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Guest Post: Is It Wrong To Be Anti-Government?
Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market blog,
It is natural for a society to search for explanations and motivations in the wake of a man-made tragedy. It is also somewhat natural for people to be driven by their personal biases when looking for someone or something to blame. In recent years, however, our country has been carefully conditioned to view almost every criminal event from an ideological perspective.
The mainstream media now places far more emphasis on the political affiliations and philosophies of “madmen” than it does on their personal disorders and psychosis. The media’s goal, or mission, if you will, is to associate every dark deed whether real or engineered to the political enemies of the establishment, and to make the actions of each individual the collective shame of an entire group of people.
I could sift through a long list of terror attacks and mass shootings in which the establishment media jumped to the conclusion that the perpetrators were inspired by the beliefs of Constitutional conservatives, “conspiracy theorists”, patriots, etc. It is clear to anyone paying attention that the system is going out of its way to demonize those who question the officially sanctioned story, or the officially sanctioned world view. The circus surrounding the latest shooting of multiple TSA agents at Los Angeles International Airport is a perfect example.
Paul Ciancia, the primary suspect in the shooting, was immediately tied to the Liberty Movement by media outlets and the Southern Poverty Law Center, by notes (which we still have yet to see proof of) that law enforcement claims to have found on his person. The notes allegedly use terms such as “New World Order” and “fiat money”, commonly covered by those of us in the alternative media. The assertion is, of course, that Paul Ciancia is just the beginning, and that most if not all of us involved in the exposure of the globalist agenda are powder kegs just waiting to “go off.” The label often used by the MSM to profile people like Ciancia and marginalize the organizational efforts of liberty based culture is “anti-government.”
The establishment desires to acclimate Americans to the idea that being anti-government is wrong; that it is a despicable philosophy embracing social deviance, aimless violence, isolation and zealotry. Looking beyond the mainstream position, my question is, is it really such a bad thing to be anti-government today?
Conspiracy Realists
The terms “anti-government” and “conspiracy theorist” are almost always used in the same paragraph when mainstream media pundits espouse their propaganda. They are nothing more than ad hominem labels designed to play on the presumptions of the general population, manipulating them into dismissing any and all alternative viewpoints before they are ever heard or explained. The establishment and the media are ill-equipped to debate us on fair terms, and understand that they will lose control if Americans are allowed to hear what we have to say in a balanced forum. Therefore, their only fallback is to bury the public in lies so thick they won’t want to listen to us at all.
The Liberty Movement now has the upper hand in the war for information. The exposure of multiple conspiracies in the past several years alone has given immense weight to our stance, and reaffirmed warnings we gave long ago.
When we spoke out against the invasion of Iraq, commissioned by George W. Bush on the dubious claim that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were an immediate threat to the security of our nation, we were called “liberals” and “traitors.” Today, Bush and Cheney have both openly admitted that no WMD’s were ever present in the region. When we attempted to educate the masses on the widespread surveillance of innocent people by the NSA, some of them laughed. Today, it is common knowledge that all electronic communications are monitored by the Federal government. When we refused to accept the official story behind the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Fast and Furious program, we were called “kooks”. Today, it is common knowledge that the Obama Administration purposely allowed U.S. arms to fall into the hands of Mexican cartels. When we roared over the obvious hand the White House played in the Benghazi attack, we were labeled “racists” and “right wing extremists.” Today, it is common knowledge that the White House ordered military response units to stand down and allow the attack to take place. I could go on and on…
Events that were called “conspiracy theory” by the mainstream yesterday are now historical fact today. Have we ever received an apology for this slander? No, of course not, and we don’t expect one will ever surface. We have already gained something far more important – legitimacy.
And what about Paul Ciancia’s apparent belief in the dangers of the “New World Order” and “fiat money”? Are these “conspiracy theories”, or conspiracy realism? The Liberty Movement didn’t coin the phrase “New World Order”, these political and corporate “luminaries” did:
Is economic collapse really just a fairytale perpetrated by “anti-government extremists” bent on fear mongering and dividing society? Perhaps we should ask Alan Greenspan, who now openly admits that he and the private Federal Reserve knew full well they had helped engineer the housing bubble which eventually imploded during the derivatives collapse of 2008.
Or, why not ask the the White House, which just last month proclaimed that “economic chaos” would result if Republicans did not agree to raise the debt ceiling.
Does this make Barack Obama and the Democratic elite “conspiracy theorists” as well?
It is undeniable that government conspiracies and corporate conspiracies exist, and have caused unquantifiable pain to the American people and the people of the world. Knowing this, is it not natural that many citizens would adopt anti-government views in response? Is it wrong to distrust a criminal individual or a criminal enterprise? Why would it be wrong to distrust a criminal government?
The Purpose Behind The Anti-Government Label
When the establishment mainstream applies the anti-government label, they are hoping to achieve several levels propaganda. Here are just a few:
False Association: By placing the alleged “anti-government” views of violent people in the spotlight, the establishment is asserting that it is the political philosophy, not the individual, that is the problem. They are also asserting that other people who hold similar beliefs are guilty by association. That is to say, the actions of one man now become the trespasses of all those who share his ideology. This tactic is only applied by the media to those on the conservative or constitutional end of the spectrum, as it was with Paul Ciancia. For example, when it was discovered that Arizona mass shooter Jared Loughner was actually a leftist, the MSM did not attempt to tie his actions to liberals in general. Why? Because the left is not a threat to the elitist oligarchy within our government. Constitutional conservatives, on the other hand, are.
False Generalization: The term “anti-government” is so broad that, like the term “terrorist”, it can be applied to almost anyone for any reason. The establishment does not want you to distinguish between those who are anti-government for the wrong reasons, and those who are anti-government for the right reasons. Anyone who questions the status quo becomes the enemy regardless of their motives or logic. By demonizing the idea of being anti-government, the establishment manipulates the public into assuming that all government by extension is good, or at least necessary, when the facts actually suggest that most government is neither good or necessary.
False Assertion: The negative connotations surrounding the anti-government stance also suggest that anyone who defends themselves or their principles against government tyranny, whether rationally justified or not, is an evil person. Just look at how Washington D.C. has treated Edward Snowden. Numerous political elites have suggested trying the whistle-blower for treason, or assassinating him outright without due process, even though Snowden’s only crime was to expose the criminal mass surveillance of the American people by the government itself. Rather than apologizing for their corruption, the government would rather destroy anyone who exposes the truth.
False Shame: Does government criminality call for behavior like that allegedly taken by Paul Ciancia? His particular action was not morally honorable or even effective. It helped the establishment's position instead of hurting it, and was apparently driven more by personal psychological turmoil rather than political affiliation. But, would it be wrong for morally sound and rational Americans facing imminent despotism within government to physically fight back? Would it be wrong to enter into combat with a totalitarian system? The Founding Fathers did, but only after they had exhausted all other avenues, and only after they had broken away from dependence on the system they had sought to fight. Being anti-government does not mean one is a violent and dangerous person. It does mean, though, that there will come a point at which we will not allow government to further erode our freedoms. We will not and should not feel shame in making that stand.
I do not agree with every element of the “anti-government” ethos that exists in our era, but I do see the vast majority of reasons behind it as legitimate. If the establishment really desired to quell the quickly growing anti-government methodology, then they would stop committing Constitutional atrocities and stop giving the public so many causes to hate them. If they continue with their vicious bid to erase civil liberties, dominate the citizenry through fear and intimidation and steal and murder in our name, then our response will inevitably be “anti-government”, and we will inevitably move to end the system as we know it.
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YHC, you are a true thoughtful, patriotic American. You have my respect.
sky wing 2010 Careful before you hand out those heartfelt wiishes to YHC, he's a Aussie/Britt and they wouldn't know jack shit about a free Republic. They have their queen shoved up their arse. There are way too many Britts on here now....doubt they even live here.
Do you have the slightest idea of the difference between a Democracy and a Constitutional Republic?
