Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master’s commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. – W.H. Auden
I have come to the conclusion that statism rots the brain. In order for a free mind to accept the delusion that someone else as human as himself has the right to tell him what to do, he has to inflict damage on his own psychic organs of self-determination; in order to accept the patent absurdity that such superiority can be conferred by merely putting on a special costume, carrying a little tin amulet or giving oneself an interesting title, that damage has to be severe indeed. And if the subject is to believe that this right of state functionaries to control him extends even to what he does with his own body, the damage has to be both irreversible and so dramatic that it renders the statist incapable of recognizing the truth about nearly anything in which the state is involved. The individual so afflicted not only identifies with the overlords, rationalizing that because they have the divine right to rule him they legitimately represent his interests (“Government is just a word for the things we choose to do together”); he will also obediently line up in front of the slaughterhouse and praise the wisdom and goodness of the butcher (for example, in the recent cacophony of bootlicking which began with and included a federal judge’s declaration that the NSA’s blatantly-unconstitutional universal surveillance is in fact constitutional).
In really advanced cases, the victim’s mind is so warped that he cannot imagine things another way from the status quo; if something is currently illegal, it must have always been that way, and when faced with evidence to the contrary he will misinterpret it to support his lawheaded perception. If he sees an example of government coercion inflicted upon something which was previously free of it, that simply will not compute because holy governmental control is, was and ever will be, forever and ever amen. Think I’m exaggerating? Let’s take a look at how historian William Moss Wilson recently described the imposition of a licensing regime on Nashville whores during the occupation of the city by Union forces in the early 1860s. Remember, prostitution was not illegal in and of itself anywhere in the US prior to 1910; it was often regulated, or restricted to certain areas, or banned from certain areas, and streetwalkers were often harassed by cops using laws against vagrancy and the like. But since a lawhead cannot imagine that something now regarded as “criminal” could ever have been seen otherwise, we get nonsense like this:
…By June 1863, the large numbers of soldiers hospitalized in Nashville for venereal diseases led surgeons and regimental commanders to…[attempt to] rid the city of its prostitutes. Deportation would prove no easy task; nearly every structure along…“Smokey Row”…was a house of prostitution, and other brothels were scattered about town…several hundred women were dragged onto requisitioned steamboats…but [other cities refused them]…and…black prostitutes…filled the void left by their white colleagues…Once deportation proved a failure, [officials instead] released orders that required all of Nashville’s prostitutes to register with the military government, which would in turn issue each woman a license to practice her trade…for a weekly fee of 50 cents…these women would receive a regular medical checkup, and if healthy, issued a certificate. Infected prostitutes would be hospitalized and treated at no additional charge. Failure to register would be penalized with a 30-day sentence in a workhouse…
Wilson’s brain is so warped by statism that he cannot see the imposition of licensing, mandatory health checks and pimping fees for what they are, the intrusion of government into a field with which it had previously been uninvolved; the very idea of an unregulated profession is anathema to him. Accordingly, he misnames the regime “legalization”, ignoring the fact that prostitution wasn’t illegal to begin with and therefore could not be “legalized”. The attempt at deportation was not, as he himself explains, the normal status quo in Nashville, but rather an act of martial law by the military governor of an occupied city. He is “shocked” by the fact that the press and city government viciously attacked the deportation plan but accepted the licensing scheme, and he willfully misinterprets the whores’ acceptance of the regime as a desire to be “protected by regulation” rather than as a welcome respite from the harassment which had preceded it.
This is not an isolated incident; for example, articles about Storyville usually describe it as a “legalized red-light district” when in actuality its establishment represented the restriction to a small area of a business which had previously been allowed everywhere in the city. I’ll bet that before most of y’all started reading this blog, you believed that prostitution had always been illegal in most of the US; most people are surprised to learn that criminalization was a 20th-century notion, enacted in the same general time period as Prohibition and enforced by large, standing municipal police departments which had only existed for a generation. The fact of the matter is that prior to 1913, the US federal government was tiny and the state governments not much bigger; however, the busybody laws which began in the “Progressive Era” gave the swelling numbers of government officials many new excuses to meddle in people’s lives, and the new permanent income tax provided the funds with which to do it. Government began to grow at a pathological rate and has not stopped since, and the minds of most who were born, raised and conditioned to it can no more imagine another way than the members of a lost underground civilization could imagine the sky.
Hi Maggie,
do you know Bob Altemeyer’s “The Authoritarians”? (Free, just Google it.)
It explains to a degree who these people are, how they behave and how destructive and dangerous they are. It also has numbers.
