and justice, then teach your children the principles of self-ownership. Teach them to respect the rights of every human being, and teach them to recognize and reject the belief in authority for what it is. The most irrational, self-contradictory, anti-human, evil, destructive, and dangerous superstition the world has ever known.

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Part 4a - Life without the Superstition

Dennis promoting Mark Passio — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 18:13:09 GMT

Larken Rose The Most Dangerous Superstition

2.49MB ∙ PDF file

The Solution

Nearly everyone can see at least some problems with the “government” he lives under, whether it be corruption, war-mongering, socialist redistribution, police state intrusions, or other oppressions. And many are desperate to find a solution to such problems.

So they vote for this or that candidate, support this or that political movement or party, lobby for or against this or that legislation, and almost always end up disappointed with the results.

They can easily identify and complain about various problems, but an actual solution always eludes them.

The reason they are always disappointed is because the problem does not reside in the people called “government”: it resides in the minds of their victims. Tinkering with “government” cannot fix a problem that does not come from “government.”

The dissatisfied voter fails to realize that it is his own view of reality, his own belief in “authority,” that is the root cause of most of society’s problems. He believes that a ruling class is a natural, necessary, beneficial part of human society, and so all of his efforts focus on bickering over who should be in charge, and on what the power of “government” should be used for.

When he thinks of “solutions,” he thinks inside the box of statism. As a result, he is powerless from the beginning. Begging masters to be nice, or asking for a new master, never leads to freedom. Instead, such behaviors are clear indicators that the person is not even free inside his own mind. And a man whose mind is not free will never be free in body.

People are so accustomed to engaging in the cult rituals collectively referred to as “politics” (voting, lobbying, petitioning, campaigning, etc.) that any suggestion that they not bother participating in such pointless and impotent endeavors amounts, in their eyes, to suggesting that they “do nothing.” Because they view voting, whining and begging as the entire spectrum of possibilities open to them when it comes to “government.” They are unable to even comprehend anything that might actually accomplish freedom.

So when a voluntaryist or anarchist explains both the problem and the way out of it, but without presenting a new candidate to vote for, a new political party to support, or some new movement or campaign to get behind, in other words, without proposing anything that coincides with the superstition of “government” and “authority”, the average statist will complain that no solutions were offered.

From their perspective, anyone who does not play the game of “politics,” within the rules set down by the ruling class, is “doing nothing.” They enthusiastically declare, “You have to participate!” They fail to realize that participating in the game created and controlled by tyrants is “doing nothing” nothing useful, at least.

In truth, rather than some event needing to occur, or some particular thing needing to be done, the real solution-the only solution to the problems involving “government”-comes from not doing certain things, and from certain things not happening. In one sense, there is no positive, active solution to “government.” The ultimate solution is negative and passive:

Stop advocating aggression against your neighbors. Stop engaging in rituals that condone the initiation of violence and reinforce the notion that some people have the right to rule. Stop thinking and speaking and acting in ways that reinforce the myth that normal people should be, and must be, beholden to some master, and should obey such a master rather than follow their own consciences.

When people stop bowing at the altar of “government”, stop playing the games of tyrants, stop respecting arbitrary rules written by megalomaniacs, the problem will go away on its own. Being a mythical entity, “authority” does not need to be overthrown, or voted out, or “reformed.” The people need only stop imagining something that is not there, and never was.

If the people stopped allowing an irrational superstition to warp their perceptions, their actions would immediately and dramatically improve. Most aggression, which is now done in the name of “authority,” would cease. No one would issue commands, enforce commands, or feel an obligation to obey commands, unless the commands themselves were seen as inherently justified based upon the situation, not based upon the one giving the command, or his supposed “authority.” That alone would eliminate the vast majority of theft, extortion, intimidation, harassment, coercion, terrorism, assault and murder which human beings now perpetrate against one another.

When the people recognize and accept no master, they will have no master. Ultimately, their bondage, and the means to escape it, exists entirely inside their own minds.

Human society does not need anything added to it to fix most of its problems, nor does it need the institution of some new “system” or the implementation of some new master plan. Instead, it needs to have one thing-one all-pervasive, extremely destructive thing-removed from society: the belief in “authority” and “government.”

What will “make things work” is not any centralized plan, not any authoritarian agenda, but the mutually voluntary interaction of many individuals, each serving his own values and following his own conscience. Of course, this does not fit at all with the way almost everyone was trained to think: that society needs a master plan with “leaders” who will make it happen.

In truth, what society needs the most is the complete lack of a master plan, and the complete absence of authoritarian “leaders” to whom the people must surrender their free will and judgment. The solution is not to add some new thing to society, but simply to understand and dispel the most dangerous superstition.

Reality Is Anarchy

Many people have become anarchists-advocates of a society without any ruling class-after having come to the conclusion that society would be more prosperous and more peaceful, and would enjoy more justice and security, without any “government” at all.

However, that is somewhat akin to an individual deciding, after careful analysis, that Christmas would work better without Santa Claus. But if Santa Claus is not real, it is pointless to have a debate about whether he is “needed” in order for Christmas to “work.”

If Christmas works at all, it already works without Santa. And so it is with the usual debate between “government” and “anarchy.” “Government” does not exist. It never has and never will, which can be proven, using logic that does not at all depend upon any individual’s moral beliefs.

To quickly rehash, people cannot delegate rights they do not have, which makes it impossible for anyone to acquire the right to rule (”authority”). People cannot alter morality, which makes the “laws” of “government” devoid of any inherent “authority.” Ergo, “authority”-the right to rule-cannot logically exist. The concept itself is self-contradictory, like the concept of a “militant pacifist.”

A human being cannot have superhuman rights, and therefore no one can have the inherent right to rule. A person cannot be morally obliged to ignore his own moral judgment; therefore, no one can have the inherent obligation to obey another. And those two ingredients-the ruler’s right to command and the subject’s obligation to obey-are the heart and soul of the concept of “authority,” without which it cannot exist. And without “authority;” there is no “government.”

If the control which the gang called “government” exerts over others is without legitimacy, it is not “government”. Its commands are not “laws.” Its enforcers are not “law enforcement.” Again, without the right to rule, and a simultaneous moral obligation to obey on the part of the masses, the organization called “government” is nothing more than a gang of thugs, thieves and murderers.

“Government” is an impossibility; it’s simply not an option, any more than Santa Claus is an option. And insisting that it is “necessary,” when it does not and cannot even exist, or predicting doom and gloom if we do not have the mythical entity, does not change that fact. To argue that human beings need to have a rightful ruler, one with the moral right to forcibly control all others, and one whom all others are obligated to obey, does not change the fact that there is no such thing, and can be no such thing.

As such, the purpose of this final chapter is not merely to argue that society would work better without the fiction called “government”, but to introduce to the reader the ways in which people will perceive reality differently, think differently, behave differently, and interact differently-very differently, indeed-once they give up the most dangerous superstition: the belief in “authority.”

Anarchy, meaning an absence of “government,” is what is. It is what has always been, and will always be. When people accept that truth and stop hallucinating a creature called “authority,” they will stop behaving in the irrational and destructive manner they do now.

Almost everyone, at least to begin with, has difficulty thinking clearly about such a concept. Because every politician, and every “government,” is constantly proposing “solutions” that deal with how society will be organized, managed and controlled through a centralized, authoritarian “system”, most people do not even know how to mentally process the idea of a complete lack of any forcibly imposed “system.” They instinctively ask things such as “How would the roads work?” or “How would we defend ourselves?”

The truth is that no one can know how everything would work or what all would happen. Individuals can make suggestions about how things should work, or predictions about how things might work, but no one can possibly know the best way for everything to work. Despite the huge amount of uncertainty this creates, the historical track record of people living in freedom is far better than any centralized, managed “solution” has ever been.

However, statists have been trained to be terrified of this infinitely more complex type of society, where there is not one master plan but billions of individual plans, interacting with each other in innumerable different ways. To them, that means chaos. And in a way, it is chaos, in the sense that there is no single guiding idea and no single controlling entity. This does not mean that people cannot make agreements, or work together, or cooperate and find compromises. Instead, it means that each person will view life as an adult instead of throwing away his free will and responsibility to blindly follow someone else’s agenda.

As an aside, even without the “authority” superstition, there would still be leaders and followers. But it would usually be actual leadership, where one person leads by example, by demonstrating a level of intelligence, compassion or courage which inspires others to behave similarly. That is a very different phenomenon from what is usually dubbed “leadership” today.

When people talk of the “leaders” of countries, they are talking about people coercively controlling millions of others. The term “leader of the free world,” when talking about a “government” official, is inaccurate and self-contradictory.

Politicians do not lead by example. If anything, they set an example of how to be dishonest, conniving, narcissistic and power-happy. They say what people want to hear, in order to dominate and control them. To call such people “leaders” is as ridiculous as calling thieves “producers,” or calling murderers “healers.”

In the absence of the belief in “government,” real leaders could emerge: people who claim no right to rule, no right to force anyone else to follow them, but whose virtues and actions others recognize as being worth emulating.

No one could predict, and no one will control, what all will happen in a world without the myth of “government.” The following is not, therefore, intended to be a complete explanation of how every piece of human society would work once the “authority” myth is gone. Instead, it is an introduction to a few of the ways in which human beings might stop allowing an irrational superstition to distort their thinking and pervert their behavior, and might start behaving as rational, free beings, driven by their own free will and individual judgment, as they ought to be.

Fear of Freedom

Most people live their lives surrounded by authoritarian hierarchies, from families, to schools, to businesses, to all levels of “government.” As a result, most people have a hard time even beginning to imagine a “leaderless” civilization, a society of equals, an existence devoid of rulers, a world without “legislators” and their “laws.” The very thought, in most people’s minds, conjures up images of chaos and mayhem.

People are more comfortable with whatever they are accustomed to, and fear the unknown. People are so attached to whatever is familiar to them that even those who live in very high crime areas or war zones rarely leave the world they know to search for something better.

Similarly, it is a well-documented fact that some long-term prisoners develop a fear of being released, and when they are, commit further crimes with the intention of being sent back to prison. Even slaves can exhibit a dread of being freed.

This is because the life of a prisoner or a slave, though not likely fulfilling, is predictable, and imagining a new, drastically changed life, in a strange place, among strangers, with all of the related uncertainties-how will I eat? where will I live? what will it be like? will I be safe?-scares almost everyone.

So it is when most people contemplate human society without a ruling class. The concept is so foreign to everything they have ever known and ever thought about, and everything they were taught is necessary and good, that they hardly know how to begin to imagine it. Even our very language illustrates our fear of living in society as free equals, because such a state is defined as “anarchy”-a term also used to describe chaos and destruction. We have grown so accustomed to the mental cage which the myth of “authority” has formed around each of us that most of us are terrified of the idea of life without that cage. We are literally scared of our own freedom.

And some people work hard to reinforce that fear. Those who benefit the most from the myth of “authority”-those who crave dominion over others, and the unearned wealth and power it gives them-are constantly pushing the message that life without them in charge would mean constant pain and suffering for everyone. Just about anything people can be afraid of-crime, poverty, disease, invasion, environmental disaster, etc.-has been used by tyrants to scare people into subservience.

The details vary, but the template of the message from the tyrants is always the same: “If you do not give us power over you, so that we can protect you, you will suffer horribly.” That message, combined with man’s inherent fear of the unknown, has allowed for an incomprehensible level of oppression, theft, and outright murder, lasting generation after generation, all around the world.

Ironically, it has been the empty promise of protection against suffering and injustice which has duped so many people into accepting the very thing which has caused more suffering and injustice than anything else in history: the belief in “government.”

