It's a government: a coercive civil authority, a monopoly-violence institution. There's no form of it that will be good. The only good is if good-hearted people push back against intrusions. Otherwise, it's all tyranny at varying speeds of travel.
I believe in Government, I don't believe in the Monopoly on the use of Force, IE the State. I've written about that a few times, Jacob Hornberger has as well, and much more eloquently I might add. The government should have never been granted any monopoly on the use of force, but I can fully understand why the Founding Fathers wanted one.
(I'm a pro government anti-state libertarian. But I'd like to see self government as the ideal, especially because I have no desire to govern anyone but myself.)
Their liberty and heads were on the line, literally. If they didn't create a government strong enough to withstand attack and England was likely to want revenge, they wouldn't be long for this world. They wrote a lot about how Big government would protect Liberty and that's often the context under which they talked about government protecting liberty.
They knew how close they were to defeat and were darn near in a panic when they pushed for the Constitution.
Both the Federalists and anti-Federalists agreed that they needed to do something to keep their new country safe from future attacks and that meant finding some way to give the feds more power.
I wonder if they would have considered a less powerful federal government if they didn't need to worry about an attack coming before the population grew large enough to handle attacks more easily? And since we are so big and have nukes and everything do we really need a State or could we deal with a government (state minus monopoly) instead?
A corporation has a board of governance, a family could be considered a form of government. An individual will govern themselves or others will govern their behavior for them.
The idea that the only form of Governance or Government must include a monopoly on the use of force is a myth that needs to be challenged.
We the people Granted or "allowed" our leaders to have authority they should not have. We haven't stopped them, therefore they were granted their monopoly by us.
I don't believe it's possible to live without some form of governance, hence there will always be government, but we don't need to have an all powerful government which we hand over a monopoly on force to.
People hear the term Government and automatically assume THE STATE but it's a thumb and fingers argument. All States include a form of government, not all forms of government are The STATE, in fact the vast majority of the time we govern ourselves with informal structures that have little or nothing to do with the STATE.
Until humans are perfect (never happen) we will find ways to govern each others bad behavior, I'm in favor of that, in fact I'm fairly sure everyone is, nobody wants us to really be Ungovernable, what we want is for the most people to govern themselves so we don't have to do it for them, after they violate our property.
OK, I'll accept your use of "government" in your article to mean any type of order-keeping, though that's not what government typically means; government assumes the order is kept through imposing the order in a might-makes-right fashion. "Self-government" is actually an oxymoron, though it's become popular in culture to speak of it.
> We the people Granted or "allowed" our leaders . . .
"We the people" doesn't exist. There is no such thing as a collective will. And there's no such thing as a collective that obtains the power to grant coercive civil authority through any means other than might makes right. If you speak of "We the people" then you speak of the kind of government that you call THE STATE.
Correct, we have been conditioned to believe that Government means the same thing as The State, as if allowing them to have monopolistic power is the ONLY way to govern. I'd like to change that thinking, so that people don't automatically think STATE when they hear Government. They aren't the same thing.
And I use the term "we the people" as a short cut for All of US, WE as in YOU and I and everyone else, WE allowed it did we not? Or are we all excused and hold no blame? Using "We the people" is my way of taking a shot at the idea that our collective will, or self determination as a whole ie, democracy, as espoused by the founding fathers, is actually held subordinate to the STATE. I'm mocking the idea that We the People are somehow in charge whenever I use that specific term.
Our STATE claims to be doing all of these great things for WE the People and We the People do in fact exist, we are real people right? Saying We the People don't exist would be like saying We the White people of America don't exist. We exist, we don't have collective rights as white people nor do we have collective rights as Americans in general, but we exist as a group of people.
There is in fact a group of people who are collectively called Americans, however I agree with anyone who says We the People have no collective rights. I could have as easily said WE Americans, it's the same thing. Do We American's not exist?
It's the same exact thing as saying "We the people of America", there is no implication here that We the people have collective rights. At the same time "WE" as a group have abdicated our rights, we gave them away by failing to defend them.
If I came across as suggesting we have group rights, that wasn't my goal. My point is that We the people, as in all of us individuals who are also part of a group called "we the people", have allowed them to control far more than they should have been allowed to control. I'm willing to place at least some of the blame on myself because I think that ultimately each of us is responsible for allowing this creeping authoritarianism, which was made possible by the state monopoly on the use of force.
Group rights don't exist, groups of people do. "We the people" is just my way of Saying We American's and I use that phrase specifically to emphasize the hypocrisy of the STATE which pretends WE have the power, when clearly WE do not.
