Statists (one who believes in “government”) are confounded by incidents like the above; outraged by it but they really can’t figure out why. There was no police brutality or use of excessive force and no facts to indicate that Ms. Menefield was targeted because she was Black or that old white people aren’t treated the same fucked up way. So whats really wrong? The arrest may seem petty and therefore avoidable but it’s a reflection of the reality that 1) we live in a free range prison - a legal system based entirely on physical violence not voluntary consent and 2) we advocate for violence against others through our irrational belief in and blind obedience to authority.
Contrary to all lofty legal pronouncements and propaganda the legal system is entirely based on physical force/violence, not voluntary consent. Every law or order from authorities is a command backed by the threat of violence against those who do not comply – here, we mean violence by forced confiscation of property [payment of fines] or arrest or prison. Said threat of violence includes the ability and willingness of authorities to use deadly force against those who disobey. All “choices” presented to citizens in the free range prison are false; you either comply or go to jail or die. Locke states, “The lie of tyranny is that you will maintain the freedom of life by obeying authority. The choices it offers you are a lifetime of obedience or death.” FUNKTIONARY states, “There is no freedom in the presence of so-called authority.” You may believe you freely choose to pay taxes or trash fees but you’re just creating a placebo for yourself, making your slavery go down smoother. Mind control aside, the only reality is to comply with authority or eventually authorities will place you in greater confinement.
Relations between the Government and individuals are NOT based upon mutual, voluntary agreement, in which either side is free to opt out of the arrangement. Government service is undeclinable, provided on a compulsory basis. Dr. Blynd makes it plain, “government very simply is one man violently controlling the life and property of another man.” In some places this violent control is “decreed” to be for the latter’s “own good” and “protection” and hailed as the “best system in the world.” Because it’s based on violence, there are no voluntary associations. You may recognize that violent control over a man’s life and property is what we like to call—slavery. Slavery is a form of government, and in most cases, if not all, synonymous with “government.” Ms. Menefield fucked around and found out what happens when you don’t comply with authority. She disobeyed the law and was sanctioned by authorities. Hopefully, this incident brought her out of her delusion of being “free,” but after a lifetime of false consciousness programming that is doubtful. According to a “journalist” at CBS, “in the time since her arrest, Menefield has been thinking deeply about God’s role in her life. “I’ve been questioning God a little bit, I guess cause I’ve been so upset. I had a daycare here for eight years, and I’ve been asking the Lord. I say ‘Why did this happen to me as much as I’ve done for people, Lord? I’ve paid my tithes every Sunday. I ushered at church. I was just questioning. Something’s just not right.”
Pursuant to statist logic without the threat of violence, lawbreakers such as Ms. Menefield could simply choose not to suffer punishment.’ Michael Huemer details the mechanics of the chain of authority, ‘Commands from authorities such as the warnings Ms. Menefield received, are often enforced with threats to issue further commands, yet that cannot be all there is to it. At the end of the chain must come a threat that the violator literally cannot defy. The system as a whole must be anchored by a non-voluntary intervention, a harm that the state can impose regardless of the individual’s choices. That anchor is provided by physical force. Even the threat of imprisonment requires enforcement: how can the state ensure that the criminal goes to the prison? The answer lies in coercion, involving actual or threatened bodily injury, or at a minimum, physical pushing or pulling of the individual’s body to the location of imprisonment. This is the final intervention that the individual cannot choose to defy. One can choose not to pay a fine, one can choose to drive without a license, and one can even choose not to walk to a police car to be taken away. But one cannot choose not to be subjected to physical force if the agents of the state decide to impose it.’
The legal system is not voluntary or consensual and there is no way to opt out or decline participation in it; we are born into an involuntary system of physical coercion where you either obey authority or eventually authoritarians will place you in greater confinement or murder you.
Statists are also confounded by Ms. Menefield’s arrest because they are responsible for it due to their belief in authority. As explained, every “law” is a threat, backed by the ability and willingness to use deadly force against those who disobey. As such, when statists advocate for new laws or for the enforcement of law or when they obey the law or vote they inadvertently advocate for violence and oppression against themselves and others.
Here, after failing to pay trash fines and responding to warnings from authorities, the police arrested her and detained her – as they were authorized to do by voters. That is, elected authorities at some point created a law that authorized the government to fine or arrest for a failure to pay trash fines. The creation of laws perpetuates violence because law and authority are violence = force will be used on those disobey.
Larken Rose observes “the belief in authority leads to a strange contradiction in how people see the world. Almost everyone advocates that “law” be used to coerce others to do certain things, or to fund certain things. However, while advocating such violence, knowing full well the consequences to any who are caught disobeying, those same advocates fail to recognize that what they are advocating is violence. There are millions, for example, who consider themselves to be peaceful, civilized people – some even proudly wear the label of “pacifist” – while advocating armed robbery against everyone they know, as well as millions of strangers. They see no contradiction, because the robbery is given the euphemism “taxation” and is carried out by people who are imagined to have the right to commit robbery, in the name of “government.”
The level of denial which the belief in “authority” creates is profound. When advocating “political” violence, people accept no responsibility for the results.”
Here, statists should be uneasy about the assault, false imprisonment and kidnapping of Ms. B because they are responsible for it. Undoubtedly however, they will blame the government. FUNKTIONARY explains, “The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.”
