Category Archives: government

When the State Asserts that Man is Both the Standard of Good and the Threat to the Good: The rational failure of a Government by and of the People

Epistemology, Ethics, forced compliance, government, individualism vs collectivism, Violence, Voluntarism, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Man must be protected from himself is the argument for government in a nutshell. And this? Is a very bad argument. This sophist rationale is why freedom is never to be found under the auspices of government.

Any government.

Ever.

Anywhere.

Because freedom which is function of what an external monolith of “legal” violence, like the State, will allow is not freedom. It is, by definition, control. The phrase “that which allows us to be free” contains a fundamental contradiction in terms. Freedom does not and cannot operate under the auspices of threats of violence for stepping out of external, codified boundaries. And to say that these boundaries are what guarantees that freedom itself (in the form of unfettered wicked indulgence by the naturally depraved human being) doesn’t become oppressive is another contradiction, as it makes the restraint of freedom the foundational moral operation; it makes the limitation of freedom the means, so the argument goes, of ensuring freedom.  But unless man is able to choose his actions, by not having his behavior fundamentally dictated and coerced through threats of violence should be stray from an abstract, subjective (yes, subjective) legal code, there can be no morality. Why? Because there can be no choice. For if man cannot choose to do good, then man cannot do good at all. And actions which are compelled at gunpoint are not choices!

It is not necessarily intentional. It is not necessarily rank deception. It is most likely a function of the prevailing philosophy regarding the nature of man which has never, to my knowledge, been reconciled to reason…where reason is a place that cannot ever, under any circumstance, accommodate contradiction.

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Because of man’s tendency to do evil, so the argument goes, left to his own unfettered (un-governed) devices society must inevitably dissolve into an orgy of tyranny and oppression.

This is a contradiction which nullifies the argument, and renders the practical application of it both impossible to any efficacy and ultimately destructive. For man cannot be both good and evil. What I mean by this is that he who is the standard for morality–for good–cannot also be he who wrecks this standard. He from whom rights are said to be derived cannot also be the one who poses the threat to the those very rights. Man cannot be the primary thing worth saving and the primary thing which jeopardizes that salvation.

Now, of course we may rightly assert that some human beings truly do evil and therefore are capable of harming others, but this is not the argument with which we are presented in defense of government. The argument is that human beings on the whole cannot fundamentally be trusted to exist outside of the power of coercive authority because human nature itself is depraved.

Human beings have the natural tendency toward evil, so it is argued. They are prone to it–not by choice, but because of naturally determined instinct. What this mean is that when presented with the option of good or evil, human beings, absent any external arbitrating, force, will do evil. They must…because they are driven in such an unfettered circumstance by their nature, and their nature is evil. Therefore, human beings must be governed by an outside force–a governing authority– in order to keep their natural evil in check, and to (hypocritically) ensure the existence and perpetuation of the human race by means of a rigid and regulated social apparatus that ultimately dictates all behavior by threatening its denizens with violence should they dare resist its self-proclaimed mandate to control man for the sake of man. And this is the metaphysical and ethical foundation upon which government stands. Go and see for yourself. Ask 20 people why we need government and I guarantee you that 20 of 20 will regurgitate, in some manner, the hypocritical philosophy I just explicated.

This foundational philosophy ironically and certainly inadvertently undermines the oft-trotted argument that government can exist of the people, for the people, and by the people. That is, it undermines–by its inherent and fatal contradiction–the assertion that people are the standard of the law which the government exists to uphold. If people are by nature evil, and this the root of their very being, then it simply cannot be argued that they may simultaneously represent the good which government must protect. On the contrary, if man is by nature evil, and can no more help doing evil when left to his own devices than he can help walking upright, then people in fact represent a singular threat to good. Because their nature is inexorable and absolute evil, they are the antithesis of good. And therefore, people must be controlled, not set free, by an external coercive authority. And this is exactly what they are, no matter what anyone says to the contrary. You cannot claim to be free in an environment where all of your actions are ultimately a function of what someone else says you are allowed to do.

Further, the  idea that a government can exist in the interest of a humanity which is by nature evil is to assert that the government is a proponent of evil. This, however, is never the argument for government, because though true, it wrecks the benevolent facade of coercive authority. On the contrary, the argument is always that government exists for good, and that without government, man’s evil nature will reign supreme. And what this means is that it is not man, but the government which is actually the standard of good. The people are not the standard. The people are not that from which moral “rights” are derived. The government is. For the “rights of the people” are irrelevant absent government, because absent government man’s natural evil must subordinate them. The people, then, are not the source of moral dictums, but are the singular danger to them. They are not the value of the law. They are the enemy of it. So they must be controlled.