It seems strange that any thinking human being would not be naturally open and receptive to the idea that he owns himself and should be in charge of his own life, unhindered by any human “authority.” However, the average person who hears such a message often lashes out at the messenger, insists that actual freedom, a world without masters and subjects, would mean chaos and destruction, and then vehemently advocates continued enslavement of all of mankind, including himself.

He does so not based upon any rational thought or any evidence or experience, but based upon his own deep-seated, existential terror of the unknown--the unknown in this case being a society of equals instead of masters and subjects. He has never seen it in action on a large scale and has never thought about it, cannot imagine it, and therefore fears it. And those who desire dominion over others are constantly reinforcing and encouraging that fear in those they seek to subjugate.

Seeing a Different World

When someone who has been indoctrinated into the cult of “authority” finally disentangles himself from the superstition, the first thing that happens is that he sees a drastically different reality. When he observes the effects of the “authority” superstition, which infiltrate nearly every aspect of most people’s lives, he sees things as they actually are, not as he had formerly imagined them to be.

Most of the time, when he sees so-called “law enforcement” in action, he recognizes it as raw, illegitimate and immoral thuggery being used to extort and control the people in order to serve the will of politicians. (The exception to this is when the police use force to stop others who are actually guilty of acts of aggression-ironically, the very acts which the police routinely commit for the ruling class.)

When the recovering statist watches various political rituals, whether a presidential election, a legislative debate in Congress, or a local zoning board passing some new “ordinance,” he sees it for what it is: the acting out of delusions and hallucinations by people who have been indoctrinated into a completely irrational cult.

Any discussions in the media of what “public policy” should be, or which “representatives” should be elected, or what “legislation” should be enacted, appear, to one who has escaped the superstition, as useful and rational as well-dressed, attractive, respectable-looking people seriously discussing how Santa Claus should handle the next Christmas.

To one who has escaped the myth of “authority,” the premise upon which all political discussion rests disintegrates, and every bit of the rhetoric which stems from the superstition is recognized as being utterly insane. The un-indoctrinated individual sees every campaign speech, every political argument, every discussion in the news about anything political, every CNN broadcast of another debate on the House floor over some new piece of “legislation,” as a display of the symptoms of profound delusions due to the blind acceptance of utterly asinine, cult-like dogma.

All voting, campaigning, writing to one’s “congressman,” signing petitions, suddenly appear no more rational or useful than praying to a volcano god to grant its blessings to the tribe. One who has been deprogrammed sees not only the futility in all “political” action, but sees that such actions, no matter what their intended goals, actually reinforce the superstition.

Just as everyone in a tribe praying to a volcano god would reinforce the idea that there is a volcano god, so begging politicians for favors reinforces the idea that there is a rightful ruling class, that their commands are “law,” and that obedience to such “laws” is a moral imperative.

Those whom most people now regard with great respect, and who are often called “honorable,” are recognized as delusional, god-complex lunatics by those who have escaped the “authority” myth. The un-indoctrinated would take no more pride in shaking the “President’s” hand than he would in shaking the hand of any other psychotic, narcissistic mass murderer.

The men who wear black dresses and wield wooden hammers and refer to themselves as “the court” are seen as the madmen they are. Those who wear badges and uniforms, and imagine themselves to be something other than mere human beings, are not seen by the deprogrammed as noble warriors for “law and order” but as confused souls suffering from what is little more than a mental disorder.

Of course, those who have given up the superstition of “authority” can still fear the damage which the megalomaniacs and their mercenaries-soldiers and police-are capable of inflicting, but the mercenaries’ actions are no longer seen as being in any way legitimate, or rational, or moral.

Those who have escaped the myth begin to see that those whose actions are influenced by their “official” badge are as dangerous as people who are high on PCP, and for the same reason: because they are hallucinating a reality which is not there, which leads them to act out violently, unrestrained by a rational thought process.

Those who have escaped the “authority” superstition, when confronted by a “police officer,” may still act as they would if confronted by a rabid dog: speaking softly, behaving in a submissive manner, and not making sudden movements. But it is not out of respect for either the “law enforcer” or the rabid dog; it is out of fear of the danger posed by a brain that is malfunctioning because it is infected by a destructive disease, be it rabies or the belief in “authority.”

When believers in “authority” commit acts of aggression, imagining such acts to be righteous because they are called “law,” their targets have few options.

When a “tax” collector, or a police officer, or some other enforcer of the will of politicians, attempts to extort, harass, control or assault those who have escaped the myth of “authority”, the targets of the “legal” aggression can either go along with what they know to be injustice, or they can try to somehow circumvent or hide from the “legal” aggressors, or they can forcibly resist the aggressors. It is unfortunate that the last option is ever necessary, because, though using defensive force is morally justified (even when “illegal”), it is sad that one good person would ever have to use violence against another good person simply because the latter has had his perception of right and wrong twisted and perverted by an irrational superstition.

Even the murderous thugs of the most brutal regimes in history, due to their faith in the “authority” myth, thought they were doing their duty; they thought, on some level, that their actions were noble and righteous, or they would not have committed them.

Such mindless loyalty to “authority” often leaves the intended victims with only two options: submit to tyranny or kill the deluded “law enforcers.” It would be far better for everyone if, before forcible resistance becomes necessary, the mercenaries of the state could be deprogrammed out of their delusion, so as to avoid the necessity of having to scare, hurt or even kill them to stop them from committing evil.

Author’s personal note; The nicest thing you can do for anyone who has been duped into acting as a pawn of the oppression machine called “government” is to do whatever you can to persuade him to rethink his loyalty to the myth of “authority.” If all else fails, give him a copy of this book. As uncomfortable as that might be, you might be doing a lot of his potential future victims a huge favor, and you might even be doing the enforcer himself a huge favor, by negating the need for one of his future intended victims to maim or kill him.

A World Without Rules

One who has been deprogrammed looks out at the world, and instead of seeing hierarchies of different ruling classes within different jurisdictions, sees a world of equals-not in talent, ability, or wealth, of course, but in rights. He sees a world in which each person owns himself, and he comes to the realization that he has no rightful master, that there is no one above him, and that that is true of everyone else, as well. He is beholden to no “government,” no “country,” and no “law.” He is a sovereign entity. He is bound by his own conscience, and nothing else.

Such a realization is incredibly freeing, but also can be quite disturbing to those who have always measured their conduct by how well they obeyed others. Obedience not only is easy, as it allows someone else to make all the decisions, but it also allows the one who blindly obeys to imagine that the consequences, whatever they may be, are always someone else’s responsibility. To have to figure out right and wrong, and to know that you alone are responsible for your decisions and actions, can feel like a huge burden.

Essentially, losing the belief in “authority” means growing up, which has advantages and drawbacks. The un-indoctrinated person can no longer face the world as a care-free, irresponsible child, but at the same time, he will possess a level of freedom and empowerment he could not have imagined before.

Statists often have a deep-seated terror of a world in which every person decides for himself what he should do. Unfortunately for them, that is all that has ever existed, and all that ever will exist. Everyone already decides for himself what he will do.

That is called “free will.” Many assume that if an individual is not bound by any “authority,” and has the attitude “I can do whatever I want,” he will behave like a selfish animal. Some even imagine that they themselves would become animals if they were not governed by a master. Such a belief implies that people feel a strong moral obligation to do as they are told, but otherwise have no moral compass at all.

But most people obey “the law” because they believe that it is good to do so. There is no reason to think that, without being subservient to a master, those same people would no longer care about being good. Yet many still imagine human beings to be stupid savages, kept in check only by controllers. So they expect that, if unrestrained by a belief in “authority,” most people would become like unchained animals.

Those who have given up the “authority” delusion know better. There are, of course, consequences to actions, with or without “authority.” Aside from moral issues, most people usually choose to behave in ways that do not incur the wrath of others. Even if no one believed in right and wrong, being a habitual thief or murderer would be dangerous, and finding ways to peacefully coexist benefits the individual and the group. But aside from that, most people try to be good.

In fact, that is why they obey “the law”: because they were taught that doing so is good. The problem is not that people do not want to be good; it is that their judgment of what is good and what is bad is horribly twisted and perverted by their belief in “authority.” They are taught that funding and obeying a gang of thugs is a virtue, and resisting is a sin. They are taught that asking those thugs to rob and control their neighbors (via “legislation”) is perfectly moral and legitimate.

In short, when it comes to “authority,” they are taught that good is evil and that evil is good. Initiating violence via “the law” is seen as good, and resisting such assaults (”breaking the law”) is seen as bad.

Without the myth of “authority,” people would still have disagreements, and some would still be malicious or negligent, and would still do stupid or hostile things. The main difference in how human beings would interact without the “authority” superstition is quite simple: If someone did not feel justified in doing something himself, he would not feel justified in asking someone else to do it, nor would he feel justified doing it himself on someone else’s behalf. The concept is so simple, almost to the point of sounding trivial, but would lead to a huge change in human behavior.

To wit, if someone would not feel justified in paying for his children’s education by forcibly robbing his neighbors, he also would not feel justified in “voting” for local “government” to impose a “property tax” to pay for “public” schools. And if someone would not feel justified in stealing his neighbor’s property to fund a school, he still would not feel justified in doing so even if he was given a badge, and told to do so, in the name of “the law.”

As another example, if someone would not feel justified in kicking down someone’s door and dragging him away and putting him in a cage for years, for having possessed a plant with mind-altering properties, then he would not feel justified in supporting “anti-drug laws” either. Nor would he suddenly feel justified in engaging in such trespassing, assault and kidnapping just because some “authority” gave him a badge and told him to do so, in the name of some “law.”

As yet another example, if someone would not feel justified using violence to keep a complete stranger from setting foot anywhere in an entire “country,” then he would still not feel justified in doing so if someone gave him a badge, nor would he feel justified in supporting “immigration laws” which instruct others to do so.

In a society without the myth of “authority” there would still be thieves, murderers, and other aggressors. The difference is that all of the people who view theft and murder as immoral would not advocate and condone “legal” theft and murder, which every statist now does. Again, to advocate any “law” is to advocate the use of whatever level of authoritarian force is required, up to and including deadly force, to achieve compliance.

And the people who perceived theft and murder as immoral would not commit such acts simply because some “authority” or “law” told them to. How much of what police do on a daily basis would they do on their own, without a “law” or a “government” telling them to? Very little. How much of what “soldiers” routinely do would they do on their own, without an authoritarian military leader telling them to? Very little. How much of what “tax collectors” do now would they do on their own, without any “government” telling them to? None of it.

Everything good that the people who are called “law enforcers” now do-i.e. trying to stop genuinely hostile, destructive people from harming innocents-they could continue to do without the myth of “authority.” And they could do so out of the kindness of their hearts, or as a paid career, in the likely event that other people would want to voluntarily pay them for doing so.

At same time, everything bad that “law enforcers” and soldiers now do-e.g. terrorizing or shooting people they know nothing about, aggressing against those who commit victimless “crimes,” detaining, interrogating and assaulting complete strangers-most of them would stop doing.

How many people were assaulted, tortured and murdered by the population of Germany as a whole, or the population of Russia as a whole, or the population of China as a whole, before the respective “governments” of those countries, under the regimes of Hitler, Stalin and Mao, enacted “laws” pretending to legitimize such atrocities? Almost none.

And how many atrocities were committed after “authority” issued commands directing people to commit them? The numbers are staggering: tens of millions murdered, hundreds of millions assaulted, oppressed or tortured. Obviously, the people of those countries (and just about every other country) were far less inclined to commit acts of aggression on their own than they were to commit acts of aggression when commanded to do so by an imagined “authority.”