"We, the people, Granted or "allowed" our leaders to have authority they should not have. We haven't stopped them, therefore they were granted their monopoly by us." ---
"We the People..." is often cited as a preamble to explaining how something objectionable made something even more objectionable, forming the basis for advancing change or explaining frustration. I have a problem with its inclusiveness - as if, in a rural baby nation, a tiny group of intelligent, rich guys could 'speak' for the few million other residents. Hence, the integrity and applicability of the "We" is problematic. The monopoly on Force is the standard and objectionable constant. Can a society have laws without the means of sanctioned Force to enforce them? Can a few million people actually agree to a body of laws and sanctions without an enforcement entity? Or will there always be one(s) looking for the exception? Is there no way to rule innocent men except by making everything illegal? (Rand)?
"At the same time "WE" as a group have abdicated our rights, we gave them away by failing to defend them." -- Agreed. However, defending them against the usurper with a monopoly on Force might not have the results we hope for!
The subject/concept is a target-rich environment for reasonable discussion. I hope it continues here.
> We the People do in fact exist, we are real people right?
People exist, as "people" is the plural of "person."
The People -- turning a plural back into a singular -- gets sketchy, because it's almost guaranteed to be done for the purpose of assigning to a group an attribute that a group simply doesn't have (like a will).
"We" is also a way to assign blame to a collective, which serves to absolve individuals. Whenever I hear someone talk in plurals, I wonder who they're talking about. If they're trying to mean me as part of their we, I almost always object, unless there's a clear prior reference to something that actually include the identified invividuals. For instance, you and I, Brad, are engaged in a written exchange, so you could say "we" are engaged in a written exchange, as long as it referring to you and me and not some open-ended abstraction.
While I'm glad to know you're basically using the term "We the People" to make fun of aspects of the STATE, I'm not with you on "We the People" existing as anything beyond an abstraction fit for satire/parody/mockery.
I hope that someday we might at least break their monopoly on the use of force. We need parallel courts and cops, they can't have the power of taxation, that needs to return to an actual voluntary basis, etc. etc. Voluntaryism, I guess is close to what I envision, at most a night watchman state.
I think our Dear Leaders might give us the chance someday to recreate this mess, it will all have to crash and burn first, but, is that really impossible the way we are going? Look what happened after the end of the last Cold War. Cold War 2.0 could result in some interesting opportunities, especially because as far in debt as we are, it's unlikely to be us who wins this one.
I think we need to break their state monopoly on the use of force, they should never have been granted one in the first place. Once they had that monopoly we could no longer consider ourselves Sovereign people, instead there was a Sovereign State, this fact was confirmed when the North invaded the South.
If the People of the South had any Sovereignty at all they could have left.
I think of it like a homeowners association, who's under a management contract. We the homeowners, (landowners) should be able to vote with our feet and hire new management at will. The founding father's agreed with this in theory, but not in practice.
The fact that we can't vote with our feet is a direct result of the monopoly on the use of force, which they granted to the feds.
I can understand why they felt the need for a strong union, obviously without one England could come back with a vengeance or other nations could take advantage of the weakness. But still, it was a mistake to grant the feds their monopoly, they abused it almost immediately, (Whiskey rebellion)
But do they really need their monopoly now and is it currently keeping us safer? We aren't safer, we are closer and closer to destruction every day and thirty five trillion in debt.
If they bankrupt our nation, I'd suggest that any form of government, that we might decide to create while we rebuild, should not include a monopoly on the use of force.
Either a free people will fight of their own free will to protect their nation or they haven't created a nation worth fighting for.
Ps, I'd make sure we kept the nukes.. yeah I know Rothbard didn't like nukes, but I have to go with a few subs and nukes, as the cheaper and safer alternative to keeping an army large enough to keep us safe, especially with all the enemies we have created. Plus I think it would actually be safer for the world for us to have a few nukes, rather than a large standing army as well. It's too tempting for leaders to use their standing armies.
It's a government: a coercive civil authority, a monopoly-violence institution. There's no form of it that will be good. The only good is if good-hearted people push back against intrusions. Otherwise, it's all tyranny at varying speeds of travel.
I believe in Government, I don't believe in the Monopoly on the use of Force, IE the State. I've written about that a few times, Jacob Hornberger has as well, and much more eloquently I might add. The government should have never been granted any monopoly on the use of force, but I can fully understand why the Founding Fathers wanted one.
