We are not a country of anarchists: a philosophical rebuttal
On Oct. 4, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) made a blog post which presents a statist viewpoint of the necessity of government services as well as an incorrect association of Republicans with anarchism. Let us examine her sophistry and rebut it line-by-line. In the interest of reason, something which tends to make statists uncomfortable, we will skip around occasionally.
“If you watch the anarchist tirades coming from extremist Republicans in the House, you’d think they believe that the government that governs best is a government that doesn’t exist at all.”
Right out of the gate, there are multiple fallacies and falsehoods. Anarchism is an anti-political philosophy which holds the state to be an unnecessary, immoral, and harmful institution. Anarchists advocate for stateless societies with an absence of force, fraud, and coercion. This is not the position of any House Republican.
“Extreme” is a philosophically invalid term that is used frequently by statists, particularly those of a progressive bent, to dismiss a position without having to argue against it. As such, it is an example of argumentum ad lapidem.
No government exists; only its component parts (each person, each building, each gun, etc.) exist, because only those parts have independent forms in physical reality. To define existence in a way that does not require an independent form in physical reality allows for abstractions and universals to exist alongside concrete objects, which deprives the idea of existence of meaning, as anything can then be said to exist.
“But behind all the slogans of the Tea Party – and all the thinly veiled calls for anarchy in Washington – is a reality: The American people don’t want a future without government.”
“The American people” is a nonexistent universal, just like government. Each individual person exists; “the American people” does not. Therefore it cannot be a reality that the American people do not want a future without government. It is also not the case that each individual person wants a statist future. Some individuals within the geographical area of the United States are anarchists, this writer included.
“When was the last time the anarchy gang called for regulators to go easier on companies that put lead in children’s toys? Or for inspectors to stop checking whether the meat in our grocery stores is crawling with deadly bacteria? Or for the FDA to ignore whether morning sickness drugs will cause horrible deformities in our babies?
When? Never. In fact, whenever the anarchists make any headway in their quest and cause damage to our government, the opposite happens.
…The Food and Drug Administration makes sure that the white pills we take are antibiotics and not baking soda. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration oversees crash tests to make sure our new cars have functioning brakes. The Consumer Product Safety Commission makes sure that babies’ car seats don’t collapse in a crash and that toasters don’t explode.”
Here, Sen. Warren is going after her straw man caricature of House Republicans, but let us take the attack upon anarchism at face value. First, we should consider the nature of regulations imposed by the state. Such regulations are written by legislators, who are routinely bribed by lobbyists hired by the most powerful people in the very industries to be regulated. Under such a system, regulations serve not the interests of the common man, but the interests of the wealthy business owners.
On the other hand, all of the above examples can be handled through private dispute resolution organizations in a free market. People who destroy life, liberty, and property with their goods would be made to either perform restitution or be economically ostracized. Economic ostracism would make it impossible for them to continue their harmful practices, as no one would buy their goods or sell them anything for fear of being ostracized themselves. All of this can be forcefully backed by individuals acting in self-defense or by private defense agencies.
“After the sequester kicked in, Republicans immediately turned around and called on us to protect funding for our national defense and to keep our air traffic controllers on the job.
And now that the House Republicans have shut down the government – holding the country hostage because of some imaginary government ‘health care boogeyman’ – Republicans almost immediately turned around and called on us to start reopening parts of our government.”
By pointing to Republican efforts to protect certain government employees and services, Sen. Warren has contradicted her previous assertion that Republicans are anarchists.
A hostage-taker is a person who threatens to harm peaceful people unless certain demands are met. Any legislator who passes a law of any kind is doing exactly that, because anyone who peacefully disobeys a law is in danger of being harmed by agents of the state. Therefore, every member of every legislature is a hostage-taker, not just House Republicans.
“Why do they do this? Because the boogeyman government in the alternate universe of their fiery political speeches isn’t real. It doesn’t exist.”
Sen. Warren says that government does not exist. Even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut.
“Government is real, and it has three basic functions:”
And sometimes, a blind squirrel promptly loses the nut again.
“1. Provide for the national defense.”
Like a government and the American people, a nation is yet another nonexistent collective. There is no such thing as national defense apart from the sum of individual defenses.
“2. Put rules in place, like traffic lights and bank regulations, that are fair and transparent.”
As shown above, regulations in a statist society are anything but fair, as the affluent can easily bribe those who write the regulations. A state is not necessary for there to be regulations, as the free market imposes its own regulations which arise through spontaneous order.
“3. Build the things together that none of us can build alone – roads, schools, power grids – the things that give everyone a chance to succeed.”
Here, Sen. Warren commits the great fallacy of statism, which goes like this:
1. The state provides service X. X can be anything; in this case, Sen. Warren mentions roads, schools, and power grids.
2. Without the state, service X would not be provided.
3. Therefore, those who do not want the state to provide service X do not want service X to be provided at all, and do not care about people who need service X.
The problem with such reasoning is that step 2 is a positive claim, which carries a burden of proof. This burden is never fulfilled by statists, nor can it be, as one must ultimately disprove every possible solution to a problem that does not involve the state. This is an inexhaustible proof by exhaustion. On the other hand, all that an advocate of liberty must do is to find a solitary example of such services being provided in the free market. Examples of roads and schools which are built and maintained privately are abundant. Power grids can be more tricky to open up to free market competition, but it can be done.
“These things did not appear by magic.”
This is a straw man, as no one claims that they did.
“In each instance, we made a choice as a people to come together. We made that choice because we wanted to be a country with a foundation that would allow anyone to have a chance to succeed.”
From here on out, Sen. Warren continually uses “we” to refer to “the American people,” a collective which has already been shown not to exist. It is impossible for “us” to make a choice because there is no such thing as a collective mind; there are only individual minds. For the sake of avoiding unnecessary repetition, this rebuttal should be understood to come after each bit of text by Sen. Warren from this point forward. In this excerpt, the collective pronouns render all points invalid.
“We are alive, we are healthier, we are stronger because of government. Alive, healthier, stronger because of what we did together.”
This is a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Just because individuals acted on the idea of government before people became healthier and stronger does not mean that the idea of government is the cause of such benefits. There could be any other cause for an increase in the health of individuals.
“We are not a country of anarchists. We are not a country of pessimists and ideologues whose motto is, ‘I’ve got mine, the rest of you are on your own.’ We are not a country that tolerates dangerous drugs, unsafe meat, dirty air, or toxic mortgages.”
Here, Sen. Warren proposes that one must either believe a government that regulates many aspects of the economy, or be a stereotypical bomb-throwing chaos-seeker who views selfishness as a virtue. This is a false dilemma fallacy, as it is quite possible to believe that people should form voluntary associations to solve problems without the use of force, fraud, or coercion.
“We are not that nation. We have never been that nation. And we never will be that nation.”
The future is unknown and unknowable. People once said that a constitutional republic would never work. People once said that (chattel) slavery would never end. People once said that landing on the moon was impossible. Now Sen. Warren says that the end of the state will never come. She is on the wrong side of historical precedent.
“The political minority in the House that condemns government and begged for this shutdown has its day. But like all the reckless and extremist factions that have come before it, its day will pass – and the government will get back to the work we have chosen to do together.”
There is no government shutdown; there is only a roughly 17 percent slowdown.
Sen. Warren comes full circle with the philosophically invalid terms “reckless” and “extremist.”
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