How to know you love Government
Dare to ask questions nobody else is asking
We were all born with it.
You know. It.
Government.
It was just ... there. Along with your mum and dad, your siblings, school, clothes, food, your bed, your favourite stuffed toy, etc.
Never crossed your mind, you never thought to question ... why it was there. Why would you? After all, you liked all the things. (OK, school, maybe not so much. But even school had some redeeming features - you saw your friends there.)
And since they all kept you alive, and made life worth living, you just sort of figured ... Hey, that thing called Government must be a good thing, right? If all the other things are?
And as time went by, you started to discover Government's redeeming qualities too. All the horrible, nasty little things, Government could protect you from.
Here are some of them, in no particular order:
You're terrified of the future
Also known as, You doubt yourself.
Got to make a living now. Mum and Dad have kicked you out of the house. Go, little bird. Fly. Be free.
How?
How am I supposed to do this flying thing? How do I do Free? What if these wings don't work? Or if there's a sudden gust of gravity? Who's gonna catch me?
Where's the user guide? I didn’t ask for this, y’know. I didn’t ask to be born!
Somobody protect me from all the scary voices in my head that tell me I'm no good, I don't have what it takes, I'm gonna starve, I can't pay the rent, I'll never make it!
Who's gonna take care of me and feed me when I can't do it for myself? Which is definitely when I'm old and decrepit, but is also, kinda like ... now.
Where's my social safety net?
Aaaahhhh. Here's comes Superman. Thank you Super- ... thank you Big Brother!
You fear people
Not all people, of course.
Just ... those people. You know, them. Over there (pointing). The ones who screw everything up for the rest of us.
Those people, you'd dearly love to see GONE. Or at least, reprogrammed.
Your ENEMIES.
(And you're fooling yourself if you think, I love everybody! I don't have any enemies! Oh yes, you do.)
Oh, if only they could be eliminated or silenced or something. Life would be sooooo much more bearable.
But you haven't the guts to do it yourself. Or maybe you just don't want to get your hands dirty.
You'd much rather some big bully come along and do the job neatly, tidily, and conveniently.
As copywriter Blair Warren puts it, You need help throwing rocks at your enemies!
And Government ... oh how very convenient! ... can do exactly that, if we give it a monopoly on firearms and violence.
Which we didn’t exactly give, but which Government claimed, and we haven’t objected.
You think you’re a victim who needs defending
This is really a variation on You Fear People.
Victim mentality is oh, so easy to succumb to. Especially if you were bullied early on (as I was), or suffered some kind of abuse.
Victim thinking infected my own head the first half of my life. Only reason I gave it up is, Having someone else to blame fixed nothing for me. I still felt miserable.
But climbing out of John Bunyan's Slough of Despond takes effort.
So when Superman comes along and says, Don't worry! I'll prevent this happening again, to you and anyone else! ...
Pretty convincing argument.
You want the world to adapt to you, you don’t want to adapt to the world
Doncha just love CHANGE?
What? You don't?
Of course you don't. That's because it always feels like losing. You're the one doing the reacting, to Change that's Imposed On You.
Wouldn't it be nice to turn the tables for once? Why yes, it would.
For once, you’ll be able to live in the world the way You Think It Should Be. At last.
And Government ... makes that possible. Just like power steering in a car. With a simple twist of the wheel, you'll be able to change to a direction that suits YOU!
Makes sense to your lizard brain, at least.
You envy
More specifically, you envy everyone with more than you.
They trigger some chemical in your head that screams NOT FAIR!
They MUST have stolen it!
So when Government comes along and says, Hey, I can make it possible for you to raid those people’s piggy banks ... all legally ...
Pretty convincing argument.
Government is just part of the furniture
OK, this one is understandable.
Richard Koch refers to it as Extreme Sensitivity to Initial Conditions.
We were born, and grew up with, Government. It was just there, like Mom and Dad, and everything else that we slowly built our lives upon.
And since we don't see people around us protesting against Big Brother's existence, that must mean its existence is OK, right?
I was born to a scientist civil servant who spent his entire career with the federal government. His father spent his whole career with the same government, and my other grandfather, the latter half of his. And since I never went cold or hungry, and had the occasional vacation ...
It never dawned on me to question what this Thing Called Government was.
You don’t want to have to govern yourself
Also known as, You’re terrified of responsibility.
Responsibility. UGH! What an awful word.
You simply can't stomach being responsible for yourself. Too many ways out there to be Wrong, to fail, to screw up. Too much shame to be felt.
Nope, can't stand it.
Some bigwig taking all that responsibility away? Yes please! Much less shame.
Somebody's gotta build the roads and hospitals, doncha know!
This one's classic.
Just imagine a world without roads, cars, trucks, trains, clinics, etc. We'd all grind to a halt and, in pretty short order, starve and die horrible deaths.
Yup, yup, yup. We need all those things.
Who'd build them if Government didn't?
ANSWER: Pretty much the same people who are building them now.
Governments don't build a damn thing. People do.
(In fact, governments often act as a brake on progress, and an inflater of costs.)
If you think a world without governments is a world without roads and hospitals, you don't think human beings are capable of organizing ourselves and solving problems. You don't think we (or YOU) are capable of doing ANYTHING if there isn't some Big Brother telling you what to do.
Only reason you think governments are necessary to building roads and hospitals is because you've never seen it done any other way.
You’re handing Government way too much credit. (And power.)
How else will be know that everybody wins, not just the Lucky Few?
OK, this one has merit.
It's particularly persuasive for women, whose brains are more naturally wired subsonsciously to think this way. (Which is a really good thing. That's how they gain confidence to bear abd raise children.)
A world in which the same few actors keep taking the lion's share of the spoils, all the time ... isn't a very attractive one to live in.
(Not even for the lions, long-term. Because even lions have bad days. Even lions have predators - they're just usually other lions.)
A world in which everybody wins, at least some of the time, is desirable.
(Politicians know this. That's why some of them, left-leaning more often than not, will often trot out the mantra at election time, "With me, everybody wins!" Which by implication means, "With me, nobody loses!"
They have right-leaning politicians at a disadvantage. Right-leaning ones have more of a bias for Truth, and know that "everybody wins, nobody loses" is total falsehood. Left-leaning ones have a bias for Fairness. They get it. "Everybody wins, nobody loses" must be MADE to happen.)
So yeah, this one has merit.
Just not enough.
You want to be safe, and Putin’s out there, doncha know?
This one has merit too.
You might not like the idea of being ruled over. But there are, sadly, people in the world ... most of them, perhaps ... who DO.
They've got Putins over them, and happily send their sons to the army, to do King Putin's bidding, for the good of the nation. And he's oh so willing to let them die in his place.
And they also like the idea of YOU being ruled over. You’re less of a threat, that way.
The Putins are chomping at the bit to march across your border and take YOU DOWN.
Think you can fight them off all on your own?
So while we might hate the idea of Government ... ARMY is a sadly unavoidable necessity.
(Just ask your average Israeli. They don't particularly enjoy bleeeding and dying any more than the next guy. But on Oct 7th, 2023, they didn’t pick up their Libertarian User Manual. They grabbed their rifles and reported for duty with their old regiment.
One of Israelis’ more famous ancestors wrote, "There is a time for war, and a time for peace." Them's the breaks.
So if you acknowledge the need for ARMY ... then yeah, there is some value to Government.
Just maybe not Massive, Gargantuan Government such as we have now.