The “lawmakers” give the commands, but it is their faithful enforcers who carry them out. Millions upon millions of otherwise decent, civilized people spend day after day harassing, threatening, extorting, controlling, bullying and otherwise oppressing others who have not harmed or threatened anyone. But because the actions of such “law enforcers” are deemed “legal,” and because they believe they an acting on behalf of “authority,” they imagine themselves to bear no responsibility for their actions. Worse yet, they do not even view their own actions as being their own actions. They speak and act as if their minds and bodies have somehow been taken over by some invisible entity called “the law” or “government.” They say things like “Hey, I don’t make the laws, I just enforce them; it’s not up to me.” They speak and act as if it is impossible for them to do anything other than helplessly carry out the will of a power called “authority,” and that they are therefore no more personally responsible for their actions than a puppet is responsible for what the puppeteer makes it do.

When acting in their “official” capacity, while seemingly helplessly possessed by the spirit of “authority,” “law enforcers” behave in ways which they never otherwise would, and do things that they themselves would recognize as uncivilized, violent and evil if they did such things of their own volition, without an “authority” telling them to.

Examples of this occur all over the world, every hour of every day, in a wide variety of ways. A soldier might shoot a complete stranger, whose only sin was to be out walking in a militarily occupied zone after a declared curfew. A group of heavily armed men might kick down someone’s door and drag him away, or shoot a man in front of his wife and children, because the man grew a plant which politicians proclaimed to be forbidden (”illegal”). A bureaucrat might file paperwork instructing a financial institution to take thousands of dollars out of someone’s bank account in the name of “tax collection.” Another bureaucrat may send in armed thugs upon finding out that someone had the gall to build a deck on his own property, with the approval of his neighbors but without “government” approval (in the form of a “building permit”). A traffic cop may stop and extort someone (via a “ticket”) for not wearing a seatbelt. A TSA agent may rummage through someone’s personal belongings, without the slightest reason to suspect that the person has done, or is going to do, anything wrong. A “judge” may direct armed thugs to put someone in a cage, for weeks, months, or years, for anything from showing contempt for the judge to driving without the written permission of politicians (in the form of a driver’s “license”) to having engaged in any type of mutually voluntary but nonpolitician- sanctioned (”illegal”) commerce.

These examples, and literally millions of others which could be given, are acts of aggression committed by perpetrators who would not have committed them if they had not been directed to do so by a perceived “authority.” In short, most instances of theft, assault and murder happen only because “authority” told someone to steal, attack, or kill.

Most of the time, the people who carry out such orders would not have committed such crimes on their own. Of the 100,000 people who work for the Internal Revenue Service, how many engaged in harassment, extortion and theft before becoming IRS agents? Few, if any. How many soldiers went around harassing, threatening, or killing people they did not know before joining the military? Few, if any. How many police officers regularly went around stopping, interrogating, and kidnapping non-violent people before becoming “law enforcers”? Very few. How many “judges” had people thrown into cages for nonviolent behavior before being appointed to a “court”? Probably none.

When such acts of aggression become “legal,” and are done in the name of “law enforcement,” those who commit them imagine such acts to be inherently legitimate and valid, even though they recognize that, had they committed the very same acts on their own, instead of on behalf of an imagined “authority,” the acts would have constituted crimes, and would have been immoral. While there are obviously mOTE more significant and less significant cogs in the wheels of the “government” machine, from low-level paper-pushers to armed mercenaries, they all have two things in common: 1) they inflict unpleasantness on others in a way they would not have done on their own, and 2) they accept no personal responsibility for their actions while in “law enforcer” mode. Nothing makes this more obvious than the fact that, when the properness or morality of their actions is called into question, their response is almost always some variation of “I’m just doing my job.” The obvious implication in all such statements is this: “I am not responsible for my actions, because ‘authority’ told me to do this.” The only way that makes a shred of sense is if the person is literally incapable of refusing to do something a perceived “authority” tells him to do. Unfortunately, the horrific truth is that most people, as a result of their authoritarian indoctrination, do seem to be psychologically incapable

of disobeying the commands of an imagined “authority.” Most people, given the choice between doing what they know is right and doing what they know is wrong when ordered to do so by a perceived “authority,” will do the latter. Nothing demonstrates this more dearly than the results of the psychology experiments done by Dr. Stanley Milgram in the 1960s.

In brief, the Milgram studies were designed to determine to what degree ordinary people would inflict pain upon strangers simply because an “authority” figure told them to. For the complete description of the experiments and the results, see Dr. Milgram’s book, Obedience to Authority. The following is a short synopsis of his experiments and findings.

Subjects were asked to volunteer for what they were told was an experiment testing human memory. Under the supervision of a scientist (the “authority” figure), one person was strapped into a chair and wired with electrodes, and the other – the actual subject of the study – sat in front of a shock-generating machine. The person n front of the “zapper” machine was told that the goal was to test whether shocking :he other person when he gave a wrong answer to a memorization question would affect his ability to remember things. The true goal, however, was to test to what degree the person in front of the zapper machine would inflict pain on an innocent stranger simply because someone in the role of “authority” told him to. The zapper machine had a series of switches, going up to 450 volts, and the “zapper” subject was supposed to increase the voltage and administer another shock each time the “zappee” got an answer wrong. In truth, the “zappee” in the tests was an actor, who was not being shocked at all, but at given voltage levels would give out shouts of pain, protests about heart troubles, demands to stop the experiment, screams for mercy, and eventually silence (feigning unconsciousness or death). In addition, the “zapper” machine was dearly marked with danger labels at the upper end of the series of switches.

The results of the experiment shocked even Dr. Milgram. In short, a significant majority of subjects, nearly two out of three, continued through the experiment right to the end, inflicting what they thought were excruciatingly painful – if not lethal – shocks to a complete stranger, despite the screams of agony, the cries for mercy, even the unconsciousness or death of the (pretending) victim. Dr. Milgram himself succinctly sums up the conclusion to be reached: “With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe .... A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority.”

Of note, in the experiments there was no threat that the “zapper” would be punished for failure to obey, nor was there any special reward promised for obedience. So the results were not merely showing that an ordinary person might hurt someone else to “save his own neck,” or might hurt someone else if it somehow profited himself. Instead, the results showed that most people will inflict excruciating pain, even death, upon an innocent stranger for no other reason than that he was told to do so by a perceived “authority.” This point cannot be over-stressed: there is a particular belief that leads basically good people to do bad things, even heinously evil things. Even the atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich were the result, not of millions of evil people, but of a very small handful of truly evil people who had acquired positions of “authority,” and millions of obedient people who merely did what the perceived “authority” told them to do. In her book about Hitler’s top bureaucrat, Adolf Eichmann (sometimes called “the Architect of the Holocaust”), author Hannah Arendt used the phrase “the banality of evil” to refer to the fact that most evil is not the result of personal malice or hatred. but merely the result of blind obedience – individuals giving up their own free wit and judgment in favor of unthinking subservience to an imagined “authority.” Interestingly, both Arendt’s book and Dr. Milgram’s experiments offended a lot of people.