I gave you a +1 because that's precisely what I would asked if I read my own ramblings in the third person.
When citing "democracy", I am of course referring to the core process in defining a constitutional republic, that of electing the head of state, and representatives. My main complaint is that government is absolutely chock full of lifetime unelected officials - civil servants & bureaucrats - who actually run the country with the special interest groups under the facade of a two party state.
I dare say it isn't capitalism, socialism, constitutionalism or any other socio-econo-political philosophy that is important. It is the ability to hire and, more importantly fire our leaders in a democracy.
"The conspiracy that we truly hate, the real Conspiracy, isn't one of these fiendishly clever ones. It doesn't even know it's a conspiracy! It cant. It's a faceless confederacy of dunces, so vast and so broad that it underlies all the lesser conspiracies and permeates all human reality. Quite the opposite of devious, it dominates by merely exploiting the overall, mealymouthed, chickenbutt-kissing "Code of Normality" (or CON) of ALL the Pinks, norm-worms and mere-humes at large. There is no more insidious and subtle a weapon than that.
This Conspiracy has no face; we know it only by its desires... a great Mirror of Disfigurement, it reflects what is wrong with everyone. Politics and the petty squabbles of nations are only part of what The Conspiracy manipulates. It is MUCH BIGGER than gods or demons, Republicans and Democrats, or Presidents and interlocking corporate directorates; it's everything from the school bully to the wimp principle, from Mom and Dad to the Bobbie in the Billybong.
More than anything else, The Conspiracy is an attitude - a fear - a PINKNESS. A cancer of the imagination, the hatred of the real, the yearning for "cuteness," the eagerness to obey... Oh sure, people LOVE new things - like Michael Jackson is "new" compared to The Beatles. But if, say, a REAL JESUS were to appear, well, it might look just a bit TOO new to be allowed to run loose for very long. "
-Rev. Ivan Stang
slack on!
Is it wrong to be against an institution that flies drones over nations blowing up schools and churches? murdering untold millions of civilians.
Is it wrong to be against an institution that in cohort with a criminal banking cartel counterfeits the money you and your people are using to fund criminal operations such as above?
Is it wrong to be against an institution that spies on you? records your private phone calls and tries to keep tabs on you?
Is it wrong to be against an institution that is trying to control the chemical composition of your body? by talling you not only what you can consume.... but what you MUST consume... ?
Is it wrong to be against an institution that has a track reccord for corrpution, theft, fraud, lies, deception, murder, person disapearances, civil rights violations, human rights violations, crimes against humanity?
Is it wrong to be against an instututuin that is supposed to be "for the people of the people" when the very people the run the institution have been related through blood/friendship for the past 150 years?
Is it wrong to be against an institution that targets and discriminats against people who are a trying to expose corruption?
I could go on...
The sensible portion of the population knows the government is corrupt.
THe sensible portion of the population knows the government is not "out to help people", that the people in government for the most part are out to fulfill their own agenda for personal gains.
The sensible portion of the population knows that nothing good can come of this government, and that any good that does come out of it is simply a propoganda campeign meant to mask and lessen the focus on their criminal activity
This year, this is what we have learned about our government:
1) They are spying on us
2) They are torturing people for information, they are arresting or murdering American Citizens in secret.
3) There are "secret courts" making "secret decisions" determing our fate as a society.
4) They are murdering untold 1000s of women and children in foreign lands, fueling hatred towards America and putting American lives at risk of backlash, by fueling radicalism in the middle east creating untold MILLIONS of new enemies to perpetuate the Military Industrial Complex.
5) They are counterfeiting our money with the help of the federal reserve, to finance Death Inc. world wide.
6) They voted down the GMO labeling bill, because YOU AS AN AMERICAN HAVE NO RIGHT TO KNOW WHAT IS IN YOUR FOOD.
7) They are perpetuating a war on whistle-blowers to prevent their corruption from being out for all to see.
8) They are manipulating economic data to hide the fact that they are single-handedly destroying the domestic economy in order to keep foreign economies of our alleged enemies strong.
9) A lot of officials in government are accepting bribes to pass legislation
10) Obama was trained as an actor by Harry Lenix , knew that he was being groomed for the "acting role" of president since 1998 (madcow interview)
11) That Obama's mother was into prostitution/porn
12) That the government is turning a blind eye to bank fraud and letting banks get away with whatever crimes they want "too big to jail"
I don't even want to go on.
I can't even think of one good thing the government did in the past 60 years that isn't rendered a nullity by the greater harm that act may have caused.
HAS THE GOVERNMENT IN THE PAST 20 YEARS GIVEN THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ONE GOOD REASON TO TRUST THEM?
Quite a long read.....but well worth the time.
Got some stuff to add....but it would just muddy up the waters.
not only is it not wrong but it is now a duty to be anti government. when the government has made itself the enemy of the governed, what other recourse is there?
The answer to that question is spelled out in the Declaration of Independence
I am not anti-government. I am anti-shitheadedness. If you act like a shithead I'll be against it. Crushing rights, strong arming liberty, being fascist and dictatorial over your fellow human being is wrong. I believe in natural rights bestowed upon me by God. We had a government that functioned quite well from 1791-1913. The current form is hurting people, enriching thugs who step all over their perceived lesser humans and making an absolute mess of what should be the dawn of a Golden age in human development. It needs to stop. How that happens is the question. May God bless us all and lead us to liberty through the courage of enlightened brave men.
+100 for "anti-shitheadedness" - should be a new category of political discourse and taught in every 1st year poli-sci course.
Being against government is like being against the ToothFairy. Neither exists. To be sure, most people wander around all the time doing things because they imagine "government says so". And a great many people wander around all the time pretending they are an "agent or authority of government". But there is no government, and there can be no such thing as government. Not really. And "really" (reality) is where we all live.
It is incredibly sickening to look at the planet from the perspective of an alien observer (that is to say, and objective observer). Any objective observer can look at the reality and see the absolute impossibility, and the inherent absurdity of fictions like "government" and "authority" and "official" and "law" and endless other forms of nonsense.
This perspective is not difficult... except, it seems, for homo-sapiens born on a planet where 99.999999% of their species is utterly and completely insane in the most fundamental way (that is, inability to distinguish real from fiction).
Any objective being can see through such nonsense easily. One way to recognize the absurdity of the situation is to notice that all humans come to exist the same way --- by being born. Given that identity, and symmetry of relationship between any two individuals, there is obviously no real basis for one to have authority over the other. Any claim of such authority by either can be offset by the other. If one says "you must do as I say", the other can counter with "you must do as I say", and neither has any basis in reality to claim anything of the sort.
To formulate more grandiose versions changes nothing. Seriously, does anyone really believe that if 50 humans sit around a table and sign a document... that somehow doing so can possibly obligate thousands or millions or billions of other humans who had nothing to do with their meeting or document? Let's hope not! After all, it is obvious that any number of groups of 50 people can sit around other tables and sign other documents that state and claim other nonsense, and claim to obligate other people.
Anyone with even one-tenth a brain can see right through such nonsense! When people invent fictions, nothing real changes. When people invent names like "USA", nothing pops into existence. The ocean, lakes, ponds, continents and islands that existed before, still exist. And nothing new came to exist. Nothing real that is. They can make up endless names and endless fictions of all sorts (like "nation" and "congress" and "president" and "law" and "citizen"), but nothing real popped into existence when they wrote those words or signed those documents. Nothing.
So, every sane individual understands with complete clarity that government doesn't exist. No government. Anywhere. The very notion is absurd... except as fiction. As fiction, as imagination, hell... writers can create just about anything! Creatures, continents, planets, galaxies, entire universes. But they don't exist in reality, they only exist as mental-units in the brains of people who decide to allow them into their consciousness. That's what fictions are --- mental units without referents in reality. The mental-unit is real, but the referent isn't.
And pretending that fictions are real doesn't make them real. Even billions of people wandering around their entire lives thinking and honestly believing those fictions are real doesn't make them real. They are not real. They are fictions.