It also confirms that “most people are morons” is actually a scientifically sustainable fact. Pretty bad.
Quite frankly, it does not look good. It looks like a very large fraction of the population is not accessible to rationality of any form, yet easily manipulated.
“Most people are morons”
Does that book say if wondering if you are a moron means you actually are?
Seriously though, if a large segment of the population is so easily manipulated, that begs the important question of who’s doing the manipulating? One would hope it’s someone who has more than their own personal aggrandizement in mind, but we all know that is rarely the case.
I know that many here would reject manipulation on general principle, but I wonder if that is going to be necessary in order to actually change things for the better. I’ve said before that I see little to be gained by writing off large numbers of people as unreachable, whether that is the right wing writing off people as “takers,” the left wing righting off people as “zealots,” or even those here writing off people as “lawheads.”
I’m not saying it wouldn’t be hard or frustrating and it may very well be futile, but at some point someone is going to have to engage with the opposition on their level. If rationality doesn’t work, then use their own rhetoric in such a way as to reverse the descent without them actually realizing it. If such a thing can work for people who only have their own ends in mind, why not for those who have everyone else’s ends at heart?
Ah, ‘blatantly unconstitutional’; my favorite phrase. It’s so obvious! How could anyone think otherwise in good faith? Everyone who even learned about these programs prior to public exposure and went along with them must be evil and dumb.
Sigh – wishing something were a constitutional right does not actually make it one.
Well, there’s this thing called the Fourth Amendment, but we’ll just pretend that doesn’t exist.
That’s the point. The fourth amendment doesn’t prohibit certain acts just because we want it to.
For instance, it does prohibit intentional eavesdropping of conversations between US persons without probable cause and a warrant. It doesn’t prohibit the consensual accumulation of metadata logs from third parties, under heavy restriction and oversight. The Supreme Court has never held otherwise, and that’s exactly what that Judge said.
The NSA does the latter, not the former. It does this to scan for needles in the haystack in real time to detect unknown threats – something one can’t do with individualized warrants.
It’s fine if you want to say, “I prefer the government not accumulate metadata, even if it means it can’t conduct real-time, needles-in-the-haystack, unknown-threat scanning. I’m willing to live with that trade-off.” And I’d agree with you.
But that a far cry from pretending the fourth amendment mandates that course of action, which it doesn’t.
I’m wholly unsurprised that you support the abominable third-party doctrine, or that you willfully ignore the danger of metadata. Thanks for demonstrating the moral bankruptcy of statism yet again.
I’ll just leave this link right here.
The Constitution is a contract, and therefore does not change its meaning merely because one of the parties insists on unilaterally “interpreting” it. And its principal authors spelt out its meaning quite clearly in the Federalist Papers. Therefore, most of the changes imposed in the 20th century are clearly wrong.
Of course, the mechanisms that the Constitution set up for enforcing itself have been long since taken over by the bad guys. I don’t think that means it’s time to foment a revolution quite yet, but I do feel we should no longer be cooperating with the system. We need to bring it to a standstill as happened in 1787, hopefully leading to a convention and a new, better constitution as happened then.
You don’t have to change the constitution to prevent the government from doing things you don’t like. You just have to follow Milton Friedman’s strategy and create an intellectual environment where it is beneficial for a politician to explicitly take responsibility for the obvious trade-off: “the government must not do this, even if it means it can’t scan for unknown threats, and even if that means we occasionally experience an attack we could have otherwise prevented. It’s not worth it, we can take the hit and be brave and principled enough not to give up or rights.”
Well, the reason you hardly even hear that message is that it’s not popular enough to help politicians win elections, and until it is, they’re not going to do what you want. Relying on the current constitution to protect you if folly, because the status quo is grounded in the operative interpretation of it. Renting on a new Constitution is done folly, because if your co-citizens don’t support your position enough to support politicians to try and pass a mere statute, they certainly can’t be trusted to enact it in convention.
Why not? The busybodies and other swine have always been happy to ignore any part of the constitution that conflicted with their plans. Look at how the Political Left fought long and hard to pretend that the 2nd amendment was ridiculous. Either side of the aisle can be counted on to assert that the 1st amendment doesn’t really apply to anything that annoys them
Ah, constitutions! Earnest attempts at “law control” in which a piece of paper (or, to Dubya, a “goddam piece of paper”) opposes vast armed government gangs. The “constitution” game was up as soon as the government decided that it had the power to say what the constitution meant.
Maggie, you’re right as usual: lawheadedness is truly a mental disorder. I’m thinking just now of a guy I used to work with, who suffered so badly with the disease that he always had to find out just what laws and rules dealt with any given activity, so he could be sure to comply. Truly, an acute case.
