The State Is Not The Problem

Picture in your mind for a moment the image of a crazy man angrily shaking his fist at a non-existent foe.

Many libertarians are passionate defenders of the right to bear arms. They say things like …

“Guns don’t hurt people. People hurt people.”

I would argue, however, that libertarians who blame the state for violence have a lot in common with those who blame guns for violence.

The state is just another kind of weapon is it not?
It doesn’t hurt anyone on its own.
It’s just a tool.

“The state doesn’t hurt people. People hurt people.”

Ponder that disturbing truth for a moment.


The state is not the problem.

The state is just one type of weapon that people use to impose their will on each other.

The problem is not the weapon.

The problem is with those who seek to use the weapon to force their will on others.

More specifically, the problem is the pattern of thinking that gives rise to the desire to exercise control over our fellow human beings.

I submit that if people did not desire to impose their will on each other there would be no state.

The real enemy of freedom and the root cause of all conflict and violence in the world is that pattern of thinking in the mind of man that gives rise in him to a desire to impose his will on his fellow man.

So the critically important question to ask is “Why?”.

Why do people desire to impose their will on each other?

You need only search your heart to find the answer.

FEAR

The state is not the problem.

FEAR is the problem.

You can completely destroy the state but if man has not learned to condition his mind to overcome FEAR he will just find another weapon he can use to impose his will on his fellow man.

Somalia proved that did it not?

Admittedly, this is a humbling truth that is difficult to accept. Many libertarians have spent their entire lives railing against the evils of the state.

If you are one of these, please consider the disturbing possibility that the crazy man shaking his fist at a non-existent foe might be you.

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Addendum

My apologies to any of my libertarian friends who might find this to be offensive. My goal was not to offend. Rather it was to challenge your thinking. I have found that sometimes patterns of thinking are so deeply ingrained that it sometimes requires a bit of a shock in order to get us to question them.

I believe very strongly that achieving the free society we all dream of requires us to radically change our entire way of thinking about the nature of the problem and, consequently, the range of solutions that might be effective in solving it.

One of the most fascinating things about the world in which we live is that problems which at first appear to be complex and intractable often turn out to have staggeringly simple root causes that can go undetected for decades or more. In such situations, solving the problem by dealing directly with its root cause can result in an almost magical melting away of the heretofore observed complexity.

I strongly believe that to be the case here and make the following bold prediction: The day that man learns to condition his mind to face and overcome his fears will be the day in which the state itself will cease to exist. More so, all forms of coercion, conflict and violence will simply disappear as humanity enters into a new age of emotional maturity and bids farewell to the age of barbarism.

The resultant ripple-effect of changes to human society of this one simple change will be of such staggering vastness that it may well be impossible to predict exactly what the world would look like. There is, however, one thing of which we can be sure. It is a world worth fighting for.