Likewise, billions of kids believing SantaClaus is real doesn't make SantaClaus exist. The fact that billions of kids take all sorts of actions in December of each year because they believe their mental-unit refers to something real... does not make SantaClaus pop into existence. The number of believers in a fiction has no bearing whatsoever on the status of the mental-unit --- it is a fiction.
So this is the answer. Don't be against government, or officials, or authority, or law. Just get honest, get real, and recognize --- they don't exist.
What does exist is the universe, galaxies, star systems, planets, moons/satellites, asteroids, comets. And on one or perhaps more planets there are micro-organisms, plants, animals and various lifeforms.
That is all. Nothing else exists. 100% of all terms about human collectives like "government" are pure fiction. ALL of them. All that exists are individual existents of various kinds. The so-called "collectives" literally do not exist! A brain may contain a mental-unit that supposedly refers-to many individuals, but all that exists are the individuals. How a brain groups individual existents does not create new existents. To say an individual is a "doctor" and a "father" and a "christian" and a "shortstop" and a "musician" and any number of other terms does not create any more existents. All that exists is the individual. Period.
As long as people are willing to talk endlessly about fictions, and fight endlessly about fictions... everyone will suffer, and nothing will get better. Only sanity can save mankind, starting with the most fundamental form of sanity - the abiliity to distinguish real from fiction. Only then can human beings focus on the reality that makes life possible and good, and stop wasting their time, and destroying everything around them.
However, 99.99999999% of homo-sapiens are utterly insane in the most fundamental of ways. And therefore, mankind is finished. Game over.
If government doesn't exist, then mankind doesn't exist for the same reason: its a convenient abstraction we occasionally logical disposable DNA transport machines use in order to minimize the effort necessary to function.
Its a nice idea, but we don't even agree on what is sane. ~6.8 billion current perceptions of the human experience, not a single one accurate, all changing constantly. With or without our consent, what is occurring is evolution and noone knows where its going. in the long term the only thing that matters is where the DNA is going. Everyone dies, so everyone is "finished". Which is great, if you really believe your assertion that everything is not fine in the world of the fictitious construct homo sapiens sapien. The 6-legged mutations are far in the lead.
Human intelligence is a joke. We don't even know what life is, or death, or even reality. Whatever it is, death is necessary. Would you like the worst tyrants who ever cursed our ancestors to stick around? Or the current batch?
The only thing we can each control is our attitude. The cup is always half full. You can appreciate what you have and use it, or not. Its always your choice. Control your attitude and the features of reality that you discern change. If you know there are options, you will see options. If you know everyone is stupid, you will see stupidity everywhere, and not one bright light. These abstractions called adjectives and nouns don't really exist either. Someone invented them and others pushed them forward, without which your social contact would entirely consist of a bunch of guys thumping their chests, howling and grabbing at you. The fine control these words afford you is better, isn't it? Just like everyone else, you live in an imaginary model you didn't even construct yourself, using imaginary models you didn't even construct yourself.
Those contracts are other people's models. You can choose to abide by an agreement or not. You're right, not all agreements are good. So you have to figure out which ones you want to be a part of, and how to avoid the rest. If you can do this, you're winning.
What you can do is imagine your model in a way that benefits you, and perhaps be an example to these idiots that populate your model. You can't force them to think what you think they should. You aren't going to fix them, they have to fix themselves. Work on your life. Its not about them. They have their own lives. They model you too...
Yes, you're correct, mankind does not exist. What does exist are roughly 7 billion individual animals that appear to be homo-sapiens. Those 7 billion individuals exist. To the extent the term "mankind" is useful, it does not mean anything other than those 7 billion individuals.
So how one holds and regards the mental-units in their brains makes all the difference. If you believe SantaClaus exists, then you are insane. Obviously I also have a SantaClaus mental-unit in my head too, but I do not regard that mental-unit as referring to a real fat man in a red suit in his toy factory at the north pole. That makes me sane, and any adult who believes SantaClaus exists insane.
The same is true of government. The individual humans who pretend to be part of government do exist. They are a subset of that 7 billion individuals I mentioned before. They do indeed exist. However, people muttering some name like "Intergalactic Empire of Dweebs" does not create anything real. Oh, you can get a bunch of dweebs together and create fancy uniforms and badges, and you can run around telling people what they must do, and grabbing money from their wallets when they disobey. Yes, all you individuals who do that exist, and the humans you harm exist, but there is no "government" named "Intergalactic Empire of Dweebs", because nothing new popped into existence when you dweebs signed your founding document (if you even bothered to do so).
The fact that some individuals harm other individuals does not create any real entity in the universe. You jerks are just a bunch of human predators harming other human animals. Period. End of story.
I am sane. I don't need approval from insane folks to consider myself sane! Being sane is a specific relationship between the content of my consciousness and the universe.
Where "your" DNA is going may matter to you, but does not matter in some universal sense. After no more humans exist in this universe, the practical significance of human DNA will fall closer to zero than you can imagine.
Yes, "human intelligence" is indeed a joke. That was a large part of the point of my message. That 99.999999% of humans are completely insane in the most fundamental possible way certainly implies that "human intelligence" is a very rare commodity. And indeed it is.
You may not know what is life, death and reality, but I do. So speak for yourself. But before you go off on some crazed tangent that you've been brainwashed with, I do not know everything about life, death and reality... but I also do not need to be omniscient to have knowledge. In other words, I have a sane meaning of "know" and "knowledge", not some insane, confused philosopher-jerk inspired twisted heap of neural chaos version.
The death of tyrants does not stop new tyrants from taking over and being even worse. So the death of tyrants doesn't have any practical significance, except that eventually they will all be dead, along with all other humans who have not escaped planet earth.
Yes indeed, attitude is very important. I agree with you on that point. In fact, the cup is about 99.99999999999999% full, but those of us still stuck on earth suffer the nasty consequences of living with a whole lot of that other 0.00000000000001% that is empty --- namely, human intelligence (for lack of a better term). So yes, I do indeed see stupidity everywhere (when I look outside my little domain of solitude here in the extreme boonies).
There is no social contract, and there cannot be a social contract. That's another one of those insane notions that is also a blatant self-contradiction.
I do not live in an imaginary model of anything. I live in the real universe. Period. I also enjoy many varieties of fiction, which I can do without danger, because I also keep track of what is real and what is fiction (and what kind of fiction). For example, I sometimes invent electronic devices. Until I build a real, physical instance of my design, it is fiction. Once I've built one and made sure it works, it is no longer fiction, it is real. That's just one of many varieties of fiction that I enjoy. But I never, ever lie to myself about what is real versus fiction, and I never will. And I've learned to think about the "reality-status" of every mental-unit I think with, so I don't confuse myself about what is real and what is not. Thus I am one of an infinitesimal number of humans who are sane full time, not just now and then.
My understanding of reality is not other people's models. I don't think that way. I don't expect you to understand that, because obviously that's the only mindset you and virtually everyone else knows. I am aware of many models that others create, but those are not my models, and not how I observe or understand reality.
I do NOT have any agreement with "mankind" or "government". There is no "social contract", and most certainly I never signed one or agreed to one, and I never will because "society" doesn't exist, and there is no practical way for me to formulate a contract with every human on planet earth (which would be a requirement).
Nothing wrong with agreements between individuals though, and I do make those on extremely rare occasion.
Yes, I have no necessary relationship to anyone else. I post messages here once in a while as a form of good will, just in case there is, by some amazing miracle, an actual honest brain out there who might benefit from my thoughts.
Then I go back to work on the project that will consume the rest of my organic life, and hopefully get me off this planet and make me literally immortal (as in, surviving, advancing and prospering literally for eternity... trillions of years for a start). I know that sounds absurd, but that's because you don't know what I'm doing, and the brilliant folks I'm collaborating with. Once we're gone, the rest of mankind will spiral down the toilet of history, and the only consequence of mankind and his DNA will be... those of us who leave this planet and explore and engineer the universe for our benefit and enjoyment. But we won't even be humans, or even organic beings at that point, though we will still be conscious sentient beings.