Having only recently become an escort’s client and discovering how that world works, it occurs to me that it’s an excellent example of private, voluntary cooperation, without the “benefit” of government regulation … and, indeed, in spite of government-waged warfare against it. It seems to me that a client who does his homework and exercises a modicum of caution and prudence can enjoy a lady’s company in relatively-complete safety; and she, by screening properly and observing good practices, can make her living in reasonable safety. And it also seems to me that the residual risk to both people is mostly the result of prohibition.
Yep. And not so long ago, much of the Western world was like that.
Seems to me that the desire to be dominated by others is strong in the human race. (Nothing wrong with it if properly exercised, and one has a dominatrix and keep it to play time). From the beginning we’ve had those anxious to appoint a chief, priest, boss or king to tell them what to do, and profit from their efforts.
Fear of freedom runs deep in the human race.
“buh buh buh-” The lawheads will say “We’ve got to have order! We’ve got to have a government!”
To an extent, I agree. Some efforts in a society require coordination, organization and standardization. But does that always mean giving someone extraordinary authority above you?
Why not exercise that power yourself, among yourselves? That where socialism, and syndicalism comes in. It’s the way to do government without becoming a slave, because you are the government. (do not confuse this with the form of facisim practiced in the USSR and China under the name of communism.)
I wonder if it’s not just fear of freedom, but fear of others’ freedom: “I’M able to exercise freedom responsibly, but [insert group here] would kill us all and rob us blind in a minute if they thought they had the freedom to.”
“To an extent, I agree. Some efforts in a society require coordination, organization and standardization.”
I like this, Comixchik. And it informs something I’ve been wanting to ask from time to time when I read this blog. I realize this is a “what if” scenario that is more an intellectual exercise than anything, but please bear with me. This also isn’t an attempt to play “gotcha” or anything like that.
In the past 100 years (if we’re going back to 1913), is there anything that government actually did right or which government provided which was good? Anything that we take for granted today which we’d be willing to have had come much later (or not at all) if the government had remained tiny? I’ll admit I’m straining to think of a positive example off the top of my head, because it can be argued that any medical or scientific research could have been accomplished by non-government-supported labs (eventually), or that any benefits that infrastructure projects provided are negated by the people who lost their land to build them. Maybe regulations that say in essence “you can’t dump industrial waste in the water” but those have become so labyrinthal of late I don’t know if even those work as an example.
Maggie, since your entry involves an example from the American Civil War, I’ll take it a step further. One of the first major expansions of federal power was as a result of that war (I believe that’s been cited here on this blog in the past). So, who here thinks the American experiment should have ended in 1860 with the Southern Secession? What do you think that world would look like? I myself can’t really speak to an answer as I’m not a historian. Although among other things, I wonder if the slavery issue would have eventually been settled without a bloody war thanks to the relentless march of technology (why feed and house 20 slaves when you can have a cotton gin or mechanical reaper do the work?)
I suppose what I’m getting at is if we were still working under a true pre-modern societal system, whether any of us would even have the time to connect and learn and yes, even argue, about things like this, because we’d all be too busy planting and harvesting subsistence crops.
To me this all speaks to the even bigger question of whether we as a species have progressed too fast for our own good. I read that “Burn the F’ing System Down” article yesterday and found a great many people theorizing that the problem indeed isn’t with this or that method of governance but with the limitations of our human minds (as Comixchik alluded to above), a problem that will not be solved until perhaps the next leap in evolution.
To answer your question, I’ll speak about the US government, since it’s mostly Americans here.
Good things the government has done since since 1913:
– Widespread public education. (Certainly not perfect, but better than none)
– Social security
– economic redevelopment of the south
– Medicare, medicaid
– The Civil Rights act of 1964
– NASA, and the space program
– The Internet
That’s just a few things, off the top of my head.
Thank you, Comixchik.
One more I would like to add- Saving the world from the Nazis in the mid twentieth century.
I used to feel that way, until I realized that it was just a matter of a less-developed form of fascism getting a more-developed competitor out of the way.
Even more than slavery, the raison d’être of the Confederate States of America was white fucking supremacy. I wish it weren’t the case, but I don’t think that there was any other way for those bastards to give up slavery except at the point of a sword.