The reason is simple: people who have been taught to respect “authority; and have been taught that obedience is a virtue and that cooperating with “authority” is what makes us civilized, do not like to hear the truth, which is that truly evil people, with all their malice and hatred, pose far less of a threat to mankind than the basically good people who believe in “authority.” Anyone who honestly examines the results of Dr. Milgram’s experiments cannot escape that fact of reality. But aside from the general lesson to be learned from the Milgram experiments – that most people will intentionally hurt other people if a perceived “authority” tells them to several other findings from Milgram’s work are worth noting: 1) Many of the subjects of the experiments showed signs of stress, guilt, and anguish while inflicting pain on others, and yet continued doing so. This fact demonstrates that these were not simply nasty sadists waiting for an excuse to hurt others; they did not enjoy doing it. Furthermore, it shows that the people knew that they were doing something wrong, and did it anyway because “authority” told them to. Some subjects protested, begged to be allowed to stop, trembled uncontrollably; even cried, and yet most continued to the end of the experiment. The conclusion could hardly be more obvious: The belief in “authority” makes good people commit evil.

2) The subject’s income level, education level, age, sex, and other demographic factors seemed to have little or no influence on the results. Statistically speaking, a rich, cultured, educated young woman will obey an authoritarian command to hurt someone else just as readily as an illiterate, poor, male manual laborer will. The one common factor shared by all of those who continued to the end of the experiment is that they believed in “authority” (obviously). Again, the message to be learned, however troubling it may be, is logically inescapable: Regardless of almost any other factors, the belief in authority turns good people into agents of evil.

3) The average person, when the experiment is described to him, not including the results, guesses that the compassion and conscience of most people would prevent them from continuing through the entire experiment. Professional psychiatrists predicted that only about one in a thousand would obey to the end of the experiment, when in reality it was about 65%. And when the average person, who has not actually been tested, is asked if he personally would have gone to the end of the study if he had been tested, he usually insists that he would not have. Yet the majority do. Again, the message is troubling but indisputable: Almost everyone hugely underestimates the degree to which the belief in “authority,” even in himself, can be used to persuade good people to commit evil.

4) Dr. Milgram also found that some test subjects, defying all reason, were determined to blame the results of their own blind obedience on the victim: the one being shocked. In other words, through whatever twisted mentality it took, some of those doing the shocking imagined that the one being shocked was somehow to blame for his own suffering. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that when police officers are caught assaulting innocent civilians, or when soldiers are caught terrorizing or murdering civilians, or when prison guards are caught torturing prisoners, their defense is often to blame the victim, no matter how much the authoritarian aggressors have to mangle the truth and logic in order to do so.

Interestingly, even though at the Nuremberg trials, “just following orders” was not accepted as a valid excuse for what the Nazis did, it is still the standard response from countless soldiers, police, tax collectors, bureaucrats, and other representatives of “authority” whenever the morality of their behavior is questioned. Both in Milgram’s experiments and in countless real-life abuses of power, those who intentionally hurt others simply fall back on the standard excuse, claiming that they were not personally responsible because they were merely following orders. In the Milgram experiments, several subjects even directly asked the “authority” figure which of them was responsible for what was happening. When the “authority” figure said that he was the one responsible, most subjects went on without further debate, apparently comfortable with the notion that whatever happened from then on was not their fault and they would not be held liable. Again, the message is difficult to escape: The belief in “authority” allows basically good people to disassociate themselves from the evil acts they themselves commit, relieving them of any feeling of personal responsibility.

5) When it was left up to the “zapper” what voltage to use, only very rarely would he go above 150 volts, the point at which the one pretending to be shocked said he did not want to go on. It is very important to note that up to that point – and almost all subjects made it to that point – the “zappee” let out grunts of pain but did no: ask for the experiment to stop. As a result, the one doing the zapping could quite reasonably say that the one being zapped had agreed to the arrangement, and up to that point was still a willing participant.

Interestingly, of the few subjects who did not go all the way to the end, many of them stopped as soon as the “zappee” said he wanted out. This could be dubbed the “libertarian line,” since, once the “zappee” asks to be unstrapped, for the zapper to continue anyway constitutes initiating violence against another – the exact thing libertarians oppose.

Unfortunately, those who stop at the “libertarian line” are only a small minority of the population. As for the rest, the findings are disturbingly clear: of the people who would, at the behest of “authority,” shock someone who calmly said, “I don’t want to do this anymore,” most would continue inflicting pain even if the victim was screaming in agony. Is this because most people are evil? No. It is because they have been conditioned to do as they are told and have been indoctrinated into the most dangerous superstition of all: the belief in “authority.” It should be noted that even Dr. Milgram could not escape his own indoctrination into the cult of “authority” worship. In passing, and with very little comment, even he opined that “we cannot have a society without some structure of authority.” He made a weak attempt to defend teaching obedience to “authority” by saying: “Obedience is often rational. It makes good sense to follow the doctor’s orders, to obey traffic signs, and to clear the building when the police inform us of a bomb threat.” Yet none of those examples actually requires or justifies a belief in “authority.” Despite the way people often talk, doctors do not give “orders.” They are “authorities” in the sense that they are knowledgeable in the field of medicine, but not in the sense of having any right to rule.

As for the other examples, the main reason to observe the rules of the road, or to leave a building with a bomb in it, is not because obedience to “authority” is a virtue, but because the alternative is injury or death. If some non-authority in a theater pulled a bomb from under his seat, held it up for all to see, and said, “A bomb! Let’s get out of here!” would everyone else stay where they were because the person was not perceived as an “authority”? Of course not. And if “government” repealed the “law” saying which side of the road everyone should drive on, would people start randomly swerving around? Of course not. They would keep driving on the right side, because they do not want to crash into each other. So, although even Dr. Milgram clung to the notion that the belief in “authority” is sometimes necessary and good, he gave no rational argument to support such an assertion. It is a testament to the strength of the myth of “authority” that even someone who had witnessed what Dr. Milgram had witnessed was still unable to completely give up the superstition.

After Dr. Milgram publicized his findings, many were shocked and dismayed by the extent to which normal people were willing to inflict pain or death upon innocent strangers when instructed to do so by a perceived “authority.” Similar tests performed since Dr. Milgram’s experiments have yielded similar results, which continue to shock some people. However, the results really should not be surprising to anyone who has taken a look at how most human beings are raised.

The purported purpose of schools is to teach reading, writing, mathematics, and other academic fields of thought. But the message that institutions of “education” actually teach, far more effectively than any useful knowledge or skills, is the idea that subservience and blind obedience to “authority” are virtues. Simply consider the environment in which the majority of people spend most of their formative years. Year after year, students live in a world in which: • They receive approval, praise and reward for being where “authority” tells them to be, when “authority” tells them to be there. They receive disapproval, reproach and punishment for being anywhere else. (This includes the fact that they are coerced into being in school to begin with.) • They receive approval, praise and reward for doing what “authority” tells them to do.

They receive disapproval, reproach and punishment for doing anything else, or for failing to do what “authority” tells them to do.

• They receive approval, praise and reward for speaking when and how “authority” tells them to speak., and receive disapproval, reproach and punishment for speaking at any other time, in any other way, or about any subject other than what “authority” tells them to speak about, or for failing to speak when “authority” tells them to speak.

• They receive approval, praise and reward for repeating back whatever ideas the “authority” declares to be true and important, and receive disapproval, reproach and punishment for disagreeing, verbally or on a written test, with the opinions of those claiming to be “authority,” or for thinking or writing about subjects other than what “authority” tells them to think or write about.