In the long run, it will be billions of years of organic development, then perhaps 200,000 years of human history, then an eternity of exploring and engineering the universe as inorganic conscious beings. The mankind part will be so quick in the scheme of things, it will almost seem like a momentary flash. But it was a necessary step to get where we're going. So eventually we may say (metaphorically), thanks, goodbye and good riddens.
you are talking like that first african woman who started it all and whose daughter now desperately wants to go back to cave man living.
"Civilization is idiocy; Apache living was heaven."
Lol, I'll kinda of buy that when I see NSA NSA !
Santa Claus. Easter Bunny. Space Monkeys. Any scientific truth that has been disproved is a better example of controlled mass delusion. Religion. Geocentric cosmology. Alchemy. Psychoanalysis. Economics.
You map to the spectrum of social contracts. The only way you could have not benefitted from anyone else is if you sprang from the dust fully formed. That you and I both were not eaten when we were defenseless demonstrates that human predation is entirely learned behavior.
Money is the most obvious form of the social contract. The education you received, which includes all the knowledge of others upon which your entire life's work is based, is the social contract. Unless of course you never had a teacher or read a lesson.
Electricity is provided to you through social contract. Unless you designed and built the machines used to make the computer you are using to read this, and designed that computer from scratch and then built it yourself, acquiring all the raw materials and refining them yourself - metals, plastics, silicon, dyes, every manufactured product you use is a product of the social contract. Would you like to enumerate the industries and count the jerks and dweebs who made this possible? Thousands of jerks provided you with just the clothes on your back, and the food you eat. Like it or not, we are all in this together.
Consider what they did with Einstein's work. Weapons first. Always. Great minds are responsible for the use of their discoveries. At this time the brutes have more than enough technology to sort out their differences or destroy the planet. Currently they are pruning the species to their best ideas; and they are morons. You would do the same, only to your specification? Wherever you go, there you are.
You need to expand your "social contract" to include 3.5 billion years of evolution and an additional 10 billion to include the universe, which renders your "social contract" a meaningless concept.
After all, your mentalist construct, social contract, wouldn't exist without that.
People invent endless bogus notions to make themselves feel better, or more often to justify abusing others. Without any doubt whatsoever, the notion of a "social contract" suits the later purpose for most people - to justify them abusing others, or to justify the local predators abusing others.
Anyone who cannot immediately recognize that "social contract" is a self-contradiction, and therefore self-refuting, is disingenuous. By necessity a contract is voluntary, and agreed to by all parties involved. Otherwise it is not a contract. Period.
Any human who allows his brain to be filled with overt, self-contradictory, self-refuting nonsense like "social contract" is worse than insane. They are intentionally evil (unless they are exceptionally, spectacularly clueless). Sorry, I don't enjoy offending, but that's a fact. And you who support such nonsense have made it possible (or at least vastly easier) for human predators to dominate the planet, and steal, thwart or otherwise destroy the good endeavors that honest, ethical, benevolent, productive individuals pursue.
As it turns out, I am indeed almost entirely self-taught. Also, what I consider knowledge is not what you or most people consider knowledge. EVERYTHING humans have said, and EVERYTHING I've read in books... is nothing more than claims, statements, mutterings of [almost always] liars and fools. To even recognize the few grains and nuggets of truth requires quite a bit of effort, the proof being the obvious fact that almost every human is insane and ignorant.
Not until I perform my own observations and thought processes on any topic do I consider myself to possibly know anything at all on that topic. The mutterings and writings of others is NOT knowledge. Period. Mostly that is deception, which is worse than no knowledge at all.
In fact, I quite appreciate many advances that other humans have made across the centuries. I would shake their hands, tip my hat, and praise them if I had the opportunity. And I had that opportunity in a couple cases. The rest of them and I have an implicit deal of sorts --- a bit like your "social contract", albeit informal and benevolent. It goes like this. I quite appreciate the advances others have made across the centuries, and I tip my hat in acknowledgement and appreciation to those 0.000001% who have done astounding things, and those 0.0001% who have done wonderful things. I do benefit from having examples of useful ideas and objects to consider and inspect.
But my appreciation only extends to those individuals who made those advances and achievements. It does not extend to a pile of deceptive politicians who arbitrarily claim I am a slave because someone else (those inventors) did something great decades or centuries ago.
I do not owe anything to anyone who achieved great things in the past. They had no obligation to allow anyone to hear their ideas or touch their inventions... but they did. I certainly do not owe them anything whatsoever. They didn't create their ideas or inventions for me, didn't give me their ideas or inventions, didn't know or care whether I'd ever exist at all. So my appreciation and respect is all they get. Nothing more.
In return, like those great individuals I admire, I provide the same services to untold individuals in the future... at no cost or obligation upon them or anyone. The insights, inventions and technologies I have produced in my lifetime [and allow others to know about] are free for everyone in the future to enjoy and benefit from. All those unlimited number of individuals who come after me do not owe me a penny, or need to recognize me. I did what I did for me and my benefit, but I happily welcome all who come after me to enjoy any benefits they can. Everyone is free. Everyone benefits. No need for any contract, much less one that enslaves all mankind for eternity, which is the purpose of the notion "social contract".
This is no social contract. There can be no social contracts. As I said before, the very term is a self-contradiction, and an overt, gross obscenity. And there is no need for any such nonsense either, unless you are a predator intent upon theft and destruction.
Yes, I agree that great minds are responsible for their works. The fact is, those of us working on the project that will consume the rest of my organic life take that notion utterly seriously. Nonetheless, it is also inappropriate to blame the first individual who discovers or invents something new because someone else finds a way to apply that knowledge in destructive ways. Each individual is responsible for the consequences of his own actions, and is not responsible for the actions of others. Period.
No, we will not behave as others have. We are implementing the most powerful technology in the history of mankind. We could have unlimited funding, and our work would be massively easier, if we accepted funds from predators-DBA-government or predators-DBA-corporations. But we don't, and we won't. Because we know what would happen --- just what you expect to happen, massively more advanced and "efficient" abuse, slavery and destruction. In fact, if the predators-that-be had our technology, they would probably destroy all but a few of mankind (themselves), and turn our invention into millions or billions of super-capable, super-productive, super-obedient slaves. Not gonna happen - at least not from our efforts. When we're finished, we'll just leave the planet, and let you and the rest of mankind do whatever you all decide to do. That's your business. Ultimately that will almost certainly be complete self-destruction, but that is for all you 7+ billion chimps to decide and implement for yourselves. But given most humans think like you do, and actually sanction and defend revolting destructive nonsense like "social contract", mankind will surely perish sooner rather than later. And you know what? Except for a very few exceptions, good riddens.
honestann, you obviously don't own a business, or you would know just how real government is.
No. The fact that kids wake you at 5am on December 25th doesn't mean SantaClaus exists. It does mean you and your kids exist, and the mental unit labeled "SantaClaus" in their brain exists. But there is no SantaClaus. All the nonsense that people do because they hold fictional mental units in their brains, and take them seriously, does not make things that don't exist magically exist.
The exact same is true of "government". Oh yes, you are real, the building where you run your business is real, the human predators who threaten to cage you or kill you are real, but there is no "government". That should be true. Just because those predators who come to your place of business say the word "government" and "authority" and "law"... doesn't make any of that real. But oh yes indeed, those predators are real, their guns are real, their bullets are real, and yes indeed, we must all figure out how to deal with predators, because they can be very dangerous.
But unless people learn to distinguish real from fiction, they will never be able to figure out how to organize their lives effectively, or what to accept or submit to, or how to interact with various kinds of other individuals. And the bottom line is, until humans recognize what is real and what is fiction, the vast majority of humans will forever be prey.
As long as you believe government exists, you are certain to remain prey. Even worse, you will continue to help the predators be more effective in their abuse - of you and everyone else who refuses to wake up and get real.
