KA-POW! #13 - Chodorov

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Frank Chodorov for “Does the State Protect Us?” :

Since Society puts so high a value on independence from a foreign State, it should not demur at the cost of maintaining this independence. One must pay for what one wants. However, when we examine the most approved method of financing war we find that it is based on a general reluctance to foot the bill. Every war is fought with current production — there is no way of shooting off guns that have not yet been made or of feeding soldiers with food that will be raised by the next generation — and in a real sense every war is conducted on a pay-as-you-fight basis.

The economic consequence of the most approved method of financing wars is that a lien on the future production of the nation is established, and nearly always it is a permanent lien. ...

But war, and the preparations for it, is attended with a charge that has nothing to do with protection and is a load that increasingly hampers Society in its search for a better life. That is the power which the State acquires during war and does not relinquish when it is over.

When the enemy is at the city gates, or there is a general fear that he is coming, the individual abdicates his self-reliance and places himself unreservedly under the direction of the captain; he gives up his freedom in order to attain freedom. Or so he thinks. But it is a matter of record that what he gives up is never fully returned to him, that he must fight his own captain to get back his natural heritage.

The State jealously guards the power over Society which it has acquired during a climate of fear. To prove the point, we need not review the history of ancient Rome, where a succession of protective wars ended up in the servitude of the people to the emperors; we need only list and add up the interventionary powers acquired by the American State during the wars it conducted; the sum total is a monstrous tax load, a monstrous bureaucracy, a monstrous statute book, and a popular conviction that the State (which was feared and despised in 1789) is the giver of all things good.

So, then, the "protective" service rendered by the State is paid for not only with taxes but also with subservience. Society is much poorer for it.

Honorable mention goes to Doug Casey for “Governments Are Just Monopolies on Force” :

Government sponsors untold waste, criminality and inequality in every sphere of life it touches, giving little or nothing in return. Its contributions to the commonweal are wars, pogroms, confiscations, persecutions, taxation, regulation and inflation. And it’s not just some governments of which that’s true, although some are clearly much worse than others. It’s an inherent characteristic of all government.

...

What is the essence of government? After you cut through all the rhetoric, the doublethink and the smokescreen of altruism that surround the subject, you find that the essence of government is force. And the belief it has the right to initiate the use of force whenever expedient. Government is an organization with a monopoly, albeit with some fringe competition, on the use of force within a given territory. As Mao Zedong said, “The power of government comes out of the barrel of a gun.” There is no voluntarism about obeying laws.

...

One of the most perversely misleading myths about government is that it promotes order within its own bailiwick, keeps groups from constantly warring with each other and somehow creates togetherness and harmony. In fact, that’s the exact opposite of the truth. There’s no cosmic imperative for different people to rise up against one another – unless they’re organized into political groups. The Middle East, now the world’s most fertile breeding ground for hatred, provides an excellent example.

Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together peaceably in Palestine, Lebanon and North Africa for centuries, until the situation became politicized after WWI. Until then an individual’s background and beliefs were just personal attributes, not a casus belli. Government was at its most benign, an ineffectual nuisance that concerned itself mostly with extorting taxes. People were busy with that most harmless of activities, making money.

But politics does not deal with people as individuals. It scoops them up into parties and nations. And some group inevitably winds up using the power of the state (however innocently or “justly” at first) to impose its values and wishes on others, with predictably destructive results. What would otherwise be an interesting kaleidoscope of humanity then sorts itself out according to the lowest common denominator peculiar to the time and place.