• They receive approval, praise and reward for immediately telling “authority” about any problems or personal conflicts they encounter, and receive disapproval, reproach and punishment for trying to solve any problems or settle any disagreements on their own.

• They receive approval, praise and reward for complying with whatever rilles, however arbitrary, “authority” decides to impose upon them. They receive disapproval, reproach and punishment for disobeying any such rules. These rules can be about almost anything, including what clothes to wear, what hairstyles to have, what facial expression to have, how to sit in a chair, what to have on a desk, what direction to face, and what words to use.

• They receive approval, praise and reward for telling the “authority” when another student has disobeyed “the rules,” and receive disapproval, reproach and punishment for failing to do so.

The students clearly and immediately see that, in their world, there are two distinct classes of people, masters (”teachers”) and subjects (”students”), and that the rules of proper behavior are drastically different for the two groups. The masters constantly do things that they tell the subjects not to do: boss people around, control others via threats, take property from others, etc. This constant and obvious double standard teaches the subjects that there is a very different standard of morality for the masters than there is for the subjects. The subjects must do whatever the masters tell them to, and only what the masters tell them to, while the masters can do pretty mud anything they want.

Not long ago, the masters would even routinely commit physical assault (i.e. “corporal punishment”) against subjects who did not quickly and unquestioningly do as they were told, while telling the subjects that it was completely unacceptable for them to ever use physical violence, even in self-defense, especially in self-defense against the masters.

Thankfully, the use of regular, overt physical violence by “teachers” has become uncommon. However, though the force has become less obvious, the basic methods of authoritarian control and punishment remain.

In the classroom setting, the “authority” can change the rules at will, can punish the entire group for what one student does, and can question or search any student – or all students – at any time. The “authority” is never seen as having any obligation to justify or explain to the students the rules it makes, or anything else it does. And it is of no concern to “authority” whether a student has a good reason to think that us time would be better spent being somewhere else, doing something else, or thinking about something else. The “grades” the student receives, the way he is treated, the signals he is sent – written, verbal, and otherwise – all depend upon one factor: his ability and willingness to unquestioningly subvert his own desires, judgment and decisions to those of “authority.” If he does that, he is deemed “good.” If he does not, he is deemed “bad.” This method of indoctrination was not accidentaL Schooling in the United States, and in fact in much of the world, was deliberately modeled after the Prussian system of “education,” which was designed with the express purpose of training people to be obedient tools of the ruling class, easy to manage and quick to unthinkingly obey, especially for military purposes. As it was explained by Johann Fichte, one of the designers of the Prussian system, the goal of this method was to “fashion” the student in such a way that he “simply cannot will otherwise” than what those in “authority” want him to will. At the time, the system was openly admitted to be a means of psychologically enslaving the general populace to the will of the ruling class. And it continues to accomplish exactly that, all over the world, including in the United States.

The reason most people do whatever “authority” tells them to, regardless of whether the command is moral or rational, is because that is exactly what they were trained to do.

Everything about authoritarian “schooling” (and authoritarian parenting), even the modern version that pretends to be caring and open-minded, continually hammers into the heads of the youngsters the notion that their success, their goodness, their very worth as human beings, is measured by how well they obey “authority.” Is it any wonder, then, that father than applying logic to evidence to reach their own conclusions, most adults look for an “authority” to tell them what to think? Is it an] wonder that when a man with a badge starts barking orders, most adults timidly obey without question, even if they have done nothing wrong? Is it any wonder that most adults sheepishly submit to whatever interrogations and searches “law enforcers” want to inflict upon them? Is it any wonder that many adults will run to the nearest “authority” to solve any problem or settle any dispute? Is it any wonder that most adults will comply with any order, however irrational, unfair, or immoral it may be, if they imagine the one giving the order to be “authority”? Should any of this be surprising in light of the fact that nearly everyone went through many years of being deliberately trained to behave that way? Dr. Milgram’s experiments made it quite clear that the kind of people produced even by our modern, supposedly enlightened society, even in the good old U.S.A. – that supposed bastion of liberty and justice – are, for the most part, callous, irresponsible, unthinking tools for whichever megalomaniac claims the right to rule. When the people are intentionally trained to humbly submit to the beast called “authority” – when they are taught that it is more important to obey than it is to judge – why should we be at all surprised at the extortion, oppression, terrorism and mass murder that are committed just because a self-proclaimed “authority” commanded it? All of human history makes the deadly formula as plain as it could possibly be: A few evil rulers + many obedient subjects = widespread injustice and oppression.

There should also be at least some mention here about the psychological study done at Stanford University in 1971, in which a sort of mock prison was set up, with dozens of students appointed as mock prisoners and others as mock prison guards. The experiment had to be terminated early, after only six days, because those who had been given “authority” (the guards) had become shockingly callous, abusive and sadistic toward their prisoners.

It must be noted that the abuse committed by the “guards” even went beyond what they were told to do by those running the experiment, which was designed to humiliate and degrade the prisoners. This shows that the personal malicious or sadistic tendencies in an individual is a significant contributing factor to such abuse, but that most people openly act out such tendencies only when given a position of “authority” that they believe gives them permission to do so. The same phenomenon can be seen in all sorts of abuses of power, whether by a bureaucrat on a power trip, a soldier or police officer who likes to bully or assault civilians, or any other official who enjoys lording his power over others.

These demonstrate that not only does the belief in “authority” allow basically good people to become tools of oppression and injustice, but it also brings out and dramatically amplifies whatever potential for malice, hatred, sadism and love of dominion those people may possess. The superstition of “authority” begins by making average people mere agents of evil (which Arendt described as the “banality of evil”), but then goes on to make such people personally evil, by convincing them that they have the right, or even the duty, to abuse and oppress other people. This can be seen in the behavior of soldiers, police, prosecutors, judges, even petty bureaucrats. Anyone whose job consists of harassing, extorting, threatening, coercing and controlling decent people will, sooner or later, become at least callous, if not downright sadistic. One cannot continually act like a monster without eventually becoming one.

Another important thing to note, as shown in countless examples of abuses of power, is that, while a belief in “authority” can lead people to inflict harm on others, that same belief often cannot limit the extent to which the agents of “authority” hurt other people.

For example, many individuals who would never oppress an innocent person on their own become “police officers,” thereby acquiring the “legal” power to commit a certain degree of oppression. Yet, on many occasions, they end up going well beyond the “legal” oppression they are “authorized” to commit, and become sadistic, power-happy monsters.

The same is true, perhaps even more so, of soldiers. Perhaps the reason so many combat veterans end up being deeply emotionally traumatized is not so much a result of thinking about what they have witnessed as it is a result of thinking about what they themselves have done. The high rate of suicide among combat veterans supports this thesis. It makes little sense for Someone to wish for his own death simply because he has seen something horrible. It makes a lot more sense for someone to wish for his own death because he himself has done something horrible, and has in fact become something horrible.

The reason that the belief in “authority” can drive people to commit evil, but in the end cannot limit the evil they commit, is simple. Aside from whatever “technical” limitations there are supposed to be on an agent of “authority,” the primary concept that the enforcer is taught, and the primary concept that he must accept in order to do his job, is that, as a representative of “authority,” he is above the common folk and has the moral right to forcibly control them. In short, he is taught that his badge and his position make him the rightful master of all the “average” people. Once he is convinced of that lie, it should be expected that he will despise the average citizen and treat him with contempt, in the same way – and for the same reason – that a slave owner will treat his slaves not as human beings, but as property, whose feelings and opinions matter no more than the feelings and opinions of the master’s cattle or his furniture.