(I'm a pro government anti-state libertarian. But I'd like to see self government as the ideal, especially because I have no desire to govern anyone but myself.)
Their liberty and heads were on the line, literally. If they didn't create a government strong enough to withstand attack and England was likely to want revenge, they wouldn't be long for this world. They wrote a lot about how Big government would protect Liberty and that's often the context under which they talked about government protecting liberty.
They knew how close they were to defeat and were darn near in a panic when they pushed for the Constitution.
Both the Federalists and anti-Federalists agreed that they needed to do something to keep their new country safe from future attacks and that meant finding some way to give the feds more power.
I wonder if they would have considered a less powerful federal government if they didn't need to worry about an attack coming before the population grew large enough to handle attacks more easily? And since we are so big and have nukes and everything do we really need a State or could we deal with a government (state minus monopoly) instead?
> I believe in Government, I don't believe in the Monopoly on the use of Force
Then I don't know what you mean by Government.
> The government should have never been granted any monopoly on the use of force
How is a government "granted" anything? This assumes there is some entity granting the powers than previously has those powers.
A corporation has a board of governance, a family could be considered a form of government. An individual will govern themselves or others will govern their behavior for them.
The idea that the only form of Governance or Government must include a monopoly on the use of force is a myth that needs to be challenged.
We the people Granted or "allowed" our leaders to have authority they should not have. We haven't stopped them, therefore they were granted their monopoly by us.
I don't believe it's possible to live without some form of governance, hence there will always be government, but we don't need to have an all powerful government which we hand over a monopoly on force to.
People hear the term Government and automatically assume THE STATE but it's a thumb and fingers argument. All States include a form of government, not all forms of government are The STATE, in fact the vast majority of the time we govern ourselves with informal structures that have little or nothing to do with the STATE.
Until humans are perfect (never happen) we will find ways to govern each others bad behavior, I'm in favor of that, in fact I'm fairly sure everyone is, nobody wants us to really be Ungovernable, what we want is for the most people to govern themselves so we don't have to do it for them, after they violate our property.
OK, I'll accept your use of "government" in your article to mean any type of order-keeping, though that's not what government typically means; government assumes the order is kept through imposing the order in a might-makes-right fashion. "Self-government" is actually an oxymoron, though it's become popular in culture to speak of it.
> We the people Granted or "allowed" our leaders . . .
"We the people" doesn't exist. There is no such thing as a collective will. And there's no such thing as a collective that obtains the power to grant coercive civil authority through any means other than might makes right. If you speak of "We the people" then you speak of the kind of government that you call THE STATE.
Correct, we have been conditioned to believe that Government means the same thing as The State, as if allowing them to have monopolistic power is the ONLY way to govern. I'd like to change that thinking, so that people don't automatically think STATE when they hear Government. They aren't the same thing.
And I use the term "we the people" as a short cut for All of US, WE as in YOU and I and everyone else, WE allowed it did we not? Or are we all excused and hold no blame? Using "We the people" is my way of taking a shot at the idea that our collective will, or self determination as a whole ie, democracy, as espoused by the founding fathers, is actually held subordinate to the STATE. I'm mocking the idea that We the People are somehow in charge whenever I use that specific term.
Our STATE claims to be doing all of these great things for WE the People and We the People do in fact exist, we are real people right? Saying We the People don't exist would be like saying We the White people of America don't exist. We exist, we don't have collective rights as white people nor do we have collective rights as Americans in general, but we exist as a group of people.
There is in fact a group of people who are collectively called Americans, however I agree with anyone who says We the People have no collective rights. I could have as easily said WE Americans, it's the same thing. Do We American's not exist?
It's the same exact thing as saying "We the people of America", there is no implication here that We the people have collective rights. At the same time "WE" as a group have abdicated our rights, we gave them away by failing to defend them.
If I came across as suggesting we have group rights, that wasn't my goal. My point is that We the people, as in all of us individuals who are also part of a group called "we the people", have allowed them to control far more than they should have been allowed to control. I'm willing to place at least some of the blame on myself because I think that ultimately each of us is responsible for allowing this creeping authoritarianism, which was made possible by the state monopoly on the use of force.
Group rights don't exist, groups of people do. "We the people" is just my way of Saying We American's and I use that phrase specifically to emphasize the hypocrisy of the STATE which pretends WE have the power, when clearly WE do not.
