April 4, 2010
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four
The Government Can't Force Me to Do Sh*t!!!
I'm a bit lazy today so I'll just make my entry a quote of a comment I posted earlier today on jenessa1889's blog. Basically I responded to a comment where someone wrote "Also, the government really shouldn't be able
to force me to do sh*t."Here's what I replied (basically spelling and grammar cleaned up a little):
"Really!?!? So the government shouldn't have the right to force you to follow the speed limit? Or wear a seat belt? In fact, the government should allow you to drive right on down the left side of the road or on the divider or through the middle of fields if you want. And you can do so at 200 mph if your car can do it in the middle of the night while its raining with no headlights or windshield wipers on. And you should be able to do it without a license and without insurance in an unregistered vehicle you just stole from your neighbor last night. Oh and with a baby or two in the backseat just lying there without any straps and not in car seats.
I mean obviously the government doesn't have any right to force you not to steal right? You can walk into your neighbors house and if he doesn't have a gun or is unwilling to protect his stuff, sh*t on him. You can take whatever crap you want and leave. No damn government is going to get in your way. And in fact if he DOES try to stop you, you can beat him to a bloody pulp, rape his wife and children, and shoot his grandmother in the face. There's no damn government that's going to stop you.
I'm sure you believe the government shouldn't be able to force you to pay taxes, What about a draft or registering for selective service? How about abortion rights? Presumably if the government can't force you to do sh*t, it can't force a woman not to have an abortion. Indeed, she can have one the day before the child is born. In fact, a woman can kill her baby six months after it is born and don't expect government to be able to stop her or punish her. It certainly has no RIGHT to do so.
Government can't force you to send your kids to school or even to feed your kids or otherwise interfere with your family life. In fact you should be able to marry 30 entities, 20 of them underage children and 10 of them animals in your household. You should be able to sexually and physically abuse all of them. You can tie four of them up in your basement and make 16 of them fight in gladiatorial combat for your affection.
In meantime, you'll start a business where you'll run an unregistered nuclear reactor to power it. You'll pour the nuclear waste and other waste materials into oceans and rivers. You can use that power to build a giant farming operation where you employ slave labor to produce opium, heroine, pcp, and various prescription drugs all which you'll sell to minors without a prescription. On the side, you'll manufacture unregistered unmarked arms which you can sell to foreign nationals and terrorists domestic and abroad. All this is just to bide you time while you train up an army of spies which you'll have infiltrate the federal government and sell state secrets to multinational corporations based in China. Of course you'll use your profits to buy every television and radio outlet in the country on which you'll play nonstop kiddy porn 24 hours a day.
I could go on and on. Governments absolutely can and SHOULD be able to force people to do sh*t. Absolutely every law that exists is a restriction on people's ability to do sh*t, That's why we HAVE governments."
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I'm of course being a little unfair to the commenter in order to make a symbolic point. Nobody who has ever thought about it, really believes that Governments shouldn't be able to make you do ANYTHING. Undoubtedly the writer probably just meant things like filling out the census or buying health insurance.
I think the anti-government fever that is flooding the country is very often extremely irrational. The idea that the best government is no government is just plain false. It's not true. A world with no government is a very dangerous and enormously unfair world. You don't want to live there.
For many who are anti-government, their anti-government sentiment is awfully selective too. For example, it's fairly frequent for us to see anti-government activists who protest taxes but don't have a problem with torture or illegal wars or indefinite detention. Fairly frequently we see anti-government activists who have no problem with warrant-less wiretapping of Americans or full body scanners or with the patriot act giving people access to their library records. And of course many of even the most pure anti-government activists seem strangely to think it's just plain cool and right for the government to interfere with a woman's right to choose and to intervene to ensure that schools teach religious ideas like intelligent design. And the idea of the Government genetically registering every single immigrant in order to find those that are here illegally doesn't sound bad to many of them either.
If you're a self proclaimed "libertarian" who believes all those things then you're just a hypocrite and a liar. You don't really believe in smaller government, you just believe in government that doesn't have the features that YOU don't like.
But if you are really consistent in your anti-government principles then fine. More power to you. I don't think the resulting world you'd create if you had complete sway would be good for anyone. But at least your fighting for less government can influence our Government to keep it in check from having too much influence in our lives. There are times in our country's history when we absolutely need that. That's why we have Democracy so the people can serve as a check on their leaders.
Reasonable people I believe understand that there has to be a balance. It can't be all or nothing. The government when it pays to help us have public schools, and regulate pollution, and enforces basic laws is a Good thing even if that restricts a little of our personal freedoms. On the other hand, a Government that tapes all its citizens conversations and keeps their DNA on file and randomly hires mercenaries to assassinate citizens is a bit much. Striking that balance is important. It requires reasonable thought and debate.
