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Feb. 18, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
17:01
1588 Joe Stack and the IRS - The Impact of Error

Even if you are anti-tax, Joe Stack was wrong in every conceivable way - here's why.

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Hi everybody, it's Steph from 3DMain Radio.
I hope you're doing well. I wasn't going to comment on Richard Stack flying his airplane into the IRS building, but I have received a fair deluge of emails asking for my thoughts.
So, here they are.
Now, for those who've seen my Bomb and the Brain series, we understand that abandonment, child neglect, and abuse leads to physical changes within the brain that create significant problems with impulse control and problems with consequences of actions and so on.
Physiological problems is brain development is arrested and shattered in many cases.
He grew up in an orphanage.
And by definition, if you grew up in an orphanage, you're not receiving the one-on-one parental attention and care that you should be getting from a primary caregiver.
Of course, I'm not saying that everybody who grows up in an orphanage ends up like this fellow, but it is not inconsequential that he grew up without the love of a parent that has an effect on brain development.
And that's sort of one aspect that I think is a problem.
But I think much more fundamentally, and this is a problem that is shared by many types of libertarians and Republicans and the teabaggers within the United States, there is this fundamental misapprehension of what a government is and what it is for that leads people to, I think, pound their head against the wall and then end up being in frustration when all you get is a bloody head.
The government It's not a moral institution that is instituted to protect you.
The government is not a moral institution or a moral entity that is set up in order to aid, protect, educate, comfort, keep healthy, keep secure.
It's nothing to do with that.
Now, it certainly is true that the government says that that's what it's for, but that's entirely to be expected.
When some greasy guy slides into your Italian restaurant and offers you protection for $1,000 or $5,000 a month, we don't think that that person is actually offering you protection from anyone other than himself.
So, I think it's really, really important to understand if you are into Opposing certain aspects of state power that you can't oppose them unless you understand what the state actually is.
This guy, he wrote thousands of letters to his congressman and the reports are that he tried to write his house off as a religion and say that his house was a church and then not pay taxes because he was angry at the Catholic Church.
In other words, what he was attempting to do was to hold government to a moral standard.
Because the government says that it's all about moral standards, but it's not.
It's not. It's like the mafia offers you protection in return for $5,000 a month.
And then you get robbed and you write lots of letters to the local Mafia Don saying, hey, where's my protection?
Well, it's probably the Mafia guy who stole from you, right?
So, writing letters to congressmen and having demonstrations and so on is all the equivalent of picketing in front of the local Mafia Don's mansion complaining that you're not getting the protection that you have paid for.
You're not getting the protection that was promised to you in return.
For the $5,000 a month that is being extorted from you, it's insane.
It's fundamentally insane.
We would view somebody as insane who took the Mafia's promise of protection seriously and attempted to cash in on that, attempted to hold the Mafia to the moral standard that the Mafia was claiming.
We would recognize that that person just had a fundamental misunderstanding.
Of what the Mafia is, of what a criminal organization is all about.
Yeah, they'll make promises. Of course they will.
And yes, they will be happy to educate your children on how great the Mafia is and so on.
But that has nothing to do with the actual ethics, the actual reality of the situation.
The government has no interest in protecting your property.
I mean, that's mental.
The government can't be interested in protecting your property because it takes almost half your property to begin with.
That's like saying, I'm really interested in maintaining your health, so I'm going to have to saw off your leg.
Well, clearly I'm not interested in maintaining your health if that's my first approach to it.
The government is not interested in protecting your property any more than the farmer is interested in having his cows wander free across the plane.
Now, The government will give you a certain amount of liberty, of course, because that makes you more productive as a tax livestock.
For sure. It'll give you a small amount of property rights.
It will give you some ability to choose your own work.
Why? Because that makes you more motivated to work hard and to...
To pay your taxes, and you will pay more taxes.
I mean, we are free-range livestock.
In the Middle Ages, it was not free-range, but rather cooped livestock, and it wasn't very productive.