"The government will be on His shoulders..."
i think i get your point, but government does, and should exist. i like my garbage to be picked up twice a week. police and the courts should control the predators in our midst. ever hear a drunken jamie dimon ramble on about how he would like to commoditize water? there is a line that has been crossed, look what is happening right now, government has failed in keeping large predatory interests in check, and has in fact been captured by them. that doesn't make the concept of government obsolete, it just means things are messed up. it will change here in the states, it always does.
You don't need government to pickup your garbage. And water should be commoditized - (priced), because its not free or "unlimited". The only line that has been crossed is thinking that government is better at organizing an economy than the free market. $17T in debt ought to make it clear that such a thought has been proven to be utterly false.
of course water is unlimited. it's the most common thing on the fucking earth. and if you think letting jamie dimon's ilk price it is a good idea, study bolivia. do you think letting banks set prices is free market you twit? how's that working with gasoline these days?
No, government does not exist. No government has ever existed. Think about the following carefully, very slowly, step by step.
What happened the first time some human uttered "I am government" or "We are government" or "I/we are the authority and you must obey"? Did something new, that did not exist the moment before, just POP into existence?
No. What existed before (millions of humans on planet earth) was exactly what existed after that human uttered those words. The mere utterance of those words did not create anything whatsoever. The so-called "government" in question was no more real than thousands of "god" entities that similar claims pretended.
Can't you see that? Are you truly incapable of seeing in even trivially simple and obvious examples when something real exists, and when there is only a CLAIM of something? The claim is: "SantaClaus is a fat jolly man who lives at the north pole, operates a toy factory, has a NSA operation of his own to spy on little kids all year long, and then once a year on December 25th flies to a billion homes all over the world (in about 50,000 seconds, and thus a rate of 140,000 homes per second).
Do you really believe that making a claim like that POPs into existence that jolly fat man in his red suit at the north pole, along with a whole factory and NSA spy operation? Seriously?
Do you really believe that just because real human beings (mostly kids) believ that SantaClaus exists, that this makes that dude POP into existence?
Do you really believe that just because real human beings (kids and adults) take actions that assume SantaClaus exists, that this makes that dude POP into existence?
Do you? Seriously?
Look. I understand. I really do. As far as I can tell, EVERYONE on planet earth has their brains jammed full of fictions (mental units that refer to nothing) from before they even begin to comprehend language. And virtually EVERYONE (except me) thinks it is cute, if not absolutely necessary, to pretend that endless fictions are real when kids are young. Adults absolute explode in anger when I say kids should never be told a fiction or fantasy... until they are old enough to understand what is fiction and fantasy, and how to distinguish them.
So EVERYONE is forcably pre-disposed and programmed to believe that ENDLESS fictions are not fictions, but instead are real. So maybe it shouldn't be so surprising that the entirety of mankind grows up with virtually ZERO ability to distinguish real from fiction.
That this is the state of reality is completely obvious. For evidence, look at the difference between the fiction we call "SantaClaus" and the many fictions we call "god" (perhaps hundreds of different ones). When humans get to a certain age, they are told "SantaClaus doesn't exist, and if you keep saying SantaClaus exists, people will laugh at you and call you names, and you'll never get a date" (or something like that). So humans stop believing their "SantaClaus" mental unit refers to something real (that dude at the north pole).
The opposite is true with the mental unit people call "god". Even though people in different parts of the world have entirely different notions and identities for their "god", they do not tell kids at some point "this mental unit is a fiction, which means there is no real entity out there". So, adults continue to accept that blatant fiction, and go to extreme lenghts to keep up the pretence, even though it is completely obvious to everyone that "probably this is a fiction".
You probably disagree, but the evidence is absolutely irrefutable. How? Easy. At some age every individual finds out that hundreds of "god" mental units exist, and that people in different parts of the world believe their mental unit refers to something, while everyone else everywhere else is wrong. Thus every slightly honest individual on the planet acknowledges that most people on earth have a "god" mental unit that refers to... nothing. Of course, they tend to quickly add, "but my god mental unit refers to the only one who is real".
Uh, huh. Right. Everyone thinks their "god" mental unit refers to a real being, while everyone else has a mental unit that is a bogus fiction. Which necessarily means that EVERYONE sees that EVERYONE simply accepts what is accepted by others around them, without ANYONE performing any sort of observation, investigation or rational thought about the problem. In other words, EVERYONE understands that they... like everyone else everywhere... is simply asserting that their "god" mental unit is the one valid, non-fictional mental-unit.
No wonder "you gotta have faith" to allow such nonsense in your brains! No kidding! And everyone knows, because everyone knows everything I just said above. They know that at least 999 of the 1000 supposed gods are bogus, and yet insist two things: that they somehow know that one of them isn't bogus, and that the one that isn't bogus is the one accepted by the people in their part of the world.
What a twisted species! Even when everyone knows what is happening, they utterly accept it, even knowing they are being deceptive, disingenuous, and clinically and fundamentally insane!
The concept "government" is not "obsolete". The concept "government" is a fiction. In other words, the concept "government" is a mental unit that does not, and never did, refer to anything real. PERIOD. That's all there is. Period.
However, there is something extremely strange about human beings. Even when they know they are being fundamentally dishonest... and even dishonest with themselves... they cannot stop themselves from destroying their own brains by filling it with endless completely bogus fictions, and then not labeling them as "fiction" as they must to remain sane or intellectually effective.
Of this, there is no doubt. Too many examples exist. And most actions that humans take today are taken partly or fully on the basis of accepting fictions as real.
I have demonstrated this phenomenon dozens of times in messages on ZH. I'm sure some folks here are so freaking tired of reading these messages they'd like to blow me to pieces to shut me up.
I don't blame them! But how do you think I feel, living on a planet where 99.9999999% of the other humans are stark raving lunatic insane in the most fundamental possible way? No wonder I live in the extreme boonies, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest settlement of any size. Blatantly insane chimps are dangerous. And sure enough, just look at the world. Look at what humans do. Look at what humans support. Look at what humans rationalize. Freaking completely crazy insane deadly chimps bouncing off the walls all day long.
And why? For the reason I keep harping on. They have been brainwashed and programmed since birth to believe almost every mental unit they have refers to something real. The very strange thing is, almost every adult human really does understand that "fiction exists", and that most of what they see in most movies is "fiction", and that most of what they read in books of "fiction"... is just made up. You'd think that humans who understand the nature of "real versus fiction" would make some effort to tag their mental units with "real" or "fiction" or "undetermined". But nope.
You, and most people, really need to perform "mind experiments" to help them comprehend the nature of the mental units they host (especially those they apply daily to make decisions and take actions).
You really need to think about a planet, or continent, or island, or whatever works for you... where there are hundreds to millions of sentient beings similar to humans. But they've never invented the notion "government" or "authority" or "official" or "law". Now. How do you create one of those? And what IS it that you supposedly just created?
If you just stand on a soapbox and say, "I have created a government, and I am the authority, and I created a bunch of rules you must follow, or I will lock you in cages or kill you. And you must send me 10% of everything you produce, and 10% of everything you exchange with others to help pay for the service I provide you, namely to enslave you".
I mean, seriously. Did that create "government"? If so, what IS government?
What you need to recognize is, nothing new exists after you stood on that soapbox that did not exist before. You, the soapbox, your clothes, everything and everyone around you... existed before and after you stood on that soapbox and made a complete fool of yourself. NOTHING popped into existence. There was no "government" before, and there is no "government" after. Any claim to the contrary is abviously insane. The example is too simple to leave any doubt.
You can perform any number of these "mind experiments" in an attempt to figure out whether any version of "government" exists. The result is always the same. What existed before, is what exists after, thus no "government" exists.
Like thousands and thousands and thousands of bogus mental units, "government" and "authority" and "official" and "law" are 100% made-up fictions.
