Category Archives: government
Why Politics Today is Simply About Violent Power Struggles
The Law Cannot be Moral, it Can Only Be Legal
Dictated good–that is, the establishment of “law” under the auspices (and given absolute efficacy and purpose by the State–centralized, consolidated violence) of Governing Authority (power) to subjective and abstract ends, like “common good”, or the “people’s mandate”–is not morality. It is legality. And the two are completely antipodal. For if the law, not the individual, is the standard of morality to which men may be forced then choice is irrelevant. And if choice is irrelevant, moral agency is irrelevant. And if moral agency is irrelevant then there is no morality.
Aphorism of the Day: Why Every Government is a Tyranny
A government, no matter what kind–no matter how ostensibly free–must always be at its heart a tyranny because of the basic premise which must underwrite it:
The efficacy of man’s existence is better–that is, supremely–realized through force, not his will.
The Governing of Man Says Everything About His Nature
Ask yourself why we assume government is the superior social system. Of course, we already know the answer: because left on its own, mankind dissolves into an orgy of sin.
This is not some trite or casual observation. This admission is a PROFOUND metaphysical statement, with ramifications affecting every ounce of human existence. So, before we make such a claim, wisdom demands that we fully examine and fully understand what it is we are declaring.
The root of the issue is this:
Does man need governing?
To argue that the efficacy of human existence is only truly realized–or maximally realized–when man is forced by government into morality is to argue that man is, on his own, by the choice and free will endemic to him, inadequate to existence.
Once this is accepted, tyranny and death must inevitably follow. Because if man is Able, then governing him is a contradiction to his existence, and this will be manifest by his sacrifice to the State. If he is Unable, then his existence is an oxymoron and we must concede that he should be sacrificed to the State.
One small problem:
The government is run by man. So now what?
The only resolution to the contradiction is to reject the underlying metaphysical assumption. Man is not Unable; He is Able. Man then does not need governing; he needs NOT to be governed. Man’s Will and Choice and Self-awareness are not an abberation or a distortion of nature, they are the means by which he truly LIVES.
Individualism vs Collectivism: Why Groups Must Hate Each Other
Why Only the Individual Can Represent the Moral and Epistemological Standard; and Why Only Voluntarism is Benevolent
It is impossible to accept and embrace cultural or racial differences if the ideology promoting such “acceptance” declares these differences as the very ontological root from which human beings spring. That is, if the metaphysical primary of me is “whiteness” or “secular-ness” and the metaphysical primary of another is “blackness” or “Muslim-ness”, then our relative existences are mutually exclusive. Which means that there can be no acceptance of differences since the differences themselves are absolute. I can no more traverse the chasm of collectivist-identity metaphysics in order to appreciate the perspective of a “different” culture or race than I can appreciate the “perspective” of a softball. There is no common frame of reference, since the very absolute root of what I am (e.g. “White”) is by definition the antipode of the absolute root of the other (e.g. Black).
And because these metaphysical roots are infinitely contrary, I do not actually exist to him and he does not actually exist to me.
Once this philosophy is combined with moral value, necessarily declared and established by the ruling governing Authority, because collectivist value can only be pragmatically realized or made at all relevant through force, there can be no integration of groups; only the categorical elimination (destruction…death) of the imposter. Meaning that if “whiteness” or “secular-ness” is bad and “blackness” or “Muslim-ness” is good then I have become the imposter. I, in assuming that my existence has any value or efficacy, become a rank moral affront to the “good” group. The “lie” of the value of my existence distracts and subtracts from the actual value of the existence of the black man, or the Muslim man, for example. (Which is where, by the way, we get the political phenomenon of “white privilege”…it’s a predictable manifestation of Marxist economics, which is a function of collectivist metaphysics.)
My very presence, my very birth, then, must be regarded as a pervasive sin, the only absolution for which is death. The act of snuffing out my “artificial” life is thus the moral obligation of those in the “true” and “righteous” group. It is the only cure for what has made me so infinitely offensive: the fact that I was born at all.
Now, a plug for voluntarism:
The aforementioned is yet another reason why societies established under the auspices of a central Authority…the State; the Government; the King, always distill down to oppression, exploitation, and economic collapse. As soon as an “Authority” is established to represent “the people”, humanity MUST be defined collectively…and therefore, collectively valued. Which means politics will always, always, always dissolve into a “them” versus “us” mentality, which the violence of the State, wielded by the “true” group, must mitigate. Which means that all such societies will eventually become tyrannies.
Choice and Individual Will cannot by any means or any measure be combined with Force and Collective Need.
Period.
Why the “Border” Doesn’t Actually Exist as Such to Governments
The State–the Government–cannot rationally recognize any limitation to its power. (And this fact is purely logical, where I define “logic” here as rational consistency.) This is because government is Authority, and Authority is Force. Force qua Force is not compatible with, nor can it fundamentally be subject to, ideas, reason, compromise, Truth, ethics or morality, context, reality, opinions, pragmatism, rights, etc.. In other words, government, at root, is monolithic violence, and thus all of its actions–when all equivocations, paradoxes, and prevarications are distilled down to the logical axioms–are merely the exercise of violence for the sake of violence.