Dear Thequietman, other great things done by US government: FMLA Program. This program has kept me a working taxpayer for many years. It protects your job if you have chronic illnesses with no cures, etc., by keeping you from getting fired for being out sick too much. It also protects the jobs of women on maternity leave and if you need to take care of a sick family member. Also in no way has it infringed on any of my rights. I’ve never been asked to take a drug test, been grilled about my life, etc. This program keeps people like me from going on disability. Before it people like me were fired for attendance and had to go on disability if no one outside of US govt. helped them. Another one: disability income. Unfortunately, some who have illnesses that try to work repeatedly and can’t (even under FMLA Program) have this to keep them independent if their family and/or communities can’t afford to help them and/or don’t care to help them (I’ve seen this type of thing firsthand unfortunately). If the US govt. hadn’t stepped in to help these people there would be way more disabled people who are homeless, etc. Unemployment insurance is another one. This is one that can’t be called “theft” (eyeroll) because you literally pay into it when you’re working. It’s kept me independent at times when I was out of work (through no fault of my own) and they also were a big help to me in finding my current job. Food stamps is another one. There are people who are poor through no fault of their own (from being laid off from jobs, etc.) and this helps them get food during hard times. It’s also a program that helps people of all ages (like disability income does) which is very needed because if people need help their age shouldn’t matter and the help should be for ALL in need. Yes, there are people who take advantage of unemployment insurance, etc., but those who don’t and are truly in need due to no fault of their own need to be talked about also as focusing just on those who take advantage isn’t the full picture.
Dear thequietman, also wanted to say that if you acknowledge that US govt. has done/is still doing some good things that doesn’t automatically mean you condone all they do. I’m fed up with this assumption. If you acknowledge the good that doesn’t mean you condone and/or willfully ignore the bad. There’s too many bad things going on in US government and we need to do what we can to at least try and change them. But, I also say be thankful for the good that’s there and don’t write it off like it doesn’t count, is only a fluke, etc.
Thank you Laura. If I am correct, you’re Ms. Augustin, aka the “Naked Anthropologist”? Whether you are or not, I’m in total agreement with you.
That assumption you reference, that acknowledging the good (or even saying the capacity for good is still there) somehow equals condoning the bad is what I was trying to drive at in my original question. This is why I find myself parting ways with those arguing for bringing down the entire system.
WIth regards to my original question, the reason I was struggling to think of an example myself was that I couldn’t think of one at the time that couldn’t be written off by others here as “not counting” or just a fluke. Comixchik was good enough to mention some and I thank you again for contributing some more.
This Laura is not Laura Agustin; she is Sailor Barsoom’s girlfriend.
Ah, I beg your pardon then, Laura. A case of mistaken identity.
Dear thequietman, no offense taken.
Dear thequietman, I was going to answer for myself (and am able to) but got beaten to it. I’m proud to be Sailor Barsoom’s girlfriend for many years (and hope for the rest of our lives and am always working on making that possible) but I’m more than that. I’ve learned there’s way more to life than just being a girlfriend. To just be that would to me mean going back to my old life which I’d rather be dead than be part of. It’s possible to be a girlfriend plus have 100% of the $’s you have be from your work only PLUS other things going on outside of work.
Dear thequietman, you’re welcome. I’m glad you have an open mind on this. Something else that I get a kick out of (being sarcastic here) is some “all government is EEEEVIL” types from what we know of them (from what they say, etc.) have never had the need for unemployment insurance, aren’t disabled and don’t have health problems that allow them to only work while on the FMLA program. In other words, no experience with these programs and no need for them. Thanks again for having an open mind towards the possibility of government doing good things.
I’m sorry, but I find this whole “government good/government bad” argument tiresome, and it misses the real point in discussing the role of government and proper limitations of its power.
It is absurd to argue that government has no role to play, just as it is absurd to argue that all government does is valuable, useful, or proper. Or that there are not serious downsides and both unintended and politically motivated intended negative consequences to many government programs, or that government does not over-reach.
I won’t attempt to speak for all countries at all times, but in the U.S. we have a Constitution framed by revolutionaries who believed, for the most part, that the role of government should be strictly limited, that government should serve certain specific functions necessary to the protection of the commonweal, and the rights of the individual should be enumerated and jealously guarded from the abuse of power by the state.
As Maggie has well illustrated in her discussion of how creeping statism has caused what were once seen as perfectly legal and tolerated rights of individuals to control their own bodies, whether in the practice or utilization of prostitution in this country, to be nearly completely outlawed, the natural tendency of the state is to expand its power and its reach. In so doing, it builds and entrenches its power, continually eating away at the rights of the individual. At the same time, the bureaucracy becomes a power unto itself, expanding and entrenching itself and finding new and insidious ways to infringe on the privacy and rights of the individual. These things should come as no surprise since that is the natural tendency of organizations.
