You are in an abusive relationship right now. And I want to liberate you from your abuser.
You may be comfortable in your relationship. You may be slightly uneasy about it. You might even be totally unaware that it’s abusive, but it is. And you must leave before something terrible happens. Your partner thinks they own you. They violate you without your consent on a regular basis. And they justify the abuse using warped logic and emotions and make you feel guilty for questioning them. With whom are you in this relationship? Your government.
In order to understand your own self worth, you must first understand the basic concept of ‘property rights’. This concept is the foundation of freedom. It states that every adult human owns themselves and their justly acquired property, and no man shall violate their person or their property.
Most people I’ve met would agree with that statement on its face. However, most people I know also help the abusers justify their serial violations of their property rights. This is not dissimilar to when a girl (let’s call her “Sarah”) understands that physical abuse is wrong (it violates property rights), yet at the same time defends her abusive boyfriend who beats her to a pulp every night.
“He really loves me”
“He doesn’t mean it”
“It was my fault for messing up dinner”
“He was just disciplining me”
We’ve all heard at least one version of this warped defense of a violent creature come from their victim. This phenomenon is similar to ‘Stockholm Syndrome’, in which a victim grows to like and/or love their kidnapper.
I am not blaming the victim. I understand that humans are emotional creatures. Some of us seek logic to improve our understanding, but it’s a constant struggle to choose logic over our primal emotional motives, because our emotional instincts (fear, hunger, attachment, sexual desire, etc.) are what have, historically, kept us alive.
Think back to what you told Sarah the last time her partner abused her. You likely said some version of “He is violent and you need to leave him. There is no justification for the initiation of violence, and you deserve much better. Please leave him as soon as you can. I will help you get through this!”
Why don’t we use the same logic (because humans are emotional first and logical secondarily) when it comes to the ultimate abuser: government?
Much like Sarah’s abusive boyfriend, the government first and foremost paints itself in the role of ‘protector and caretaker’. As boyfriends (and sex traffickers and pimps) often brainwash their victims into thinking, governments first must convince their victims that “without me, you wouldn’t survive!” Yes, I have heard that exact statement from a woman who was sex-trafficked and kept as a prostitute by a pimp for years. When I asked why she didn’t simply leave, she told me that she really felt like she could not survive without her ‘daddy’. It was depressing to hear, but that is what abusers do to their victims. By the end of my conversation with her, I understood that she was trapped by a mental barrier more so than a physical constraint. That being said, prostitutes who are caught trying to escape their pimps……well, let’s just say they are treated similarly to slaves who are caught trying to leave their masters, both in the 1800’s and today.
Your federal, state, and local governments convince you that the world has so many horrible dangers that you could not possibly fend for yourself, just like Sarah, that “weak, stupid 110-pound beautiful 17 year old girl”. Politicians and their cronies in the media constantly scare citizens with threats of terrorism, drug gangs, psychotic homeless people, and infectious diseases. Because most people do not quite understand the above threats very well, they lazily outsource their concern to the government in exchange for ‘just a little tax money and some laws that we must obey in exchange for the government’s services’. If I abused the 17 year old girl but convinced her that the outside world is dangerous and I would protect her, feed her, and let her stay with me, you’d condemn me, wouldn’t you?
Now that the government and their armed enforcers have you convinced that a society without a powerful government is too dangerous to even consider, you are trapped. This allows them to slowly and methodically turn up the heat a tiny bit each year so that you never really feel a big difference in the amount of control they have over you. Increase one tax by 0.05% here, increase an obscure gun regulation there, and so on. Of course, when an opportunistic tragedy like a shooting does occur anywhere in the nation with 330,000,000 people, politicians capitalize on it and pass ‘groundbreaking’ new legislation that eliminates tremendous amounts of our liberties and empowers politicians massively. But they pretend that it’s all about protecting us, of course.
“Honey, I bought you this iPhone X! It’s incredible. And it will let me know wherever you are via real-time GPS tracking. That way, you never have to worry about whether I’m watching over you. This will let me keep you totally safe, because I care about you so much!”, the manipulative pimp says to his victim.
And life goes on like this for the prostitute and the American citizen for years. Progressively, each victim loses more freedom and their abusers gain more power. They gain this power via ‘legislation’ and via the mental barriers that they erect within the minds of their victims. At this point, both types of victims have been so thoroughly brainwashed by their professional victimizers that they become their abuser’s greatest asset. When a person attempts to help a sex-trafficked prostitute who does not fully comprehend her terrible position, she might tell the good samaritan to go to hell because her ‘daddy’ takes great care of her. Similarly, citizens call me evil and reckless when I offer them a hand to leave the ‘plantation’. Even after their daddy steals 50% of their income each year before they even see it, brainwashed ‘patriots’ continue to fulfill what they believe is their duty to their protectors in DC. When State governments literally make it a crime to smoke a plant or to work in your industry without their written permission (occupational license), the naive victim accepts the reins of control as an inevitability of a ‘civil society’. When local cops pull you over and brandish their gun, demand that you stop and let them interrogate you, and then force you to give them hundreds of dollars or face dire consequences, you obediently comply; partly out of fear and partly out of righteous duty to your master, just like Sarah and the teenage prostitute.
After being abused by the cop on your way home from state-approved work, 30% of which was taxed by the federal government, you begin to warp logic into a mental gymnastics routine so that you can reconcile the abuse you are taking. You tell yourself that on the federal level, a 30% tax on your income is fair because the federal budget is $5 trillion annually, and the righteous leaders like Trump, Obama, Schumer, and Pelosi do so much to protect and provide for you. The state does require so many people to obtain an occupational license before working because they just want every type of work to be safe and effective. And the local cops are ‘mostly good people’, so although you wish they wouldn’t pull you over and fine you for not wearing a seatbelt in your own car, they are really just trying to protect you from yourself. As you continue to think about it, you recall that each level of government was also ‘duly elected’ by the people they serve, so they certainly can do anything they please. In fact, you voted for your town councilor, mayor, governor, and president, and they all won! You are being represented in the government and you have a say in the law! This brings a smile to your face.