It is very telling that many modern “law enforcers” quickly become angry, even violent, when an average citizen simply speaks to the “officer” as an equal, instead of assuming the tone and demeanor of a subjugated underling. Again, this reaction is precisely the same – and has the same cause – as the reaction a slave master would have to an “uppity” slave speaking to him as an equal. There are plenty of examples. depicted in numerous police abuse videos on the internet, of supposed representatives of “authority” going into a rage and resorting to open violence, simply because someone they approached spoke to them as one adult would speak to another instead of speaking as a subject would speak to a master. The state mercenaries refer to this lack of groveling as someone having an “attitude.” In their eyes, someone treating them as mere mortals, as if they are on the same level as everyone else, amounts to showing disrespect for their alleged “authority.” Similarly, anyone who does not consent to be detained, questioned, or searched by “officers of the law” is automatically perceived, by the mercenaries of the state, as some sort of troublemaker who has something to hide. Again, the real reason such lack of “cooperation” annoys authoritarian enforcers is because it amounts to people treating them as mere humans instead of treating them as superior beings, which is what they imagine themselves to be. To wit, if someone was confronted by a stranger (without a badge) who started interrogating the person in an obviously accusatory way and then asked to be allowed to search the person’s pockets, his car, and his home, not only would the person being accosted almost certainly refuse, out he also would probably be outraged at the request. “Of course you can’t rummage through my stuff! Who do you think you are?” But when strangers with badges make such requests, they are the ones offended when the targets of their intrusive, unjustified harassments, accusations and searches object, and refuse to “cooperate.” Even when the “officers” know full well that the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution specifically dictate that a person has no “Legal” duty to answer questions or consent to searches, such “lack of cooperation” – i.e., the failure to unquestioningly bow to the enforcer’s every whim and request – is still seen by the “police” as a sign that the person must be some sort of criminal and enemy of the state. From the perspective of “law enforcers,” only a despicable lowlife would ever treat representatives of “authority” in the same manner as he treats everyone else.

Again, this is not how most of these people view the world before becoming “officers of the law.” In their authoritarian enforcement training, they are specifically taught to treat people as inferiors, to always try to gain control of everyone and everything the moment they arrive on a scene, telling everyone where to go, what to do, when they can speak, and so on. They are not merely told that they have the right to boss everyone around, which would be dangerous enough; they are trained that they must, in every situation, use whatever it takes – commands, intimidation, or outright violence – to get everyone present to bow to their “authority,” and are taught that it is a crime for anyone to fail to unquestioningly bow to their will, which they characterize as “disobeying a lawful order.” It is also very significant that it is customary for the police, as soon as they arrive at any scene, to make sure that no one else is armed with any sort of weapon, and to disarm anyone who is, before knowing anything else about who the people are or what is going on, and even regardless of whether the people are “legally” armed. The obvious purpose of this practice is to immediately create a huge imbalance of power, where only the “law enforcers” have the ability to forcibly impose their will on others. Imagine the arrogance required for an average citizen to arrive on some scene, unfamiliar with the situation and the people involved, and have his very first thought be, “Nobody is allowed to have a weapon, except me.” In short, “law enforcers” are trained to be oppressive megalomaniacs and to treat everyone else as cattle. And, human nature being what it is, anyone who routinely treats others that way – the way “law enforcers” are required to treat everyone else – will learn to despise others and treat them with contempt, disrespect and hostility. However good or bad at heart an individual is to begin with, the way to bring out the worst in him is to give him “authority” over others.

 (Author’s personal note: Several former police officers have personally told me that they quit the force after they noticed that the job, and their supposed “authority,” was slowly turning them into monsters – one of them using that exact word.)

In fairness, many “law enforcers” make an effort to be “nice guys” and at least attempt to treat others with respect. But ultimately they cannot treat others as equals, and still be “law enforcers.” They can be friendly, and even apologetic about it (e.g. “Sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to...”), but their job still requires them to coercively control and extort others, and not just those who have actually harmed, someone. A cop cannot treat others as equals without losing his job. Imagine an officer who would do traffic stops, or search places, or detain and interrogate people, or use physical force against someone only in situations in which you would feel justified in doing such things yourself, without any badge or “law” telling you you could.

The same holds true of “government” investigators, prosecutors and judges. And “government” employee who refused to investigate, prosecute, or sentence someone for a victimless “crime” would quickly lose his job. It is not up to the agents of “authority” to decide which “laws” to enforce. If there are morally illegitimate “laws” (as there always are), all branches of authoritarian “law enforcement” are required to enforce them, thereby assisting in the extortion and oppression of innocent people. Even if much of what he does is aimed at actual criminals – those who have committed acts of aggression against others – every “law enforcer,” as part of his job, is required to commit acts of aggression himself. There are some who do almost nothing other than initiating violence, such as “tax” collectors, narcotics agents, and immigration agents. This makes it literally impossible, in almost all cases, to work for “government” without committing immoral acts of aggression. Being a “law enforcer” and being a moral person are almost always mutually exclusive.

However politely they may do the job, and despite the fact that they also go after actual criminals (the kind who have victims), “law enforcers” are always professional aggressors, subjugating the people to the will of the politicians by way of violence and the threat of violence. And anyone who does that, if he did not already have a certain degree of contempt and hatred for his fellow man, will almost certainly develop it. To put it another way, even the nicest, most friendly slave owner, if he continues to believe in the legitimacy of slavery and continues to practice it, will be committing evil and will inflict harm upon the people he imagines to be his rightful property. And he will naturally develop a degree of contempt toward the victims of his aggression, and will behave contemptuously toward them.

The ability of the “authority” belief to create harm, and the simultaneous inability of it to limit the harm, once the master imagines himself to have the right to rule over his “inferiors,” can be seen not only on an individual basis but on a large scale as well. Most of the debates and writings that led up to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution focused on limiting the powers that the federal government would have, and on discussing all of the things that it was not allowed to do. The Bill of Rights, for example, is a list of things the U.S. government is constitutionally prohibited from doing. In fact, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments make it an open-ended list, so that the federal “government,” in theory, was not supposed to do anything except what the Constitution specifically “authorized” it to do. Nonetheless, with the possible exception of the Third Amendment, the “Bill of Rights” also happens to be a list of rights that federal agents violate every single day, in every state in the union. In reality, whether on an individual or national level, telling someone “You have the right to rule others, but only within these limits” will, sooner or later, result in that person dominating others without recognizing any limits to his power.

In the long run, there is no such thing, and can be no such thing, as “limited government,” because once someone is accepted by others as a rightful master, and believes himself to have the moral right to rule, there will be nothing and no one “above” him, with the power to restrain him. Inside a “government,” a higher “authority” might choose to limit a lower “authority,” but logic and experience show that an authoritarian hierarchy, taken as a whole, will never limit itself for long. Why would it? Why would a master ever put his own interests below the interests of his slaves? The Constitution is a perfect example of this: a piece of parchment which purported to grant very limited “authority” to certain people but which utterly failed to stop those people from going beyond those limits, creating something that eventually grew into the most powerful authoritarian empire in history. And the problem cannot be solved by appointing another set of masters (e.g., a “court system”) inside the same authoritarian structure, with the supposed purpose of enforcing limits upon the first set of masters. “Separation of powers” and “checks and balances” and “due process” are meaningless if the masters and those assigned to limit them are both part of the same authoritarian organization.