Ironically, when faced with the concept of a purely voluntary society, in which every service, even defense and protection, is funded by willing customers instead of by coercive “taxation,” many statists predict that private security firms would evolve into new, abusive, oppressive “governments,” or that competing security companies would end up being engaged in perpetual violent conflicts with each other.

Such predictions fail to recognize that most people do not want to attack and rob their neighbors, and do not want to be attacked and robbed themselves, and it is only through the belief in “authority” that the majority ever feels okay about advocating robbery via “taxation,” or ever feels obligated to go along with being attacked and robbed themselves via “obeying the law.”

Without the notion that “government” has rights that individuals do not, no malicious, aggressive private security firm would ever have popular support. If they were seen merely as private employees of average people, no one involved-neither the customers nor their hired protectors would imagine the employees to have any right to steal, harass, terrorize, or do anything that anyone else does not have the right to do.

To look at it another way, and to make it more personal, imagine living in a world where none of your neighbors felt justified in advocating that you be “taxed” to fund things which you object to. Imagine if every cause, every plan, every program, every idea, every proposed solution to all sorts of problems, was something you could either voluntarily support, or not. Imagine living in a world where none of your neighbors felt that they had the right to forcibly impose their ideas, choices and lifestyles upon you. They would feel justified (as they already do) in using force to stop you if you decided to attack them or rob them, but very few would feel good about committing any sort of aggression against you.

Contrary to what most people assume, this is exactly what a “world without rules” would look like. Each person would be guided by his own conscience-which could be thought of as self-imposed “rules” or “self-government”-and even though some people acting on their own would still make stupid or malicious choices and commit acts of aggression, no longer would anyone imagine that calling something a “law” or a “rule” can make an inherently unjustified act into something good. And if you were to resist such an act of aggression, your neighbors would praise you for doing so, instead of condemning you as a “criminal,” which nearly all of them would do today if you resisted an act of aggression which happened to be “legal.”

Thinking Differently, Talking Differently

Many of the terms people use and the discussions they have on a daily basis are based upon the assumption that “authority” can exist. By constantly hearing and repeating the superstition-based dogma, nearly everyone unwittingly reinforces the myth, in their own minds and in the minds of those they talk to. Authoritarian propaganda is so ubiquitous that it does not feel to the masses like a “message” at all; it just feels like “talking about what is.”

Most of every history book is about who ruled what area when, which authoritarian regime conquered another authoritarian regime, which individuals or political parties came to power, which forms of “government” and types of “public policy” various empires have had, and so on. They speak about elections, who wielded the power behind the scenes, what “laws” were passed, what “taxes” were imposed, and what the people thought about their “leaders.” The underlying premise, which comes through loud and clear even if it is never openly stated, is that it is both inevitable and legitimate for there to be a ruling class-some variety of overlord with the right to forcibly control everyone else.

That message continues to be a constant underlying theme of nearly everything written in the newspapers, or broadcast on the radio or television. The news reports, whether local or national, talk about what “legislation” the “representatives” or “congressmen” have passed, what “law enforcers” did that day, which candidates are running for “public office,” what “public policies” they support, and so on. The way every bit of it is reported is heavily tainted by the superstition of “authority.” Of course, the way people think affects the way they talk, and each person is constantly expressing his fundamental beliefs, even in seemingly trivial discussions.

Compare how the same exact situation and events would likely be reported, first by one who believes in “authority,” and then by one who does not: With Superstition: “Today the local government of Springfield put into place a four percent increase in local building permit fees, the proceeds of which are intended to fund a program to provide certain medical assistance for the elderly.”

Without Superstition: “Today a group of Local extortionists issued a formal threat to anyone doing construction or renovation in Springfield, demanding four percent more than the group had previously demanded from such people. The thieves say they intend to give some of the money they seize to the elderly.”

When someone escapes the superstition of “authority,” his thought patterns, and therefore his speech patterns, change dramatically. He does not use the euphemistic terms which assign legitimacy to “legal” violence. He describes “tax collectors” as what they actually are: professional extortionists. He describes “law enforcers” as what they actually are: the politicians’ hired thugs. He describes “laws” as what they actually are: threats from politicians. He does not proudly describe himself as a “law-abiding taxpayer,” because he recognizes what that term actually means: one who allows himself to be robbed and controlled by power-hungry megalomaniacs.

Most statists have a hard time imagining a world in which there is no centralized machine attempting to control everyone else. However, some find it equally difficult imagining a world in which they themselves are not being forcibly controlled. The thought of looking out at the world and feeling beholden to no one, feeling no obligation to obey the “laws” of others, is utterly foreign to anything they have ever contemplated.

As sad as it is, many people find it very hard to even imagine a world in which there is no one they must bow to, no legislature they must subjugate themselves to, no “law” or “rule” that can ever outrank their own consciences. Such ideas are worlds away from what nearly everyone has been taught to believe, and accepting such a drastically different view of reality feels like a profound, existential awakening. He who has escaped the myth says to himself something like this:

“Does any person, or any group of people, have the right to demand payment from me for something I did not ask for and do not want to fund? Of course not. If I am not committing aggression against anyone (via force or fraud), does anyone have the right to force me to make the choices they wish I would make? Of course not. Do I have the right to resist such aggression? Of course I do. Does any person, or any group of people, possess any rights that I do not possess? Of course not. How and from where would they have gotten such rights? Do I, at any time or in any place, under any circumstances, ever have an obligation to do anything other than what my own conscience dictates? Is there any situation in which the decrees or ‘laws’ of any supposed ‘authority’ could ever obligate me, in any way and to any degree, to abandon my free will, or ignore my own sense of right and wrong? Of course not.”

Teaching Morality vs. Teaching Authority

It is commonly held that unless children are taught to respect and obey “authority” they will be like wild animals, stealing, assaulting, and so on. But being obedient, in and of itself, merely means that, instead of the individual using his own judgment, he will defer to the judgment of those who seek and acquire positions of power – some of the most immoral, corrupt, callous, malicious, dishonest people on earth.

Training people to be merely obedient only prevents animalistic behavior if the supposed “authority” does not itself condone and command theft and assault, as every “government” in history has done in the name of “taxation” and “law enforcement.”

Obviously, teaching obedience does not help civilization if those giving the orders are commanding the very behaviors that harm society: acts of aggression against innocents. The idea that widespread subservience is good for society rests upon the patently false assumption that people in positions of power are morally superior to everyone else.

It should be self-evident that having most people disregard their own consciences, instead entrusting politicians to make their choices for them, is not going to make society any safer or more virtuous. Instead, it will simply legitimize the very acts that interfere with peaceful human coexistence.

Consider the analogy of a robot, which is programmed to do whatever its owner tells it to do, whether productive or destructive, whether civilized or aggressive. This is akin to a child learning to respect “authority.” Whether the obedient robot or child ends up being a tool for destruction and oppression depends entirely upon who ends up giving the orders.

If, instead, children are taught the principle of self-ownership – the idea that every individual belongs to himself, and therefore should not be robbed, threatened, assaulted, or murdered-then the supposed virtue of obedience is completely unnecessary.

Consider which of the following is more likely to lead to a just, peaceful society: billions of people being taught the basics of how to be moral human beings (e.g. the principle of non-aggression), or billions of people being taught merely to obey, in the hopes that the few people who end up in charge will happen to give good orders. If there is any difficulty imagining what would happen in the two scenarios, one need only look to history to see what has happened.

Even randomly selected “rulers,” when given permission to forcibly control everyone else, will quickly be corrupted, and will become tyrants. But average, decent people are not the ones who desire power over others. The ones who seek and obtain power are usually already narcissists and megalomaniacs, people with a never-ending lust for power, who love the idea of dominating others. And the desire for dominion is never driven by a desire to help those who are being dominated, but always by a desire to empower the controller, at the expense of those whom he controls.

Yet people continue to echo the claim that the average person, if guided purely by his own conscience, would be less trustworthy, less civilized and less moral than if he sets aside his own conscience and just blindly does whatever the tyrants of the world tell him to do. If each person relied on his own judgment, that would, by definition, be “anarchy,” while widespread obedience to authoritarian tyrants, by definition, constitutes “law and order.”

Note the drastic contrast between the usual connotations of those terms-”anarchy” sounding scary and violent, “law and order” sounding civilized and just-and the real-world results of following conscience versus following rulers. The level of evil committed by individuals acting on their own is completely dwarfed by the level of evil committed by people obeying a perceived “authority.”

Though many imagine teaching obedience to “authority” to be synonymous with teaching right and wrong, the two are actually opposites. Teaching children to respect the rights of every human being, and teaching them that committing aggression is inherently wrong, is very important. But teaching them that obedience is a virtue, and that “respecting authority” is a moral imperative, will make them grow up to either advocate widespread, large-scale aggression, or to participate in widespread, large-scale aggression. Every statist does one or the other (or both).

In fact, teaching obedience dramatically hinders the social and mental development of children. After having grown up in a situation where they were controlled by others, rewarded for obedience and punished for disobedience, if they ever escape the situation, they will have had little or no training, and little or no experience or practice, in how to think and act from morals and principles. Having never exercised their individual judgment and personal responsibility, knowing only how to do as they are told, they will be like trained monkeys that have escaped, but that have no way to cope with a life of freedom. If their upbringings have been molded mainly by controlling “authority” figures, people become existentially lost if that control vanishes.

In short people trained to obey “authority” do not know how to be independent, sovereign responsible human beings, because all their lives they have been intentionally and specifically trained not to follow their own consciences and not to use their own judgment.

So the indoctrinated, when they escape one institutionalized control setting (“school”), hallucinate another “authority” to take its place: “government.” The escaped monkeys simply build a new cage, and eagerly jump into it, because that is all they know, and all they have ever known.

In a world without the “authority” myth, on the other hand, children could be taught to be moral instead of merely obedient. They could be taught to respect people, instead of respecting the inhuman, violent monster called “government.” They could be taught that it is up to them, not only to do the right thing, but to figure out what “the right thing” is.

As a result, they could grow up to be responsible, thinking, useful adults, members of a peaceful and productive community, instead of growing up to be little more than cattle on the farms of tyrants.

No Master Plan

If tomorrow, by some miracle, everyone in the world let go of the belief in “authority,” the vast majority of theft, assault, and murder in society would immediately cease. All wars would end; all robbery in the name of “taxation” would stop; all oppression carried out in the name of “law” would cease. The people as a whole – including the perpetrators, victims, and spectators of oppression – would no longer view such acts of aggression as legitimate.

But there would be another, less immediate change as well. The belief in “authority” is, in essence, a psychological cage. It trains people to believe that they do not need to judge what is right and wrong; that they do not need to take it upon themselves to fix society; that all that is required of them is that they “play by the rules” and do as they are told while looking to “leaders” and “lawmakers” to handle the problems of society.

In short, the belief in “authority” trains people to never grow up, to always view the world as children view it: an incomprehensibly complicated place that is, and will always be, someone else’s responsibility. Whatever the problem-poverty, crime, disease, economic or environmental trouble-the indoctrinated statists are always on the lookout for some new “leader” to elect, who will promise to fix things.

In one way, a world of authoritarians function exactly the way a kindergarten classroom does: if anything goes wrong-if anything outside of the predictable, pre-planned, centrally-controlled agenda occurs-the “children” call on the “teacher” to fix everything. The entire authoritarian environment of a classroom teaches the children that they are never in charge; it is never up to them to decide what to do.

In fact, they are strongly discouraged from ever thinking or acting on their own. After all, if they were allowed to think and make their own decisions, the first decision most of them would make would be to walk out of the classroom.

