Perhaps because I am an individualist others find me difficult to understand, or perhaps it is because most people have preconceived ideas about everyone else, but whatever the reason, people constantly make assumptions about me, and my views, which are just not correct. I don't really care that they do, but some of the assumptions are rather amusing.
Some are not at all significant, and typically ignorant. When I mention I am opposed to the WOD (war on drugs), the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency), and even the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), it is immediately assumed I must be some kind of pot-head hippy. I have no interest in using drugs, and for the most part think people harm themselves with them, (but everybody is different). Though I don't really care if other people think I personally have anything to do with drugs (so long as its not some government agent), I know the government has no business regulating what anyone wants to use or put in their body.
Another assumption always made when I mention I do not believe in a God is that I must be an evolutionist. While I do not believe the world was created, that does not mean I have to swallow the Darwinian fairy tales trying to be put over as science--and I don't.
"So you're an atheist" I'm told. "How do you conclude that?" I ask. "An atheist is someone who doesn't believe in God," it is explained. "But God is not the only thing I do not believe in. I do not believe in extrasensory perception, for example. Does that make me an a-extrasensory-perceptionist?" If others want to identify me as an atheist, I have no objection, but personally I think it's stupid to identify yourself in terms of what you do not believe.
It is also assumed that because I do not believe in God, I must be an anti-religionist. Of course I'm not. What another believes is of no particular interest to me, unless one's beliefs have some direct bearing on my personal relationship with them, or is used in any way, such a politically, to force their religious beliefs on me.
Now I've been told I'm an anarchist, because I make no bones about the fact I have no use for government, or the "state," in any form, and believe government is evil by its very nature. Well, I'm not an anarchist. Partly to explain that is the purpose of my latest article Anarchism and Society, but more importantly to show what is wrong with anarchism as a political view, which essentially is, no method is possible to make a society anything other than what it is, which is determined entirely by the kind of individuals a society is comprised of. Intended or not, anarchism is just another kind of social engineering. [The picture is Emma Goldman.]
Political Faith
I do not have a religion and do not believe in a God, but I can see at least some reason in the faith of some people, even if I do not agree with it. What I cannot see any reason for at all as that baseless credulity at the heart of people's faith in government. No government has ever delivered what it promises, and most government promises are outrageous. Any child who has not had their mind warped by government schools would immediately see through the lies every politician tells.
How can people believe any of these:
- Government laws and law enforcement provide a safe and ordered society. [If a government could do that, and did it, I'd move to that country in a minute. Since no government has ever accomplished that, here's as good as anyplace.]
- Government keeps us safe from terrorist attacks. [Read Fred Reed's latest to see how they do it.]
- Continuous government wars keep America safe from foreign invasion. [Well, of course. Why would people who want to kill our young men and women come here to do it when we are willing to send them there to be killed.]
- Government actions can improve the economy and provide jobs. [An agency that produces not a single product or performs a single service anyone would willingly pay for cannot improve or provide anything, and since all it does is financed by those who actually do produce something of value and perform valuable services, a government cannot do anything but hurt an economy.]
- Government laws ensure our food and medicine is safe. [The only thing the government food and drug laws ensure is the jobs of those who enforce them, and the immunity of those in the food and drug industries that "comply with those laws" (read "pay the bribes") from prosecution when their products cause diseases or poison us.]
- Government must enact and enforce draconian laws to keep the environment safe--from--global warming, endangerment to wild animals, pollution of lakes, rivers and streams, the Martian landscape. [Just checking to see if you were paying attention. First, it is not the government's environment. Secondly their is no moral reason some people's idea of what a proper environment is may be shoved down the throats of those who would prefer another. Finally, almost all the supposed environmental dangers are lies.]
- Government laws and enforcement keep our children and society safe from addictive and mind altering drugs. [How out of touch with reality does one have to be believe that? What, there are no drug addicts anymore, no grade school overdoses, no drug murder, no drive-by shootings? The so-called "war on drugs" is doomed to be as endless as the "war on terror," even if it's not called that anymore.]
- Government officials always know and tell the truth, like "Guam is in danger of capsizing due to its population"--OH Wait!--Looks like I owe an apology here. Apparently Guam did capsize over the Easter weekend. A Chinese Island was discovered on the other side. [This may not be true.]
I have the solution. I've just sent an urgent email to Hank Johnson asking him to push through an immediate grant. I'll develop a huge green (solar and wind powered) gyroscope that can be fastened to the middle of Guam, and that will stabilize the thing so it cannot capsize. I've worked out the exact cost to be $370,023,637,450.27. I'll even throw in the 27 cents, as my patriotic duty.
—Reginald Firehammer (03/08/10)
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT INDIVIDUALIST
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