It is important to stress the fact that in the Milgram experiments, the subjects thought they were shocking innocent strangers. There was no accusation that the one being shocked was a bad person, or had done anything immoral. It should be obvious that if the average person will, at the behest of “authority,” inflict pain upon an innocent person, he will also inflict such pain – with less hesitation and less guilt – upon someone he imagines to be deserving of such pain.

The U.S. military (and presumably many other militaries) has done a lot of research to determine what can be done to overcome a soldier’s natural aversion to killing, so that he will kill on command. And one of the most effective ways of achieving this is to demonize and dehumanize the one he is being told to shoot. In modern wars, the “governments” of both sides feed their soldiers constant propaganda designed to paint “the enemy” as a bunch of heartless, vicious, sadistic, inhuman monsters. Ironically, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because such propaganda makes both sides into gangs of heartless monsters, zealously trying to exterminate enemies that they do not view as being fully human.

Similar tactics are used in “law enforcement.” The hired mercenaries of “government” are far more likely to inflict injustice and oppression upon someone if that person has first been dehumanized and demonized. Just the terminology used – by the masters, the enforcers, and everyone else – constitutes a very effective form of mind control, which alters how both enforcers and their targets perceive reality, thereby affecting how both groups behave. Such terms reinforce the premise that obedience to “authority” is a virtue, and that disobedience is a sin.

What literally happens is that one group of people issues a command, and their enforcers impose it upon the masses, by punishing disobedience. This is what the Mafia does, what street gangs do, what schoolyard bullies do, and what all “governments” do. The difference is that when “government” does it, it uses not only threats but also indoctrination, of both the enforcers and the general public Where the message of most thugs is usually direct and honest (”Do what I say or I hurt you”), the “government” message involves a great deal of psychology and mind control, which is essential to making the state mercenaries feel righteous about inflicting oppression on others. The controllers in “government” portray themselves as “lawmakers” who have the right to “govern” society, portray their commands as “laws,” and portray any who disobey as “criminals.” And, unlike Mafia “heavies,” those who administer retribution against any who disobey the politicians are portrayed, not merely as hired thugs, but as noble “law enforcers,” who are righteously protecting society from all the uncivilized, contemptuous “law-breakers.” Such propaganda goes a long way, not only toward making the authoritarian enforcers carry out violence against innocent people but also toward making them feel proud of it.

They are convinced, via their authoritarian indoctrination, that they are bringing “criminals” to “justice,” thereby maintaining “law and order” for the benefit of society.

But what they are actually doing, more often than not, is using violence to coerce everyone into obeying whatever commands the politicians issue, however immoral, arbitrary, socially or economically destructive, or downright idiotic those commands may be.

There is a big difference in the connotations of the two terms “law enforcer” and “politician’s thug.” There is no difference, however, in what they literally mean. But by persuading the enforcers that the violence they use constitutes inherently righteous and noble “law enforcement,” their perceptions can be altered in such a way that they will gladly and proudly impose the ruling class’s will upon their fellow man. There are as many examples of this as there are “laws,” but they all fall into one of two categories: prohibitions (whereby politicians proclaim that their subjects are not allowed to do a certain thing) and demands (whereby politicians proclaim that their subjects must do a certain thing). One example of each will suffice to demonstrate the point.

Prohibition: The controllers issue a decree that their subjects may not possess marijuana. That prohibition is proclaimed to be “the law,” and any who disobey it are deemed to be “criminals.” The controllers then spend huge amounts of money (taken from their subjects by way of a different “law”) to pay for mercenaries, guns, armored vehicles, prisons, and so on, for the sole purpose of taking captive any who are caught disobeying their “law.” Now consider the perspective of the “police officer” assigned the duty of enforcing that “law” who discovers that someone has been selling marijuana to willing customers. If the “officer” could objectively consider the situation, without the myth of “authority” distorting his perception, he would immediately see that his “job” is not only immoral but utterly idiotic and hypocritical – his “job” being to physically capture someone for the purpose of putting that person in a cage for a long time, for doing something that was neither fraudulent nor violent. In fact, until the cop showed up, all the people involved – grower, dealer, seller, buyer, user – interacted peacefully and voluntarily. Furthermore, if the officer has ever consumed alcohol, he would be guilty of something morally identical to what the “criminal” has done. Nonetheless, he will see himself as the brave, righteous, noble “law enforcer” as he participates in a paramilitary, armed invasion of the person’s home and forcibly captures and drags the “scofflaw” away from his friends and family.

Then the office I will go home and have a beer, and of course would not react kindly to anyone who tried to forcibly stop him from doing so. The only difference – which is no real difference at all – is that politicians made up a command about one mind-altering substance (marijuana) and not the other (alcohol). As a result, the “officer” will truly believe that using one mind – altering substance is a good, wholesome, all – American behavior, while using another is shady, immoral and “criminal,” and even justifies violent assault and kidnapping of the “perpetrators.” Demand: The controllers enact a “law” saying that any of their subjects who own property must give to the controllers, every year, a payment in the amount of two percent of the value of the subject’s property. That demand is called a “property tax” and is proclaimed to be “the law,” and any who disobey it are “criminals” and “tax cheats.” The controllers then set up an organization of “tax collectors” to find any who disobey, to either forcibly extract money from them or to forcibly evict them from their properties and seize such properties and give them to the controllers.

Of course if anyone did that without all of the authoritarian propaganda, it would be called extortion: “You have to pay me a bunch of money, every year, or I won’t let you live in your own house.” And very few people, including those who now work as “tax collectors,” would want to be part of such a racketeering scheme. Yet when the exact same thing is done “legally;” not only will average people accept a job being part of such an extortion racket but they will show disdain for any who resist it. Those who then trynot to be robbed are viewed as greedy “tax cheats” who don’t want to pay their “fair share.” And those whose job it is to forcibly take money or property from such “tax cheats” usually do so with a feeling of righteousness, because they truly believe that the “authority” of “law” can take what is usually an immoral act – theft, extortion and racketeering – and transform it into something righteous and legitimate. So they commit mass robbery, feel good about it, and feel contempt for their victims. That is the power of the most dangerous superstition.

Statists often argue that taxation is not theft because “governments” use tax revenue for things that are for the “common good,” so it’s just a matter of people paying for goods and services they receive. Such an argument ignores the fundamental nature of the situation. A simple example makes the double standard obvious. Suppose a stranger came up to you and said he had mowed your lawn, or left an item for you at your house, and now demanded that you give him $1,000, though you had never agreed to any such arrangement. Obviously that would constitute extortion, and you would have no duty to pay, even if he really had mowed your lawn or left you something. No one has the right, without your consent, to provide you some item or service – when you didn’t ask for it and didn’t want to buy it – and then forcibly take from you whatever he declares the item or service to be worth. And yet that is exactly what every “government,” at every level, always does.

