Government Causes the Crime
Part III

by James Redford

To start with, all modern Governments steal huge amounts of money directly from their subjects which Governments call "taxation," but is called "extortion" and "theft" when anybody else does it. Even in a "free" country like the United States, all totaled close to 50% of an average person's income is consumed by the taxes the Government takes. As well, Governments such as the U.S. Government like to impose brutally Draconian mandatory-minimum prison sentences against people who have never aggressed against another so that they can be anally raped for 20 years for violating the Government's make-believe "crimes" against using or selling certain pharmaceuticals that it has deemed verboten. Thus Governments dictate to their subjects what they may and may not put into their bodies -- which is a direct claim of ownership to those bodies, otherwise known as "slavery." The list of such consensual make-believe "crimes" that Governments continually come up with is virtually limitless, and constitutes a large percentage of the aggression made against people's just property in a typical modern society.

But by far, worst of all is the amount of people murdered by their own Governments. More than four times the amount of non-combatants have been condemned to death for purely political reasons by their own Governments within the past century than were killed in that same time-span from wars. From 1900 to 1923, various Turkish regimes killed from 3,500,000 to over 4,300,000 of its own Armenians, Greeks, Nestorians, and other Christians. Communist Governments have murdered over 110 million of their own subjects since 1917. And Germany committed genocide against some 16 million people. (The preceding figures are from Prof. R.J. Rummel's website: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills.) Some 800,000 Christian Tutsis in Rwanda were hacked to death with machetes between April and July of 1994 by the Hutu-led military force after the Tutsis had been disarmed by Governmental decree in the early 1990s, which the United Nations helped to enforce. On several occasions, United Nations soldiers stationed in Rwanda actually handed over helpless Tutsi Christians under their protection to members of the Hutu military. They then stood by as their screaming charges were unceremoniously hacked to pieces. This massacre happened one year after the United Nations helped to put in a national ID card in Rwanda. Needless to say, all of the subject populations of the above mass murders had been disarmed beforehand.

All totaled, neither the private-sector crime which Government is largely responsible for promoting and causing or even the wars committed by Governments upon the subjects of other Governments come anywhere close to the crimes Government is directly responsible for committing against its own citizens -- certainly not in amount of numbers. Without a doubt, the most dangerous presence to ever exist throughout history has always been the people's very own Government.

Government is by far the most evil force on the face of the Earth throughout the history of mankind, by many great orders of magnitude. Nothing good can come of it simply because of its incentive structure, i.e., the internal logic of the system. Again, even when Government does arrest and imprison real criminals all it is doing is getting in the way of those who could have done the job better -- i.e., private, voluntarily organized individuals. Government is not your friend. In the eyes of Government, you are a herd animal to be mulcted by Government so that Government can continue to live and grow.

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As a side note, I thought the American readers of this article would be interested to know that the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was officially abolished on the 26th of October, the day that H.R. 3162, i.e., the "USA Patriot Act" (hey, you're not for bin Laden are you?) was passed into law. The police can now secretly search your house and take whatever they want from it without having to tell you about it until they issue you a warrant up to six months later (see SEC. 213). Also, the legal definition of "domestic terrorism" was changed to include any "acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State" (see SEC. 802). So smoking a joint could be domestic terrorism, since the U.S. Government considers such drug use to be dangerous to human life, and since it is illegal after all. But you will be happy to know that such an act would only qualify if it "appear[s] to be intended to influence the policy of a Government by intimidation or coercion." So you need not worry, smoking a joint would only be an act of domestic terrorism if the U.S. Government thinks you're doing it as a protest against their drug laws--the clause for "intimidation" already applies, otherwise the U.S. Government would have no law against it. The above are just a few examples of all the Police State goodies contained in H.R. 3162. And oh yeah, none of these particular Police State measures are "sunsetted" either (see SEC. 224), so when you hear someone say that H.R. 3162 sunsets in four years you'll know to tell them that the most loving provisions will remain. Don't you feel safer already?

November 4, 2001