Political Atheism

[Lonewulf]

I'm not proposing anything. I wouldn't dream of telling you how to run your life. Thats my point. I don't believe I need someone else running my life, and I certainly don't need to elect someone to run yours. I wouldn't want you under any form of authority that you don't voluntarily submit to.

I think that some people would prefer to live a communal life and others a fiercely independent one. I think most would choose to participate in a free economy where trade of goods, services, and ideas are unrestricted. If you are afraid of suicide bombers... I imagine someone would market themselves as your protector for example... you could choose your level of protection based on your perceived need and your resources.

The problem is how to handle when one person's unrestricted services impedes upon the freedom of another person.

What you seem to be advocating is the blatant overpowering of the rich over the poor, the strong over the weak.

Can you explain to me how my analogy fails on several fundamental points, thats what I am really interested in? I'm not really interested in hearing arguments about whether living under one political system or another is more effective, I'm only interested in arguments from morality. I subscribe to the axiom that no man should commit an act of aggression against another man (murder, theft of property, assault, coercion etc.), therefore, I do not believe that government is valid because it gives certain men the right to commit aggressive acts against another.

Religion falls, in the main, without any rituals or supernatural.

While a government has its rituals, it requires no belief in the supernatural. What you seem to be saying, is that if something is abstract, it cannot exist. That's not really all that true. You might as well state that emotions don't exist.

If you subscribe to the axiom that murder, theft of property, assault, and coercion are wrong in every respect, regardless of any kind of context or utility, then perhaps you can explain to me how you intend on preventing people in this Utopia of yours from murdering, stealing, assaulting, or coercing anyone else.

It seems that you're essentially saying that you don't like the house cat because it bites and scratches you from time to time, and instead want to institute a house tiger. No, a series of them. Rabid ones.

 

[drkitten]

Because a government which doesn't have authority to do things that individuals don't isn't a government at all, but a club.

It's what differentiates government from all other forms of organisation, a monopoly on the use and exercise of violence.

That's a common anarchist misconception, yes.

It's wrong, of course. Government is not about the use of force, but upon the authorization of force. Historical examples abound; for example, in Tokugawa-era Japan, any samurai was authorized to use force against the peasantry in a number of circumstances without being a member of the government. Similarly, under US law today, private citizens are routinely authorized to use force, for example, in defense of their lives and property or to prevent a greater harm.

What differentiates a government is that a government can authorize the use of force, either in advance or in retrospect. But this is just a specific instance of a government's more general ability to authorize or forbid behavior generally.

In other words, a government is not about "force," but about "rules." A government makes rules and ultimately decides what may and may not be done.

And since it's well-established that there are some people who do not like following rules and will not follow them absent compulsion, government is necessary.

 

[adamruth]

Here's a simplified scenario:

The people vote to decide what is a crime and what is not.

One of these crimes is locking people up.

The people appoint a representative to be in the government whose job is to judge criminals and sentence those who are found guilty.

The people appoint police to enforce their list of crimes, and agree that even if these police have to commit the crime of locking someone up, they will not be punished for doing so.

Someone commits a crime .

The judge decides to lock the criminal up.

The police carry out the sentence.

The people don't complain about the police because they remember that they had already decided that it was okay for them to commit that crime.

Now tell me, at what point in this scenario was power given to a non-existent entity?

"The people don't complain..."

My point is that "the people" don't have, themselves, the right to imprison anyone. It would seem to then follow that they can't delegate that right to anyone. The way this is rationalised is that somehow "the government" has the right to imprison independent of its members. That's the non-existent entity that has a power which is "superhuman" (i.e. a power that an individual person doesn't possess).

 

[adamruth]

What you seem to be advocating is the blatant overpowering of ... the strong over the weak.

Which describes democracy pretty well: The blatant overpowering of the majority over the minority.

If you subscribe to the axiom that murder, theft of property, assault, and coercion are wrong in every respect, regardless of any kind of context or utility, then perhaps you can explain to me how you intend on preventing people in this Utopia of yours from murdering, stealing, assaulting, or coercing anyone else.

I can't speak for him but the axiom I subscribe to is that all initiated violence is wrong (that is, violence which is not used to defend against violence). And calling it "Utopia" is just wrong, no one claimed any kind of Utopia. Murderers, thieves, etc. will be stopped with violence, if necessary. I plan on protecting myself, my property, and my friends & family as needed.