I understand that this is difficult to both accept and to apprehend/comprehend, but the rationally consistent fact is that actions spurred on by authority, by definition, are mutually exclusive of anything requiring the recognition of individual existential/ontological “rights”; that is, the right of the free intellectual and moral agent to utterly own himself and therefore manifest his own singular life according to his own will…and this axiom (that man is only man if there is the corollary of Will) is a metaphysical, ethical, and social primary which necessarily (rationally) demands that all individual interactions with one another be completely voluntary. But as soon as you inject Force via the notion of “governing Authority” into the equation, you have again by definition contradicted all manner of free and voluntary expression. That is, Force and Will are utterly incompatible, because Will requires categorical voluntary interaction in order to actually be willful.
Now, all of this is to say that geopolitical “borders” are of no relevance to government except as a yet another means of asserting its power; an expression of Force, to the infinite expansion of itself. They will be “opened” or “closed” not in service to the sanctity of a nation’s individual citizens, who are also merely a target of its Force, but only in service to its own Infinite Absolute.
So, for those of you scratching you heads at the utter disregard our government has for US border security at the moment, and the persistent demagoguery it displays (along with the left in general, which is the overtly statist of the two major political philosophies) with respect to calling border security advocates racists and imbeciles, now you know why. It is merely pursuing the logical ends of the premises behind it.
What You’re Really Afraid Of, Brother and Sister American
You who are afraid of white nationalism, you aren’t afraid of white nationalism. And you who are afraid of black nationalism, you aren’t afraid of black nationalism. And you who are afraid of radical Islam, you aren’t afraid of radical Islam. And you who are afraid of the Moral Majority, you aren’t afraid of the Moral Majority. And you who are afraid of refugees, you aren’t afraid of refugees. And you who are afraid of socialized medicine, you aren’t afraid of socialized medicine. And you who are afraid of illegal immigration, you aren’t afraid of illegal immigration. And you who are afraid of the socialists, or fascists, or anarchists, or unregulated markets, or corporate bribery, or corporate welfare, you aren’t afraid of…that.
What you are afraid of, is that you will have no choice. You are afraid that when some people get what they want, you will be compelled at gunpoint to take what you don’t want.
What you are afraid of…
Is force.
And you should be. There is one Master, you see; one State. And those of its children it decides it shall love at any given moment, will be fed its children that it decides it shall hate.
And you are afraid you will be that child.
Why Can’t We Just Leave Politics Out of Our Relationships?
Though politics may be an uncomfortable topic for many, having the potential to rend relationships irreparably in two, or turn a happy Thanksgiving gathering into a screaming hell, knowing someone’s politics can and often is immeasurably important.
This is because it necessarily speaks to one’s interpretation of reality, one’s core ethics and values. And since most people are not prepared to define their metaphysical, epistemological, and moral primaries (they have them, they just can’t articulate them) qua metaphysics, epistemology, and morality, talking politics is, I would argue, a great vehicle for learning them. Because , let’s face it, everyone has has an opinion–an articulated, and generally well thought-out opinion–on politics. Everyone. Even those who insist they don’t almost certainly do.
Political opinions are more than just a window to the soul…to the rocky depths of a person’s entire belief system. They are a giant glass dome which offers a view into the foundational character of a person–a character based upon the philosophical assumptions by which they interpret all of reality, including and especially how they value other people, of which I am one. And how and when I expose myself to philosophical assumptions from which either positive or destructive behaviors will flow towards me is something over which I prefer to have control. Because this is the key to happiness. That is, the key to happiness is avoiding abuse. And abuse is always applied as an extension of the most basic ideas about the nature of reality, and especially the value of others. And one’s politics quickly and easily illuminate these ideas.
Add to that, you and I are not superheroes. We have a very limited amount of emotional and intellectual capital to spend, not to mention time. I’d rather spend it on people who do not hold drastically different assumptions, as those relationships are almost certain to fail, and with that failure will cost me the requisite amount of psychological and emotional fallout.
In 44 years of life never had a good–well, a close–relationship with a leftist–a collectivist: Marxist, socialist, Statist, a communist, or mystic (a religious person whose beliefs are rationally inconsistent…which is most of them). The reason is simple: these people concede something about human nature–at the most basic level; at the level of metaphysics and ontology–that is the categorical antipode of what I believe. This root assumption about humanity–about me–gives meaning and purpose to all they think and do. And because the core beliefs are so utterly different, there is no real compatibility in the relationship, and this must become evident sooner or later. In other words, if your fundamental beliefs are utterly opposed to mine, so must your behavior be also. And that’s behavior which I must, due to the value I place upon myself and truth, avoid to the greatest degree possible.
In other words, it’s hard to play checkers with you if you bring a racket to the table and proceed to swing at the pieces. If we have completely different fundamental ideas, we are playing at completely different games.
So…that’s why politics.
unreformingtheology 