L. Neil Smith's
THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE
Number 351, January 22, 2006

"Down With Tolerance!"

Why Do They Hate America?
Michael Bradshaw
speaker [at] usrepeals.org

Exclusive to TLE

The following is a post by Dervish from the Claire Files forum about why the Prussian-Americans hate and fear individuals in general and, particularly, the Ethnic-Americans (the people of the 18th century enlightenment, as it has evolved)—and my reply. By the way, those "P" and "E" labels are mine, not his.

"I don't get why there are so many people who hate and fear individuals as dangerous, murderous folk, but think that the individuals that make up the state are trustworthy. I've asked such people why in the past, and they have never answered that one. A few have admitted that it sounds strange, and say they don't fully trust them, but are back into giving the state ultimate power over the individual (and some say that outright).

What is the psychology behind that?

If you hate and fear all individuals, then you hate and fear everyone in the government, and wouldn't trust them either. If anything, you'd fear them most of all because of the immunities and powers they have (I mean, if they collect the evidence, decide when a crime has been committed, etc, then wouldn't you expect abuse?). Seems inevitable to me. I also wonder: If the Montana Freemen "took over" would these same people suddenly trust them with this godlike power of the government to watch and intervene against everyone else?

I mean maybe it's a "well they're the government because God says so" type thing. I don't get it. I've tried to understand that thinking and have failed. And I've asked those type of people to explain it, and most of them can't. I mean even they know it's stupid because they typically won't even try to, and rarely even admit that they're being stupid (even as they continue to be stupid).

What is the psychology behind this?"

Hi, Dervish!

If you don't mind a bit of pontificating:

I think that the short answer is early-childhood conditioning.

My long answer is that those people are religious believers, just like those of any other religion.

Look at the functions of churches and government schools. Both exhibit the 3 earmarks of religion:

  • A world view—that is a package deal and is false to fact.

  • A moral code—that is given as a package deal from the church/school; and for the purpose of advancing the power and wealth of the clergy/government. The goals are not stated honestly.

  • All arguments and justifications for the world view and moral code are arguments from authority and other logical fallacies or errors (with some fortuitous exceptions based on engineering practice applied to human behavior, such as the "Golden Rule" of the Christians), not observable facts or reason. This is dogma.

Libertarians, on the other hand (or tentacle, if you will...) offer:

  • A world view—that is based on observable and verifiable facts and analyzed by sound and reasonable argument based on the scientific method of thinking, and without fallacy.

  • A moral code (the Zero Aggression Principle)—that is based on the goal of the greatest good for all people according to the desires of those people (including the long-term survival of the human race), and that is also based on observation of the real world over 6,000+ years of history (plus anthropology for more thousands of years into the past) according to the scientific method. This is philosophy.

  • Arguments that are logical (both deductive and inductive), falsifyable, non-fallacious and based on observable facts analyzed by the scientific method to support an honestly stated goal.

By a combination of indoctrination into the cult of the state (the worship of the state organization in general and politicians in particular as the Gods, with reverence for bureaucrats as the clergy) along with heavy conditioning to be unable to think logically or critically about the state and other forbidden subjects, the state is able to "breed" a new culture (since the mid-nineteenth century) of Prussian-Americans using the Prussian model of forced religious schooling—falsely advertised as education. In this way the state can make many people (it looks like about half the population is fully indoctrinated now, with much of the other half "getting there") look at reality—and see only the overlay of doctrine from the state religious schools.

The state has three primary methods of control of its property, the common people:

  • Indoctrinated religious worship of and obedience to the state and politicians.

  • The inculcation of a false view of the world based on nonexistent dangers and threats, combined with the false promise of safety and salvation from the nonexistent evils—by the holy State and Politicians.

  • The use and threat of violence against the disobedient and the scapegoats.

The false dangers may be natural, such as global warming/cooling or acid rain. The false dangers are also classes of people, the scapegoats, on whom are blamed all the troubles of the world. In Germany, in the nineteen-thirties and 'forties it was the Jews who were to blame for all that was bad and much that was not. Now, in America, we all get to be the Jews.

The United States (a government, not a country, like America is) has gone the Nazis one better, in that they have combined the classical "blame the Jews" strategy with a school/mass-media induced and generalized "fear of all known phenomena", which, of course, includes all other common people. L. N. Smith summed it up as "you are incompetent and your neighbors are all criminally insane!".

What most folks do not seem to see in this propaganda is the utterly mad level of racism involved. What we find here is a religious doctrine that postulates at least three distinct human "races". The highest is the politician, who is actually a god, as he is the State Incarnate. The middle level is the government official or employee, who takes direction from the gods and is racially superior to the commoners—sort of the classical light-skinned, or European, human. The lowest race, the commoners—are brutish, violent, filthy, unintelligent, only semi-human, childish and incapable of running their own lives on their own. The middle-race refer to them as "scumbags" or "dirtbags". The worst of the commoners are the vile Anarcho-capitalist libertarians and other forms of individualist, like minarchists.

Yucky-Poo! Such icky, (insert here a whole raft of epithets) common people! They will murder you at the drop of a hat, you know. Why can't they just go back where they came from? We really ought to just get rid of them—like the vermin they are!

And so . . .
FEMA has put out a "request for proposal" for "engineering plans" for the concentration camps. Billed as "emergency evacuation cities" for natural disasters, of course. Perhaps they will re-use the old Manzanar site. It is so convenient. And so the work goes on—the superior men taking up their manifest destiny.

Again.

It will be interesting to see just how long it will take them to surpass the record of the twentieth century governments—of over three-hundred million dead in their genocides and wars.

So, Dervish,
The common Prussian-American does not actually hate and fear all individuals. He only hates and fears individual commoners in general, and individualists of whatever stripe in particular. He actually worships the State and Politicians as his personal Gods, and reveres the bureaucrats as the priests of his church.

They do, indeed, rule by Divine Right.

He is unable to think about these subjects because he is forbidden to do so. His doctrine requires unquestioning belief in and obedience to the state. He would probably not accept the Montana Freemen in your hypothetical example as a new sacred state (at least for a few months...), because they would not take power by means of the present single-party faction-election system. But if one of them should rise through the party hierarchy and be nominated by one of the two factions; then, yes, I think that he would be worshipped as a god, just like George III is worshipped today.

When someone like you, who can think and actually has an education, points out that the King is naked, the poor Prussian American may have a momentary laps into consciousness and a semblance of reason; but will quickly overcome the pain of disobedience to his conditioning by reverting to religious belief again.

"Hail to the Commander in Chief!"

It seems from your post above that you suffer from what I call the "solipsist fallacy". That is the error of thinking that other people think or feel like you do; or that they think at all. It is discussed in more depth in my article "The Solipsist Fallacy? Wazzat?" in The Libertarian Enterprise.

I try to decide, early in a conversation, whether the Prussian-American I am talking to is able to think about new things or see old things in a new light—or not. If I get a glimmer of comprehension from the person I may go further into the subjects of philosophy, politics or economics, etc. If not, then I bow-out of the subject as gracefully as I can and either go on to something else or go away. That seems to limit the headaches and wasted time somewhat.

It is sort of like trying to teach a pig to sing—wasting our time and annoying the pig. We need to see the difference between the Prussian-Pig and the confused Ethnic-American.

I hope this helps!



Michael Bradshaw is the Speaker (also the Lord-High Janitor) of the United States House of Repeals. www.usrepeals.org (Off-line as of November 8, 2005 due to server weirdness. "We are working on it!" Sheesh!)


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