Now governments have figured out that if we give people certain liberties and some property rights, they're much more productive.
But it's got nothing to do with setting us free.
At all. It's the same way that if farmers found out that giving cows each of their own, you know, five to a field or whatever, made them ten times more productive in terms of meat and milk, they would do that, but not with the next intention of setting the cows free, but simply because it made them more profitable to harvest from.
So, yeah, you've got some freedoms and you have some property rights and you have some, you know, bad access to a terrible justice system, but it has nothing to do with Any commitment that the government has to freedom, it only has a commitment to enriching itself by taking money from you.
And if you're more productive, when you have some freedom, then it will give you some freedom.
For sure. I mean, that's the advancement in livestock management techniques that modern republican democracies represent, or even non-republican democracies represent.
If you have the illusion of participation, you are much more controllable.
If you have the illusion of freedom, you are much more productive in terms of the wealth you will generate for your masters.
So, writing to the government and saying, be good, live by the standards that you have promised me, live by what is in the Constitution, live by the rhetoric that is used to cloak and befog dull sheep-like citizens is insane.
It's mad. It's completely mad.
And I think that because this Stark fellow attempted to get the government to live by its own rules and attempted to reform and influence the government towards greater morality, it probably had a good deal to do with why he finally snapped.
Because that is a fundamental misapprehension of reality.
And, I mean, there's lots of people who've written about how, well, America was founded on violent tax protests and this is a violent tax protest and so on.
And that's all fine.
But the fact that America was founded on violent tax protests and has since become the largest and most powerful government that this world has ever seen or is ever likely to see simply means that violent tax protests never work.
And yeah, it's true. When the government was first instituted in the United States, it was smaller than the government that was there from the British.
But so what? It wasn't smaller because it had any commitment to letting its citizens be free.
Governments are always as large as circumstances permit.
Why was the post-revolution US government smaller than the British government?
Because it had less power.
It was as big as it conceivably could be, given that it was a new government, given that it didn't want a counter-revolution, given that it was hugely, hugely, hugely in debt, given the roads and communications and so on.
As large as it possibly could be, given the circumstances of the time.
And we know that because the moment that governments can grow larger, they do grow larger.
And we also know that they are continually trying to grow larger.
So when you see a small government, it's not got anything to do with the fact that the government is committed to some sort of liberty for its citizens.
The only time that the governments are small is when they're physically unable to exercise their will over a population for a variety of reasons, and this generally is during a transition.
So, they throw out the old criminals and the new mafia comes in, and in order for people to not ever say, why do we even need this mafia, they will provide additional liberties and benefits and bonuses to their new people, but only because They don't have enough thugs to enforce their will.
And of course, the moment that Washington wanted to impose a whiskey tax, he rode at the head of the army and shot and skewed people who wouldn't give him his money.
It's just another new thug, just another new mafia that's coming in.
So it is my strong urging for people to let go, just let go of this mad fantasy That the government is some moral institution that is designed to help protect and create your freedoms and liberties, and that somehow it has been hijacked by bad people.
That is as completely insane as saying the mafia is really, really there to help and protect the shopkeepers and the prostitutes and the drug addicts.
And those who are in debt through addictions to gambling to the Mafia, that the Mafia is really there to protect people and to make their lives better.
Unfortunately, you see, the Mafia has just been hijacked by a really bad godfather.
And what we need to do is convince that bad godfather to give up his power or get a new godfather to come in so we can make the Mafia oh so much better.
No, my friends. No, no, no.
We really have to open our eyes.
The state is an agency of violence.
The state is there to enrich the rich and make the poor dependent upon it through welfare and subsidies and free schools and so on, and to make the old and the sick as dependent upon the state as possible.
Why? Because it cares about these people?
Of course not! I think it cares about the education of the poor.
Look at how badly the poor are educated and ask yourself if the government cares about the education of the poor.
What the government does is hand out bread and circuses to make people dependent on the government so that anybody who suggests limiting or shrinking government power runs into all of the classes hanging off the government teats like sows on the side of a pig.
