The Iron Rule
On the Origin of All Political Authority
Follow me on Twitter: @FromKulak
Every regime of Sovereignty is governed according to a very simple principle:
"THOSE WHO RESIST WILL BE SHOT"
You lose to Tony Soprano in a game of cards, can't afford to pay him?
He sets an interest rate. Still won't Pay?
He'll show up to bust out your business and make you take out loans you can't pay so as to pay him, make you purchase good online for him to resell, and make you destroy your life on fraudulent loans, til nothing is left...
And if you refuse or lie to him, he'll get violent. He'll beat you, and if you offer violence in turn or resist... maybe even win the fistfight with him and his goons...
He'll either shoot you then and there, or he'll leave and you'll be shot by a henchman who can't be tied to him.
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By contrast, if you fail to pay your taxes to the IRS...
They'll set an exorbitant interest rate on the outstanding amount. Still won't pay?
They'll show up with agents and put a lien on your home or business...
And if you still won't pay the expanding amount? Armed men will show up to take your home or business... And if you get violent with them they'll taser, mace, and beat the crap out of you before dragging you to a cage to lose years of your life getting sexually assaulted by another prisoner. And as we've seen countless times on police procedural these very cops act as advisors on, they'll mock you and extort confessions with the threat of those sexual assaults.
And if by some miracle you defeat the police officers who come to confiscate your home and chase them off with a gun or your superior unarmed martial arts... they'll shoot you or come back with a tactical team who will. They'll maybe give you one last chance to surrender and accept prison and sexual assault for a term of decades or life now.
But any continued resistance can only end in death.
Those who resist will be shot.
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This is, of course, the exact same process. Right down to the individual steps.
The IRS and the Mob only differ in their perceived "Legitimacy", which is a largely bullshit concept. The Mob and wiseguys think of the Mob as legitimate... and of course if you go back enough most nation states evolved out of protection schemes little different... It was just they called their regional bosses "Lords" and "Knights" or instead of Capos and enforcers.
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This is how school Lunch programs are funded!
Every democratic policy is funded by the threat that if anyone refuses to pay up, an infinitely escalating amount of violence will be used to overcome any and all resistance or avoidance.
Old men are shot every year because the US forest Service's bureaucracy needs more committee meetings.
Grandmothers are raided and lose their houses to fund the Gender Study departments at Montclair State University.
This is what all politics is. Violence and the terror of violence. this is how the sausage gets made.
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And yet you'll hear from Moderates and "Conservatives" that firing the bureaucracy or shutting down universities or cutting welfare programs, merely giving the biggest leaches in modern life less of other people's stolen money...
That's MEAN! that's heartless! That's uncharitable and un-Christian.
Yet dragging the elderly out of their homes and shooting their dogs in front of their grandchildren over back taxes... that's just the normal price we pay for civilization.
All politics! All Governance! Every government that has ever formed or ever will be formed, every policy that will ever be advocated, every welfare program or regulation that will ever be enacted is backed-up by an eternal universal commitment to escalate to unlimited violence in the face of any and all resistance to pay.
Hell the current US president has even hinted he'd use nukes and drone strikes to put down tax revolts or state declarations of independence.
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Simply put, if you are unwilling to escalate to unlimited violence to enforce your political vision... you are not only unwilling to enforce your political vision, YOU DON'T HAVE A POLITICAL VISION.
That is what a political vision is! A vision you are willing to enforce with unlimited violence.
A political vision or movement you aren't willing to enforce with violence is not political... It is an art project or a service club... It's an old women's sewing circle.
After the French Revolution those who continued to espouse loyalty to and advance the interests of Bourbons were shot or guillotined.
And after Napoleon's coup, those who continued to advance the interest of the Thermidoians suffered the same fate.
And likewise when the Bourbons were restored in 1815, they made numerous examples, famously Marshall Ney.
Even on the Battlefield of Waterloo, when the old guard, out of ammo and unable to fight, still refused to surrender... They were cut to pieces by cannister shot.
Likewise, every Usurpation and restoration of Ancien Regime Europe was accompanied by surrenders and oaths of loyalty, or killings for those who continued to resist.
Likewise the American revolution....
You thought your forefathers were better than this?
This is what British/Canadian Army Surgeon and later Lieutenant Colonel William "Tigre" Dunlop wrote after interviewing Dutch Refugees who'd settled in Canada after the revolution In his "Recollections of the War of 1812" (On Guttenburg):
"Among these good, kind, simple people, I spent a month or six weeks very pleasantly. Loyal and warmly attached to the British Crown, they followed our standard in the Revolutionary War, and obtained from government settlements in Canada when driven from their homes on the banks of the Hudson. From what I could learn from them, the Americans had persecuted them and their families with a rancour they displayed to no other race of mankind. When prisoners were taken in action, while the British were treated by them with respect, and even with kindness, the Dutch were deliberately murdered in cold blood. Men without arms in their hands, but suspected of favouring the British cause, were shot before their own doors, or hanged on the apple trees of their own orchards, in presence of their wives and families, who without regard to age or sex, were turned from their homes without remorse or pity. And one old dame told me that she was for six weeks in the woods between Utica and Niagara, unaccompanied by any one but her two infant children, looking for her husband, who she luckily found in the fort of the latter place; at one time she and her poor babes must have perished from hunger, but for some Mohawk Indians, who came up and delivered them, and conducted them to the Fort. The Dutch themselves ascribe this very different treatment of the two races to the fear of the Americans that the British would retaliate in case they were ill-used, while the Dutch could not." (Bolding Mine)
P.S.