Instead we get lots of shouting "Government is Always Bad!", "Get your government hands off my medicare!", and other such nonsense. That kind of rhetoric helps nobody.
Also want to randomly note I mentioned in my rant the phrase "the government doesn't have any right to force you". That's kinda sloppy wording on my part. I don't believe governments have rights per se. Governments have powers. Government secure rights possessed by the people. In order to do that, often the Government has to restrict behaviors.
I will write more tomorrow though right now I know not yet about what.
Comments (14)
I saw that blog of which you speak, and contributed that I'm not doing my census and there will be no fall out from that. Only 30 to 50 percent of people do the census, and then they use statistics to generalize from that data. I am in no way an anti-gov activist, but I don't think you were talking about me, I hope not. I am actually very political.
@And_I_love - I'm not talking about anyone in particular who commented on that thread. I'm talking more theoretically.
However, I do think you should fill out your census. I think it is very very unlikely to cause you any harm and the government uses that information for a lot of programs that really do help people. You're absolutely right though that lots and lots of people don't fill out their census forms and that the government almost certainly won't punish you for not doing so. But there are fines on the books so they could if they wanted to. Likely you will just be asked by a census worker if they can find you and they get to you in time, who will make the best estimate based on your responses.
@nephyo - fines on the books really?
if they could go after me for not filling it out, that's all the more reason I don't want to fill it out. there is a certain kind of logic in that for some of us.
@nephyo - oops, and it's not an ANTI-government protesting kind of logic. I'm a solid person in my political views.
Nice work!
hmmmm, gladiatorial combat for my affection, could be fun.
Nice post, we have responsiblities as citizens. Some people act like 2 year olds needing a nap. "no, you can't make me!"
I read that comment you posted and it made me laugh. So true. Laws and government exist for a reason, and it's not always a bad reason. I can't see any reason other than paranoia and just plain stubbornness for not filling out the census. It took me two minutes and I didn't think I was giving any "private" information that couldn't be determined by looking at my facebook page, lol.
The government workers processing the census forms aren't taking the time to look at every individual's information. There are millions of people (the census numbers, when compiled, will give an actual number) in this country. You seriously think the government is going to look at you as an individual? That's overestimating your own importance. As someone who's interested in history, I find that filling out the census is going to provide valuable information for future generations, not to mention the relevant information it gives lawmakers today. Like I said, it's just paranoia, stubbornness, and contrariness. Just do it.
Sometimes I want to smack people in the face with Hobbes' social contract theory until they bleed.
The thing is, it's impossible to sustain a world without government. Which is not to say a world without government would fall into chaos (though, undoubtedly it would at first,) but that chaos is not possible in the long term. Someone would take power, and some brand of government would emerge, and it would probably suck a lot worse than what we have now (just ask Burma or Nepal.)
Most people's political beliefs barely seem grounded in reality, and that makes me crazy.
The narrow issue is with Obamacare forcing people to buy insurance, not whether guvmint generally can force people to do stuff. Whether something is constitutional is another matter altogether. Do you want the guvmint telling you to buy Bibles or condoms? If they can tell you to buy health insurance, they can tell you to buy those things. They can force you to obtain abortions, like they do in China, if this is allowed. Do you want that?
@soccerdadforlife - Except that the person I was replying to gave no indication that he was referring to health care reform, I only inferred it because it is likely that he follows the same crowd. He was specifically responding to a post about the Census but his statement was completely general. He said the government shouldn't be able to force him to do sh*t. "sh*t" in general usage in that context generally refers to "anything".
As for hcr, I care about the results. If the government forcing me to buy Bibles or condoms saved lives yeah it wouldn't bother me THAT much. Bibles I can't see any good that can come from it. Condoms? Actually that's not too bad an idea. They're not that expensive. I think we'd survive. Abortions? I don't want government forcing people to or not to get abortions. But there's no reason to believe health care reform would lead to any of that whatsoever. But you don't have to tell me that letting the government force us to do anything would result in absurd conclusions. My point is that saying the government can't force us to do anything ALSO results in absurd conclusions. The thing is, you don't have to follow an idea to every possible conclusion no matter how absurd. We can as a society choose a reasonable middle ground. And we have, time and time again.
Really the thing about this health care reform bill is that what the mandate is, is a tax in disguise. It's perfectly reasonable to tax the people and then provide the people health care. That's what every developed country in the world does. And it's what WE already do with medicare and medicaid, the VA, and SCHIP.