That's what the government is for.
It's for creating dependency and for enriching the rich through using force and plundering the future generations by creating massive debts that they are then sold on the block for.
It's not a moral institution.
So trying to convince it to be moral and live by its values is completely mad.
It is a fundamental misapprehension of what this coercive organization is actually all about.
And this is a good, useful exercise, I think.
Just say to yourself, WWMD, what would mafia do?
And that is your answer to the nature of the state.
Now, what Joseph Steck, in his mania and his frustration, did not understand, and what so, so many people throughout history and in the modern world do not understand, you cannot solve the problem of violence with violence any more than you can solve the problem of darkness with darkness.
You can only solve the problem of darkness with illumination.
You can only solve the problem of evil with moral clarity and clear, rational, empirical, and passionate communication.
The same way that you can only solve the problem of darkness with light.
You can only solve the problem of evil with illumination.
People in the world are in a pre- or anti-philosophical state, and what that means is that they can create whatever categories for whatever actions they want.
So they'll look at this Stark fellow and say, ah, he's a domestic terrorist, he flew his plane, he's crazy, he's evil, he's mad, or whatever, right?
And these may all be true. But these very selfsame people, when looking at a million Iraqis killed by a war, we'll talk patriotism and defense and we'll still find the weapons of mass destruction under a building 20 years from now.
And so people at the moment live in a state of moral superstition.
They can create, in the same way Hindus can create a god for every pebble, they can create a moral category for every action, which are all completely separated from each other, like bubbles in a high wind.
They're all completely separate and opposed to just bouncing around completely madly.
Those lottery balls.
And so people can make up whatever moral rules they want for whatever particular circumstances they have.
Until we can get people to understand that morality is not subjective and morality is not divine.
Morality is consistent and clear and rational principles.
That are universal. Until we can get people to understand that, people will simply make up whatever moral rules they want for their own particular emotional defenses for each particular instance of an event.
Right? You understand?
To kill civilians is immoral.
But what has been going on in Iraq, or in South America, or In Japan, or in Okinawa.
Death count there are these things infinitely higher.
The initiation of force against domestic citizens, throwing people in jail for having bits of vegetation in their pockets, or not turning over their money to their overlords.
Terrorism is just a magic word that people invent to label their enemies.
It's got nothing to do with any consistent moral principles, and until those moral principles illuminate The world.
People are just stumbling around in the dark calling evil whatever they run their shins into.
Evil can never be fought.
Evil can never be fought because evil always portrays itself as the good and as long as it is believed to be the good, it can never be fought.
The moment that evil is recognized in general as evil, it ceases to have any power.
In the same way that slavery was considered a Christian moral imperative to protect the darky races in the past, now in the Western world it is considered an immorality, and nobody can advocate slavery in any reasonable rational or public circles without being labeled a complete crazy evil hoodlum.
Hitler has been re-characterized as evil, and of course rightly so, but Hitler was considered a hero.
by the German working and middle classes and some of the industrialists in the 1920s and 1930s.
He was going to save them from the communist genocide run by the Jews as people saw it in Russia.
It happened in the 1920s when all the Christians were killed.
And now he's evil and nobody says Hitler was good and gains any traction in public debate because he's been clearly identified as evil, though in the past for many people he was good.
And wife-beating was considered once a moral thing to do to keep women in their place, and people advocated it publicly.
Now nobody publicly advocates wife-beating because it's generally accepted as evil.
And this was achieved through a pounding, grinding, dull, passionate, energetic, empirical repetition of the rational universality of moral principles.
It's like pounding nails into a fog sometimes to get people to see a tenth of a percent of moral clarity because it is so dangerous to themselves and their relationships to get moral illumination in the world.
And you don't enlighten people about the universality of morals by flying planes into buildings.
It doesn't work for Bin Laden and it didn't work for Stack and it isn't going to work for anybody else.
To use violence is not to illuminate the true nature of evil.
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