"Recollections on the War of 1812" Is incredible, and short (80ish pages)
Conrad has Marlowe observe in "Heart of Darkness" that London and the Thames were once one of the dark rivers of the world, and the Romans ventured up into the dark places of the earth...
In principle, we all understand our homelands were once dark places, but it is crazy Dunlop's "1812" EXACTLY follows the plot of Heart of Darkness 100 years before Conrad.
You can read a "Heart of Darkness" narrative about the St Lawrence River, Canada, and upstate New York.
This is what goes into establishing a political order... This is how the American republic was formed and a large part of how soldiers and revolutionaries were compensated by states and the federal government after the war.
This is why I find it laughable when people (and even some misguided moderate Libertarians) will say libertarianism is too bloodless or too unwilling to use violence to enforce political outcomes, or that it should be unwilling.
Enforcement with violence is the Libertarian definition of a political outcome! This is what the state IS in Libertarian theory! and if you ask an anarcho-capitalist steeped in the theory how a post-state society could resist the reimplementation of a state, or maintain the existence of Liberty without a centralized superstructure to enforce that Political Outcome... They will not appeal to some vague notion of kumbaya hippy non-aggression, but a Decentralized social and property-structure that would enforce that Political Outcome with violence.
Because a political outcome IS an outcome enforced with violence.
The Iron Rule, what becomes in Republics of those who remain loyal to other political orders, what happens to those who resist "political authority", Ie. Authority backed up by unlimited violence...
That is unalterable in any place at any time, from the Italian Mafia, to modern Welfare America, to Napoleonic and Post-Napoleonic Europe... To Medieval Europe, to Rome and Troy... And Back to the American Revolution... and into the future after the republic has fallen and whatever political order that arises cannot even be called a state, but something else entirely.
Whether it is Religion, the Divine Right of Kings, the Republic, Equality, The Race, Ancient Rights, Welfare, or an Anti-Tax conception of Liberty itself that motivates an order....
It will remain unalterable universal axiom of ALL political orders:
Those who Resist will be Shot.
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Follow me on Twitter: @FromKulak
Yes, ultimately politics is always ultimately enforced at the end of a gun. Libertarians are delusional and those who rely on a long-dead "constitution" are delusional. But there is a corruption in the chase for political power that always occurs, too, because the masses are unable to understand nuance, subtlety, or long-term planning, and because the opposition, which isn't ever *entirely* wrong, must be ruthlessly crushed; therefore simple propaganda must be used, which corrupts and distorts the underlying messaging.
But there's not a way out of this conundrum. According to Julian Assange, we aren’t able to sit out of politics. Either we are a participant of history or a victim of it: “I think first it’s necessary to have an understanding that one is either a participant in history or a victim of it, and that there is no other option. It is actually not possible to remove oneself from history, because of the nature of economic…and intellectual interaction. Hence, it is not possible to break oneself off….Because no one wants to be a victim, one must therefore be a participant, and in being a participant, the most important thing to understand is that your behavior affects other people’s behavior, and your courage will inspire actions. On the other hand, a lack of courage will suppress them.”
Lastly, though, consider Ernst Jünger and his idea of an independent "anarch" that stands outside of history. Jünger would ask himself during World War 2 what one could “advise a man, especially a simple man, to do in order to extricate himself from the conformity that is constantly being produced by technology?” In contrast to Carl Schmitt and his push for a totalitarian state, the answer Jünger, an atheist, eventually settled on was: “Only prayer.” For, “In situations that can cause the cleverest of us to fail and the bravest of us to look for avenues of escape, we occasionally see someone who quietly recognizes the right thing to do and does good. You can be sure that is a man who prays.” Ultimately only a recovery of a sense of the transcendent, he decided, could serve as an antidote to nihilistic modernity’s temptations. Without it, “our freedom of will and powers of resistance diminish; the appeal of demonic powers becomes more compelling, and its imperatives more terrible.”
Yes, governments are like criminal enterprises -- sometimes worse. (C.M. Kornbluth's "The Syndic" is a fun read.)
But when looking at any government, one must compare against likely alternatives. Civil war is worse than the current U.S. government. And the historical instances in which government has been replaced with close to nothing involve either an island (Iceland or Ireland), or mass quantities of divine intervention (Israel in the time of the Judges).
Maybe a band of anarcho-idealists could round up enough mercenaries to overthrow a particularly loathsome island government -- say Cuba, but even that is an expensive an risky experiment.
I'd rather focus on incremental, but probable, improvements. Maybe I'm getting old.