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Godvernment
Topic Started: Nov 8 2011, 08:54 AM (64 Views)
Chris
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Fire & Ice Senior Diplomat
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"The true State is the ethical whole and the realization of freedom. It is the absolute purpose of reason that freedom should be realized. ... The State is the march of God through the World, its ground is the power of reason realizing itself as will."

"We must ... worship the State as the manifestation of the Divine on Earth."


From G.W.F. Hegel, "Philosophy of Law" in Jacob Loewenberg (ed.), Hegel: Selections (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1929), pp. 443-444, 447.

The Problem with Seeing Government as God
Quote:
 
While I haven't made a scientific study of the topic, I suspect the leading genre for popular entertainment – and for popular delusions of crowds, for that matter – revolves around magical worlds. As illustration, the Harry Potter series will serve.

The problem is that there is no such thing as magic, at least not in the mystical sense (versus sleight-of-hand variety). Rather, the physical world, and even the metaphysical world constructed by humans in their ancient and long-running quest for protection from the physical world, operates within the boundaries of certain irrefutable truths.

In the first instance, the laws of physics are only rarely found wanting; in the second, basic principles of economies are inviolate, or should be if you actually want an economy to succeed for any length of time.

This unblinking faith in an all-caring, omnipotent "Godvernment" is terrifyingly misplaced: it not only runs contrary to many of those truths but runs contrary to nearly every important lesson history has to teach. Look no further than the debts and deficits of Godvernments around the world to see the consequences of trying to keep this myth alive.

That this faith is on the increase, versus the opposite, should be very concerning… both to those who believe in the rights of individuals and to those trying to build and maintain a reasonable standard of living in this age of deep uncertainty.

Especially in that most, if not all, of that uncertainty, as well as active threats to the general well-being, emanates from the very Godvernments people look to for salvation and sustenance. The graphic shown here demonstrates this point vis à vis US security policies soberingly well.

Now, I am sure that some of you view these remarks as just another libertarian tirade, and I guess to some degree, they are.

Yet, I think there is an important underlying point that requires serious reflection. Namely, with people the world over trapped in a delusional and self-destructive cycle of believing that the Godvernments can solve all that ails – even though almost all that ails is caused or made worse by those very same institutions – then things can only get worse from here....
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