As Sarah thinks about her violent boyfriend who beats her and then makes her pay for groceries and do all of the cooking and cleaning, she performs a similar mental gymnastics routine to make herself feel better.
“I chose him.”
“I COULD leave him anytime, but I WANT to stay with him. He’s not perfect, but nobody is. I love him, and he loves me. He cares about me so much!”
“What would I do without him, anyway? I’m a pretty teenage girl and the world is a scary place. I could be abused by some guy out there!”, she shudders.
These techniques are common survival mechanisms to help us feel better about uncomfortable situations. This is psychology 101. As I mentioned earlier, humans are primarily emotional and are not inherently logical, like some people would like to think. This concept was explained by the world-famous author, Dale Carnegie, when he explained that the most famous murderers and gangsters of all time used emotion and warped logic to justify their acts – they still considered themselves to be innocent, even moments before being executed. Think about it: When was the last time you admitted to doing something truly wrong? Immoral. Evil. If you are human, you’ve likely done things that were wrong; even things you knew were wrong and willfully did despite that knowledge. I know I have. Yet, have you ever admitted that what you did was wrong? If you have, you know how difficult it is. It’s much easier to rationalize your decision. “I didn’t pay for that candy bar, but 711 is rich and won’t be harmed by me stealing it, anyway.” “Yeah, I hooked up with a woman while my wife was away, but what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her, right? I deserve to have some fun, and she has been shutting me out for weeks. It’s only fair.”
Again, we are emotional and it is nearly impossible to condemn ourselves. So, we justify immorality, both when we are the perpetrators and when we are the coerced victims.
“Come on, man. Cops aren’t that bad. Sure, there are a few bad apples, but they really do protect us. Most of them are good people. Could you imagine a society with no government-funded police?? It would be chaos! That’s what the Antifa anarchists want! And you agree to pay taxes by living in society. And you get all sorts of great government services in exchange for a few bucks in taxes. You should be thankful for the government!”, says the concerned patriot.
In short, nearly all cops in the US are inherently immoral agents of the state, as long as they are willing to enforce any and every law, no matter how unconstitutional or immoral. Remember the lesson on ‘property rights’ from earlier in the article? The premise that you likely agreed to? It states that no person can morally violate another person or their property. There was no asterisk implying that a ‘vote’ in which one politician barely beats another politician in a binary choice between two crooks leads to one ‘winning’ due to 14% of the voters supporting them. If voting – democracy – could supercede property rights, then theft and gang-rape are legal as long as there is majority approval of the act in the given scenario. If I don’t have the right to go to your house and rob you at gunpoint, how can I delegate such authority to any other man by way of a vote? Isn’t that exactly what I do when I vote for a congressman who then increases taxes and takes that money from you by employing armed enforcers who extort you with violence? Isn’t it also a violation of property rights when cops pull you over and take your money? What about when local politicians send armed enforcers to your home based on suspicion that you were growing the wrong kind of plant or because you owned a firearm with the wrong kind of buttstock or magazine? When a cop kill your wife while ‘serving a warrant’, isn’t that a violation of property rights? But it’s okay, because the cops are just enforcing the will of a ‘duly elected’ official, isn’t it?
Cops should no longer be viewed as moral because their daily duties involve violating property rights. From enforcing gun control to collecting taxes to punishing people for fixing shelves in the house that they own, cops regularly violate property rights. Not to mention the epidemic of police brutality, rape, murder, and theft that is perpetrated by and defended by so many cops and their bosses nationwide.
As for Antifa and the progressive socialist left being dubbed ‘anarchists’ by uneducated conservatives with Stockholm Syndrome……this could not be further from the truth. They are literally the antithesis of anarchists. Anarchists believe in no rulers. The far left believes in all-powerful rulers. This insane conflation needs to end.
If people can vote – even if 99% of people in a given society all vote for Governor Smith – to violate the property rights of an innocent person, then that society is not a moral one. They have violated the one true law that freedom, peace, and morality stem from.
No, it does not matter if the tax is one penny per year or 80% of your income. Theft is theft. It is irrelevant if cops fine you for $15 or $500. Armed robbery is wrong. I don’t care if you think cannabis is dangerous and should not be grown or smoked (I actually agree that it’s a bad habit). Any armed man who breaks into your home unwelcome and punishes you for growing a plant is committing an immoral act, as are the people who sent him (politicians). And those who support all of the perpetrators by voting for and defending them are partially to blame, as well.
What would we do without our current police? I’d counter by asking what the abused teens from above would do without their abusive boyfriends and pimps. They may not know, but they should still leave their abusive relationships for two big reasons: On principle, they should not stay with abusers. Practically, the likelihood that they will lead happier and healthier lives absent their abusers is quite high.
Without the current police structure, one could only imagine how we’d protect ourselves. But we do know that cops can’t and don’t protect people. And the Supreme Court has ruled that cops have no obligation to protect anyone but themselves. Without police, nobody would enforce gun control, meaning that people would be free to defend themselves from harm. The few who could not defend themselves could be protected by family, friends, neighbors, or other communities. Or they could hire private security. Or they could form a neighborhood watch. Or they could simply elect a sheriff to fulfill the role of true protection.
I know that it’s uncomfortable to think about all of this logically. I know that it challenges much of your conventional ideology. I went through these same growing pains a few years ago. While it’s now very frustrating to argue with people who naturally resist logic and favor emotional arguments, I am much happier and healthier now that I understand – and assert – my property rights.