"We, the people, Granted or "allowed" our leaders to have authority they should not have. We haven't stopped them, therefore they were granted their monopoly by us." ---
"We the People..." is often cited as a preamble to explaining how something objectionable made something even more objectionable, forming the basis for advancing change or explaining frustration. I have a problem with its inclusiveness - as if, in a rural baby nation, a tiny group of intelligent, rich guys could 'speak' for the few million other residents. Hence, the integrity and applicability of the "We" is problematic. The monopoly on Force is the standard and objectionable constant. Can a society have laws without the means of sanctioned Force to enforce them? Can a few million people actually agree to a body of laws and sanctions without an enforcement entity? Or will there always be one(s) looking for the exception? Is there no way to rule innocent men except by making everything illegal? (Rand)?
"At the same time "WE" as a group have abdicated our rights, we gave them away by failing to defend them." -- Agreed. However, defending them against the usurper with a monopoly on Force might not have the results we hope for!
The subject/concept is a target-rich environment for reasonable discussion. I hope it continues here.
> We the People do in fact exist, we are real people right?
People exist, as "people" is the plural of "person."
The People -- turning a plural back into a singular -- gets sketchy, because it's almost guaranteed to be done for the purpose of assigning to a group an attribute that a group simply doesn't have (like a will).
"We" is also a way to assign blame to a collective, which serves to absolve individuals. Whenever I hear someone talk in plurals, I wonder who they're talking about. If they're trying to mean me as part of their we, I almost always object, unless there's a clear prior reference to something that actually include the identified invividuals. For instance, you and I, Brad, are engaged in a written exchange, so you could say "we" are engaged in a written exchange, as long as it referring to you and me and not some open-ended abstraction.
While I'm glad to know you're basically using the term "We the People" to make fun of aspects of the STATE, I'm not with you on "We the People" existing as anything beyond an abstraction fit for satire/parody/mockery.
I agree with the author and the comment of DCS. Gary Barnett writes about the evil of government, any government, on his substack.
I think the only escape from the State is death and even then the State taxes the corpse and demands papers from it.
I hope that someday we might at least break their monopoly on the use of force. We need parallel courts and cops, they can't have the power of taxation, that needs to return to an actual voluntary basis, etc. etc. Voluntaryism, I guess is close to what I envision, at most a night watchman state.
I think our Dear Leaders might give us the chance someday to recreate this mess, it will all have to crash and burn first, but, is that really impossible the way we are going? Look what happened after the end of the last Cold War. Cold War 2.0 could result in some interesting opportunities, especially because as far in debt as we are, it's unlikely to be us who wins this one.
Brad, winning to me nowadays means leaving this planet and humanity behind. I am beginning to think that Homo sapiens is a failed genetic experiment.
Patience, Timmy - The UFO's are about to make their move. Get your ticket at the station...etc.!
Brian, At least that would be a change in the scenery.
You might wanna get clarification on those 'anal probe' rumors before jumpig aboard!
Brian, Hahaha! As my friend Rick told me at SeaTac as I boarded my long flight to Belem, Brazil, "Don't forget to tape your ass shut!"
I'll give Brian's Question a shot.
I think we need to break their state monopoly on the use of force, they should never have been granted one in the first place. Once they had that monopoly we could no longer consider ourselves Sovereign people, instead there was a Sovereign State, this fact was confirmed when the North invaded the South.
If the People of the South had any Sovereignty at all they could have left.
I think of it like a homeowners association, who's under a management contract. We the homeowners, (landowners) should be able to vote with our feet and hire new management at will. The founding father's agreed with this in theory, but not in practice.
The fact that we can't vote with our feet is a direct result of the monopoly on the use of force, which they granted to the feds.
I can understand why they felt the need for a strong union, obviously without one England could come back with a vengeance or other nations could take advantage of the weakness. But still, it was a mistake to grant the feds their monopoly, they abused it almost immediately, (Whiskey rebellion)
But do they really need their monopoly now and is it currently keeping us safer? We aren't safer, we are closer and closer to destruction every day and thirty five trillion in debt.
If they bankrupt our nation, I'd suggest that any form of government, that we might decide to create while we rebuild, should not include a monopoly on the use of force.
Either a free people will fight of their own free will to protect their nation or they haven't created a nation worth fighting for.
Ps, I'd make sure we kept the nukes.. yeah I know Rothbard didn't like nukes, but I have to go with a few subs and nukes, as the cheaper and safer alternative to keeping an army large enough to keep us safe, especially with all the enemies we have created. Plus I think it would actually be safer for the world for us to have a few nukes, rather than a large standing army as well. It's too tempting for leaders to use their standing armies.