Statism is a death threat.
If you've ever pointed out that taxation is theft, or that "acts and statutes" are a euphemism for "comply or die", you've probably heard something to the effect of the following in response:
"Explain to me how things I don't even understand now will work absent a group of men and women who have a monopoly on plunder and violence, and I'll think about changing my mind about wanting you thrown in a rape cage or murdered for following your conscience and resisting the theft of taxation."
Perhaps I'm not sugar coating it as much as a statist would, but this is essentially what statists are saying whenever they challenge the INSANE notion put forth by voluntaryists that all interactions should be based on consent. And in fact, it's worse than that. Not only are they tacitly acknowledging that you don't want force initiated against you by disagreeing with you and entering into discussion instead of immediately initiating force, they're TAUNTING you with their own willingness to either initiate force against you or demand that someone else do so on their behalf.
That means they're fully aware of the non-consensual implications of what they advocate, and they don't care.
That's why the question of whether or not some people should be able to rule over other people isn't a debate. There can never be an honest debate with anyone who resorts to coercion and death threats instead of arguments.
Death threats aren't arguments.
Ad baculum is a fallacy; not an argument. If theft, murder, assault, rape, kidnapping, enslavement and torture are immoral, what's there to debate? Stealing and murdering to prevent theft and murder is a performative contradiction, therefore the claim of all statists is:
"Some people should be able to get away with doing immoral things for no other reason than that they call themselves 'government'."
The burden of proof for this claim is insurmountable. There is no way to put forth a logically consistent, evidence-based argument for it. Any attempt to do so would lead to contradiction and logical fallacy, not the least of which would be ad baculum, or appeal to force, as previously discussed.
To reiterate, this means there never was a debate to begin with. It's not a debate. In the words of Jeff Deist, president of the Mises Institute, it's a fight. In the words of Marc Stevens of the No State Project, it's damage control. Statism is always the wrong answer. No amount of special pleading can morally justify the means by which its ends are attained.
About the Author
I'm Jared Howe! I'm a Voluntaryist hip hop artist and professional technical editor/writer with a passion for Austrian economics and universal ethics. You can catch my podcast every Friday on the Seeds of Liberty Podcast Network.
