Voluntary serfdom, double standards, conformism...

... A.K.A. Principles of Politics

Imagine you have a gun and go to your neighbour's home: imagine to point your gun at your neighbour's face and force them to fund a charitable organization which helps African children. Would you be proud of yourselves? Would you be surprised to be considered a criminal? Would you call it charity? No.

Suppose now to do exactly the same thing, but not directly: suppose that the state does it for you. This is foreign aid, funded through coercitive taxation. Would you be proud of yourselves? Would you be surprised to be considered a criminal? Would you call it charity?

If now you answer "yes", then you got a tipically political disease: double standards, moral hypocricy. What is a crime done by a private person becomes somethin to be proud of if done through "the state", whatever this means. What you would have called a crime, now you name "politics"; what you would have called hypocricy, now you call "social justice".

Imagine to go to your neighbour's home: imagine to ask him to give you his son for temporary enslavement, one year of forced labor to help on you kitchen. Suppose now that you neighbour agrees: would you call him a coward, a debauched, a degenerate? Yes.

Suppose now that the "state" calls you son for compulsory military service, the draft (or civil service, such as Hitler's Reichsarbeitsdienst... it seems that something akin will soon be introduced in Italy). Do you feel a coward in obeying? Do you feel a debauched in not protesting? Do you feel a degenerate in not rebelling? No? Why?

If you yield to power without a word of disappointment, obeying orders that you wouldn't take seriously if imposed upon you by any other man, you are probably victim of another tipically political disease: voluntary servitude. You believe something to be right only because power says it is right.

Suppose now that the "state" calls the son of your neighbour to kidnap him with the draft. How do you believe he should react? Should he obey? Should he yield? Should he surrender?
Only because you surrender, does everybody shall surrender? Only because you kneel, does everybody shal kneel?

If your reasoning is similar, you got a third, and equally lethal, political disease: conformism: you believe your compromises should be made compulsory, your weaknesses, made law, your submission, imposed to everybody.

Without double standard, without voluntary servitude, without conformism, no government could last. People despise arrogance: except when it is called "Politics". People despise coercion: except when it is named "Politics". People despise oppression: except when it is dubbed "Politics". People are clever, except whem it comes to politics.

But remember: if the public opinion were libertarian, the political classes would be harmless; if the public opinion believed in individual rights, their violation would be unconceivable, if the public opinion were principled, individual rights would be safe.

But when the public opinion sleeps, liberty dies. That's exactly our situation...