You hire that task out to a group called "the government." But there are other ways to accomplish that goal.

 

[Dunstan]

"The people don't complain..."

My point is that "the people" don't have, themselves, the right to imprison anyone. It would seem to then follow that they can't delegate that right to anyone. The way this is rationalised is that somehow "the government" has the right to imprison independent of its members. That's the non-existent entity that has a power which is "superhuman" (i.e. a power that an individual person doesn't possess).

So, in your hypothetical anarchic utopia, what do you do to people who violate your rights? What do your "private enforcement companies" do? And what gives you, or them, the right to do it?

 

[adamruth]

Government is not about the use of force, but upon the authorization of force. Historical examples abound; for example, in Tokugawa-era Japan, any samurai was authorized to use force against the peasantry in a number of circumstances without being a member of the government. Similarly, under US law today, private citizens are routinely authorized to use force, for example, in defense of their lives and property or to prevent a greater harm.

That's just a matter of semantics. The government reserves for itself the use of force and delegates it out. That's what a monopoly is. Think of a patent. Only you are allowed to implement the invention, however you can license others to use it. The default is that only the government can use force.

But this is just a specific instance of a government's more general ability to authorize or forbid behavior generally.

Thorough force. There's nothing the government can do to prevent any behaviour except through the exercise of force. Most people comply when threatened by the government, but that "threat" is a threat of force.

And since it's well-established that there are some people who do not like following rules and will not follow them absent compulsion, government is necessary.

Force is necessary, government is only one implementation of that.

 

[Lonewulf]

Which describes democracy pretty well: The blatant overpowering of the majority over the minority.

An Athenian Democracy, perhaps.

The Constitutional Republic, as exists in the U.S., does not run in that way, and it's not like your criticism hasn't been brought up before (it's referred to as mob rule). If they did, you would not see any increase in civil rights, even when they are unpopular. If you had truly studied the present governments, you would know of the thing called checks and balances.

I can't speak for him but the axiom I subscribe to is that all initiated violence is wrong (that is, violence which is not used to defend against violence).

Violence as a result of government action is, ideally, used to defend against or prevent violence.

And calling it "Utopia" is just wrong, no one claimed any kind of Utopia.

My mistake, then...

Murderers, thieves, etc. will be stopped with violence, if necessary. I plan on protecting myself, my property, and my friends & family as needed.

You're making the assumption that you are capable of protecting your property, your friends, and your family.

There are ways to create a superior force against an inferior force. A gang can potentially overwhelm you and take what they need from you. You may have heard of roving rape groups and war bands in some of the worst parts of Africa; that's what you would be looking at.

To defend against such a band, you'd need a larger band. But the larger your own band, the more potential you have of committing offenses against other weaker people. Corruption is almost certainly going to creep in, and so the larger band eventually becomes a threat, or has elements of it that become a threat.

It's an ever-escalating state, and with nothing to regulate it, it would escalate out of control.

And that's just the normal "state of living". There's also other things to worry about, such as unregulated businesses and manufacturing. What if we had no laws against pollutants? What would you do if you saw conditions as bad in the slums of the 1800s? Without regulation, the poor would suffer under the shadow of the rich, and unregulated industry would poo-poo over everything there is. The environmental damage would be catastrophic.

 

[phantomb]

"The people don't complain..."

My point is that "the people" don't have, themselves, the right to imprison anyone.

No, but that's because they've intentionally given away that right with the realization that a single person cannot be trusted to decide something as important as whether it is appropriate to lock someone up.

It would seem to then follow that they can't delegate that right to anyone.

Of course they can. What is right and what is wrong is decided primarily by the people themselves. If everyone in the society decides that they will collectively give police the right to lock up a criminal, who are you to tell them they can't?

The way this is rationalised is that somehow "the government" has the right to imprison independent of its members. That's the non-existent entity that has a power which is "superhuman" (i.e. a power that an individual person doesn't possess).

It's not a rationalization, it's a decision. By living and voting in your society you help to decide what powers your government does and does not have. There is no non-existent entity.

 

[drkitten]

Which describes democracy pretty well: The blatant overpowering of the majority over the minority.

Which, of course, is why the Founding Fathers (of the USA) set up a constitutional republic with a Bill of Rights to limit the majoritarian powers; a structure that the various constituencies accepted and continue to accept.

If you don't like it, the procedures for changing the structure are written into the structure itself.

