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Wendy McElroy: the State discourages helpfulness and decency

Many libertarians have come to consider the police and other law-enforcement divisions of the State as the most directly vicious and physically dangerous branches of the State to deal with. Wendy McElroy wrote about why you should never voluntarily talk to agents of the State or offer them any unnecessary information. The main reason is:

The police have become the active enemies of civil society and are primarily (by far!) concerned with imposing social control over your non-aggressive behavior. The police are the main enforcement arm and unthinking muscle behind a government that actively opposes the moral and natural jurisdiction that every human being—including you—has over their property and the peaceful use of their own bodies. For the love of your own liberty/safety and that of your family, STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM GOVERNMENT AGENTS, especially the police who do not care about your rights or safety…other than considering them to be annoying barriers to doing whatever the hell they want. And the courts will back them up.

A second post by her demonstrates the embitterment and divisiveness that the State creates between good, well-meaning individuals, and these permeate all of society. Regarding her urgent plea to everyone to avoid dealing with the police or any other State agents to the greatest extent possible, she writes:

Unhappily…and I hate to write the following words…following this policy means cancelling out some of the best instincts within you as a matter of self-protection. I give a personal example and a news item to explain what I’m talking about.

On the personal side: my husband is the best man I know. He volunteers his time (and generously so) to several charities where his expertise in computers and other electronics is highly valued—as it should be. Some of the charities wish him to work with children and I adamantly argued with him to never, never do so. The slightest misstep on his part—whether in word or action (indeed, the slightest misinterpretation or outright lie)—re: “harming a child” or even being suspected of harming a child could be legally and financially devastating to us. In the absence of the State, my main concern about my husband and children would be that he is the sort who would endanger his own life to save a drowning child. That’s the sort of human being who now refuses to deal with children because of the threat to his own welfare and to mine that any such encounter could constitute.

That is the root of the reason some libertarians are misunderstood as countenancing child abuse or child pornography or some such—because we refuse to accept the legitimacy of the State outlawing such things. Well, while we all recognize the evil and immoral nature of child abuse, and while that’s about the last thing most libertarians would eliminate from accepted State activities, the reason we refuse to wholeheartedly support State bans on child porno and other forms of sexual abuse is that the existence of the State is an absolute moral evil, because its establishment, its continued existence, and every one of its activities utilizes aggressive force against innocent people who want no part of it, and this utilization of force disrupts the natural relationships between humans and therefore State actions are all subject to the law of unintended consequences. The unintended consequence in McElroy’s example is that charitable, well-meaning adults who love children are dissuaded from, even scared of, offering their charitable services to children for fear of being accused of child abuse or molestation. If you think such fear is exaggerated or that false accusations of child molestation are too rare to worry about, read William L. Anderson’s chronicle of the Little Rascals Day Care center in North Carolina.

The news item that Wendy McElroy referred to that demonstrated her hatred and suspicion of the State:

As for the news item….I recommend reading a commentary entitled “Be careful who you help” by Bob Smith at the No Force No Fraud website. A summary:

A man goes to the grocery store, minding his own business, and is approached by a woman asking if he could give her a ride home. She asks if he ‘does a service,’ and he says he doesn’t. She persists. He agrees to give her a ride if she’s still there when he’s ready to leave after shopping. She was waiting, so he gave her a ride as he promised. She offered to give him some money, and tried to get him to name a price. He said ‘Anything you give me.’ Is there anything about that story to indicate that the 78-year-old man wanted to haul that woman for pay? He tried to avoid it, and then gave in to her insistence. Yet, the undercover operative charged the man for running an illegal taxi service. His vehicle was impounded and fines of $2,000 were levied on him.

I hate like hell to say it but be careful of helping anyone in distress, be careful of helping your neighbor because you are introducing a wild card into your own safety and welfare. God I hate to write these words. But that’s what the State does. It punishes the best instincts within you and turns decent people into callous ones simply because it is dangerous to care.

Have I mentioned how much I hate the State? It not only imposes cruel and savage punishment on those who wish to simply live their lives, it also requires that you harden your heart to those in need. It punishes decency and, so, destroys the essential fabric that enables society to function in health and prosperty: good will.

Maybe the Statist will say that dissuading a few well-meaning adults from helping children is a small price to pay for enforcing the very good and correct laws against child molestation, which protect every child in society; and in the socialist-Statist world we live in fewer children are poor and in need of charity than would be in a free society. The latter is obviously false, and I vehemently disagree with the former argument. At the very least, some progress can be made in the realm of our justice (sic) systems and law-enforcement systems if Statists will admit that there is something terribly wrong with a court system that would even allow the Little Rascals Day Care case to get to trial, much less result in the convictions it did. I personally blame every Statist alive for such tragedies.

My main point is that the State, in its attempts to protect and help people, sows suspicion, embitterment, and divisiveness between its subjects, suppressing the cooperation, respect, and peace that result from freedom and voluntary exchange. This happens because everything the State does, by definition—and this isn’t some kooky re-defining of terms or clever but accurate libertarian terminology, like calling jury duty juror conscription or calling politicians the professional criminal class, etc.—is coercive. The State is defined by its establishment and enforcement of its monopoly on the use of aggression in a given geographical area. It doesn’t produce, it only takes. It doesn’t exchange, it only coerces. This isn’t wacky anarchist opinion; it is fact.

While it is true that H. sapiens, as an omnivorous predatory animal, naturally uses force and violence without considering the justness or the consequences of his actions, the natural order of relationships in larger society seems to be peace and cooperation. Especially as the division of labor becomes more widespread. Just think of your relationships with everyone you interact with. They are anarchistic. I am aware that we all live and work and interact in the context of a single legal system and a monopolistic government. But our anarchistic interpersonal relationships don’t involve the State or force at all. I think our existence in the context of a Statist world only suppresses cooperation, charity, and mutual respect, as these and myriad other examples show; Statism doesn’t permit or increase such peace and respect. It should be obvious that peace, cooperation, and respect are greatest where the State is absent, not where it is strong. It should also be clear that the State, as a user of force and nothing else, is closer to the primitive, ancestral, inhuman nature inside of us than to any more-evolved, higher nature. I think the shrinking and eventual elimination of monopolistic government, not its augmentation, will promote the suppression of our violent nature and the growth of our peaceful, voluntarist nature.