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You cannot legitimately argue that man represents that from which natural moral rights are derived, and yet at the same time claim that he is evil and represents the singular existential threat to those rights, and therefore must be governed. This is to create in man a dichotomy of nature which contradicts and nullifies itself. If man is good, and this as a function of his very nature, then it is both irrational and counterproductive to establish an institution which exists to compel moral behavior by “authoritative” (legalized)  violence. For to insist that the naturally good man must be compelled to good through violence is to deny that man can do good on his own, and this denies that his nature is in fact good.  And if man is evil, and this a function of his nature, then man cannot possibly be compelled to good, for good is utterly exclusive of his being. To compel him to good is an impossible task. For man, being evil, perverts good, he does not cultivate it. It’s like adding poison to a meal and calling it seasoning. The only thing for which the naturally evil man is fit is destruction. In either case, government is utterly beside the point.

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To attempt to use force to compel the naturally evil man into goodness, or to prevent the naturally good man from losing his goodness is like attempting to compel the frog out of his frog-ness, or to prevent the frog from losing his frog-ness. The frog is by nature absolutely a frog. No amount of violence and no amount of coercion can make him a rabbit. And since the frog is by nature a frog he can pose no threat to his own frog-ness. No centralized coercive authority is necessary to prevent, nor is it effective in preventing, the frog from losing his frog-ness.

The man who is good by nature has no use for government, because by definition he cannot lose his goodness. Nor can he pose a threat to his own natural goodness (i.e. left to himself, man who is “naturally” good when governed somehow becomes “naturally” evil when free of government). Because to claim that he may pose a threat to his own goodness is to deny that he is, in fact, naturally good. And the man who is evil by nature has no use for government, because he cannot be compelled to do good. Because to claim that the man who is evil by nature can be synthesized into good is to deny that he is, in fact, naturally evil. The naturally evil man is fit only for destruction. And if he is destroyed, then there is no one to govern, and thus there is no point in government.

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And all of this leads us to another truth.

Man cannot be defined according to a moral nature. And of course once we no longer define him this way, there is no rational philosophical argument for the existence of government. Why? Because government is force, and force is violence, and violence nullifies choice. The man who cannot choose is a man who cannot express his own agency; and the man who cannot express his own agency cannot express SELF. Thus, he cannot BE himself in any relevant way.

You see, man is not a moral agent in the sense that morality defines him. Man is a rational agent. What this means that man is the epistemological frame of reference for all he knows; all he thinks; all he does. That is, man being himself, where “himself” is the agent who conceptualizes existence and thus makes it relevant and meaningful, is why man knows what he knows. Because he is SELF, and absolutely so, he is able to make distinctions between good and evil, and truth and fallacy. He is the arbiter–the reference–for knowledge.

Man’s nature is not a moral one, it is to be the reference for morality—for good and evil; truth and fallacy.  HE defines and applies these things. Therefore, it is HE who governs them, not the other way around (the other way around being to make man subordinate to the very ideas and concepts which are meaningless and useless without him). For what is Truth unless it is true TO AND FOR MAN? And what is goodness unless it is good TO AND FOR MAN?

These things are worthless. They are nothing. They are non-existent.

It is man who serves as the epistemological and moral standard for all of the reality in which he exists. Man cannot rationally or productively be subordinated to a legal moral standard that derives the entirety of its value and relevancy and meaning from him. Man cannot serve moral standards, moral standards must serve him. Man does not serve truth. Truth serves him.  To erect a set of rules for man to follow and by this claim he is good is to strip man from his rightful place as the only rational moral and epistemological reference for all of truth and goodness. And once this happens, truth and goodness have no meaning…and so the rules are pointless. Rules to which man is subordinated by violence are ultimately his destruction, not his salvation.

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James Madison’s Flawed Logic, and Why Government Cannot Possibly Function According to “Justly Derived Authority”

Authority, government, Voluntarism,

“…the rulers who are guilty of such encroachment exceed their commission from which they derive their authority and are tyrants. The people who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves.” ~ James Madison, ‘A Memorial in Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments’ – 1786

What Madison fails to see is that one cannot establish an Authority and then expect that that Authority has any obligation to him at all. For if one is sufficient and capable to act (exist) on his own behalf, then no authority is needed; only cooperation. If Authority is needed, then it is implied that one is not sufficient, nor capable, to act on his own behalf. In which case, by what reasonable argument can he expect Authority to regard anything he thinks or wants?