I can't speak for him but the axiom I subscribe to is that all initiated violence is wrong (that is, violence which is not used to defend against violence).

Ah, yes, another of the standard anarchist misconceptions. "All violence is wrong except for the sort I personally approve of."

For example, : "Murderers, thieves, etc. will be stopped with violence, if necessary."

Why is "theft" necessarily violent? In fact, it usually isn't; most theft is simple "theft by deception" and/or fraud, which is by definition non-violent. But you want to stop such frauds, "by violence, if necessary," which means you are willing to initiate violence despite the fact that "all initiated violence is wrong."

I plan on protecting myself, my property, and my friends & family as needed.

The problem with this is that you are a lousy judge both of what is needed and of what is your property.

The longest standing civil right in the world --- literally --- is the right to commit what most Americans consider to be a crime. It's called the "right of access," it exists in Nordic law (Finland, Sweden, &c), and it predates all other codes of civil rights in the world. Simply stated, anyone has the (government-supported) right to wander over "private" land and to gather, for example, mushrooms and berries from that land.

In the USA, this would be called "trespassing." Is this a crime of violence? Is this a crime at all? If I wander onto "your property" and pick berries, how will you "protect" yourself?

You hire that task out to a group called "the government."

No, you have always had the right to protect yourself; almost no government restricts it. What you do not have --- and will never have, if your neighbors have any input at all --- is the right to decide for yourself and yourself alone what deserves protection and how much force you may use to protect it.

And if you don't allow your neighbors any say in it, then a) you're being selfish, as before, and b) you have no reason to expect your neighbors to respect your self-created boundaries. Which means that when you pull a gun on someone picking berries, they're likely to come after YOU as one of the "murderers" that they've agreed among themselves justifies action.

 

[adamruth]

So, in your hypothetical anarchic utopia, what do you do to people who violate your rights? What do your "private enforcement companies" do? And what gives you, or them, the right to do it?

Why do people feel the need to poison the well with the term "utopia?"

Everyone has the right to defend themselves against aggression, that right can be delegated. It's all of the other things that the government does that the people don't have the right to delegate, such as taxation, regulation, immigration, and so on.

 

[drkitten]

Why do people feel the need to poison the well with the term "utopia?"

Because it's not well-poisoning; it's an accurate description of a proposal for a idealized society that works in theory assuming a completely inaccurate view of human nature.

Why do people feel the need to poison the well in a discussion of my free energy machine with the term "perpetual motion"?

Why do people feel the need to poison the well in a discussion of how people with different skin color are morally and intellectually inferior with the term "racism"?

 

[Dunstan]

Why do people feel the need to poison the well with the term "utopia?"

Everyone has the right to defend themselves against aggression, that right can be delegated. It's all of the other things that the government does that the people don't have the right to delegate, such as taxation, regulation, immigration, and so on.

Don't dodge the question.

What is the extent of this "right to defend themselves"? What happens if the wrong has already been committed? Suppose Fred has broken into your home when you weren't there, and stolen some of your property. What will you do? Will you merely take it back? What if he's already sold it -- will you take some of his property as your compensation? What if he doesn't have any property worth taking? What if you came home and caught him in the act, and Fred immediately throws up his hands and says, "ok, I'll leave peacefully." Will you let him go, knowing that he'll likely try again to rob you or someone else?

 

[drkitten]

That's just a matter of semantics. The government reserves for itself the use of force and delegates it out. That's what a monopoly is.

It does not.

It explicitly, for example, authorizes the right to use force in self-defense. That's not a delegation, however, as there is no duty to use force. The state is not telling you to use force or not, which means that it's not a state action.

This principle is even recognized legally. When I delegate something to you, and you do it wrongly, anyone you injure has a cause of action against me (respondeat superior). If you use force (wrongly), then the state is not responsible for your use of force and you have no claim against the state.

Thorough force. There's nothing the government can do to prevent any behaviour except through the exercise of force.

Not at all. Most people follow rules simply because they are rules (are you familiar with the work of the psychologist Stanley Milgram?), not because they are threatened. In fact, most people will follow rules even when they are told explicitly that they need not follow rules.

We're social animals, and that's how social animals behave.

Force is necessary, government is only one implementation of that.

Yes, but government is not about "force," but about "rules." And it is necessary that a monopoly on rule-making exist (for a single society) to ensure stability --- you've seen what happens when that breaks down in the newspapers. Any organization with an ultimate monopoly on rule-making is a government, almost by definition.