When targets of authoritarian aggression are successfully demonized and dehumanized, there are essentially no limits to the degree of violence and injustice which those who believe in “authority” will commit. For any who might still have hope that the consciences of American soldiers and “law enforcers” might limit the level of injustice they are willing to inflict upon complete strangers, there are plenty of real-world examples that prove otherwise. One of the most well-known would have to be the massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam war, where U.S. troops not only murdered hundreds of unarmed civilians, mostly women and children, but also sexually assaulted and tortured some, and some soldiers openly delighted in the suffering and deaths of their victims, by the soldiers’ own testimonies. This is what American soldiers did, as a result of their loyalty to the myth of “authority,” combined with the demonization and dehumanization of their victims. The soldiers themselves put it perfectly bluntly, one saying they were “just following orders,” another saying that most of the U.S. soldiers there “didn’t consider the Vietnamese human” (It should be noted that there were some American soldiers who tried, with little success, to stop or limit the massacre.) While this might have been one of the most famous examples of war-time atrocities committed by American troops, it is certainly not the only one. In fact, new examples of the sadism of America soldiers keep coming to light. Whereas in the Milgram experiments, some test subjects would demonstrate – verbally or by their behavior – that they felt bad about inflicting harm upon an innocent stranger, “law enforcers” and soldiers who are first taught to despise an “enemy,” obey authoritarian commands even more eagerly, often in a way that shows that they delight in inflicting pain and death on their victims.

This was plainly displayed in the images that came out of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq showing that American troops, male and female, not only carried out mental and physical torture but exhibited delight and amusement at the suffering of their victims, even happily posing for the camera while humiliating, assaulting, torturing and raping their prisoners.

(Both the Bush and Obama administrations prevented much of the photographic evidence of this torture from being made public, for fear of the effect that those images would have on the opinion of the military and the “country,” among Americans and foreigners alike.) Again, though the evidence shows that such torture was carried out at the behest of the highest levels of “government,” it is important to note that the ones who carried out these commands of “authority” clearly exhibited a sadistic enjoyment of the pain and suffering they were inflicting on other human beings. They had been told, by someone they perceived as “authority,” that it was noble and righteous to hate and hurt “the enemy.” So they did, and they enjoyed it.

The same attitude and mentality can be seen in various “law enforcement” actions, such as the assault on Ruby Ridge in 1992 and the raid, standoff, and eventual massacre near Waco, Texas, in 1993. In neither case was “authority” going after someone who had actually harmed or threatened anyone else. Instead, both events involved paramilitary assaults based upon the alleged possession of “illegal” firearms. In the Waco incident, eighty people, including men, women and children, eventually died, after being mentally and physically tortured for weeks with sleep deprivation and CS gas, among other things.

The victims were demonized, to both the public and those in “law enforcement,” and the “government” aggressors exhibited both contempt for their victims and enthusiasm at the thought of killing them. The same general attitude can be seen in dozens of “police abuse” videos depicting police enthusiastically bullying and even physically assaulting people who are not a threat to anyone, and who are not even fighting back or resisting.

This is the direct result of convincing “law enforcers” that everyone else is beneath them and that, as agents of “authority;” they have the right to have everyone else treat them like superiors, groveling before them and unquestioningly obeying their commands. The same pattern can also be seen among “tax collectors” and other bureaucrats.

To what extent the belief in “authority” actually creates sadistic tendencies, and to what extent it simply unleashes tendencies which were already there, hardly matters. The point is that, by pretending to relieve the individual of responsibility for his own actions, and by ordering him to inflict harm on others and telling him that it not just permissible but virtuous to harm a particular target, the myth of “authority” converts millions of average, otherwise decent people into monsters and sadistic agents of evil. Whatever factors normally compel people to behave civilly and nonviolently – whether it be the individual’s internal virtues, his devotion to oral principles or religious beliefs, or simply his concern about what others might think of him or might do to him – are easily defeated and overridden by the belief in “authority.” In short, the most effective way to shut down the humanity and decency of any individual is to teach him to respect and obey “authority.”

Those who do the bidding of a supposed “authority” usually go out of their way to make it clear that they are doing so. When a soldier dons his military attire, marches in formation, or gets into a military vehicle; when a cop puts on his uniform and gets into the car marked “POLICE”; when a plainclothes “government” agent – whether from the FBI, IRS, U.S. Marshals, or any other agency – shows his “badge” or announces his “official” title, he is making a very specific statement, which can be summed up as follows:

“I am not acting as a thinking, responsible, independent human being, and should not be treated as such. I am not personally responsible jar my actions, because I am not acting from my own free will or my own judgment or right and wrong. I am, instead, acting as the tool of something superhuman, something with the right to rule you and control you. As such, I can do things that you can’t. I have rights that you don’t. You must do as I say, submit to my commands, and treat me as your superior, because I am not a mere human being. I have risen above that. Through my unquestioning obedience and loyalty to my masters, I have become a piece of the superhuman entity called ‘authority.’ As a result, the rules of human morality do not apply to me, and my actions should not be judged by the usual standards of human behavior.”

This bizarre, mystical, cult-like belief is held by every “law enforcer” in the world. It is horribly dangerous for anyone to imagine himself to have an exemption from the basic rules of right and wrong, yet that is exactly what every agent of “government” imagines.

Despite the fact that soldiers and “law enforcers” usually display their “official” uniforms with great pride, what they are actually doing is publicly displaying the fact that they are delusional, have a completely warped and demented view of reality, and have betrayed the very thing that made them human: their free will and the personal responsibility that goes along with it. Every person who cairns to act on behalf of “authority” is demonstrating that he has accepted an utterly ridiculous lie: that his position, his badge, his office dramatically changes what behaviors are moral and what behaviors are immoral. The idea is patently insane, but is rarely recognized as such because even the victims of the enforcers share in this delusion.

It is important to again stress the fact that, of those who become “law enforcers” and soldiers, most do so out of a desire to fight for justice. Nonetheless, because of their belief in “authority,” their noble intentions often end up being used to harm the innocent and protect the guilty. Because a police officer is supposed to “enforce the law,” and a soldier is supposed to follow orders, their own values and intentions get trumped by the agendas of those giving the orders. Notwithstanding the military recruiting propaganda encouraging young men and women to join up to fight for truth and justice, the true job of a soldier is to kill whomever the masters tell him to kill. It is as simple as that. How many Americans would, on their own, choose to go to foreign lands and kill complete strangers? Very few. How many Americans, on their own, if they were in a foreign land, would feel justified in going door to door, interrogating strangers at gunpoint, invading and searching their homes, because they thought some truly bad people might be in the area? Very few. These are actions which almost every individual’s sense of morality would tell him are wrong. But when someone voluntarily joins an authoritarian military, he intentionally shuts off his own judgment and conscience in favor of simply doing as he is told.

Though soldiers sometimes use legitimate force, such as combatting aggressors and invaders, they also routinely act as aggressors and invaders themselves. It would be impossible for a “government” military to function any other way. Imagine an army going door to door, politely asking each homeowner for permission to cross his land. :;imply calling the situation “war” causes the believers in “government” to imagine :hat the usual standards of human behavior do not apply. Under the excuse of necessity; soldiers trespass, steal, intimidate, threaten, assault, interrogate, torture, and murder. And they do this even against people they consider to be their allies. The military invasion and occupation of Iraq by the mercenaries of the U.S. “government,” which was purportedly done to defend the people of Iraq, was an example of large-scale aggression and coercion – and thus was immoral – even if it displaced a regime guilty of an even worse level of intimidation and murder (the regime of Saddam Hussein). Yet the supposed evil of the enemy is often cited as the justification for authoritarian coercion. In truth, today and throughout history, large-scale violence against innocents has always been done in the name of “fighting for freedom” or “fighting against injustice.” Even when the Nazis invaded Poland, they first staged a series of false-flag events and propaganda stunts, collectively known is “Operation Himmler,” so they could pretend that the invasion was a justifiable act of self-defense. The truth is that, even when the evil of an enemy regime is easy to see, making the overall fight seem righteous to one side, the violence committed by authoritarian militaries is never directed only at the actual aggressors on the other side. The structure and methodology of hierarchical armies make it so that innocents are always victimized in one way or another, and not just by accident, but by design. The pack mentality that is such a big part of patriotism makes this unavoidable.