However, taxes have a bad rap in this country, especially on a federal level, so they hide it in the idea of a mandate and give people a choice of what for of health care service they receive through the exchange. Hence it's more "market based". I'm far from a market fundamentalist. I'd rather they had done it as a tax just like the government does when they tax people to provide countless other services. But make no mistake the reason we HAVE a mandate is because republicans and conservatives in Congress and Thinktanks wanted it. They wanted it for years and years and years. They are the ones who proposed it initially. It's just that conservative democrats decided it was a decent idea and an easier sell than the traditional tax system. They probably miscalculated there, but that doesn't mean it's an immoral system. If it works, I'm fine with it. My fear is that it won't work, because insurance companies are untrustworthy partners for the government. Which is why we should have just expanded medicare to everyone.
@And_I_love - This is from the howstufworks article (http://people.howstuffworks.com/question345.htm) on the subject:
"Someone is very likely to notice if you do not fill out and return your form. After April 1 in a census year, all of the responses received by the U.S. Census Bureau will be compared to major lists of U.S. residences. If your response has not been received -- or if you didn't complete all the questions on your form -- someone from the census will contact you for that information. The census is a $6.5 billion dollar project. They can afford to be thorough!
If you refuse to give out the information or you deliberately give inaccurate information, you can be inlegal trouble. According to United States Code, Title 13 (Census), Chapter 7 (Offenses and Penalties), SubChapter II, if you're over 18 and refuse to answer all or part of the Census, you can be fined up to $100. If you give false answers, you're subject to a fine of up to $500. If you offer suggestions or information with the "intent to cause inaccurate enumeration of population," you are subject to a fine of up to $1,000, up to a year in prison, or both."
Beneath that they quote the actual statute.
As you can see what they REALLY care about is people who lie on their census either just to be jerks or more dangerously in order to cause a false count. The latter is particularly dangerous because a political party could conceivably try to get its constituents to boost their numbers in order to get more representation in Congress. It's TOTALLY reasonable to have some kind of punishment for that behavior.
The $100 fine though? That's largely just for show. I don't even know if it's seriously enforced. If it is, it's kinda like a speeding ticket. Most of the people who don't fill out the census live in the poorest parts of the country and just don't fill it out because they don't know about it and are missed or because real fear of government is actually far stronger in those areas then they are even in the most libertarian of wealthier neighborhoods.
But the Census is super expensive for the government. That's the justification of having the fine. If saying "there's a hundred dollar fine" convinces more people to fill out the Census even if they don't enforce it, they can save a LOT of money. Because every form they don't get means they have to hire more people to go out and "enumerate" as required by the constitution.
@nephyo - Well, we'll just keep you in a cage and not let you out because if we let you out you might eat junk food. Don't you have an itty bitty problem with unlimited gummint power, even for ostensibly good purposes? What if the purpose is to remove appendices prophylactically, only to later discover that appendices are needed in certain conditions?
You still haven't answered my question about abortions. The issue isn't whether you consider them necessary, but whether the gummint considers them necessary for what it considers to be a good purpose (population control).
You need to take a principled approach rather than an idealistic approach. You end up with contradictory positions.
@elvesdoitbetter - exactly. The extreme forms of libertarianism and anarchism seem to imagine a world where people somehow, magically get along with everyone. It's like they think all we have to do is get rid of that pesky State thing and laws and everything will be sunshine and lollypops. But having no credible evidence whatsoever of that in the real world, I don't see why people would even posit it. Worse, to me is the idea that even if this were true, people seem to think you can actually get there here in the real world in a few easy steps. They think that you can piece by piece eliminate and dismantle the institutions built throughout the entire history of human civilization and that nothing would ever arise in its place if we did that.
Worst of all is IMO the notion that the only and best way to do that is to start a brutal civil war to upturn the "tyrants" and return power back in the hands of the people. That's enormously dangerous rhetoric, yet it seems increasingly common.
I like to describe it this way. What people call "government" is really nothing more than the guy in the room with the biggest Stick. That person might have a literal stick or some other powerful weapon, or might be a super persuasive person able to draw people to his side, or that person might be a person invested in the power to control the stick through the will of the people. But there's always gonna be someone with a big stick and a willingness to use it. It's human nature. So it definitely makes sense to ensure that your stick wielder is accountable to someone or something and has strong incentives to wield that stick for the betterment of others. A long tradition of fealty to the law and democratic institutions and devotion to the public welfare like we have in modern democracies seems like a pretty good system for that to me. And I've yet to hear of another that would be likely to work better.
@soccerdadforlife - Are you listening? I've said repeatedly that I don't believe in unlimited government power both in my entry and in my response to you. I've said that there has to be a balance between extreme government intervention and extreme LACK of government intervention.
The analysis through which you decide whether a government intervention is justified can't just be "government==bad!, no government==good!" If that's your "principled approach" you will get absurd idiotic results that I've outlined. Likewise you would get absurd idiotic results if your principles are the opposite. What is needed is an analysis of many factors like what are the results of this intervention on individual freedoms and life and safety and happiness.
Neither abortion nor health care are simple issues because they have a complex effect on many factors in our society.
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