Likewise, adult authoritarians are constantly told that one should not “take the law into his own hands.” The people are trained to call “the authorities” whenever there is a conflict or other problem, and then meekly do whatever the “government” enforcers tell them to do.

If there is any dispute between people, the people are told that they should always run to the masters, whether by calling the “police” or by going to authoritarian “courts” to settle disagreements. When discussing societal challenges, the well-trained subjects of the state talk in terms such as: “They should pass a law ...” or “They should make a government program ...” They view their lives as part of a giant, centralized, master plan, so it logically follows that if they want their lives improved, the solution is to petition the planners to change the plan.

This view is so ingrained in the masses that many people literally cannot comprehend the idea of individuals living their lives without being part of anyone else’s master plan.

This is demonstrated by the common response authoritarians have to the idea of a society without rulers. Almost without exception, a statist who ponders a stateless society will begin by asking how things will “work” without a ruling class. He does not ask this simply because he is curious about how roads, defense, trade, dispute resolution, and other things might function without “government.’ He asks this because he has always been trained to view human existence inside the framework of some centralized, forcibly-imposed master plan, and is literally incapable of thinking outside of that paradigm. And so he will ask how things will work “under anarchy” and will refer to it as a “system,” imagining it as a new type of master plan to be inflicted upon the masses, when, of course, it is the exact opposite: a complete lack of a centralized, forcibly-imposed plan.

But an overall plan for humanity is all that the statist has ever considered, and often it is all that he can comprehend. The idea that no one will be “in charge,” that no one will be making “the rules” for everyone else, that no one will be planning or managing mankind as a whole, and that no one will be telling the statist what to do, is simply something most authoritarians have never even imagined. The concept is so unfamiliar that they do not even know how to process it, so they desperately try to fit the idea of “anarchy” (a stateless society) into the mold of a master plan.

Such contradictory thinking is only reinforced by those who wear the label of “anarcho-communist.” The term implies that there would be no ruling class, and that society would be organized into a collective system.

Of course, if some group claims the right to forcibly impose such a system on everyone else, that is authoritarianism, and so the “anarcho-” part of the term would not apply. Another option is that those calling themselves “anarcho-communists” are merely hoping that, in the absence of a ruling class, every single individual on the planet will freely choose to participate in communes or collectives-which, of course, would not happen. As a final possibility, perhaps the “anarcho-communists” would, for themselves, choose to be part of a commune, but would allow others to choose different arrangements.

In the end, the term “anarcho-communist” makes little sense, and is actually a symptom of authoritarianism: even when advocating a stateless society, some people automatically imagine that there must be some over-arching system or plan, some grand scheme, some form of societal management which must be imposed upon mankind as a whole.

The truth is, with or without the myth of “authority,” no one can guarantee justice or prosperity, or predict everything that might occur, or know every problem that might arise, or how to solve them all. The difference is that those who believe in “authority” continue to pretend, despite constant overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that an authoritarian system of control can guarantee safety, security, prosperity, fairness and justice.

Meanwhile, those who have given up the most dangerous superstition no longer pretend that it is possible to control everything and everyone via any “system.” Bizarrely, despite the nearly incomprehensible degree of economic disaster, human suffering, and mass oppression which the belief in “government” has repeatedly caused, proponents of authoritarianism still insist that those who oppose statism must be able to describe in minute detail exactly how everything in society would work in the absence of “government,” so that nothing bad could possibly happen. And if they cannot-as of course no one can-the statist then proclaims that as proof that “anarchy will never work.”

Rather than being a rational conclusion, such an idea is the symptom of deep-seated mental dependency and fear of the unknown. Statists want the promise that some all-knowing, all-powerful entity will take care of them and protect them from all possible misfortune and from all of the bad people in the world. The fact that politicians have been making such promises forever, and have never once actually fulfilled such a promise (because the promise is patently ridiculous), does not stop statists from wanting to hear the promise.

No matter how many times authoritarian “solutions” fail horrendously, most people still think that some other “government” plan is the only answer. What they want is a guarantee that some all-powerful entity outside of themselves will make sure that their lives are comfortable and safe. They do not seem to care, or even notice, that such “guarantees” never come true, and that anyone claiming the power to make such a guarantee is either an amazingly bold liar or a lunatic.

Nonetheless, because anarchists and voluntaryists would never make the absurd promise that, without “government,” nothing bad will ever happen, most statists remain terrified of the idea of a stateless society.

Author’s personal note: I have found that, whenever the topic of a stateless society comes up in my discussions with statists, almost without fail they begin asking questions in the passive voice: how will this get done, how will that be handled? They speak as if, even when it comes to their own lives, they are little more than spectators, waiting to see what will happen. This is because, for many of their formative years, especially while in “school,” they were little more than spectators. The scripts of their lives were written by others; their destiny was determined and decided by “authority,” not by themselves.

So, in an effort to get them to escape that mindset, when they ask me something like, “Under anarchy, how will this be dealt with?” I respond, “How would you deal with it?” When they ask, “What would be done about this potential problem?” I ask, “What would you do about it?” And they can usually come up with ideas, off the top of their heads, that are better than any authoritarian solution. The problem is not that they are incapable of being in charge of themselves, their futures, and in fact the future of the world; the problem is that it has just never occurred to them that they already are in charge of themselves, their futures, and the future of the world.

One who understands that “authority” is a myth does not have any obligation to explain how every aspect of a free society would work, any more than someone who says that Santa Claus is not real has some obligation to explain how Christmas will work without him. However, statists often insist, as a condition of even considering the possibility of a stateless society, that someone tell them how every aspect of everyone’s life will work without “government.”

Of course, no one knows-with or without the myth of “government”-what all will happen, and clinging to a provably false, self-contradictory myth, which itself has led to large-scale murder, extortion and oppression, because someone failed to describe in detail a perfect world without the myth, is absurd. People can make suggestions or predictions about how different aspects of a free society would work without the involvement of “authority”-and many scholarly treaties do exactly that-but once someone truly understands the insanity inherent in any belief in “authority,” he will never go back to accepting the myth regardless of what he thinks might happen without it, any more than an adult would go back to believing in Santa Claus because he does not know whether Christmas would work without him.

You Rule You, I Rule Me

By definition, in the absence of “authority,” no one would have the power or the right to proclaim, “This is how things will be done.” Yet that is the only template of thought which most authoritarians have ever considered. Those who realize that they have neither the ability nor the right to control all of humanity do not think in terms of a master plan for the human race.

Instead, they think in terms of the only thing they can truly control: their own actions. They think in terms of, “What should I do about this?” instead of, “What should I ask the masters to do about this?” They are not so arrogant or delusional to think they have the right or the ability to make choices for all of mankind. They make their own choices, and accept the unavoidable reality that other people will make different choices.

On a practical level, it is absurd to expect that a system of centralized control, wherein a handful of politicians, with their limited understanding and experience, come up with a master plan and then force it on everyone else, would work better than comparing and combining the knowledge, ingenuity and expertise of hundreds of millions of individuals, via a network of mutually voluntary trade and cooperation.

No matter what the goal is-whether it is food production, road building, protection against aggressors, or anything else-the ideas that come from the “chaos” of millions of people trying different inventions and solutions will always be better than the ideas which a handful of politicians will come up with. This is especially true in light of the fact that while politicians force their ideas on everyone via “the law,” even if they are lousy ideas that no one else likes, free market ideas have to be good enough that others will voluntarily support them.

Despite the amazing prosperity already created by relatively free, “anarchistic” trade and mutual cooperation, the thought of people coexisting without all of them being controlled and regulated by some master plan is still incomprehensible to most statists. Most statists have never even begun to contemplate the possibility of truly being in charge of their own lives.

Everything about modern authoritarian society trains people to be loyal subjects of a system of control, instead of training people to be what they should be: sovereign entities, figuring things out for themselves, interacting with others as equals, answerable to their own consciences above all else. To most, the idea of a world where they are the ones who have to solve problems, settle disputes, help those who need help, protect themselves and others, without being able to run to an all-powerful “authority” instead, is a completely foreign and terrifying concept. They love to advocate authoritarian solutions, but do not really even want to be in charge of themselves, much less to be personally responsible for making society work. And their belief in “authority” is what they use to attempt to evade that responsibility and avoid the realities of life.

The life of a caged animal is, in many ways, easier than life in the wild. Likewise, life as an unthinking human slave can be more predictable and feel safer than a life of responsibility. But, just as living in the wild makes animals stronger, smarter, and far better able to care for themselves, letting go of the “authority” myth will force human beings to be smarter, more creative, more compassionate, and more moral.

That is not to say that all people will, without the belief in “government,” be wise, kind and generous. But if millions of individuals each understood that it is up to them personally to make the world a better place, instead of merely obediently playing an assigned part in someone else’s master plan while crying to “government” to fix everything, it would unleash a level of human creativity, ingenuity, and cooperation beyond what most people could possibly imagine.

A Different Society

Today, most people associate the idea of “everyone doing whatever he wants” with chaos and death, and associate everyone being obedient and “law-abiding” with order and civilization. Without the “authority” myth, however, people would have a very different mindset. Without an “authority” to blindly follow and obey, without being able to whine to “the powers that be” to fix everything, people would have to figure out for themselves what is right and wrong, and how to solve problems.

Some might claim that human beings are too short-sighted, lazy and irresponsible to run their own lives, but it is precisely the belief in “authority” that has allowed them to become so lazy and helpless.

As long as they believed that making things right was not their job, that fixing problems was not their job, and that all they needed to do was to obey their masters, acting as unthinking pawns in someone else’s master plan, they had no need to grow up. But shedding the superstition forces one into the position of realizing that there is nothing on earth above him, which means that he is responsible for his own actions (or inaction); he is the one whose job it is to make the world a better place; he is the one who has to make society work.

There are certainly already statists who are trying to make a positive difference, but more often than not their belief in “authority” converts their good intentions into evil actions, perverts their compassion into violence, and turns their productivity into the fuel of oppression.

For example, many people who join the armed forces start with the noble goal of defending their countrymen from hostile foreign powers, and many of those who become “police officers” do so with the intention of helping people, and protecting the good people from the bad people.

However, once they become agents of the mythical beast known as “government” they immediately cease to be advocates of their own values and their own perceptions of right and wrong, and instead become enforcers of the arbitrary whims of politicians. In every “government” in history, those purporting to be “defenders” have quickly, if not immediately, transformed into aggressors.

The first act of almost every regime is to impose some sort of “taxation,” to forcibly rob its subjects, usually under the asinine excuse that it must do so in order to be able to protect the people against robbers. It is, therefore, ironic that so many people accept the idea that “government” is the only entity capable of protecting the good from the wicked.

In truth, only in the absence of the superstition of “authority” can the good intentions of would-be protectors and defenders actually serve humanity.

A private militia, for example, formed for the purpose of defending a certain population against foreign invaders-which is not imagined, by its members or by anyone else, to have any special “authority” whatsoever-will be guided by the personal conscience of each individual member. Such an organization can be an extremely effective means of exerting justified defensive force, while being immune to the usual corruptibility of authoritarian “protection” rackets.

A private militia member who did not suffer from the “authority” delusion could not and would not ever use the excuse of “just following orders” to try to deny responsibility for his own actions. If he uses violence, he, and everyone around him, knows that he personally made the choice, and that he is personally responsible for it, and he should personally be held accountable for his actions.

In short, the only time a private, non-authoritarian militia could become oppressive is if every individual in it personally chose to act that way. In contrast, “government” militaries can become oppressive as a result of even one genuinely malicious person in the chain of command, if those beneath him have been effectively trained to faithfully follow orders.