In World War II, the American troops saw “the Krauts” and “the Japs” as the enemy, rather than seeing the enemy as those individuals who actually committed acts of aggression against innocent people – a concept which would require each soldier to constantly use his own individual perception and moral judgment to assess each situation as he confronted it, which is incompatible with an authoritarian chain of command. Of course, of the people who fit the definition of “the Krauts” (the Germans) or “the Japs” (the Japanese), many played no part in the conflict (aside from funding it through paying “taxes,” as discussed below). But on both sides in every war, “government” militaries, and the propaganda they use, always target and demonize a general category of people rather than just the individuals who have actually initiated violence. The result is that huge demographic groups end up being ordered to subjugate or exterminate each other, making it so that neither side is ever the “good guy” in any war between “nations,” as both militaries always use violence against innocent people, as well as against other soldiers.

Perhaps one of the most heinous examples of this was the dropping of nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, which constituted by far the two worst individual acts of terrorism and mass murder in history. Together, they resulted in the deaths of around two hundred thousand civilians – about seventy times worse than the number of deaths from the 9/11/2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. The admitted goal was to inflict fear, pain and death on the population of an entire country, in order to coerce the ruling class of that country to bend to the will of another ruling class. Ironically, this fits perfectly the United States “government’s” own definition of “terrorism,” except that that definition conveniently exempts acts that are “legal” and/or committed by “governments.” If those in “government” advocate and carry out violent activities that are intended to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or to “influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion,” then it is considered legitimate and just. If anyone else does the exact same thing, it is “terrorism.” (See Section 2331 of Title 18 of the United States Code.) As an aside, the existence of nuclear weapons is entirely the result of the belief in “authority.” Unlike many weapons, it is impossible to use them for purely defensive purposes. The only reason the nuclear bomb was invented and manufactured in the first place was because of the authoritarian, nationalistic, pack-mentality idea that it is possible, and righteous, to be at war with an entire country, and that therefore indiscriminately exterminating thousands of people at once can be justifiable.

Being a member of a “government” military requires one to contribute to anti-human acts, even if only indirectly, regardless of whatever noble motives the individual may have had for joining the armed forces. The reason is simple: acting based on one’s own perception and judgment, and abiding by one’s own conscience and one’s own sense of right and wrong, is utterly incompatible with being a member of any “government” military. Sadly, the result is that both sides of every war are wrong, in that they both initiate violence against innocents. At the same time, both sides of every war are also right, in that they each condemn the other side for initiating violence against innocents.

In short, as long as there are soldiers willing to subjugate themselves to a claimed “authority,” and even to commit murder when it tells them to, lasting peace will be impossible. Those who fight for any “government,” even if they believe they are “fighting for their country,” can never achieve freedom and justice, because a ruling class, by its very nature, never wants freedom and justice, even for its own subjects, or it would cease to exist. However noble their motives, and however courageous their actions, ultimately the only thing “government” soldiers can ever achieve is subjugation and domination.

Ironically, probably in an attempt to hide the inherently evil nature of every “government” military, and to distinguish its own mercenaries from the mercenaries of other tyrannical regimes, the U.S. military pretends that American soldiers have the right and duty to disobey any order that they deem to be “illegal” or immoral. However, not only is any soldier who does so likely to be court-martialed, but such a principle – which by itself would be quite proper – goes directly against the entire concept of “authority,” and against the specific methods use to train soldiers to be unthinking, obedient tools of the regime they serve. In a combat setting, nearly everything that every “government” military does constitutes aggressive terrorism, and almost every order a soldier receives is an immoral order, whether it is to trespass on someone else’s property, blow up a bridge, block a road, disarm civilians, detain and interrogate people without justification, or kill complete strangers, just on the “say-so” of a supposed “authority.” In fact, even when the rules of engagement are only to fire if fired upon, that is still often unjustified. When one is the aggressor, whether individually or acting on behalf of “authority,” the target of that aggression has the right to use whatever force is necessary to stop the aggressor. In other words, in a lot of situations, shooting at soldiers – including American soldiers – is inherently justified. Killing someone for defending himself against aggressors is murder, even when the aggressors are U.S. soldiers. And almost every soldier routinely commits immoral acts of aggression, believing that commands from “authority” make it okay for him to do so. If any soldier actually took seriously the idea that he had the duty to disobey an immoral order, the first thing he would do would be to quit the military.

Those who act as mercenaries for “government,” even if they do so with the best intentions, will always be part of a machine that commits aggression as often as, or more often than, it defends the innocent. That being the case, nearly every combat soldier does things which would justify the use of defensive violence against him. However, as conquering invaders always have, the American military commanders label anyone whoresists their acts of aggression as an “enemy combatant,” an “insurgent,” or a “terrorist.” When aggression is committed in the name of “authority,” many then view any act ofself-defense against such aggression as a sin. As much as American authoritarians might be outraged at the suggestion, the truth is that many thousands of people the world over have had good cause to shoot at American soldiers.

When a person who has not harmed or threatened anyone is in his own home, minding his own business, and heavily armed thugs break down his door, point machine guns at him and his family, threatening and ordering them around, the homeowner has the absolute right to protect himself and his family by any means necessary, including killing the armed intruders. The average American, if he were the victim of such an assault by foreign mercenaries, would feel perfectly justified in using whatever violence was necessary to repel the attackers, but if his fellow Americans were the ones committing

such assaults in a foreign land, that same American, having been steeped in “authority”- worship and pack mentality, will “support the troops,” and will cheer when American soldiers murder a homeowner who attempts to forcibly resist such aggression and thuggery.

Authoritarian military actions are never purely defensive. When “governments” declare war, it is never to defend the innocent or to preserve freedom, though that is always thestated purpose. When “governments” engage in war, it is always to protect or add to the territory or other resources controlled by that “government.” The ruling class, by its very nature, does not even want its own subjects to be free, much less the subjects of some foreign ruler. As a result, though one who dies in combat is often said to have given his life for his country, in reality those who die in war are simply resources spent by tyrants, in various turf wars with other, competing gangs of tyrants. The people are fed propaganda about heroism, sacrifice rod patriotism, to hide the fact that “governments” never enter wars to serve justice or freedom. They do it to serve their own power. An objective examination of history makes this obvious.

Even one of the most apparently justifiable military endeavors in history – the Allies in World War II fighting against the Axis powers – while it resulted in the defeat of the third worst mass murderer in history (Adolph Hitler), it also resulted in the worst mass murderer in history (Josef Stalin) essentially being given half of Europe by the rulers of the Allied nations. The motive of most of the American soldiers who fought in the war was undoubtedly to protect the good from the evil; but the motives of those who commanded them, and therefore the actual results of the brave soldiers’ efforts, was nothing more than authoritarian conquest and power.