The only reason you believe any such nonsense is this. These notions are jammed into your brain since you were a child, are taken as real (non-fiction) by everyone around you your entire life, you will get spanked and abused if you insist these bogus ideas are bogus, you will be treated normally if you accept these bogus ideas as valid, legitimate and unquestionable, and besides, why should you be smarter than everyone else around you?
I admit, it seems almost too surreal to realize how utterly and completely insane is the entire species of man. How could such an insane state of affairs come to be? Part of the answer is clear. Some humans get a huge advantage by taking advantage of these fictions, so they do everything they can to assure these fictions are taken seriously by everyone.
But evolution is also part of the answer. Before humans developed language, there was no means to insert fiction into animal brains. A "mental unit" simply corresponded to something you noticed by means of direct personal sense perception. You see a rock, and form a "rock" mental unit. You see a bird, and form a "bird" mental unit. You see a tiger and form a "tiger" mental unit. You see a cliff, and form a "cliff" mental unit.
Well, when all your mental units are valid, because you have no means of creating bogus ones, what force does evolution (natural selection) apply? Answer: You better accept and trust your mental units... otherwise you will walk in front of the tiger and be eaten, or walk over the cliff and be killed. So evolution of all species included, right near the top of the list of necessities, "trust your mental units or die". And so, lifeforms evolved to embrace this notion. Trust your mental units. That might even be so fundamental as to qualify as a "prime directive" of sorts.
Later, humans developed language, and learned to create mental units even when they were not in the presence of something new to justify creating a mental unit. When another human would utter some new "word", other humans would naturally create a new mental unit, attach the label (the "word") to the mental unit (which is how humans "look up" their mental units when speaking or thinking), and leave it sitting there.
Without a reason to do otherwise, humans don't bother labeling their mental units as "real" or "fiction". Thus, humans have their default completely backwards. They accept their mental units as real, and take them seriously, unless the hordes of chimps around them agree they should label one as "fiction". Which they do for "SantaClaus" eventually, but mostly do not for the endless list of other fictions like "god" and "government" and "authority" and "king" and "official" and "law" and endless more.
I flat out understand this stuff. I flat out understand the nature and architecture of consciousness. I have no confusion about these topics, no more than someone who has designed and implemented a dozen CPUs would be confused about the nature of CPUs or op-codes or segment-violations or other aspects of a completely familiar technology.
So to me, it is absolutely hilarious, and even more scary, to see the vast majority of very smart humans on this planet be completely incapable of understanding such trivial, simple, obvious facts... facts about their own consciousness, which is their freaking identity after all! You'd think people would care a bit about the very core of their being. But they don't. For practical purposes, only the top-level predators care about such things. And they care because they are the programmers who enslave the entire species by making sure regular folks never understand the simple but fundamental secret of "real" versus "fiction" --- and do something about it, with their own brains.
The consequences of this situation are so absurd and ugly, it boggles the mind. The bulk of humanity says endless completely insane things like "we need government to protect us from predators"... completely ignoring the fact that the vast majority of the worst predators call themselves "government officials", and vast majority of death and destruction for thousands of years are caused by "government officials" and their "government agents" (military and various forms of cops). The facts are right in front of everyone, for everyone to see. Yet the vast majority of human beings is now so utterly brainwashed and clueless, they actually cannot imagine life without slave masters to threaten them and destroy them, all in the name of freedom and safety!
At this point in history, the human brain is little more than an Orwellian mobius pretzel. Human beings, RIP.
honestann, i look at it a little differently. government and religeon do exist, and they serve a very valid purpose. humans have worked for millinia to try to solve the biggest issue we have always faced, how do we get along with one another. i never understand people who get worked up about the 10 commandments in courthouses. they were the first enlightened ideas and formed the basis for peaceful society. so what if they came out of christianity? they are great ideas. what part of thou shall not kill is objectionable? the invisible eyes that one feels that keep bad behavior in check are a wonderful social construct. same as santa. we aren't talking about angels lounging on clouds, it's about putting a check on impulsive, destructive behavior.
Pretty much everything in the 10 commandments was in much earlier documents. Nonetheless, there is nothing wrong with people trying to grasp reality - that's a very good thing.
However, the moment they invent fictions to "enforce" or "officialize" anything, that's when war beings. That's when anything useful they ever thought up goes completely out the window, and the advocates of "thou shalt not kill" then immediately advocate wiping out whole swaths of humanity.
And these large scale atrocities are always justified on the basis of one fiction or other. You'll never find a time in human history when all of a sudden a million individuals "other here" independently decide they need to travel a thousand miles and kill a million individuals "over there" --- unless you have some grandiose fiction involved.
There just isn't anything about reality to compel humans take such crazy or destructive actions.
So let's not hear about religion and government as ways for humans to make peace. The entire history of mankind is absolute proof that fictions like religion and government make war, not peace. These fictions also thwart advancement (through the notion of "official truth").
NOTHING about these fictions is benevolent. NOTHING about these fictions slows down the nasty, destructive acts of mankind. In fact, they always expand and exaggerate the scale and scope of destruction. This has always happened, throughout history.
Individuals simply do not have enough interest in other individuals outside their personal contact to go out of their way to travel dozens or hundreds or thousands of miles to kill or enslave others. ONLY when their brains are shoved full of these fictional collective ideas do humans go so crasy, and cause so much disaster.
The fictions DO NOT GOOD. NOT ANY. Don't tell me, hey, fundamental questions like in old religion and philosophy are important. Sure they are. They are important to me. But the moment you create any of these fictions like "religion" or "government", the questions are lost and the force, intimidation, theft and destruction begin.
Therefore, there are ZERO benefits to holding these fictions in your brain, and endless obvious reasons not to, very well illustrated by at least 5,000 years of human history.
To claim that government or religion puts a CHECK on destructive behavior simply ignores 100% of the facts of reality, and the entire history of mankind. That is a good example of PR that is the diametric opposite of reality. The predators spew out these kinds of lies and braindamaged fools accept them without bothering to look at reality, to look and see whether the claims correspond to what actually happens.
Let me be clear. There is ZERO need for "god" or "religion" or "government" or "anything supernatural" to justify a life of peaceful interaction with our neighbors. NO NEED WHATSOEVER. The fact that anyone believes anything remotely like that just goes to show how insane human beings are, and how much BS their brains are willing to hold.
All these prohibitions against violence and destruction come from "natural ethics". What is "natural ethics"? It is an identification of "causality applied to human action". This "ethics" was invented by humans who were the first (or very early) producers. Before humans learned to be producers (take actions that create what would not otherwise have come to exist), all humans were predators.
As natural predators, humans had no "ethics" and had no need for anything like "ethics". They did have a "modus-operandi" however, which was "get away with whatever you can"... just like predators of other species.
But then some humans learned to be producers. They learned to collect seeds, plant them in the ground at reasonable distances from each other, make sure they received water when the rain did not fall for some time, and protect the plants that grew until the nuts, fruits and veggies were ripe and ready to eat.
This was an extraordinary boom for mankind, since he could produce vastly more goods than he could ever find by predatory means (wandering around and killing whatever he found). But such a life was completely impractical once non-producers learned where the producers were tending their crops and animals. The predator humans would just come, grab, steal, and consume whatever they wanted, with no concern for how the goods came to exist. In such an environment, there was absolutely no point in being a producer. When crops or animals were near ready to harvest, the predators would show up and droves and take everything, leaving nothing for the producers who created it.
There was, therefore, no incentive to be a producer, even though life was made vastly safer, healthier and more abundant by productive means.
To save their superior lifestyle, the producers invented "ethics". It was not religious, it was absolutely, completely and utterly natural. It was pure fundamental science, namely "causality" (cause and effect), applied to human action. The point was, the producers took actions (which were the cause) and the result was abundant goods that would not otherwise have come to exist (the effects).
So the statement of the ethics they created was essentially this.
Every individual should enjoy/bare/suffer 100% of the consequences of their own actions, and enjoy/bare/suffer 0% of the consequences of the actions taken by others.