Without the myth of “authority,” not everyone will act responsibly or charitably. But when each person accepts that he is in charge of himself, it is far less likely that good people will be doing the bidding of evil people, as happens constantly now, by way of the belief in “authority.”

Statists are often afraid of what some individuals may do if not restrained by “government.” What they should fear, however, is what those individuals may do if they become “government.” The amount of damage which one hostile, malicious individual can do by himself is nothing compared to the damage that one hostile, malicious “authority figure” can do, by way of obedient, but otherwise good people.

To put it another way, if evil was only committed by evil people the world would be a far better place than it is today, with basically good people constantly committing evil acts, because a perceived “authority” told them to.

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Part 3e - The effects of the myth on the Advocates

Dennis promoting Mark Passio — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 06:49:27 GMT

Larken Rose The Most Dangerous Superstition

2.49MB ∙ PDF file

“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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Part 3d - The effects of the myth on the Spectators

Dennis promoting Mark Passio — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 17:32:38 GMT

Larken Rose The Most Dangerous Superstition

2.49MB ∙ PDF file

The Sin of Non-Resistance

It is obvious that the belief in “authority” affects the perceptions and actions of “law enforcers,” and also affects the perceptions and actions of those against whom “laws” are enforced.

But even the perceptions and actions of the onlookers, those who are not directly involved, also play a huge role in determining the state of human society. More specifically, the inaction of spectators, who quietly allow “legal” coercion to be inflicted upon others, has an enormous impact.

History is full of examples proving that Edmund Burke was right when he said that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

The mass murder committed by the regimes of Stalin, Mao, Hitler, and many others was made possible not just by the willingness of the “enforcers” to carry out their orders but also by their victims’ imagined obligation to obey “authority,” and by the belief held by almost all onlookers that they should not interfere with “the law” being carried out.

The perpetrators of mass injustice, including mass murder, are always hugely outnumbered by their victims, and if you add in the number of spectators – all those people who could have intervened – it becomes obvious how significant the actions (or inaction) of mere “spectators” can be.

Of course, some people will fail to intervene in a situation simply as a result of basic fear. A witness to a mugging who does not dare to intervene is not condoning mugging by his inaction. He simply values the benefit to his own safety that comes from inaction more than he values whatever benefit he thinks he could be to the victim by stepping in. But there are many cases in which the belief in “authority” makes people hesitate to get involved in a conflict, not just out of fear but out of a deep psychological aversion to going against “authority.”

There are two ways this can cause spectators to stand idly by while “legal” injustice is inflicted upon someone else: 1) the spectator can believe that the injustice is actually a good thing, because it is “the law,” or 2) the spectator can disapprove, but his willingness to actually act out against “law enforcers,” or even to speak out against “authority,” is stifled by his trained-in subservience.

Either way, the outcome is the same: the spectator does nothing to stop the injustice. But the two phenomena will be addressed separately.

Imagining “Legal” Evil to Be Good

There are literally millions of examples that could be used to demonstrate how the perception of the general public is dramatically affected by the belief in “authority.” Just consider how the average person views and judges an act when it is committed by one claiming to be “authority,” as opposed to how he views and judges the exact same act when it is committed by anyone else.

Here are a few examples: 1) Scenario A: An American soldier in a foreign country is going house to house, kicking in doors, carrying a machine gun and pointing it at complete strangers, ordering them around and interrogating them, while searching for “insurgents.” Scenario B: An average citizen, in his own country, is going house to house, kicking in doors, carrying a machine gun and pointing it at complete strangers, ordering them around and interrogating them, while searching for people he doesn’t like.

The first is viewed by most people to be a brave and noble soldier “serving his country,” while the latter is viewed as a horribly dangerous, probably mentally disturbed individual who should be disarmed and subdued at all costs.

2) Scenario A: An “officer of the law” is manning a “sobriety checkpoint” or a border checkpoint, stopping everyone to ask if they are in the country “legally” or if they have been drinking, or to otherwise see if any indication or evidence of “criminal” activity can be found. Scenario B: A man without a badge is stopping every car that drives down his street, asking every driver if he is an American, asking whether he has been drinking, and looking into his car for anything that appears suspicious.

The cop who engages in such intrusive, obnoxious harassment, detainment, interrogation and searching is viewed by many as a brave “law enforcer” doing his job, while anyone else behaving that way would be viewed as psychotic and dangerous.

3) Scenario A: A “Child Protective Services” worker receives a case file and, based upon an anonymous tip, shows up at a house to question the homeowners, with the stated purpose of deciding whether they are fit parents or whether the state should forcibly take their children away from them. Scenario B: An average person, based upon a rumor he heard from a stranger, shows up at the home of other strangers, asking them questions and threatening to take their children away if the questioner is not satisfied with the answers.

Again, the “government” worker is imagined to just be “doing his job,” while the average individual who does the same thing is seen as a dangerous, probably mentally unstable person. This is not to say that there could never be a situation in which a child should be taken away from his parents for the child’s own protection, but such matters would be taken extremely seriously by any individual who had to take personal responsibility for his actions.

A bureaucrat who is merely acting as a cog in the machine of “government,” on the other hand, will do such things with far less hesitation and less justification, because he will imagine that something called “the law” is solely responsible for whatever he does.

4) Scenario A: A pilot in the United States Air Force, having been given orders to do so, flies to the proper coordinates and delivers his payload to the intended target. The result is that some mercenaries of a different “authority” are killed, along with a number of civilians who happened to be in the area. Scenario B: An American citizen, acting on his own, loads up a plane with homemade explosives, flies over a building in the city where a vicious street gang is known to reside, and drops the ordinance. The result is that several gang members are killed, as are a dozen innocent bystanders who happened to be passing by on the street.

The average American views the civilian casualties from the first scenario as unfortunate, but chalks them up to the hazards of war. The military pilot is viewed as a hero for having served his country, and is given a medal. In the latter scenario, however, the average American views the pilot as a lunatic, a terrorist, a murderer, and demands that he be put in prison for the rest of his life.

Whether an act has been formally declared “legal” by politicians, and whether it is being done at the behest of “authority,” has a huge impact on the perceived morality and legitimacy of the act.

In a very real sense, those who do the bidding of “authority” are not even regarded as people, in that their behaviors and actions are judged by such a drastically different standard from those of average human beings.

As another example, a lot of people would be alarmed at a report of “a man with a gun” in their neighborhood, unless they heard that the man also had a badge.

People judge behavior based largely upon whether such behavior has been authorized or forbidden by “authority” rather than whether the behavior was inherently legitimate.

When citizens are called into an authoritarian court to serve as jurors in a “criminal” trial, for example, it is routine for the “judge” to tell the jury that they are not to concern themselves with whether the accused did anything wrong; they are to decide only whether or not his actions were in accordance with whatever the “judge” declares “the law” to be.

Of note, those in positions of power have, over the years, deliberately and methodically worn away at an old tradition known as “jury nullification,” whereby a jury could, in essence, overturn what they viewed as a bad “law” by returning a verdict of “not guilty” even if they believed the accused had actually broken “the law.” Every jury still has that power, but authoritarian judges do everything they can to keep jurors from realizing it.

Even when not on a jury, most people still judge others through authoritarian colored glasses, judging the goodness of another based heavily upon whether he obeys the commands of politicians – i.e. whether he is a “law-abiding taxpayer.” Compare how the average citizen would view the two individuals described below.

Individual A has no driver’s license, works “under the table” to avoid paying “taxes,” never registered for the “Selective Services,” owns an unregistered, unlicensed firearm, occasionally smokes pot, sometimes gambles (”illegally”), and lives in a cabin which he owns but for which he has no “occupancy permit,” and which has a deck on the back that he built without first getting a building permit.

Individual B has a driver’s license, pays taxes on what he earns, registered for the draft, owns a registered firearm, occasionally drinks beer, sometimes plays the state lottery, and lives in a “government”-inspected and approved house with a “government”-inspected and approved deck out back.

The two live otherwise similar lives, with both being productive, and with neither robbing or assaulting anyone else. Their behaviors, choices and lifestyles are very similar in almost every way, except that there are “laws” against the actions of Individual A, but not against those of Individual B.

That alone, without any other substantive difference in what they do or how they treat other people, would cause a lot of people to view Individual A with a degree of contempt, while viewing Individual B with respect and approval.

In fact, if individual A was accosted, detained, and even physically assaulted (e.g. tasered, beaten and handcuffed) by “law enforcers,” even if he had never threatened or harmed anyone, many believers in “government” would opine that he “had it coming,” that he deserved to be attacked and caged for having disobeyed the commands of politicians.

This tendency of onlookers to blame the victims of authoritarian violence is incredibly strong. One who accepts the superstition of “authority” – the idea that some individuals have the right to forcibly dominate others, and that those others have a duty to comply – will assume that if “authority” is using violence against a person, it must be justified, and therefore the victim of such violence must have done something wrong.

This pattern shows up in different situations. When, for example, U.S. troops kill civilians in some foreign country, many Americans are desperate to believe, and therefore automatically assume, without a shred of evidence, that the dead victims must have been “insurgents,” or collaborators, or at least sympathizers with “the enemy.”

As another example, when the Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas, were subjected to a military assault, followed by prolonged physical and mental torture, followed by mass extermination, many Americans were quick to assume that anyone that “government” would do that to must have deserved it.

The American tyrants fostered this attitude by fabricating various rumors and accusations, in order to demonize the victims of that violent, fascistic assault on nonviolent people.

Actually, the incident was the result of a publicity stunt by the ATF, based upon rumors that some people in the group possessed “illegal” gun parts.

Many people assume that if someone was assaulted, prosecuted, or imprisoned by agents of “authority,” then that person must have done something “wrong, and must have deserved what was done to him. This assumption may come from a refusal of people to consider the possibility that the “government” they rely on for protection is actually an aggressor, or it may come from not wanting to consider the possibility that anyone, including himself, could be the next helpless victim of authoritarian violence, even if he has done nothing wrong.

Regardless of the cause, the end result is that, when evil is committed in the name of “law,” many spectators immediately hate the victims, and rejoice at the pain and suffering that is inflicted upon them.

Obligation to Do Wrong

While everyone is aware that there are “laws” against robbery and murder (except when they are committed in the name of “authority”), the average person is completely unaware of the tens of thousands of pages of other “government”-issued statutes, rules and regulations – federal, state and local.

But even when they have very little idea exactly what “the law” does and does not allow, most people still hold a general belief that “obeying the law” is a good thing, and that “breaking the law” is a bad thing.

In fact, even when a person is strongly opposed to a particular “law,” believing it to be unjust, he may still hold a general, conflicting belief that “laws” ought to be obeyed and that it is justified to punish those who disobey.

This psychological paradox is quite common, in fact, with many people vehemently lobbying to change what they view to be bad “laws,” while supporting the idea that as long as it is the law, people should obey it.

Such mental contradictions are common in the context of the belief in “authority,” but are rare outside of it. For example, no one would argue that it is morally wrong to try to steal an old lady’s purse but also morally wrong for the old lady to hang on to her purse. But the concept of a “bad law,” in the mind of one who believes in “authority,” boils down to a similar paradox: a bad command which also is bad to disobey.

The spectator who believes in “authority” may view a particular command, enacted by the masters and implemented by the enforcers, as being unimportant, unnecessary, counter-productive, or even stupid or unjust, while at the same time believing that people still have a moral obligation to obey that command, simply because it is “the law.” Examples of the effects of such a viewpoint abound, ranging from the mundane to the horrific. Here are a few.

1) At 2:00 a.m., on a wide-open, straight, empty road running through unpopulated farmland, a driver slows down, but does not stop, at the stop sign at a cross street. A motorcycle cop, hiding a hundred yards away behind some bushes, turns on his lights.