 

[adamruth]

An Athenian Democracy, perhaps.

The Constitutional Republic, as exists in the U.S., does not run in that way, and it's not like your criticism hasn't been brought up before (it's referred to as mob rule). If they did, you would not see any increase in civil rights, even when they are unpopular. If you had truly studied the present governments, you would know of the thing called checks and balances.

The practical difference is a matter of degrees. Certainly homosexuals in California don't feel too good about check and balances. Neither do marijuana smokers or any other number of minority groups.

I'm not saying that all implementations of government or democracy are equal, but in the end they all boil down to a powerful group enforcing it's will on a less powerful group. So pointing to anarchy and saying it also suffers from this is a bit disingenuous.

Violence as a result of government action is, ideally, used to defend against or prevent violence.

If that's all government did, then I'd have very little to complain about.

You're making the assumption that you are capable of protecting your property, your friends, and your family.

That's why I would hire it out.

There are ways to create a superior force against an inferior force. A gang can potentially overwhelm you and take what they need from you.

The IRS proves that in spades.

You may have heard of roving rape groups and war bands in some of the worst parts of Africa; that's what you would be looking at.

But most those places have governments, how is that possible?

It will always possible for a strong group to overpower a weak group, that's undeniable, I don't claim otherwise. People team up for mutual protection in a number of ways, including government. What I advocate is not the elimination of such groups, but just a changed nature of the groups.

To defend against such a band, you'd need a larger band. But the larger your own band, the more potential you have of committing offenses against other weaker people.

It's an ever-escalating state, and with nothing to regulate it, it would escalate out of control.

This applies equally well to government as to any other type of organisation. There's nothing magical about government which means it prevents this better.

And that's just the normal "state of living". There's also other things to worry about, such as unregulated businesses and manufacturing. What if we had no laws against pollutants? What would you do if you saw conditions as bad in the slums of the 1800s? Without regulation, the poor would suffer under the shadow of the rich, and unregulated industry would poo-poo over everything there is. The environmental damage would be catastrophic.

These are just assertions, which I disagree with. Pollution is a property rights issue, and it's no different than any other form of vandalism and the remedies are the same. Businesses are kept in check by competition better than any regulation.

If I saw conditions as bad as the slums in the 1800s, I'd do what was done to end it: Innovate technology and build wealth.

 

[arthwollipot]

It surprises me that you can say

...a government has no will, power, authority, or capabilities that exist independent of the individual humans that make it up.

And in the very next breath you say

It's what differentiates government from all other forms of organisation, a monopoly on the use and exercise of violence.

Does government use and exercise violence, or do humans do so?

You also say that the rules don't cease to exist when the government does. My response is show me the evidence. If you can show me a society that exists without some kind of governing body, I will be rather surprised.

It is in the nature of humans to govern, and to be governed

 

[adamruth]

Because it's not well-poisoning; it's an accurate description of a proposal for a idealized society that works in theory assuming a completely inaccurate view of human nature.

Why do people feel the need to poison the well in a discussion of my free energy machine with the term "perpetual motion"?

Why do people feel the need to poison the well in a discussion of how people with different skin color are morally and intellectually inferior with the term "racism"?

It was you who added the adjective "idealized." It's either a poisoning of the well or a straw man, since at no point did I claim that my ideas are "ideal."

And it's not me with the inaccurate view of human nature. It's you who thinks that people somehow fundamentally change when they become members of government.

 

[drkitten]

I'm not saying that all implementations of government or democracy are equal, but in the end they all boil down to a powerful group enforcing it's will on a less powerful group.

And that's why blacks now no longer have separate water fountains and can ride in the front of the bus.

They became so powerful that they were able to enforce their will on the less powerful white majority in the United States.

So pointing to anarchy and saying it also suffers from this is a bit disingenuous.

Not at all. Anarchy is designed to ensure that it is rule by force instead of rule by law. What is admittedly a flaw in some versions of democracy instead becomes the entire reason for being.

 

[mikeyx]

Let me preface this by saying that I am not a conspiracy theorist, or, a NWO theorist.

About 5 years ago at the age of 30 I finally was able to break from my fundamentalist Christian upbringing and truly examine my beliefs in the light of reality. I tried to remain as objective as possible during this soul searching process and studied as much material as possible on both sides of the debate including many Christian apologists. The writings of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens were very helpful during this period and really helped me understand the importance of living a life that is as congruent with reality as possible. This was a lengthy and very painful process that left palpable fractures in my family.