Similarly, the police officers’ conduct in this matter was evil; handcuffing a person posing no threat to anyone, taking them against their will and putting them in a cage is foul shit. It makes no difference that that they functioned as so-called representatives of authority.
Authority cannot transform evil into good. Acts that would be considered unjust or immoral when performed by citizens are just as unjust or morally unacceptable when performed by representatives of authority.
Here, if no law existed then the actions of the police would be seen as immoral and a criminal assault, false imprisonment and kidnapping. However, due to the belief in authority the conduct of the police is perceived as lawful and moral. Such belief is your enslavement.
The police officer’s right to attack others is evil. ‘Right to attack’ means the cop’s uncontrollable and absolute power to commit unprovoked assaults, non-consensual touching, stopping, searching and ordering or forcing humans against their own volition or killing them – the stuff of slavery.
To be clear, all persons have the natural right to defend themselves and come to the defense of others if they believe another person is in imminent danger from an aggressor. Private security workers and guards also work under said natural law.
In contrast, police officers also have the extra or additional “power” to act as offensively as aggressors; the right to attack people or initiate unprovoked acts of violence against people whenever they deem it necessary. Police are said to have such powers when they are acting on behalf of “authority.” As such, “citizens” police are permitted to lawfully attack (make arrests) people, touch them against their will, assault them, interfere with freedoms in many ways, kidnap people (detain and transport) or imprison them because higher authorities have empowered them to do so. In turn, people are said to have a moral and legal obligation to obey police commands and have no right to even resist an unlawful arrest in most states.
The problem is that there is no rational basis for authority, no logical way to account for its existence and it has no meaning in reality because it does not come from people nor is it derived from any natural source. FUNKTIONARY explains that Authority, the basis for all governments and rulership, is a farce. Government “authority” can be summed up as the implied right to rule over people. It is the government’s ability and moral right to forcibly control citizens, its right to be obeyed and the citizen’s corresponding moral and legal obligation to obey.’ Authority requires that government’s laws, commands and orders to be obeyed on a content-neutral basis (regardless of whether they agree or not.) [MORE] Michael Huemer defines political authority as “the hypothesized moral property in virtue of which governments may coerce people in certain ways not permitted to anyone else and in virtue of which citizens must obey governments in situations in which they would not be obligated to obey anyone else.” Said hypothesized moral property makes government the supreme authority over human affairs.
All governmental power allegedly comes exclusively from the people. Citizens delegate their individual power to government and it’s representatives for them to represent citizens. Such representation works much in the same way agents represent their principals in all kinds of business or other contractual relationships. For instance, a manager at McDonalds represents the owner of McDonalds when she carries out the owners business everyday ordering inventory and hiring workers, etc. She is the agent, the owners are the principals. Naturally, an agent only can possess whatever powers the principal gave to her. For instance, you grant the babysitter access and power to use your living room but not the basement. And it goes without saying that an agent cannot have more power than the principal because all said power originated exclusively from the principal.
Inexplicably, the government has granted itself the authority to do things that no individual could do. While citizens have the inalienable right to act in self-defense or come to the defense of others, citizens have no right to initiate unprovoked acts of violence on other people and no right to forcibly control other people. As such, it is logically impossible for citizens to delegate the right to forcibly control others to the government - because citizens cannot possibly delegate rights that they don’t have. In other words, if you don’t have the right to initiate unprovoked acts of violence against other people then you cannot delegate or authorize anyone else acting on your behalf to do so. Clearly for example, your neighbor has no right to stop, detain, kidnap you and then lock you in a cage bec ause you failed to pay your trash bill. So, how could your neighbors delegate a government representative the power to do so?
Larken Rose explains, ‘in the case of “government,” the people whom the politicians claim to represent have no right to do anything that politicians do: impose “taxes,” enact “laws,” etc. Average citizens have no right to forcibly control the choices of their neighbors, tell them how to live their lives, and punish them if they disobey, So when a “government” does such things, it is not representing anyone or anything but itself.’ As stated, it is a logical and legal impossibility for a representative to have more power than the person he is representing. Rose explains, “you can’t give someone something you don’t have.” Rose states;
“Despite all of the complex rituals and convoluted rationalizations, all modern belief in “government” rests on the notion that mere mortals can, through certain political procedures, bestow upon some people various rights which none of the people possessed to begin with. The inherent lunacy of such a notion should be obvious. There is no ritual or document through which any group of people can delegate to someone else a right which no one in the group possesses. And that self-evident truth, all by itself, demolishes any possibility of legitimate “government.”
Rose explains if those in “government” have only those rights possessed by those who elected them, then “government” loses the one ingredient that makes it “government”: the right to rule over others (”authority”). If it has the same rights and powers as everyone else, there is no reason to call it “government.” If the politicians have no more rights than you have, all of their demands and commands, all of their political rituals, “law” books, courts, and so on, amount to nothing more than the symptoms of a profound delusional psychosis. Nothing they do can have any legitimacy, any more than if you did the same thing on your own, unless they somehow acquired rights that you do not have. And that is impossible, since no one on earth, and no group of people on earth, could possibly have given them such superhuman rights.” [MORE]
