Yeah. It would be crazy to end slavery. No serious person would even consider it.
We laugh at such rationalizations for evil today, but then we turn around and use those same vapid, evil-justifying arguments for keeping ourselves and others enslaved to the State. "Ending coercive government would be the end of the world!!" – so people think, and they are right: it would be the end of a cruel and evil world, and the beginning of a healthier, more peaceful, and more compassionate one. Exposing the "coercion is necessary" nonsense for the harmful stupidity it is requires only pointing out the obvious: that love and freedom (including for the young) are the necessary environment for healthy life and for civil society.
Not surprisingly, one common result of Power is outright murder, which governments commit wholesale and which the public – and even academics in related fields – mostly forget or ignore. The twentieth century alone saw 262 million murders by governments [20] (per R. J. Rummel; see bottom of linked page for confirmation of that number) – in addition to war dead, in addition to maimed or wounded, in addition to millions tortured or impoverished, in addition to the long list of other horrors inflicted by Power. Many millions of children were orphaned or lost one parent, or had a family member tortured or maimed, or were otherwise harmed by government action in the century just past. In the course of murdering more than a quarter-billion people, could you even possibly avoid damaging many millions of children? Can war after war, including bombing of entire cities and the use of napalm, Agent Orange, depleted uranium, and other horrors, not cause trauma to children on a massive scale?
The danger of using Power specifically to do good is also confirmed in twentieth-century history, as the left-wing authors of The Black Book of Communism [21] discovered. In theory, Communism is aimed at creating a more fair and compassionate world, but after years of careful research, the authors of the Black Book concluded that Communist regimes murdered between 80 million and 100 million of "their own" people in the twentieth century and that much of this horror was calculated, purposeful, and brutal almost beyond belief – indeed, the book's Foreword is titled "The Uses of Atrocity." When committed Marxists (as most of the authors were) find that Marxist regimes have all been even worse, in many ways, than was Hitler's Third Reich, it says something important about using coercive Power to improve the world. It says, in fact, that using an agency based on coercion and violence to create a world of compassion is as dangerous, foolish, and counter-productive as it sounds. Examples are everywhere and in the news daily [22]: coercive government is without question the worst way to do anything [23] and certainly the most dangerous. Yet Marxists and the public at large, including believers in limited or "reformed" government, have, for the most part, not understood that lesson.
In the coming decades, we will either begin the movement away from coercive Power and towards more civilized, compassionate, and respectful societies, or the combination of widespread neurosis, coercive systems, and twenty-first century hypertech [24] will put an end to us.
- 4 -
The Coercive State both Causes and Feeds Upon Emotional Damage
If early trauma creates life-long emotional damage – and a great many studies show that it does – then nothing creates as much emotional damage and misery as does coercive government. Given that coercion is literally a crime, this should not be surprising. Given that any organization based upon and funded by coercion is psychopathic by nature, this should be obvious. Sadly – tragically – it does not seem obvious to most human beings, who continue to support their own enslavement, and to believe that stopping this enslavement and violence would somehow be cruel and unworkable.
The emotional damage caused, directly and indirectly, by the coercive State creates millions of damaged adults – many of whom become ardent followers, hurt and angry children in adult bodies searching for scapegoats and easy answers, stunted and confused minds easily led to corporate and military servitude, unloved former children desperate to believe in the love of a father-figure Leader. Alice Miller has written about this dynamic for decades and provided a detailed look at, for one example, the contribution of severe and widespread emotional damage to the rise and character of Hitler's Third Reich. See in particular For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence [25] and, on the web, Adolf Hitler: How Could a Monster Succeed in Blinding a Nation? [26] (Note on that essay: it is hosted at the Natural Child Project, and the site graphics are appropriately aimed at small children and their parents. Please don't let that put you off; Dr. Miller's essay is excellent).
- 5 -
Conclusion
Every coercive State is an epic horror waiting to happen. The abolitionist argument is that mankind will never be safe until this evil – like human sacrifice and traditional slavery and other horrors of the past – is ended. Coercive Power can no more be "reformed for the better" than can rape or slavery or human sacrifice; it must be removed from this world, and soon, if anything resembling civilized life is to survive.
Love, freedom, and nurture are the antidote to the Ring of Power and its horrors. There is no other path to a healthy future.
Links:
[1] http://strike-the-root.com/user/8
[2] http://strike-the-root.com/topics/socialism
[3] http://strike-the-root.com/topics/statism
[4] http://strike-the-root.com/topics/tyranny
[5] http://strike-the-root.com/topics/politicians
[6] http://strike-the-root.com/topics/police-state
[7] http://strike-the-root.com/topics/fascism
[8] http://strike-the-root.com/topics/historical-figures
[9] http://strike-the-root.com/topics/history
[10] http://strike-the-root.com/topics/communism
[11] http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-Picture-Theatrical-Editions/dp/B000X9FLKM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1274128307&sr=8-1
[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unico_Anello.png
[13] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Jjj6oI5fg
[14] http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-Fellowship-Ring-Widescreen/dp/B00003CWT6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1273615131&sr=1-2
[15] http://www.amazon.com/Fellowship-Ring-Being-First-Rings/dp/0618574948/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273615284&sr=8-2
[16] http://strike-the-root.com/62/allport/allport4.html
[17] http://books.google.com/books?id=B0loOBA3ejIC&pg=PA161&lpg=PA161&dq=%22My+political+opinions+lean+more+and+more+to+Anarchy+%28philosophically+understood,+meaning+abolition+of+control+not+whiskered+men+with+bombs%29%22&source=bl&ots=hgIEdJ8eZc&sig=6R_ldliM2z3rk
[18] http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/posters1.htm
[19] http://rationalrevolution.net/war/american_supporters_of_the_europ.htm
[20] http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/welcome.html
[21] http://www.amazon.com/Black-Book-Communism-Crimes-Repression/dp/0674076087/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273962680&sr=8-1
[22] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100514/ap_on_re_us/failed_drug_war
[23] http://strike-the-root.com/71/allport/allport22.html
[24] http://strike-the-root.com/62/allport/allport2.html
[25] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374522693/qid=954388253/103-9619095-1911034?n=283155
[26] http://www.naturalchild.org/alice_miller/adolf_hitler.html
[27] http://strike-the-root.com/sites/default/files/pictures/picture-8.jpg
[28] mailto:glen@apbb.net
[29] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0974627526/sr=1-1/qid=1154637641/ref=sr_1_1/104-6697602-1186302?ie=UTF8&s=books