The answer is: none

Authority will only ever act according to its “derived consent” or the “people’s mandate” when it is in fear of the people. This, of course, undermines both its point and its definition. Which is why Authority, once established, makes, as its singular priority (with the overt support of “patriots” like even Madison, himself), the assurance that it is never in such a position. Which is why all governments get bigger, not smaller.

Madison’s mortal flaw is his attempt to synthesize consensus and coercion. This is simply impossible by the very nature and definition of the concepts.

Why a Political Candidate Asking For Your Vote is an Exercise in Logical Fallacy

Authority, government, individualism vs collectivism, Metaphysics, Violence, Voluntarism, , ,

A person cannot ask an individual (such as you or me) to vote for them for a position of authority (rulership) over a given collective (e.g. the “People”, the “Nation”) because:

1. Individuals are not collectives, they are not groups. What is good for the group (e.g. “common good”) can never simultaneously be good for the individual. Because the definition of “good” is utterly dependent on which metaphysical paradigm you are using:

a. The group as a direct function of the individual–which is rationally consistent and makes ALL interactions within the group voluntary and mutually beneficial, because the individual is recognized as the moral and epistemological Standard.

Or b. The individual is a direct function of the group–which is rationally inconsistent, and is the premise upon which ALL authority/submission  models, like governments, are based. Individual will is subordinated to the group (again, the “common good”); and this always requires force because it renders individual will, and thus individual thought–which is in fact the moral and epistemological frame of reference all people necessarily possess–irrelevant. This nullification of individual will makes individual choice moot, which makes it necessary and incumbent upon the Authority (e.g. the State) to use force (violence and threats) to compel moral behavior…where again morality is defined according to the group (the good of the group, or again, common good); and where the “group” is necessarily defined by those who force the compliance of individual behavior to its promotion.

Why?

Because individuals cannot define it, because their minds and wills are antithetical to the group metaphysic (the individual as a function of the group). Thus, those in charge of forcing individual compliance to the group become those who define the group…essentially by default.

2. Force and Ideas are mutually exclusive. If an idea is to be implemented by threats and violence, then the idea itself–more specifically, its rationale (that which makes it true, and thus good, and thus efficacious)–is completely beside the point. Convincing someone of the efficacy and logic of your idea is irrelevant when your ultimate goal is to occupy a position of power by which you will give them no choice as to whether or not to comply with it. And this exclusiveness between force and ideas means that no candidate–no would-be agent of State FORCE– can give you an actual reason to vote for him. For the office he seeks denies the relevancy or even the possibility of your ability to understand and choose right and good things. And this being the case, how can this would-be agent of State force make a plea for your vote where he offers you an idea, which involves a rationale, which rests upon on the assumption that you can in fact understand and choose right and good things?

The answer? He cannot. It’s a contradiction. And there is no contradiction which can ever  be effectively applied. Running for public office is about deception in order to acquire votes, and this to attain the power to do nothing more than receive a specious legal pass for doing violence, even for the most well-intentioned politician.

Force and Ideas are Entirely Incompatible

Authority, Ethics, government, individualism vs collectivism, reason, Violence, Voluntarism, , , , ,

Your intellectual and/or moral agreement with an idea is entirely irrelevant if those who are not in agreement are forced to submit to it. Once force is used to implement an idea, the idea no longer matters. Force becomes the sole point and purpose, and death becomes the sole outcome. This is axiomatic. Force nullifies choice; and choice–between good and bad, and truth and falsehood, for instance–is the product of conceptualization, which is the root and efficacy of thought. And ideas are a function of thinking.

And thinking is how man defines Self, via his powers of conceptualization. And the definition of Self necessarily implies the relevancy and purpose of Self, which is thus the relevancy and purpose of the existence of the Self.

Therefore, use force, destroy ideas, which destroys the Self; that is, Humankind.

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Aphorisms: On the underlying fallacy of governments

Aphorisms, Authority, government, Violence, Voluntarism, , ,

Apologetics for government begins with the right of the good man to be protected from the avarice of the evil. From this we can directly extrapolate the following equation:

The right of the virtuous to be protected from the non-virtuous = the vast majority of men shall be subject to the authority–that is, the coercive violent force–of a tiny minority of men.

