What makes him 'our' president? He certainly is not mine NOR are the
remainder of those in the cesspool of DC.
Regard$,
--MJ
"The State is almost universally considered an institution of social
service. Some theorists venerate the State as the apotheosis of
society; others regard it as an amiable, though often inefficient,
organization for achieving social ends; but almost all regard it as a
necessary means for achieving the goals of mankind, a means to be
ranged against the "private sector" and often winning in this
competition of resources. With the rise of democracy, the
identification of the State with society has been redoubled, until it
is common to hear sentiments expressed which violate virtually every
tenet of reason and common sense such as, "we are the government."
The useful collective term "we" has enabled an ideological camouflage
to be thrown over the reality of political life. If "we are the
government," then anything a government does to an individual is not
only just and untyrannical but also "voluntary" on the part of the
individual concerned. If the government has incurred a huge public
debt which must be paid by taxing one group for the benefit of
another, this reality of burden is obscured by saying that "we owe it
to ourselves"; if the government conscripts a man, or throws him into
jail for dissident opinion, then he is "doing it to himself" and,
therefore, nothing untoward has occurred. Under this reasoning, any
Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered; instead, they
must have "committed suicide," since they were the government (which
was democratically chosen), and, therefore, anything the government
did to them was voluntary on their part. One would not think it
necessary to belabor this point, and yet the overwhelming bulk of the
people hold this fallacy to a greater or lesser degree.
"We must, therefore, emphasize that "we" are not the government; the
government is not "us." The government does not in any accurate sense
"represent" the majority of the people.[1] But, even if it did, even
if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30
percent, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary
suicide on the part of the slaughtered minority.[2] No organicist
metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that "we are all part of one
another," must be permitted to obscure this basic fact." -- Murray
Rothbard, The Anatomy of the State
[1] We cannot, in this chapter, develop the many problems and
fallacies of "democracy." Suffice it to say here that an individual's
true agent or "representative" is always subject to that individual's
orders, can be dismissed at any time and cannot act contrary to the
interests or wishes of his principal. Clearly, the "representative"
in a democracy can never fulfill such agency functions, the only ones
consonant with a libertarian society.
[2] Social democrats often retort that democracy majority choice of
rulers logically implies that the majority must leave certain
freedoms to the minority, for the minority might one day become the
majority. Apart from other flaws, this argument obviously does not
hold where the minority cannot become the majority, for example, when
the minority is of a different racial or ethnic group from the majority.
At 08:18 AM 3/17/2013, you wrote:
I didn't like it when Presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton, or Bush II
were trashed unmercifully by predominately far left extremists, and
it ain't all that becoming coming out of your pie hole either.
This is where we both agree Keith, no matter what your political
affiliation the President is OUR President, just because you didn't
vote for him or agree with him ... that is no reason to be
disrespectful!!! There are ways to disgree without resorting to
--
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