Almost everyone, given those facts, would agree that the driver did not harm or endanger anyone, or anyone’s property, and yet most people would agree that the cop would have the right to demand payment from the driver, via a traffic “ticket.”

In other words, even though they would concede that the only thing “bad” about what the driver did was that it was technically “illegal,” they believe that that alone justifies the forcible robbery of the driver.

Taking it one step further, if the driver attempted to leave the scene, rather than accept the “ticket,” most spectators would agree that the cop would be right to chase down, capture and imprison the driver.

2) A “government” inspector, from a state “Board of Health,” conducts an inspection of a restaurant. The restaurant is perfectly clean and organized, and the inspector finds no indication that anything there poses any risk to anyone’s health.

However, he nonetheless finds several technical violations of the local “code” for restaurants. As a result of those violations – not because they create a danger to anyone, but because they are “against the rules” – the restaurant owner is fined hundreds of dollars.

Again, even though the restaurant owner did not harm or endanger anyone or anyone’s property, most people would view it as legitimate for the owner to be robbed by those acting on behalf of “government.” And if the owner attempted to resist such robbery – whether by trying to conceal the technical “violations” or bribe the “inspector,” or by refusing to pay the fine – he would be seen as immoral by most people, and the enforcers would be seen as having the right to use whatever means necessary to achieve compliance with “the law.”

3) A man drives his friend home from a party. Knowing he would have to drive, he did not have any alcohol to drink, though his friend did. He drops his friend off and heads home. He notices the police doing a sobriety checkpoint traffic stop ahead, and remembers that his friend left his half-full beer bottle in the car.

Knowing that it is “illegal” to have an open container of alcohol in his car, he covers it up. He has not harmed or endangered anyone, and in fact has acted quite responsibly, acting as designated driver to make sure his friend would arrive home safely.

However, he still “broke the law” (albeit accidentally) by driving a car with an open bottle of beer in it, and then tried to hide evidence of that fact. If he was caught doing so and arrested, few people would view the cop as the bad guy in the situation.

4) A man sells a shotgun with a barrel a quarter of an inch shorter than “the law” allows. The weapon is no more lethal than a shotgun a quarter of an inch longer, and no one who was involved, threatened or used violence against anyone. But the man, having been caught with the “illegal” item, is subjected to a para-military invasion of his property, followed by an armed standoff, in which several people are killed.

Unfortunately, this example is not hypothetical. It happened to Randy Weaver at the incident at Ruby Ridge in 1992. And he was not merely “caught” selling an “illegal” shotgun; he was enticed into doing so by undercover “law enforcers.”

The result of the armed invasion of the Weavers’ property, and the subsequent shootout and prolonged siege, was that Mr. Weaver’s wife and son were killed, and he and a friend were wounded. Though it would be absurd for anyone to claim that there is a moral difference between possessing a shotgun with an 18-inch barrel and possessing a shotgun with a 17¾-inch barrel, and even though that allegation was the entire “legal” justification for the armed assault and confrontation, many spectators would still fault Randy Weaver, viewing him as the bad guy for having allowed himself to be coaxed into breaking an arbitrary, completely irrational (not to mention unconstitutional) “law.”

That is the power of the belief in “authority”: it can lead many people to view a gang of sadistic, murderous thugs as the good guys, and to view their victims as the bad guys.

To most people, “breaking the law,” without specifying which “law,” has an automatic negative connotation. They view disobedience to “authority” not merely as dangerous but as immoral. But to the “government” believer, something even worse than committing a minor, victimless “crime” is openly disobeying an agent of “authority.”

The average spectator, when observing the interaction between an “authority” figure and anyone else, will often view with disdain anyone who does not immediately and unquestioningly answer any questions and comply with any requests from a man with a badge.

Even if the person complies, but exhibits an “attitude” toward the “authority” figure – any attitude other than meek subservience – many spectators will be quick to condemn the one who fails to grovel. And one who runs away from the police, even if he had done nothing wrong in the first place, is viewed with scorn by most.

And when someone who runs, or hides, or refuses to cooperate is beaten up, tortured, or even murdered by “law enforcers,” many spectators opine that the victim should have done what the police told him to do. And when someone actively resists an “authority” figure, few have the gumption to take that person’s side under any circumstances, even with mere words.

Just as a well-trained dog will not bite its master, even when sadistically maltreated, so those who have been trained to bow to “authority” are usually psychologically incapable of bringing themselves to lift a finger to defend themselves, much less someone else, from any aggression committed in the name of “law” and “government” and “authority.”

Indeed, due to their authoritarian indoctrination, most people would more eagerly condemn their fellow victims than join together with their fellow victims to actually resist tyranny.

There is, of course, a difference between saying that it is not smart for someone to do something, and saying that it is immoral to do something. It is one thing to say that it is stupid for someone to “mouth off” to a cop, and another to say that doing so is actually immoral and that one who does so therefore deserves whatever abuse or punishment he receives.

The believers in “authority” often express the latter opinion about anyone who “defies the police,” regardless of the reason. The idea of average people imposing justice upon wayward “law enforcers” existentially terrifies statists, even when a “law enforcer” has done something as serious as committing murder.

In the eyes of the well indoctrinated, the only “civilized” course of action in such a situation is to beg some other “authority” to make things right, but never to “take the law into one’s own hands.”

People may complain about and condemn “legal” injustice, but few are even able to consider the possibility of engaging in premeditated, “illegal” resistance, even when agents of “government” are inflicting vicious brutality upon unarmed, non-violent targets.

And if, through prolonged brainwashing, a people can be rendered psychologically unable to resist the oppressions done in the name of “authority,” then it makes no difference whether those people have the physical means to resist.

Modem tyrants and their enforcers are always outnumbered (and often outgunned) by their victims by a factor of hundreds or thousands. Yet tyrants still maintain power, not because people lack the physical ability to resist, but because, as a result of their deeply inculcated belief in “authority,” they lack the mental ability to resist. As Stephen Biko put it, “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”

Double Standard on Violence

The double standard in the minds of those who have been indoctrinated into authoritarianism, when it comes to the use of physical force, is enormous. When, for example, a “law enforcer” is caught on film brutally assaulting an unarmed, innocent person, the talk is usually about whether the officer should be reprimanded, or maybe even lose his job.

If, on the other hand, some citizen assaults a “police officer,” nearly everyone will enthusiastically demand – often without even wondering or asking why the person did it – that the person be caged for many years. And if a person resorts to the use of deadly force against a supposed agent of “authority,” hardly anyone even bothers to ask why he did it. In their minds, no matter what the agent of “authority” did, it is never okay to kill a representative of the god called “government.”

To the believers in “authority,” nothing is worse than a “cop-killer” regardless of why he did it. In reality, using deadly force against one who pretends to be acting on behalf of “authority” is morally identical to using deadly force against anyone else.

An act of aggression does not become any more legitimate or righteous simply because it is “legalized” and committed by those claiming to act on behalf of “authority.” And using whatever force is necessary to stop or prevent an act of aggression, whether the aggression is “legal” or not, and whether the aggressor is a “law enforcer” or not, is justified. (Of course, the risks involved with resisting “legal” aggression are often much higher, but that does not make it any less moral or justified.)

Many of the reasons now used by “law enforcers” to forcibly take people captive – such as engaging in peaceful public demonstrations without a “permit,” or photographing “law enforcers” or “government” buildings, or not submitting to random stops and questioning by “law enforcers” – have no shred of justification when viewed without the “authority” myth.

As such, resisting such fascist thuggery, even if it requires deadly force to do so, is morally justified, albeit extremely dangerous. But most people are literally incapable of even considering such an idea. Even when they recognize unjust oppression, they imagine that the “civilized” response is to let the injustice happen, and then later beg some other “authority” to make amends.

When faced with “legal” aggression and oppression, there are only two possibilities: either the people are obliged to allow “law enforcers” to inflict all manner of injustice and oppression upon them (and then complain later), or the people have the right to use whatever level of force is necessary to stop such injustice and oppression from occurring.

To say, for example, that someone has a “right” to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures by “government” agents (as the Fourth Amendment states) would mean nothing if a victim of such tyranny was obliged to allow it to happen at the time and then complain about it later.

To have a “right” to be free from such oppression logically implies the right to use whatever force is required to stop such oppression from happening in the first place, even if that requires the killing of police officers. But the very thought terrifies those who have been trained to always bow to “authority.”

Most of those who speak of “unalienable” rights still balk at the thought of forcibly defending those rights against authoritarian assaults.

To say that someone has a “right” to do something, while also saying that he would not be justified in forcibly defending such a right against “government” incursions, is a contradiction.

In truth, what most people call “rights” they actually perceive as “government”-granted privileges, which they hope their masters will allow, but which they have no intention of forcibly protecting if such “rights” are “outlawed” by “government.”

For example, to have an unalienable right to speak one’s mind (the right to freedom of speech) means that the person also has the right to use whatever level of violence it takes, up to and including deadly force, to defend against “government” agents who try to silence him.

Though the point makes loyal believers in “authority” very uncomfortable, the very concept of a person having an unalienable right to do something also implies the right to kill any “law enforcers” who attempt to stop him from doing it.

But in truth, there is almost nothing that “government” can do, whether it be censorship, assault, kidnapping, torture, or even murder, which would make the average statist advocate violent, “illegal” resistance. (The reader is invited to test the depths of his own loyalty to the myth of “authority” by considering the question of what would have to happen before he himself would feel justified in killing a “law enforcer.”)

“Law enforcers” constantly escalate disagreements to the level of violence, every time they try to arrest someone, or force their way into someone’s home, or forcibly take someone’s property. And authoritarian enforcers will then keep increasing the level of violence they use, until they get their way.

The result is that the people, unless they are willing to engage in open revolution against the entire system, will sooner or later bow to the will of the ruling class, or be killed. And though the mercenaries of the state are always using force, or the threat of force, to subdue and subjugate average people, the moment their intended victims respond to violence with violence, most spectators will instantly identify the victim of aggression – the one who used force only to defend against an attack – as the “bad guy.”

This glaring double standard – the idea that it is okay for “authority” to commit violent acts of aggression on a regular basis, but horribly evil for the common folk to ever respond with defensive violence – shows how drastically the belief in “authority” can warp people’s perception of reality.

Ironically, in considering other places and other times, almost everyone accepts and even praises the use of “illegal” violence, including deadly violence, against agents of “government.” Few people would still insist that the Jews who lived in 1940 Germany should have continued to try to “work within the system” by voting and petitioning the Third Reich for justice.

Instead, those who “illegally” hid, ran away, or even forcibly resisted (as occurred in the Warsaw Ghetto) are now seen by almost everyone as having been justified in doing so, even though they were technically “criminals,” “law-breakers,” and even “cop-killers.”

But authoritarians, in their own time and in their own country, not only continue to condemn any who “illegally” try to avoid or resist oppression, but cheerfully gloat over the suffering of such people when they are punished by “government.”

To delight in a “tax cheat” being punished, for example, as many Americans do, is akin to a slave taking pleasure in the whipping of a fellow slave who tried to escape.

There may be an aspect of simple envy in this: a feeling that, if one subject has been victimized, it is not “fair” that another escaped such suffering. This contributes to the fact that “taxpayers” – i.e., those who have been forcibly extorted by the ruling class – often express resentment of anyone who has avoided being similarly extorted.

Oddly, the victims of “legal” robbery often imagine themselves to be virtuous for having been robbed, and look down on those who, for whatever reason, have not been robbed.