The questions we should be asking are, does this or that act or program of government fall within the limits of the Constitution on the proper role of government? What is the effect on the individual and personal rights? And, a question that has reached crisis proportions, what is the cost of this or that act or program? Nothing comes without a cost, a principle that seems to have eluded our Congress and Administrations and some state and local governing bodies and executives in recent years, leading to record deficits and public debt as a burden to be paid by taxpayers almost ad infinitum.
One can argue endlessly that certain social programs serve useful purposes and help provide for individuals that supposedly can’t provide for themselves. But the definition of what is or isn’t needed has become ever more expansive to the point where by the end of 2011 49.2% of the American population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, were receiving some sort of government assistance or another — 151 million out of a population of 306.8 million people. Is this truly what the framers of our Constitution envisaged? Is this what a free society is about? And what are the costs of this, both the actual budgetary costs and the costs in engendering long-term dependency and creation of a permanent under class?
To establish my own credentials to comment on this, aside from being a citizen and voter, I have worked for government at the federal, state, and local levels, and I have on occasion received government benefits (unemployment payments some three and a half decades ago, and Social Security now, as well as program support through various grant programs, and on at least one occasion I was told I was in effect too poor to qualify for welfare). I have seen and even benefited from some potentially positive things government does, and I have been appalled and disgusted by some of what I have seen and experienced of government. And I have on numerous occasions during my life, including within the past few years, preferred to go hungry and homeless, or nearly so, and without medical care, than to turn myself over to the intrusions and controls of the state into my life in return for some benefit or other. My freedom and autonomy mean more to me than receiving the supposed largesse of government, and as long as I have the power to do so I will resist the intrusions of government into my life and the over-reach of government into our society. And I feel I have been happier and have developed an enterprising spirit that has benefited me far beyond what government assistance ever could. I just wish the healthy distrust of, and resistance to, government was as contagious as the contemporary affinity for hooking on to the government gravy train.
Another thorny question about costs is “how much does not doing anything cost to society?” And let’s not forget that if government went away, corporations will be happy to take over in exerting control… and they don’t even have to pretend to work for our good.
@Maggie: “I have come to the conclusion that statism rots the brain . . . And if the subject is to believe that this right of state functionaries to control him extends even to what he does with his own body, the damage has to be both irreversible and so dramatic that it renders the statist incapable of recognizing the truth about nearly anything in which the state is involved.”
So correct, and in fact you embody in your words exactly some of the thoughts that have pervaded my own brain these days. If the state is free to regulate our very bodies, what right does it not possess? And if we allow it to do so, how complicit are we in surrendering our own autonomy to the state.
Yes, there are subtle and sometimes less-than-subtle complexities that arrive when what we do with our bodies intersects with what we do with the bodies of others, but the tentacles of the state and those who manipulate them go far beyond these complexities and intercede with control where indeed none should exist. And it is all incremental, bit by bit, not unlike the chart you present in which the greed and reach of government grows inexorably each year to consume more and more of the flesh of our society to feed itself.
I find myself resorting to the ideas of my relative youth in which withdrawal from the society, from the mainstream, from the reach of government, seemed then and again seems to be the only solution. Yes, one must sacrifice some things in order to gain others. And, in withdrawing, it is hard to imagine a more worthy objective than the freedom to think, believe, and act as one wishes, not in collision with the rights or freedom of others, but solely in the pursuit of happiness and self-actualization in a life that is all too short and comes but once.
To all the legal fine points and Constitutional debates, of which I am well aware, and which become their own form of trap, I say simply, “pfffttt!”
Reblogged this on Sable Aradia, Priestess & Witch and commented:
While I don’t agree with everything she says, I certainly think she has some excellent points; the best of which is that people often delude themselves into thinking that things have always been the way they are, when it’s not necessarily so. And not all social changes are “progressive.”
Hi, Maggie –
Do you have any reading suggestions about how / why prostitution was made illegal in the US? More specific than the overarching theme of it being an era of busy-body laws.
bookmoth
I go into it at length in my upcoming paper “Mind-witness Testimony”, but I’m sure you’ll find the coverage in “A Brief History of Prostitution in the US” answers most of your questions.
Excellent and eye-opening writing. I’m sharing this.
For most people, statism begins in a state-approved school. Were you taught that most people were home-educated and self-educated prior to 1850 – and even later in some parts of the country? Most “histories of education” are actually histories of schooling. An exception would be John Taylor Gatto’s Underground History of American Education, or Andrew J. Coulson’s Market Education: The Unknown History.
It’s probably best if I say nothing at all.