This meant that each individual producer gained the benefits (and problems, and losses, and disasters) of the actions he took to grow his crops and raise his animals. He did not get the effects of the work done by his fellow producers, only his own. And his fellow producers didn't get the effects of his work either. Everyone enjoyed/bared/suffered the consequences of his own decisions and actions.
This not only set the terms for interactions between producers, but also set the terms of interactions between producers and predators. The implicit statement was, "I produced this, and that makes it mine. If you try to steal it, I'll kill you".
In other words, the producer ethics said "if you are a fellow producer, I will treat you like a fellow producer, and expect you to treat me the same... and if you are a predator, I will treat you like a predator, and shoot you dead".
The result of this absolutely, completely, utterly natural ethics was... such an extraordinary improvement in the quality and quantity of goods that the human population boomed to thousands of times its previous size, which was limited by the quantity of goods produced by naturally occurring processes in the natural environment. To return to "predator rules" today would necessitate the elimination of approximately 99.9% of the human population of earth (which is what the top-level human predators ultimate want).
All the above is pure nature. There is nothing mystical, nothing supernatural, nothing religious, no faith required or permitted.
To be sure, various humans with authoritarian leanings adopted portions of these understandings of the natural world, and attached them to various completely arbitrary nonsensical mystical fictions... which we call "religion".
This is not necessary. To take perfectly natural understandings of perfectly natural phenomenon and pretend they come from some fictional doofus in the sky... does not give them credence. In fact, it removes the ultimate credence (the nature of reality) and substitutes completely arbitrary FAKE "authority". What's even more offensive is, they even stole the basic premise from the originators. They claimed we must obey their super-authority (their "god") because he was the "creator" (in other words, the producer).
The entire VALID, NATURAL argument was stolen from the first producers, and recast into a completely absurd alternative, then shoved down the throats of about 7 billion humans for the past 5000 years.
Humans need not submit to the authority of the promoters of these scams who stole, then perverted the natural and utterly benevolent understanding that allowed human life to expand so amazingly. Just the opposite. They need to recognize that the lessons we need are 100% natural, and have nothing whatsoever to do with faith, or mysticism, or religion, or authority, or government.
No, the lessons are clear. The difference in the behavior and consequences of producers versus predators and parasites is clear. We don't need some clueless authoritarian priest to tell us how nature works, to tell us that productive activity generates vastly more goods and quality of life. That's obvious to those of us with eyes and half a brain.
The ideas you imagine came out of christianity did not come out of christianity... or any other religion. They came out of common sense and a fundamental understanding of a few fundamental aspects of reality. I've read just a little of the works by investigators who tried to go back as far as we can to find the first instances of these basic ideas that you and I would both call "benevolent". They go back vastly further than christianity, and in fact go back before any religions. They seemed to be something along the lines of "words of wisdom" from very early peoples... ideas they considered important... ideas like I noted above (the fundamental metaphysical nature of producer versus predator, and production versus destruction, and cause and effect applied to human action).
Any human being who looks at the history of mankind should be ashamed to attempt to attach anything benevolent to religions or governments. Both of these, plus every other form of authoritarianism has been nothing but a huge cause of pain, agony, injustice and destruction. Sure, they pretend to "own" some of those old wisdom that pre-date any of their fictitious organizations or god-fictions, but anyone with eyes should see they are simply playing "bait and switch" and "grain of truth" games to sucker in the masses for the abuse they have in mind.
Humans don't need bogus fictions to be human, or to be benevolent. Just the opposite. We all have very good reasons to treat each other well and fairly. Full-time full-bore producers understand this completely. Predators pretend we need them to protect us from... what? Them? Yeah, that works (sarcasm).
one thing it took me a long time to fully grasp (for fear of conceit) was that the vast majority of people live only on the surface. you or i grasp the human condition, most people retreat to base the instant things get uncomfortable. the basic decency that was trained into my generation of americans doesn't exist in the current generation or several nationalities of immigrants. it isn't inate, though i spent a large part of my life believing it was. i believed that because i spent most of my life surrounded by people with similar home training. i thought good was the default setting of human behavior. i know better now. good stuff honestann, catch you on another thread.
Government is like beauty, it only exists in the mind.
I don't give a fuck what the general population or the mainstream media thinks about ANYTHING.
You should. The fuckers are dangerous.
Keep a weather eye on the teeming masses of idjits. Figure out what they're up to and what their latest asinine agenda is.
Be especially alert if they start ballyhooing around waving flags and shit.
Adam Weishaupt was anti-government and anti-organized religion, which is the same thing. His codename was Spartacus and he moved the public to kick royal butt on 2 continents. So I am inclined to think him a hero, and his detractors fools and duplicitous scoundrels who usurp his legacy while doing the exact opposite. The empire never ended. The game is afoot!
Getting rid of Central Governments
The Rule of Law without the State
http://mises.org/daily/2701
Highlights of the Xeer
There is time in this short talk to give you only some of the highlights of the Xeer. First, law and, consequently, crime are defined in terms of property rights. The law is compensatory rather than punitive. Because property right requires compensation, rather than punishment, there is no imprisonment, and fines are rare. Such fines as might be imposed seldom exceed the amount of compensation and are not payable to any court or government, but directly to the victim. A fine might be in order when, for example, the killing of a camel was deliberate and premeditated, in which case the victim receives not one but two camels.
Fines are used in another interesting way. It is expected that a prominent public figure such as a religious or political dignitary or a policeman or a judge should lead an exemplary life. If he violates the law, he pays double what would be required of an ordinary person. Also, it should be noted, since the law and crime are defined in terms of property rights, the Xeer is unequivocal in its opposition to any form of taxation.
A third point about the Xeer is that there is no monopoly of police or judicial services. Anyone is free to serve in those capacities as long as he is not at the same time a religious or political dignitary, since that would compromise the sharp separation of law, politics, and religion. Also, anyone performing in such a role is subject to the same laws as anyone else — and more so: if he violates the law, he must pay heavier damages or fines than would apply to anyone else. Public figures are expected to show exemplary conduct.
Fourth, there is no victimless crime. Only a victim or his family can initiate a court action. Where there is no victim to call a court into being, no court can form. No court can investigate on its own initiative any evidence of alleged misconduct.
For 45 years I went blindly along with what the media reported, what the government reported...even defended what they said against 'Liberals'. I was one of the sheep, fast asleep, doing my own thing and never questioning the things I was told.
That changed in one day back in 2008 when TARP was passed. I was awakened by gallons of ice water thrown onto my warm, sleeping back. I woke up pissed.
I've been pretty much anti-government ever since. Now I question the legitimacy in every aspect of government from local to federal.
There are things I bellieve government should have a hand in...Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution defined them, but mine boil down to these:
establishing standards, and enforcing them, for weights and measures;
removing predators from society;
promote peace;
enforce contract law;
raise a limited military for a specific purpose.
Can't think of what else they are legitimate in.
Congrats.
Hopefully you will continue your quest and come to understand that government is an unnecessary evil.
This is complete and utter nonsense. EVERYBODY hates Goobermint, Lefties and Righties alike.
Brandon Smith is an ideologue who purports to support the Constitution, but CENSORS anyone with opposing views to his own Fascist interpretation of Goobermint and Capitalism. He is a complete hypocrite only concerned with selling himself and his absurd ideological constructs.
We have had innumerable dealings with this hypocrite on the Diner, he is a straightforward shill for TPTB.
RE
This is complete and utter nonsense. EVERYBODY hates Goobermint, Lefties and Righties alike.
Brandon Smith is an ideologue who purports to support the Constitution, but CENSORS anyone with opposing views to his own Fascist interpretation of Goobermint and Capitalism. He is a complete hypocrite only concerned with selling himself and his absurd ideological constructs.
We have had innumerable dealings with this hypocrite on the Diner, he is a straightforward shill for TPTB.
RE
Nebbish...