This is a logical fallacy.

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To protect virtue by compelling all men through violence entirely wrecks virtue by nullifying moral and intellectual agency and is a contradiction in terms.

Which is why all governments are simply degrees of tyranny.

Free Societies vs Tyrannies are Measured on a Bell Curve: Why all States are tyrannies at root

Authority, government, Uncategorized, Violence, Voluntarism, , ,

Force is both the ideological and practical root of government, which is why all governments are fundamentally tyrannical, with “free” vs “oppressive” states measured merely in terms of degrees of force. That is, the amount of violence applied to compel individual compliance to the necessarily subjective, and therefore capricious, dictates of the State is the rubric for whether or not a State is considered a tyranny, not the absence of violent coercion, which is the only actual measure, I submit.

Now, the lower the degree of force would seem to indicate the reciprocal: a greater amount of freedom. However, this is not really the case. “Freedom” in a state which uses less overt violence to compel obedience suggests not more freedom, but merely less overt forms of control. This can be anything from subliminal or implied violence which never manifests because of fear, or more effective thought control–that is, a greater prevailing assumption amongst the populace that they are somehow free, in spite of the object and obvious fact that government, by nature and by design, depends upon the exact opposite. (On a side note, having a “Constitution” which “guarantees” specific individual freedoms, which the ruling class and its witting and unwitting advocates can reference when the state is accused of mendacious largess, and which ostensibly integrates individual freedom with the force of government even though these are clearly mutually exclusive concepts, is very helpful in spreading the specious notion of a free society under the absolute auspices of violent coercion.) In addition, I suppose it’s possible that less overt force might simply be due to the fact that the state hasn’t yet fully evolved into the inevitable (and therefore ipso facto) tyranny of which the philosophy undergirding it demands.

But here is why tyranny, regardless of how it may be perceived by the great unwashed masses, is always categorical at an given moment:

Force, as a metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, and political basis–that is, the rank philosophical foundation of government–is absolute, and thus the underlying real degree of tyranny is always complete. For without absolute tyranny, which I define as the fundamental “right” to compel behavior by force (violence), there can be no such thing as government. Remove force, and people are not organized by command, but by cooperation. And cooperating is NOT the same thing as being governed.

Under government, all human actions can occur  only when the government allows it. This is total tyranny. Period. And because the auspices of violence are absolute by virtue of the underwriting philosophy, all actions of people existing within a society organized according to governing principles, which are rooted in the power of the state to force, are necessarily absolutely violently compelled.

Unfortunately, as long as people confuse comfort, or even “relative freedom”, with freedom, there will be no freedom.

As long as freedom is plotted on a bell curve, there can be no such thing.

Voluntarism: A brief series of arguments for why government for man’s good is a contradiction in terms

Authority, government, Metaphysics, Violence, Voluntarism, , , , ,

The presumption behind all government is that men, absent the “fail safe” of forced compliance to moral behavior (which is a contradiction in terms, because force nullifies choice; and without choice there is no moral act) must necessarily act to exploit others because man’s–that is, the individual’s–root nature is base and mendacious. This assumption has many problems, not the least of which is that it does not explain how those in government get a moral pass on their own inherent depravity.

Further, it also implies and then forces a collective identity because all governments must exist for a “collective” or “common good”, which, being outside the natural context of the individual, must fundamentally be defined as an esoteric standard, available fully only to those in authority (governing officers, who are really a sort of a political priesthood) who claim to represent this Common Good as its messengers and ministers.  However, the very fact that the collective good as a moral standard must elude the individual because of his inexorably and self-evidentiary singular existential and metaphysical context, means that the “common good”cannot possibly be manifest. Because of the singular nature of human existence, each person must decide for himself what is good or not, based upon a rational Standard of Good, which is the Individual, which means each person’s inexorable and absolute right to their ownership of Self. “Common good” must be forced upon the individual in object violation of their individuality, destroying them in favor of the new statist metaphysic: collectivism, as a function of the power (violence) of the State. This in turn undermines and eventually crumbles these governments which exist in service to “common good” because whether collectivists want to acknowledge it or not, without the individual, there is no public; there is no “common” society. Which means that there is no “common good”. Thus, all States founded upon such a moral standard are rooted in a contradiction which, beyond its label, can have absolutely no substance.