In World War II, one could have at least suggested (with some imagination) the possibility of an invasion of the United States, and thereby claim that it was an act of self-defense because “national security” was at stake. But most U.S. military operations have involved no direct threat at all to the u.s. Thirty-some thousand Americans died in the Korean war. No one imagined that North Korea was going to invade the U.S. Fifty-some thousand Americans died in the Vietnam war. No one imagined that North Vietnam was going to invade the U.S. No one imagined that the armies of Iraq or Afghanistan were going to invade the U.S. The excuse for such conflicts has always been a vague cause such as “fighting communism,” or the even more ethereal excuse of having a “war on terror” (which is made more ironic by the fact that terrorist tactics were and continue to be routinely used by U.S. forces).

The sad irony is that the American ruling class, because of the legitimacy its victims imagine it to have, is the only gang actually capable of conquering and subjugating the American people. The gigantic military machine, and all of the war games it has engaged in, rather than providing a shred of real protection for the American public, is what created most existing foreign threats, and what is still used as the excuse to justify the oppression of Americans by their own “government,” via the Orwellian-named “Patriot Act,” among other things. The popular bumper sticker that says “If you love your freedom, thank a veteran” is a continuing symptom of the pack mentality, state-worshiping propaganda that ruling classes feed to their subjects so that the masters will continue to have pawns to play in their sadistic, destructive power games. Even when a slave master fights to prevent some other slave master from stealing his slaves, he is still no friend of the slaves themselves.

It is quite understandable that someone who has risked his life, gone through hell, harmed or killed other human beings, possibly including innocents, and suffered physical or emotional trauma as a result, would be reluctant to accept that all his courage, his suffering, and the damage he inflicted on others ultimately served only be schemes of megalomaniacs. However, even some of the most famous military personalities in history have eventually come to acknowledge that “governments” engage in war, not for any noble purpose but for profits and power. Major General Smedley Butler, who at the time of his death in 1940 was the most decorated U.S. Marine in history, wrote a book titled “War Is a Racket” that criticized the military-industrial complex, saying that war “is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many,” even going so far as to describe his own military “service” as the actions of “a high class muscle man,” a “racketeer” and a “gangster.” Likewise General Douglas MacArthur opined that military expansion is driven by an “artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria” and “an incessant propaganda of fear.” General MacArthur also said the following: “The powers in charge keep us in a perpetual state of fear – keep us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disaster seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.”

Of course, to criticize war as a racket which benefits only the ruling class is not to say that the ruling class on the other side is not also evil, or should not be resisted. The atrocities committed by the enforcers of the regimes of Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Lenin Pol Pot, and many others were extremely serious, and the use of defensive violence against the acts of aggression committed by the agents of such regimes was certainly justified. But authoritarian warfare pits pawn against pawn in large-scale bloody combat which covers huge geographical areas, always victimizing civilian populations in the process, while the ruling classes on both sides watch from a safe distance. Further evidence that war is never about ideals or principles is the fact that the U.S. “government” has often waged war against tyrants it put into place, such as Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein. An even more blatant example of how war is not about principles is the fact that at the beginning of World War II, Josef Stalin and his Soviet Union were sworn enemies of the United States. By the end of the war, the psychotic mass murder was referred to as “Uncle Joe” by the U.S. “government” propagandists, and was treated as a noble ally. Stalin’s crimes against humanity resulting in tens of million of deaths, went largely unmentioned in the U.S. at the time. In light of that fact, it is absurd to claim that the U.S. “government” decided to enter World War II based on any moral principle, or to defeat evil.

It is important to note what does and what does not occur in traditional international warfare. Competing ruling classes, including the American rulers, are content to watch their respective pawns slaughtering each other by the thousands, but it hat long been the official policy of many “governments,” including the U.S. “government,” not to attempt to kill foreign “rulers” – i.e., the ones most responsible for making the war happen. In truth, the most moral, the most rational, and the most cost-effective means of defense against any invading “authority” is the assassination of those who command it. Targeting “governments,” instead of their loyal enforcers, would serve humanity wonderfully, not only ending most violent conflicts a lot more quickly but creating a huge deterrent to any megalomaniac tempted to start conflicts in the first place. Yet there is an open, mutual, standing agreement between most high-level tyrants that, while it is okay to play games with the lives of their subjects, they will rarely target each other.

And so, over and over again, huge numbers of soldiers march out onto battlefields to kill each other while the real enemies of humanity – the rulers on both sides remain out of harm’s way. Thus the lives of the well-intentioned soldiers, the brave “government” enforcers who loyally follow orders to the bitter end, are utterly wasted in endeavors which, by design, ultimately achieve real freedom and justice for no one. And if a soldier manages to recognize and target the ones most responsible for injustice and oppression – those who wear the label of “government” on both sides of every war – he is condemned as a traitor and a terrorist.

Whether it is a soldier or some low-level bureaucrat, the job of all “law enforcers” is to forcibly inflict the will of the ruling class upon the general public. Nonetheless, most imagine that as they do so they are “serving the people.” Of course, the idea of “serving” someone by initiating violence against him is ridiculous. (Consider the oxymoron of the absurdly named “Internal Revenue Service,” which does nothing Cut rob hundreds of millions of people of trillions of dollars every year.) Rather than ever considering the possibility that what they do on a regular basis – participating in a system of aggression and coercion – is immoral and uncivilized, most state mercenaries, from the paper-pusher to the hired killer, simply say that they are “just doing their jobs,” and imagine that that absolves them of all personal responsibility for their actions and the results of those actions.

This, above all else, has been the downfall of human society. Most of the evil and injustice committed by human beings is not the result of greed, or malice, or hatred. It is the result of people doing what they were told, people following orders, people “doing their jobs.” In short, most of man’s inhumanity to man is a direct result of the belief in “authority.” The damage done by the merely obedient is just as real, and just as destructive, as if they had each done it from personal malice. Whether an old lady is robbed by an armed street thug or by a well-dressed, well-educated “tax collector” makes no difference, morally or in practical terms. Whether a family iii Iraq is killed by soldiers of Saddam Hussein or by soldiers of the United States “government” makes no difference, morally or in practical terms. Whether some one’s personal choices are coercively controlled by a neighborhood thug or by the “police” makes no difference, morally or in practical terms.

The only difference is that the authoritarian thug, as a result of his delusional belief in the mythical entity called “government,” refuses to accept personal responsibility for his own actions. His belief in the most dangerous superstition renders him unable to recognize evil as evil. In fact, he will feel proud of his loyal obedience to his masters as he spends day after day inflicting hardship and suffering upon innocent people, because he has been taught, for all of his life, that when evil becomes “law,” it ceases to be evil and becomes good.

In truth, if anything is a sin, it is blind obedience to “authority.” Acting as an enforcer for “government” amounts to spiritual suicide – actually worse than physical suicide, because every authoritarian “enforcer” not only shuts off the free will and ability to judge which make him human (thus “killing” his own humanity) but also leaves his body intact, to be used by tyrants as a tool for oppression. To be a “law enforcer” is to willingly change one’s self from a person into a robot – a robot which is then given to some of the most evil people in the world, to be used to dominate and subjugate the human race.

Wearing the uniform of a soldier or the badge of a “law enforcer” is not a reason for pride; it should be cause for great shame at having forsaken one’s own humanity in favor of becoming a pawn of oppressors.