Why do people put locks on their doors and alarms in their homes and cars ? If life is so wonderful and only a few identifiable nutters are romaing around they should be easy to contain.
Maybe it is because we are lousy at recognising personality disorders and how widespread mental illness is, especially the more daily exposure you have to the carriers........that is why they are always in your face, to disarm you and reduce critical awareness and self-presevation instincts.
Why don't we simply assume that seriously disordered, even evil, people gravitate towards the light switch so they can control what others see and plunge them into darkness when it suits them ? The power of government has increased because of the Soma drug the population has been fed through mass-medication, sugar-loading of food, TV and Entertainment-Drug mental lethargy.
It is not just pigs that get processed in the New Era it is the people that consume the products....the pig processing chain starts in front of your TV
One may notice the gradual shift in emphasis from wrongful actions to "wrongful" attitudes. In reality, no opinion or thought should ever be punishable, but that is the goal.
Comments tonight are world class mind candy. What a pleasure.
It's not "wrong", as long as you're comfortable saying you're an ANARCHIST.
AND: by doing so, you play right into the hands (better said, the verbal straightjacket) of the Leftists who create this cliche, to distort and devalue its critics.
So go right ahead, author, play right into it. *rolling eyes*
I pity the fool.
Being PRO LIMITED government, (or obversely) ANTI BIG goverment is one thing.
THAT'S what the Left (yes, and big-gov RINOs as well) can't stand.
Buuuuut...that's not what this author is saying. NOT AT ALL, regardless of his bleatings after-the-fact (see his comments at his homepage).
No. Being an anarchist is commendable. I don't need to be "led" and I don't need to be controlled and I don't think any of you do either.
What plays into their hands is doing exactly what you just did, in smearing anarchism. You yourself just established a premise, which is that it is reasonable according to "rational" people to want some government, and that only crazies would want no government.
Anarchism is the only way humans will finally stop wars.
If you don't have leaders, war becomes impossible.
Think how many good people and resources would not have been wasted over the millenia if there had been no war.
How hard would you have to work if you were not feeding the monster that is government and its war and money addictions?
There's nothing wrong with that, but capitalists ultimately require government to back them up.
Ding! Ding! Hence the massive contradiction that is -insert chuckle here- "anarcho-capitalism."
You can't exploit a landbase to make products without a "deed" to the land which is stamped and defended (with force) by a government. And people don't just go signing up for wage labor beause it's fun and makes them feel meaningful. People toil at wage labor because the commons have been enclosed and divvied up between the owning class (both state and private.)
Obeying in NOT enuf - You must LOVE your Rulers.
Baaaa...... Baaaa.....Baaa.....
Since we are into drawing historical parallels to understand the basic conundrum as posed by the poster :
A man once asked if it was despicable to be anti-parents ; 'cos he had suffered the indifference of selfish parents when in childhood.
He got his reply when he had his own children : He had to choose whether he wanted to be like father and have the curse of Oedipus Rex falling on his blood line. Creon : My daughter Antigone...?
You are asking the same question : In your inabliity to separate the baby from the bath water you will fall into the Rex Oedipus family trap.
Don't sell that to the American people. Condemn bad governance, condemn crony capitalism; don't condemn the Republic and the function of good institutions. They are like family, nationhood; historical life line from father to son.
Every nation like every family has its bad moments. We believe in the good and cut out the bad if we be men of substance.
The belief in government and Republic must prevail over destroying the institutions. WHy?
'Cos it leads to the exact opposite every time : A guy crosses the Rubicon.
Thats History. (Napoleon, Lenin, Mao, Hitler etc. etc.)
The people that created this Republic had an adult revolution a revolution for something not a teenage revolution against. Our revoulution suceed because there was a unified vision and an objective beyond throwing off the yoke of tyranny. If we are to slay the Leviathan we must have that common vision and it must be the vision of a return to the Republic of our past.
On the 22 Nov 2013 we will be celebrating the 50 th anniversary of when the US REpublic started to morph into land of Oedipus Rex and consorts.
Minus Hamilton. There were forces pushing for powerful centralized gov't from the get-go. They obviously eventually won out.
Man, someone swallowed the bait, the hook, the line, and the sinker!
The rod too!
Hillary Clinton said "I'm sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we're Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration".
As much as I think she's wrong about most everything, she's absolutely right about this!
Anti-totalitarian is normal.
"
Hillary Clinton said "I'm sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we're Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration". As much as I think she's wrong about most everything, she's absolutely right about this!"
She'll say that until she's president, then will be just like every other totalitarian. And what does it matter?
"He's just a speech." Hiliary Clinton.
When that government was the government of Nazi Germany then no, it isn't wrong to be anti-government.
We're not ANTI-government! We're LIMITED government!
It's apples vs. oranges! But the propaganda progressives' only strategy is to LIE! Their entire strategy is to DECEIVE!
Hence, the Prevaricator President is a member of the Prevaricator Party!
SO Booosh was a progressive, as all those other NWO presidents before him?
bingo
That gov't governs best which governs least. T. Jefferson
Government is like fire: a useful servant but a fearsome master. G. Washington
Two radical conspiracy theorists. (sarc)
Who is "we?" Speak for yourself. I am very anti government. I'm anti all government. Humans can self organize in a voluntary and consentual manner.
Government like capitalism (or communism) is just a tool to control people and extract value from them so so-called "elites" can live well off of the backs of others.
People ate grains in the 50s and weren't mega sized. It's more than just grains.
If history has shown us anything, it is that all governments turn tyrannical when their economies begin to collapse.
Being Anti-Government is one of the fundamental planks of being an American. "Patriotism" has more to do with dissent from government then obediance to government.
Asking if it is wrong to be "anti-government" puts the weight on the wrong party. The first question to ask is: "is it wrong for government to be anti-citizen", which is exactly what the self-funding, self-protective, self-centered Leviathan State does.
We the people are merely resisting enslavement. The proper question then, I would be, is it wrong to resist being enslaved?
10 thumbs up if I could!
Why would anyone be against the rich human primates enslaving the rest of the poor human primate ?
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." --Washington
It seems necessary to recite this quote from time to time as occasion warrants. Unfortunately, the occasion is occurring more frequently as government rapaciously grows in power while pleading false poverty.
See http://chuckbaldwinlive.com/Articles/tabid/109/ID/246/Whats-More-Importa...
An Excerpt:
As to loyalty to a President merely because he is President, Theodore Roosevelt may have said it best:
“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth–whether about the President or anyone else.”
Viewing your government as a cabal or even criminal organization SHOULD be that rule rather than the indictiable exception.
It is not (should not be) a crime. One of the most recogizable founding fathers was a very strong proponent of questioning the big gov.
If you feel strongly enough to act against your government - you are not necessarily a terrorist, it's more likely that you're a patriot. If you're treated like a terrorist for your view, then put it into the public domain and let the rest of us decide. Don't pick up a gun and shoot first. That makes you a piece of shit asshole.
It's never wrong to question and demand answers from those in power. Despite how the media makes that stance feel, it only proves that you are sane enough.
For fucks sake, this country was formed by hotheads with an expectation of government that is not entirely disimilar to the majority of posters here. Entirely different but not entirely disimilar. Read the Constitution, it's informative and a surprisingly good read, honestly.
Antigovernment = Antifragile
I don't need to be governed. I don't believe you need to be governed.
To the people in government everyone who opposes them is considered to be an enemy. So a patriot and a terrorist look the same through shit coloured glasses.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." -- Frédéric Bastiat.
If you are not anti-government, you haven't thought about it carefully enough.
Anti Government, indeed. Why would anyone, ANYONE ever EVER give the soviets an electronic monitoring station (other than their embassy, that is) on U.S. soil. These are decisions that are so incomprehensibly stupid that it boggles the mind to think that anyone could even remotely consider it even for a nanosecond. Jeez we have some seriously stupid people in government.
People in government are people in government - doesn't matter what their geographical location is.
Hope this helps you think more clearly.