On Colonialism

Mine is an admittedly amateurish review of the history of colonialism, but two themes stick out: 1) colonialists primarily desire the physical resources and additional tax cattle of those they are colonizing, and 2) colonialists sell this to its useful idiots (nobles, priests, peasants, and soldiers) as a moral obligation to bring their obviously superior way of life to the inferior savages. You see, it would be evil for colonialists to allow savages to continue their inferior way of life, as well as foolish to not put their resources to their most effective use. Good and wise are the colonialists. Can you guess what else is perceived as good and wise? People who call themselves “government” behave in these very same ways and for the very same reasons. You might think that government is good because it keeps us from reverting to savages, and you might think that government is wise because it knows best how to distribute resources so as to maximize the satisfaction of needs, but you would be wrong. Government is neither good nor wise. It’s criminal. To believe otherwise may just put you in the useful idiots camp. And that’s today’s two cents.

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Founder and editor of Everything-Voluntary.com and UnschoolingDads.com, Skyler is a husband and unschooling father of three beautiful children. His writings include the column series “One Voluntaryist’s Perspective” and “One Improved Unit,” and blog series “Two Cents“. Skyler also wrote the books No Hitting! and Toward a Free Society, and edited the books Everything Voluntary and Unschooling Dads. You can hear Skyler chatting away on his podcasts, Everything Voluntary and Thinking & Doing.