The Danger of Inaction

One who views “breaking the law” as inherently bad, regardless of what the “law” is, may be quick to report to the “authorities” any “illegal” activities he is aware of, even if the activities are victimless and constitute neither force nor fraud.

Likewise, those who sit on juries in “government” courtrooms, if they imagine disobedience to “authority” (”breaking the law”) to be inherently immoral, are likely to give their blessing to someone being punished, sometimes quite harshly, for doing something which harmed no one and did not constitute either fraud or violence.

In the case of the “snitch” and the juror, however, such actions take one out of the role of a mere spectator and move him into the role of a collaborator of oppression.

The damage done by the belief in “authority” among the spectators of oppression comes more often from their inaction, rather than from their action. Time after time, oppressions – large and small – have been committed right under the noses of basically good people who did nothing about it.

To a certain degree, this is the result of simple self-preservation: a person may avoid getting involved simply because he fears for his own safety. But the Milgram experiments showed quite clearly that even without an underlying threat to themselves, most people feel irresistibly compelled to obey “authority” even when they know that what they are being told to do is wrong and harmful to others.

And if they find it difficult to disobey a perceived “authority,” they will find it even more difficult, if not impossible, to bring themselves to intervene when an “authority” is exerting its will on someone else.

The result of the spectators having been trained to be passive, obedient, and non-confrontational can be seen in the many instances, throughout the world and throughout history, of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of spectators, standing around like zombies, watching as agents of “authority” assault or murder innocent people.

Even in the United States, the supposed “land of the free and the home of the brave,” videos continue to surface depicting police brutality occurring right in front of crowds of onlookers, who simply stand and watch, not lifting a finger to protect their fellow man against the evils committed in the name of “authority.”

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Part 3c - The effects of the myth on the targets

Dennis promoting Mark Passio — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 22:37:07 GMT

Larken Rose The Most Dangerous Superstition

2.49MB ∙ PDF file

Proud to Be Robbed

One of the more bizarre results of the belief in “authority” is that it causes the victims of “government” aggression to feel obligated to be victimized, and causes them to feel bad if they avoid being victimized.

A prime example is the citizen who proclaims that he is proud to pay his “taxes.” Even if one believes that some of what he surrenders is used to fund useful things (roads, helping the poor, etc.), to be proud of having been threatened and coerced into funding such things is still strange. Pride in being a “law-abiding taxpayer” is not the result of having helped people, which the person could have done far more effectively on a voluntary basis; the pride comes from having faithfully obeyed the commands of a perceived “authority”.

By analogy, a man may feel good about having freely given to someone in need, but he would not take pride in getting robbed by a poor man. Probably the only situation in which anyone brags about having been forced to do something occurs in the context of one who believes he is obligated to obey a perceived “authority”.

Having been trained to view obedience as a virtue, people want to feel good about surrendering what they earn to “government”. And so, with the help of political propaganda, they hallucinate that their “contributions” are actually helping society as a whole. They speak as if paying “taxes” means “giving back to society” or “investing in the country”.

Such rhetoric, as common as it is, is logically nonsensical, since it implies that every one of the individuals who make up “society” and “the country” somehow each owes a debt to the group as a whole, but is owed nothing. What people are actually doing when they pay “taxes” is giving money not to “society” or “the country” but to the politicians who make up the ruling class, to spend however they please. The implication, as odd as it is, is that “the people” can benefit as a whole, by everyone of “the people” being robbed individually.

The idea that the “common good” is better served by politicians spending everyone’s money than it would be served by each person spending his own money is strange, to say the least. Recently, the lie of “taxes” serving the common good has become more and more transparent as “governments” have spent astronomical amounts of money on things which obviously serve the elite at the expense of society and humanity. This would include perpetual war-mongering, direct multibillion-dollar redistribution schemes benefiting the richest people in the world (”bailouts”), and “government” takeovers of various segments of the economy (e.g. the health-care industry), among other things.

In fact, there is almost nothing average people could financially support that would be less helpful to society and humanity in general than paying “taxes”. Whatever things a person views as worthwhile – schools, roads, defense, helping the poor, etc. – he could just as easily support without going through politicians and “government”.

Yet many people specifically express pride for having surrendered the fruits of their labors to their masters, having “paid their taxes”. Consider how someone would be viewed who proudly proclaimed, “I lied on my tax return, avoided giving $3,000 to the government, and I gave the $3,000 to a really good charity instead”.

Many people would still condemn such a person for his “criminal” disloyalty to the masters, even if the person’s actions better served humanity than “paying his taxes” would have. This is because the pride expressed by many people does not cone from helping humanity, but from obeying “authority”.

There is little or no chance that anyone would voluntarily contribute his own wealth to every one of the programs and schemes now funded via “government”. And if he hands over the money only because some “law” or other “authority” compelled him to, and then expresses pride in having done so, he is in essence boasting about having been forcibly dominated, precisely the way a thoroughly indoctrinated slave might take pride in serving his master well.

There is a big difference between feeling good about having voluntarily supported some worthy cause, and taking pride in being subjugated. Instead of being offended at the insult and injustice of being coercively controlled and exploited – in fact, instead of even recognizing that as injustice many victims of “government” oppression feel profound loyalty to their controllers.

Proud to Be Controlled

If a slave can be convinced that he should be a slave, that his enslavement is both proper and legitimate, that he is the rightful property of his master and that he has an obligation to produce as much as possible for his master, then he does not need to be physically oppressed.

In other words, enslaving the mind makes enslaving the body unnecessary. And that is exactly what the belief in “authority” does: it teaches people that it is morally virtuous that they surrender their time, effort and property, as well as their freedom and control over their own lives, to a ruling class.

Many people express pride at being “law-abiding taxpayers”, which means only that they do what the politicians tell them to do, and give the politicians money. When confronted with the idea that it is wrong for them to be forcibly deprived of the fruits of their labors, even if it is done “legally”, such people often vehemently defend those who continue to rob them, insisting that such robbery is essential to human civilization. (Of course, they do not use the term “robbery” to describe the situation, though they are well aware of what would be done to them if they refused to pay)

Likewise, when one person objects to the level of taxation or other forcible control being inflicted upon him by those in “government”, others who are also being oppressed will often condemn the one who is objecting, telling him that if he does not like how he is being treated, he should leave the country.

Maligning a fellow victim of coercion for complaining about it is a sure sign that a person actually takes pride in his own enslavement.

Frederick Douglass, a former slave, witnessed and described that exact phenomenon among his fellow slaves, many of whom were proud of how hard they worked for their masters and how faithfully they did as they were told. From their perspective, a runaway slave was a shameful thief, having “stolen” himself from the master.

Douglass described how thoroughly indoctrinated many slaves were, to the point where they truly believed that their own enslavement was just and righteous: “I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man”.

Though slavery is no longer practiced openly, the mentality of loyal subservience remains. Most people today detect no inconsistencies in allowing a ruling class to forcibly extort and control everyone else, and in fact feel that such extortion and oppression is right, to the point where many feel actual shame if they are caught keeping what they earn and running their own lives.

It is one thing to feel shame at having been caught stealing, or defrauding, or committing aggression. But it is quite another for someone to feel shame about having done something which, if not for politician decrees (“laws”), he would have seen as perfectly permissible.

Such shame does not come from the immorality of the act itself; it comes only from the imagined immorality of disobeying “authority”, i.e. “breaking the law”.

When, for example, the average citizen is caught “cheating” on his “taxes”, or not having a registration sticker on his car, or smoking marijuana, or doing anyone of a thousand other things which do not constitute aggression against anyone else, but which have nonetheless been declared “illegal” by the ruling class, there is usually some feeling of guilt in the person’s own mind.

Without a feeling of being obligated to obey, being caught and punished by agents of “government” would be regarded in the same way that being bitten by a dog would be regarded: as an unpleasant consequence to be avoided, but having no moral element to it at all.

Instead, most people feel, at least to some extent, that being caught committing a victimless “crime” indicates some sort of moral failing in themselves, because they did not do as they were told. The desire to have the approval of “authority” is extremely powerful in almost everyone, to a degree they themselves do not even realize.

The ubiquitous message of authoritarianism has a psychological impact far deeper than most people imagine, as the Milgram experiments demonstrated. Nearly everyone experiences dramatic emotional stress and discomfort anytime he comes into conflict with “authority”, and will go to great lengths, no matter what acts of evil he must commit, in order to earn the approval of his masters.

Even the terminology people use illustrates how effectively they have been trained to feel morally obligated to obey “authority”. This can be seen in such simple phrases as “You’re not allowed to do that” or even “You can’t do that” when referring to some behavior that has been declared “illegal” by the ruling class.

Such phrases do not simply express a potential adverse consequence but also imply that, because some act has been forbidden by the masters, committing that act is bad, not allowable, or even impossible (”You can’t do that!”).

Looking at the statistical facts demonstrates the power of the belief in “authority”. In the United States, about 100,000 IRS employees extort about 200,000,000 victims. Those being robbed outnumber the robbers by about two thousand to one. This could never be accomplished by brute force alone; it continues only because most of those being robbed feel a duty to be robbed, and imagine such robberies to be legitimate and valid. The same is true of many other “laws”, which are generally obeyed even though the enforcers are always hugely outnumbered by those they seek to control.

The high levels of “compliance” do not come so much from a fear of punishment as from the feeling among those being controlled that they have a moral obligation to cooperate with their own subjugation.

The Good Funding the Evil

Even if an individual is never personally victimized by “law enforcement”, never has a run-in with the police, and sees little if any direct impact by “government” upon his day-to-day life, the myth of “authority” still has a dramatic impact, not only on his own life but also on how his existence affects the world around him.

For example, the millions of compliant subjects who feel an obligation to surrender a portion of what they earn to the state, to pay their “fair share” of “taxes”, continually fund all manner of endeavors and activities which those people would not otherwise fund – which almost no one would otherwise fund, and which therefore would not otherwise exist.

By way of “taxes”, those claiming to be “government” confiscate an almost incomprehensible amount of time and effort from millions of victims and convert it into fuel for the agenda of the ruling class.

To wit, millions of people who oppose war are compelled to fund it via “taxation”. The product of their time and effort is used to make possible something they morally oppose.

The same is true of state-controlled wealth-redistribution programs (e.g. “welfare”), Ponzi schemes (e.g., “Social Security”), the so-called “war on drugs”, and so on. Most of the programs of “government” would not exist if not for the belief among the general population in a moral obligation to pay one’s “taxes”.

Even “government” programs purported to have noble goals – such as protecting the public and helping the poor – become bloated, inefficient and corrupt monstrosities, which almost no one would willingly support if there was no “law” requiring them to do so.

In addition to the waste, corruption, and destructive things which “government” does with the wealth it confiscates, there is also the less obvious issue of what the people would have done with their money otherwise. As “government” takes the wealth of the producers to serve its own purposes, it also deprives the producers of the ability to further their own goals.

Someone who surrenders $1,000 in “taxes” to the ruling class may not only be funding a war he morally opposes, but he is also being deprived of the ability to put $1,000 into savings, or donate $1,000 to some charity he considers worthwhile, or pay someone $1,000 to do some landscaping work.

So the damage done by the myth of “authority” is twofold: it forces people to fund things that they do not believe are good for themselves or society, while simultaneously preventing them from funding things that they do view as worthwhile. In other words, subservience to “authority” causes people to act in a manner which is to one extent or another, directly opposed to their own priorities and values.

Even the people who imagine that their “tax” dollars are doing good by building roads, helping the poor, paying for police, and so on, would almost certainly not fund the “government” version of those services, at least not to the same degree, if they did not feel compelled – by moral obligation and the threat of punishment – to do so.

