Sure, Trump says: “In America, the people govern, the people rule, and the people are sovereign. I was elected not to take power, but to give power to the American people, where it belongs.” But that cliched claptrap cannot withstand scrutiny. “The people” neither govern nor rule. Only persons act, and only certain persons rule. There is no way everyone can rule — unless all people individually rule their own lives. That’s not what Trump means.
Tag: statism
The Illusory Goal of Defeating the State through Politics
The argument for engaging in politics as a means of weakening the state’s power is undercut by the reality of political ambition. If there were politicians who endeavored steadfastly to reduce the pain and plunder inflicted by the state in all sectors, such incrementalism might have a chance of success, but such principled people do not attain power in a political system.
You Can’t Have It Both Ways, Constitutionalists
It doesn’t matter if they try to govern others with socialism, communism, republicanism, democracy, theocracy, or some other version of statism. Governing others is always a violation of Rightful Liberty.
Detours to The “Left”
Maybe the toxicity of the “Right” rhetoric repelled them so thoroughly that they bounced directly into a belief system exactly as repugnant. They took on the “social justice” causes, no matter how anti-liberty they are, just because they weren’t the causes of the “Right.”
First, They Ignore You
Plenty of anarchists have noticed that the media, the politicians, even the Orange Fuhrer himself, have been mischaracterizing, demonizing and condemning “anarchists.”
Welfare States Encourage Bad Economic Thinking
In the absence of sound economic thinking, which explains why particular resources end up in the hands of particular members of extended social order, there appears a tendency to invent arbitrary pseudo-reasons as to why one’s position in this order is not as satisfactory as one would like it to be.
Don’t Give Government More to Do
To my reform-minded (as opposed to abolition-minded) friends, please stop trying to make statism ‘better’ and work on making it smaller and weaker. Your goals of replacing the state’s current systems of plunder and redistribution with different systems of plunder and redistribution are not helpful.
The Existence of the State makes Evil People Far More Dangerous
Donald Trump or Barack Obama or George Bush or Franklin D. Roosevelt weren’t particularly dangerous until they obtained control of the state, and the same can be said of nearly every politician, dictator, and tyrant in history. What makes evil people so dangerous is that they can—often in an ostensibly legitimate manner—assume power over millions or even billions of other people.
The Myth of ‘Good Government’
The history of the US is not that of good government gone bad, but of bad government remaining bad. Yes, it’s improved a bit in some areas even as it has worsened in others, but when it comes to its central evils—plundering, kidnapping, caging, and killing people—it continues to follow the pattern of cruel oppression which has always defined it.
The Missing Link between Truth and Goodness
In addition to being economically inefficient and ethically unjustifiable, statism is also aesthetically revolting: it suggests that complex social challenges can be addressed by the crudest principle of “might makes right”, or, to put things metaphorically, that broken quantum computers can be fixed by repeatedly pummeling them with a caveman’s club.