I can't tell you the feeling of relief that breaking free from this dogma has brought to my life. So much so that I now continually search my life for any dogma that I might be holding on to, because it feels great letting go and living a life that is more congruent with reality. I find Penn and Tellers: B.S. very entertaining and I must say that Penn's libertarian philosophy has always intrigued me, and in fact started me on a long road of questioning my own beliefs about politics.

After about a year of studying various political philosophies I currently consider myself a political atheist... I don't believe in government. You can't quantify government.... it doesn't appear to exist outside of our minds. There are men with guns, buildings, imaginary lines drawn on the land, people who claim moral authority... but no government. Government appears to be nothing more than a claimed monopoly on force... a construct of the mind designed to create an ethical heirarchy (some can use force, others cannot).

The consequence of the belief in government seems to be a whole lot of death.... much more than any belief in religion. Most of those around me believe in a god called 'democracy'... to those I would say I am an atheist to your 'democracy' in the way you don't believe in 'monarchy', or 'communism', or 'dictatorship'... I just take it one god more. Maybe thats a bad analogy, it may be more like a stone age tribesman believes that other gods than his particular tribes god exist, but, their particular god is more powerful (ie. Yaweh as opposed to Baal). Seems to me democracy is nothing more than mob rule. It has no more moral authority than any other failed god.

So fellow skeptics I would ask you to challenge my political atheism. Is it a dogmatic belief? Would you call it a religion in the same way that Christians call atheism a religion? Can you provide me with some ways in which belief in government and belief in a god are different? I feel I must be way off base here, because why wouldn't notable skeptics such as Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennet pick up the cause of erradicating such a harmful belief system?

I would have a different take on this, and I have to point out often how similar are the feeling of relief when departing Fundamentalist, but also scientologists, and even Catholic upbringing as well. And often it is the dogma, and while I didn't take up atheism, it did lead me towards a sufi approach to being protestant, but that's another story.

By Political atheist, I would use for myself the wording miltantly nonpartisan, as no party truly worth of total support, both have their flaws. Thats my take on it.

 

[adamruth]

Don't dodge the question.

What is the extent of this "right to defend themselves"? What happens if the wrong has already been committed? Suppose Fred has broken into your home when you weren't there, and stolen some of your property. What will you do? Will you merely take it back? What if he's already sold it -- will you take some of his property as your compensation? What if he doesn't have any property worth taking? What if you came home and caught him in the act, and Fred immediately throws up his hands and says, "ok, I'll leave peacefully." Will you let him go, knowing that he'll likely try again to rob you or someone else?

What happens as far as defending against aggression isn't much different than how it happens with government. It should focus more on compensation than punishment, however, that seems more valuable. As far as details go, that would be left to the market. Different places may choose to handle it differently, I don't propose that I know the specific details since I'm not talking about creating a system, but creating a system to create systems (a meta-system if you will).

You're probably looking for something more specific, though, so here's how I could see it happening:

He would need to replace it and then compensate me for the time and trouble. If he doesn't have any property worth taking, then he would need to work to pay it off. But what would probably happen is that I would have insurance which would pay me out and then they would deal with getting compensated. If I caught him then he would need to compensate me for the trouble. The compensation would need to be high enough to act as a deterrent.

The details would be ironed out by the market (courts, enforcement, and insurance). Ideas that work well would survive and ideas that worked poorly would die out.

Now before I see more people complain that this isn't perfect and therefore invalid let me say that I'm not claiming it's perfect. The fact that Fred is taking my property adds an imperfection into the world and there will never by any perfect remedy.

 

[adamruth]

No, but that's because they've intentionally given away that right with the realization that a single person cannot be trusted to decide something as important as whether it is appropriate to lock someone up.

You have the right to imprison someone? Are you saying that you have the right to do everything that the government does, but you've given that right to the government?

You have to right to take some of my property and give it to another?
You have the right to wage war on people thousands of miles away?
You have the right to stop me from hiring my neighbour to to unclog my drains unless he's paid you a license fee?

Where exactly did you get these rights?

What is right and what is wrong is decided primarily by the people themselves. If everyone in the society decides that they will collectively give police the right to lock up a criminal, who are you to tell them they can't?

If that "criminal" has done nothing to harm another person, then who are you to say it's okay to do violence on them?