Any private charity that had the inefficiency, corruption, and record of abuse that AFDC, HUD, Medicare, and other “government” programs have, would quickly lose all of its donors.

Any private company as expensive, corrupt, and inefficient as “government” infrastructure programs, would lose all of its customers. Any private protection service which was so often caught abusing, assaulting, and even killing unarmed, innocent people would have no customers. Any private company that claimed to be providing defense, but told its customers it needed a billion dollars every week to wage a prolonged war on the other side of the world, would have few, if any, contributors, including among those who now verbally support such military operations.

The feeling of obligation to pay “taxes” seems to be little hampered by the fact that “government” is notoriously wasteful and inefficient. While millions of “taxpayers” struggle to make ends meet while paying their “fair share” of “taxes”, politicians waste millions on laughably silly projects – everything from studying cow farts, to building bridges to nowhere, to paying farmers to not grow certain crops, and so on, ad infinitum – and billions more are simply “lost”, with no accounting of where they went.

But much of what people make possible through payment of “taxes” is not just wasted but is quite destructive to society. The “war on drugs” is an obvious example. How many people would voluntarily donate to a private organization which had the stated goal of dragging millions of non-violent individuals away from their friends and families, to be put into cages? Even the many Americans who now recognize the “war on drugs” as a complete failure, continue via “taxes”, to provide the funding which allows it to continue to destroy literally millions of lives.

Even the most vocal critics of the various abuses being perpetrated by the ever-growing police state are often among those making that abuse possible, by providing the funding for it. Whether the issue is blatant oppression, or corruption, or mere bungling bureaucratic inefficiency, everyone can point to at least a few things about “government” that do not meet with his approval.

And yet, having been trained to obey “authority”, he will continue to feel obligated to provide the funding which enables the same bungling, corrupt, oppressive “government” activities that he criticizes and opposes. Rarely does anyone notice the obvious inherent contradiction in feeling obligated to fund things that he thinks are bad.

Of course, people who work for non-authoritarian organizations can also be inefficient or corrupt, but when it comes to light what they are doing, their customers can simply stop funding them. That is the natural correction mechanism in human interaction, but it is completely defeated by the belief in “authority”.

How many people are there who are not currently being forced to fund some “government” program or activity that they morally oppose? Very few, if any. So why do those people keep funding things which they feel are destructive to society? Because “authority” tells them to, and because they believe that it is good to obey “authority”. As a result, they continue to surrender the fruits of their labors to fuel the machine of oppression – a machine which otherwise would not and could not exist.

“Governments” produce no wealth; what they spend they first must take from someone else. Every “government”, including the most oppressive regimes in history, has been funded by the payment of “taxes” by loyal, productive subjects. Thanks to the belief in “authority”, the wealth created by billions of people will continue to be used, not to serve the values and priorities of the people who worked to produce it, but to serve the agendas of those who, above all else, desire dominion over their fellow man.

The Third Reich was made possible by millions of German “taxpayers” who felt an obligation to pay up. The Soviet empire was made possible by millions of people who felt an obligation to give to the state whatever it demanded. Every invading army, every conquering empire, has been constructed out of wealth that was taken from productive people.

The destroyers have always been funded by the creators; the thieves have always been funded by the producers; through the belief in “authority”, the agendas of the evil have always been funded by the efforts of the good. And this will continue, unless and until the most dangerous superstition is dismantled.

When the producers no longer feel a moral obligation to fund the parasites and usurpers, the destroyers and controllers, tyranny will wither away, having been starved out of existence. Until then, good people will keep supplying the resources which the bad people need in order to carry out their destructive schemes.

Digging Their Own Graves

Sadly, the belief in “authority” even makes people feel obligated to assist in their own enslavement, oppression and sometimes death. In fact, only a small percentage of the coercion of “government” is implemented by the enforcers of “authority”; most of it is implemented by its victims. The ruling class merely tells people that they are required to do certain things, and most people comply without any actual enforcement taking place.

As one impressive example, tens of millions of Americans, every year, fill out lengthy, confusing forms known as “tax returns”, essentially extorting themselves. If the victims of the IRS agreed to pay, but only if the “government” figured out their alleged tax liabilities, the system would collapse.

Every tax return is basically a signed confession, with the victim of the extortion racket not only revealing everything about his finances – essentially interrogating himself – but also even figuring out the amount he will be robbed, so the thieves don’t have to.

But all the unproductive and unpleasant inconveniences and bureaucratic hassles that people subject themselves to, simply because they were told that “the law” requires it, are nothing compared to the more serious symptoms of the belief in “authority”.

Based upon the mythology about “duty to country” and the “laws” imposing military conscription (”the draft”), millions of people throughout history lave become murderers for the state.

Only a small fraction (so-called “draft-dodgers”) ever resisted, and they have usually been despised by their fellow countrymen, for being cowards or for lacking “patriotism”.

In the case of many “laws”, it can be difficult to distinguish between people who obey because of a simple fear of punishment, and those who obey out of a feeling of moral obligation to bow to the commands of politicians (”the law”).

With military conscription, however, it is easy to tell the difference, because “compliance” is usually far more dangerous than any punishment “government” threatens against those who refuse to comply. If the choices are to “comply” and possibly die a gruesome death on some battlefield on the other side of the world, or to disobey and possibly go to prison, it is unlikely that the threat alone is why so many people “register” and show up for” duty” when called.

In short, the level of compliance with “the draft”, at least in the past, shows quite clearly that most people would rather commit murder or die than disobey “authority”. There could hardly be a better indication of just how powerful the superstition of “authority” is: that thousands upon thousands of otherwise civilized, peaceful human beings will leave home, sometimes traveling halfway around the world, to kill or die simply because their respective ruling classes told them to.

Every soldier is both an enforcer and a victim of the superstition of “authority”, whether he volunteered or was drafted. Fighting to defend innocents against aggressors is a noble cause, and is often the intention of those who join the military. But in a hierarchical military regime, the soldier becomes a tool of the machine rather than a responsible individual.

Rather than being guided by his own conscience, he is controlled entirely by the orders he receives through the chain of command. And every time his obedience leads him to do something immoral (which is quite often), he not only harms his victims, he also harms himself.

After the Vietnam war, as one example, many American soldiers came home with their bodies intact but with deep psychological problems. How much of the mental damage was a result of witnessing carnage and how much was the result of personally creating carnage is difficult to say. A prolonged fear of imminent death can, of course, cause serious psychological problems, as can inflicting death upon others.

Violent confrontations can be quite stressful, even when the individual feels entirely justified, such as when defending his family from an attacker. But to engage in mortal combat where no one, including the combatants, seems to have any clear idea what the purpose or justification for the conflict is, as occurred in Vietnam, seems to add an additional degree of psychological trauma.

As many combat soldiers have attested to, once in the hell of war, any vague but noble cause or justification for the fight is usually forgotten, and all that is left is the desire to stay alive and to help one’s friends stay alive – both of which are served much better by going home, or by not joining the military in the first place.

And yet the number of people who simply walk away is quite small, for one simple reason: because it would constitute an act of disobedience to a perceived “authority”. And the average soldier, though he may have the courage and strength to throw himself into mortal combat, does not have the courage and strength to disobey a perceived “authority”.

As in many cases of authoritarian coercion, the victims of military conscription almost always far outnumber those trying to implement it. Even when people are “legally” commanded to sacrifice their minds and bodies for the sake of turf wars between tyrants, simple passive disobedience by any significant portion of “draftees” would make the war machine grind to a halt.

What punishment is there to fear that is worse than the result of compliance? The usual results of fighting in war are prolonged terror, physical and mental pain and suffering, dismemberment or death.

Nonetheless, even after witnessing the horrors of war first hand, very few people can bring themselves to disobey “authority”, take off the uniform and walk away.

A testament to the power of the belief in “authority” is the well-documented (if seldom discussed) fact that the atrocities committed against the German Jews by the Nazis were often carried out with the cooperation and assistance of Jewish police, such as occurred in the Warsaw Ghetto.

In their culture, just as in almost every other culture, the people had been so thoroughly convinced that obedience is a virtue that, even though someone new was “in charge”, they still felt obligated to do as they were told, even if it meant violently oppressing their own kinsmen. But what may be even more disturbing (but indisputable) is the fact that many millions of people in history have assisted in their own extermination, because “authority” told them to.

For example, during the Holocaust, many hundreds of thousands of Jews, on their own power, boarded the cattle cars of the very trains that would take them away to their deaths, without trying to hide, run away, or resist. Why? Because those pretending to be “authority” told them to.

While it was no doubt true that they were not all aware of exactly what lay in store for them at the other end, they still handed themselves into the custody of a machine that obviously meant them harm.

There is a certain feeling of comfort and safety that one gets by conforming and obeying. Believing that things are in someone else’s hands, and having trust that someone else will make things right, is a way to avoid responsibility.

Authoritarian indoctrination stresses the idea that, no matter what happens, if you simply do as you are told, and do what everyone else does, everything will be okay, and those in charge will reward and protect you. The body counts from one “government” atrocity after another show how misguided such a belief truly is.

Had the victims of “legal” oppression and murder simply withheld their assistance, even if they did not lift a finger to forcibly resist, the world would be a very different place today. If the Nazis had had to physically carry each Jew, dead or alive, to the gas chambers or crematoriums, the level of murder would have been dramatically lower.

If every slave sold into bondage had refused to work, there would soon have been no slave trade. If the IRS had to calculate the tax due and then directly take it from each “taxpayer”, there would be no more federal “taxation”.

In short, if the victims of authoritarian extortion, harassment, surveillance, assault, kidnapping, and murder simply stopped assisting in their own oppression, tyranny would crumble. And if the people went a step further and forcibly resisted, tyranny would collapse even more quickly.

But resistance, whether passive or violent, requires the people to disobey a perceived “authority”, and that is something that most people are psychologically incapable of doing.

Ultimately, it is the belief in “authority” among the victims of oppression, even more than the beliefs of the ruling class and their enforcers, which allows tyranny, and man’s inhumanity to man, to continue on such a large scale.

The Effects on Actual Criminals

Ironically, in situations where obedience would actually improve human behavior, “authority” has no effect. Those individuals, for example, whose own consciences do not stop them from robbing or assaulting their neighbors, because they do not care about the usual standards of right and wrong, also do not care what “authority” tells them to do.

It is only those who are trying to be good who ever feel compelled to obey “authority”. The belief in “authority” is a belief about morality – it is the idea that obedience is morally good. To those who do not care about what is deemed “good” – the very people whose consciences are not enough to make them behave in a civilized manner – the myth of “authority” has no effect.

To put it another way, only those who do not need to be controlled – i.e. those already trying to live moral lives – feel any obligation to obey the controllers. Meanwhile, those who pose a real threat to peaceful society feel no moral obligation to obey any “authority” anyway.

Generally speaking, all commands from “authority”, including inherently justifiable commands such as “do not steal” and “do not murder,” are always either unnecessary (when directed at good people) or ineffectual (when directed at bad people).

It is difficult to imagine any situation in which an individual would otherwise have no qualms about committing theft, assault, or murder, but would feel guilty about violating “laws” which prohibit such actions.

A distinction should be made here between moral obligation and fear of retaliation. A thief who feels no moral obligation to refrain from stealing will also feel no moral obligation to obey “laws” against stealing. However, if he perceives a threat to his own safety, whether from the “police” or anyone else, he might be deterred from robbing someone.

But that deterrent effect comes entirely from the threat of violence, not from the claimed “authority” underlying the threat. This means that supposed “authority” is never what stops actual crimes from happening, and that an effective deterrent system does not require “authority” at all. This is discussed in further detail below.

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