14A038 Advanced-Auction Time by Jim Davies, 9/3/2014    

Mencken's perceptive summary of elections ("advance auctions of stolen goods") is timely again this month; by gracious edict of our masters, we get to choose a few days hence between Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee. Or perhaps it's just the preliminary round this time, in which the choice is among those who shall be qualified to be chosen for actual office a bit later on - I don't pay enough attention to understand such details.

In fact, I noticed this one only because I happen to know the gentleman who wants to be the Republican Nominee for US Senate from New Hampshire. He is Jim Rubens, a genial and courteous person who has actually been spotted in a Libertarian Party meeting or two. He is running against Scott Brown, who gained fame not long ago by defeating a Democrat in the People's Republic of Taxachussetts to our South, to gain the seat of the late Ted Kennedy. Brown was once seen as a Tea Partygoer, but that shine subsequently dulled.

Here is Rubens' encapsulation of what he stands for, as advertised recently on Lew Rockwell's site. I don't know whether Jim is a very religious man, but the photo seems to show him in a posture of prayer, earnestly begging that Americans will renew their faith in government.

I emailed him, to check that he really meant what it said, and he replied "You and I may differ in that I do not wish to eliminate all functions of the federal government (for example national defense) and that those that remain should be better trusted by the public."

I responded that on the contrary, he wished to decorate the pig with lipstick, while I intend to reduce it to pulled pork. Here, I'll expand that by considering the example he chose ("national defense") and then the wider question of whether any government can ever be worthy of trust.

"National Defense" since 1783 has consisted of 322 wars, by my count from Wikipedia - and not one of those 322 followed an unprovoked attack on the United States. To call that bloody record "defense" is to torture the language.

No, there was no exception in 1812. Nor in 1861. Nor in 1917. Nor in 1941. Nor in 2001. The Federal Government is now and always has been the biggest warmonger on the face of the Earth. Any who seriously wish to restore faith in it on that basis can hardly complain if he is considered a raving psychopath. Yet Jim Rubens is a gentle man.

The so-called "Good War" of 1939-45 is a blatant example of US aggression. Evidence has recently emerged that FDR tricked Chamberlain in March 1939 into stringing the disastrous trip wire of the Polish Guarantee, which obliged him to declare war 75 years ago today. FDR then manipulated Americans to join in 1941. He and Churchill insisted on continuing the war until "unconditional surrender" was obtained from Germany and Japan, so condemning (according to historian Paul Johnson) an extra two million Jews to death in the concentration camps. No, governments should never be trusted with "national defense."

Then, government is untrustworthy by nature, so should be trusted for nothing at all. The nature of government is to govern. That's its whole business. It rules. That is, it takes some of the decisions about your life which you, as a self-owner, are entitled by nature to take, and makes them for you; whether you agree or not, and whether it's good for you or not. You are over-ruled. Any student in The Freedom Academy learns this, by the end of its Segment 2.

Why any self-owning, sovereign human being would trust someone else to rule him is beyond my comprehension. In fact, I've never met such a person. Have you? It is absurd; government is irreconcilable with human nature, radically opposed to it. This is the garbage-in, the ultimate source of the garbage-out which we can see every night on TV or in the newspaper. Government is a fundamentally irrational concept. It doesn't fit humanity at all, and when foisted upon it, everywhere causes mayhem, chaos, misery, poverty and death. Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.

The problem is not that government is corrupt (though it surely is) and needing reform; the problem is that by nature it is incorrigible, beyond any possibility of reform. By nature, government habitually lies; why would anyone trust an habitual liar? It pretends to keep "law and order", but implements massive injustice, as Paul Craig Roberts showed passionately last week; and even he didn't mention that the "fix" was in on the justice system as early as 1789. It pretends to safeguard finance, but implements fraudulent "money" that has lost nearly 99% of its value in a single century. It pretends to arrange affordable health care, but has raised its actual cost by a factor of seven. It pretends to furnish free education for all, but has implemented a vastly expensive system of wholesale child abuse.

By nature, government murders those it pretends to protect; why would anyone place faith in a proven serial killer? "Power kills," as R J Rummel has proven, "and absolute power kills absolutely." By his count, governments killed 262 million during the 20th Century, plus battle deaths.

By nature, government steals; since no sane person would voluntarily pay for its "services" it is always funded only by theft, which it euphemizes as "tax." Why would anyone trust a known, habitual thief? - and not mere petty theft, but grand larceny on a huge scale, of about half of everything people earn.

So everything government touches, it ruins or mars. To work for it is not even close to honest, any more than to work for the Mafia could be honest. To vote for it, or to solicit votes so as to join it, is likewise morally bankrupt. Government - Federal, State and local - is by nature reprobate, totally unworthy of trust. Thanks to increasing awareness of what government really is - not least, through the growth of TOLFA - the extent of the swindle is becoming understood. Lew Rockwell wrote in his recent book "I would mark the rise of anarcho-capitalist theory as the most dramatic intellectual shift in my adult lifetime." He is exactly right. The Age of Government is drawing to a close.

"Faith" is something we employ properly when the evidence for a belief is strong, but less than absolute. We have faith that someone will repay a debt, because he has always done so before; that someone will treat us kindly, because all precedent suggests it. Evidence for the trustworthiness of government, however, is immensely powerful and all in the opposite direction; yet Jim Rubens and his ilk want to restore our faith in it. I say he hasn't got a prayer.