And there is no government which is not a function of collective identity, and thus “collective” or “common good”. Because such a government could only act and exist to serve the specific individual at any given moment. And there is nothing which can do that except the individual himself. In which case, it’s not a government, it’s free will; its cooperation; it’s voluntarism.

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The root problem of government is that it necessarily implies that men, absent force, cannot be expected to make moral choices; and therefore there is no moral standard that doesn’t ultimately rest upon violent coercion. This destroys man at his root metaphysic. It means that man must be compelled to morality, which is the corollary of Truth, in spite of himself. That is, in spite of his nature. That is, in spite of his existence. Meaning man cannot successfully exist unless the very  substance of that existence, his nature, is destroyed. Man must cease to exist in order that he may exist.

And it is upon this terrible contradiction that all governments are built.

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The use of force to compel moral actions is an object contradiction in terms. Absent choice, morality is a nullified concept. And an outcome not based upon a free act of the will of the moral and self-aware agent is not a moral outcome. That which denies the individual his individuality–that is, his free agency–cannot be said to ultimately benefit any individual.

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On the one hand, those who argue the necessity and efficacy of government will assert that men are by nature lacking virtue–“ineptitude and vices of men”, as von Mises once said–and therefore cannot be trusted to engage voluntarily into a moral sociopolitical system. And yet government, which is a collection of those very same men men, is somehow not naturally lacking virtue.

How does one square this circle?  How do we resolve the contradiction that says that men need government because they lack fundamental virtue; and yet government is comprised of men? How is it mere paradox instead of rank fallacy that individuals won’t naturally choose good, but collections (the governors and the governed) of individuals will?

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If it’s true that men, left to themselves, will necessarily dissolve into all manner of vice (murder, theft, deceit, and your basic general exploitation) then the last thing I would think makes sense is to give a minority of men the majority of violent, coercive power. You’d have to assume that those men could wield it righteously in order for good to be the rational outcome.

But of course as soon as you assume this you’ve undermined the fundamental moral (and metaphysical) argument for government in the first place:

That man left to himself, by nature (man qua man), will not act righteously.

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Absent the foundational and absolute right to violence to compel behavior, there is no government in any capacity. This being the case, force against man is not really minimized, as some minarchists argue is the benefit of government, it is absolute.

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I think we confuse the right of collective self-defense with the right to compel behavior by violence or threats of violence before any actual offense occurs.

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The idea that there is no free market absent the ever-present threat of violence, which I submit is itself a form of violence, seems a contradiction in terms. How is man either free or moral if he acts out of fear of violating the State and not because he understands it is wrong to violate another man? The State is not the moral standard, the individual is.

And I’m not saying the state is evil. I’m saying that forced morality is a contradiction in terms. Which means the state is neither evil nor good. It’s impossible because it is a contradiction.

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The moral do not need to be governed, for they are moral. The immoral will not, or cannot, recognize the State’s moral authority. This means that the only way for the State to “work” is if it threatens the first and neutralizes the second. And neither action equals freedom by any legitimate definition. So you merely get a State which exists for the sake of its own power; its own legal “right” to violence for the sake of violence.

 

 

Dictated Good is Not Morality, it is Legality

Authority, government, Violence, Voluntarism, , , , , ,

Dictated good does not equal morality, it equals legality. And if there is legality there can be no morality because they are at categorical odds with each other. Legality is “right” behavior compelled by violence–by the explicit “right” of violence possessed by the Authority, most often the State, to complete by force behavior to an abstract standard called “The Law”.  Thus, legality nullifies choice because violence to compel outcomes makes human will irrelevant.

“Obey or else” is not a choice; it is the antithesis of choice because punishment (the “or else”) is not something that can SERVE the individual; rather, it is the removal of his ownership of self, which is commensurate with the removal of his existence–which is literal when death is the punishment (and the ability to legally put to death is the very irreducible thing which underwrites all of governing authority; without which, there is no government). And if choice is nullified then moral agency is moot. That is, if one is not choosing to do good then there is no good being done, period. Which means that under the auspices of “dictated good”, or “right behavior” made manifest by violence (or the threat of violence, or punishment, which is the same thing) of the Authority which has been established specifically to govern human social interaction (which includes economic value exchange), there can be no moral act. For I submit that when morality is said to be a function of, or even a corollary or partner to law-keeping, then morality is impossible. Force, which necessarily and utterly underwrites the law, in any measure contradicts choice in absolute measure because the two are mutually exclusive. They cannot be integrated.