I don’t hate cops.
Wait, let me clarify. I don’t hate cops, and neither should you.
Let me clarify further. It’s become a theme in libertarian, anarchist, gun-rights and drug-rights communities to bash police officers. I’ve seen the sentiment “The only good pig…” expressed five times in the past week. I see “armed tax feeder” and “government thug” and other similar euphemisms, and I see outright name-calling.
I don’t hate politicians, either, and neither should you.
Recent events have shown many examples of moral failures by men in power. History, in fact, bears out the stereotype that politicians are unfaithful to their wives and have generally low character. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Anthony Weiner are simply the latest singers in a chorus which stretches back to prehistory. There is, it seems, none righteous.
I don’t hate teachers, union workers, government employees, soldiers, welfare recipients or mortgage officers, and neither should you.
There are men who are drawn to be soldiers because of the chance to do violence, who are drawn to the police force because they want authority, or who are drawn to politics because of an addiction to the spotlight. Government employees may not represent the best and brightest members of society, and individual welfare recipients may be lazy rather than in need of any real help. ‘Private-sector’ businesses are frequently guilty of lobbying the government for their own benefit, in direct opposition to the betterment of humanity at large.
But attacking these folk for their shortcomings on a personal basis is supremely non-helpful. The policies in place guarantee that these roles will always be filled by the same sorts of people, and name-calling or even direct persuasion on an individual level won’t produce results. Angering a single educator or convincing a single cop to change his behavior isn’t going to do anything to change the government’s way of doing business, or bring us any closer to complete freedom. What it will do is reduce the credibility of our ideological fellows and weaken our overall argument.
So don’t hate the player – the cop, the soldier, the TSA screener. Hate the game of government, the set of social ‘contracts’ which bind us to servitude and limit our lives. Attempt to change policies, rather than attacking individuals. Make sure that the truth reaches as many ears as possible: keep on filming the police and recording the TSA. But realize that the human beings on tape aren’t the enemy. The enemy is the Leviathan State.
I must second Lee’s last remark. Without individuals perpetuating the system it could not sustain.
“Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.”
— The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Étienne de La Boétie
Though Bisbee-based libertarian comedian Doug Stanhope made a good point on one of his DVDs that he thoughts wars were good, if only it would confine itself to the violence driven soldiers on either side, for its elimination of anti-social members of the population.
Kaiser,
I believe the cop, the soldier, the teacher, and the politician (ummm…actually, I’m not so sure on that one) had good intentions when they started their careers. Intention is an important factor here. I do not hate any of them. The problem is with your neighbor. You see, your neighbor probably would not come over and rob you blind to pay for his life, but it seems he has no problem hiring someone to do it for him. THAT, is the problem. That is the game you refer to. For some crazy reason neighbors are usually able to peacefully coexist with one another except when it comes to politics.
Lee, you make an excellent point. Without the players there would be no game. However, attacking the players is akin to slaying zombies without killing the zombie making virus. They will just keep coming, and coming. Talk to your neighbors, make an effort to try and make one person see the truth. Ask them very bluntly, “would you rob me at gunpoint to pay for the roads?” The answer is usually no. My follow up, “well then why would you hire someone to do it for you?”
The problem is with your neighbor. It starts there, it will end there. I have been called a radical and an extremist because of my moral stance. I guess not wanting to be a slave to my neighbor is an extreme position. I do realize we have a very long way to go(perhaps that’s the excuse for my anger, Kaiser, it seems hopeless most of the time)!
Energy should be focused on your neighbors, not on the tyrants.
I hate their actions, and because of their actions I know better than to trust them to do the right thing- except as an accident.
I also pity them. I think it is so terribly sad that some people can’t get over their desire to coerce the people around them, whether it is as a freelance bully or a badged one.
However, at the moment of the attack it is probably smartest to go ahead and hate the person attacking you without regard to his employer. You need to survive, and to do that you need to not feel sorry for your attacker or wonder if he had “good intentions”. You just need to defeat him enough to survive his attack and stop him from continuing to attack you. If hatred helps you do that… Just remember that hatred can also cause you to stumble.
Chris, you hit the nail on the head. Who is your “neighbor”? The one who can’t help sticking their collectivist nose into your family life, driveway, etc. etc. etc.? Pickpocketing you for your own good? And while your neighbor may listen to you are they REALLY “listening” or just waiting to cut you off in mid breath so as to escape your logic? No? The system couldn’t work or even exist if it weren’t for these busybodies and their busybody servants who care so much for you and their own paychecks. So while I may not “hate” the individual, per se, the institutions in which they freely chose to engage in I most certainly do. This is akin to a concentration camp canteen worker who, while not directly involved in gassing the inmates, still helps peel the potatoes and slops out the meals to those who do. Are they not part and parcel one with the machine? Did anyone put a gun to their head and say, “Hey!… either you work to feed the beast or else you’ll fill its belly with your life!”? There is cognitive dissonance on a national scale at work here. Where a vast majority have had twelve, or more, years of collectivist mind control splashed before their eyes and ears. A friend of mine, to whom I’ve spoken at length about these things for years, is just now coming around to speaking with me without sounding like a Republican hack apologist. And that’s taken a LONG time just to get to this point.
Mot, what I find so frustrating is the ones who see the immorality of the system, and still won’t abandon it. This drives me crazy! Right now I am talking to a guy who I have known for quite a while, and he sees it, but he says, “until you can give me a solid answer on who will build the roads, I will continue to support OUR system.”
So basically what he is saying is; until you can tell me exactly how you can continue to make my life as comfortable as it is right now, I will continue to vote for people to rob you.
It seems if you have a good grasp on what is actually right and wrong, you have to become an expert in the logistics of infrastructure. Morality is not enough with most that I talk to, and that is a shame!
Kent, I understand your anger. I harbor some anger at the enforcers of this immoral society, but most of my anger is derived from the people I talk to who say, “oh, just pay YOUR taxes and shut up!” This is after about 60 seconds of making them see the contradictions in their own belief systems. Those people I pity. I have had many successes though, probably four this year so far.
“I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”
-Harriet Tubman
Chris, I attended a conference on Authority and Autonomy in the Family a few years back and Peter Breggin spoke at length about critical intelligence. He said that when he flew into an event in DC, he had more interesting conversations with the cab driver than anyone at the event. The terror of critical examination would be that a change in belief would cause either severe cognitive dissonance or the individual would be compelled to change his actions. This is a tough choice when you have a job for which your financial and social well-being are dependent.
There is also the function of meeting people on their own ground. Some respond to moral arguments and some to utilitarian. But I think that Breggin is right, that for far too many people, critical intelligence is too costly to practice.
Robert,
We are dealing with moral and intellectual cowardice on a massive scale.
The problem is not government, the problem is in the hearts and minds of those people who legitimize the existence of government, whoever and where ever they are.
dan gould says:
June 11, 2011 at 19:17
“The problem is not government, the problem is in the hearts and minds of those people who legitimize the existence of government, whoever and where ever they are.”
Dealing with the chaos of liberty is much too demanding of them. Therefore, “There oughta’ be a law and we need a guy to enforce it”