World's Shortest Political Quiz (1 question)

You don't have the privilege to interpret the Constitution. The Supreme Court does (see Marbury v. Madison).

Whatever the Supreme Court says is legal -- is legal. They have a forced monopoly on interpreting the Constitution -- not you.

Tell me, what does every government ultimately do to anyone who fails to follow it's dictates?

agreed.

...and to keep it from falling into chaos, is that the PEOPLE themselves must maintain whatever state of character is best suited to that form of society.

If that form is a dictatorship, then the people must maintain a passive and obedience outlook if that form is to survive. And if that form is either a constitutional republic or an anarchy, the people must maintain the high ideals of sovereignty, self-reliance, and justice if that form is to function well.

Since history has taught us that most people will simply fail to maintain such high ideals of character, the advantage of a constitutional republic is that principled founders can codify certain principles right into the laws of a nation, giving future generations a head start over where they'd be with nothing already "on the books". This is no guarantee, of course, that those future generations will keep the law. Witness our own generation for proof of this.

Our generation is quite confused. We inaugurate the President at noon on January 20. Why? Because the Constitution says so. In so doing, we recognize its authority. Yet we turn right around and violate it a thousand times over, pretending that in this or that instance, it simply doesn't count.

This is because the people are so corrupted as not to have a philosophical problem with violating the supreme law of the land. They lack the honor to appreciate the value of such a law.

And under anarchy, a people who are so unprincipled as us would be at an even greater disadvantage.

Jack Pelham
Rule of Law Revolution
www.ruleoflawrevolution.c...

I came up with a free afternoon, so I decided (don't ask me why) to tackle this short video, exposing its twisted logic, definitions, facts, and sources. I doubt that very few others want to invest an afternoon in reading it, yet it seemed good to me to tackle it both for the exercise and for the record.

Should a service or product be provided at the barrel of a gun?

What kind of question is this? Neither its meaning nor its intent is clear at first glance, as it is with questions that are truly simple. Since the world of “services and products” is immense, this question about what “should” be obviously deserves some careful consideration, yet the video insists that this question is “simple”.

On the contrary, however, what if the “service” in question is the shooting of a rabid and viscious dog on a city playground? Or, by way of a considerably different example, what if the “service” is that of a paid assassination for the mafia? Are these services “provided at the barrel of a gun?” Is this the intent of the question? If not, what is?

Yet even so, if we asked these two questions, we’d likely find the majority of people approving of the first and disapproving of the second. Or are we talking about the milk man? Should he point a gun at the milk? Or should he point a gun at the person buying the milk? What if the service is that of a gunsmith who is replacing the front sight on a rifle? In this case, it would be impossible to provide this service anywhere BUT “at the barrel of a gun”.

Thus we see that this question is quite vague and complicated, yet at 0:23 in the video, we are told that this is “one very, very simple question.” This is not true, however. A “very, very simple question” might be “Do you have blue eyes?”, or perhaps, “Is your mother living?”. But immediately with this present question, we are forced to grapple with it just to perceive what we are being asked. And so it is with most loaded questions.

Now let’s examine the string of fallacies and misdirections:

0:28 “…there are only two responsive answers to this question, that’s yes or no.”

As I have already demonstrated, this is not a simple yes/no question, no matter how much the author might like to pretend or to insist that it is. To suggest that it is, is to suggest what is called a “false dilemma”, as in “Oh my God, are we going to jump from this burning building, or are we going to wait for a helicopter?” The question presumes that there are but two choices, when in reality, there may be many other choices, such as :

• Burn to death.
• Put out the fire
• Take the stairs
• Etc.

In our present case, an obvious alternate “responsive answer” would be, “It depends on what kind of service or product is being discussed, as also upon what is meant by ‘at the barrel of a gun’.” This is certainly a “responsive answer” that invites further discussion for the sake of clarifying the question, yet the video insists that no further discussion is needed. Therefore, it seeks a knee-jerk response from the view, as opposed to a rational and well-considered response.

0:35 “If you answered ‘no’…..congratulations. You’re what we like to call ‘normal’.”

Here we are told that “no” was the correct answer to the “very, very simple” question. And if that was our response, we are petted with the picture of the baby and the monicker “normal”. Does the author present any clinical data as to normalcy? Does he provide references to any survey data regarding this question? No, he simply draws a conclusion and passes it along to us with no supporting documentation or argumentation

0:51 “…if you answered ‘yes’…..well this is something the medical community describes as a personality disorder---in particular, ‘antisocial personality’.

Just where does the “medical community” say that answering “yes” to this particular question indicates an antisocial personality? The implication of the video is clear, yet absolutely no attempt is made to provide any support for this outlandish claim. In an attempt to continue building the case, however, the video continues, alternately quoting and paraphrasing from a Merck manual. ( http://www.merck.com/mmhe... ) For instance, we are told about those with antisocial personality disorder that”

1:55 “…Despite the problems or harm they cause others by their antisocial behaviors, they typically don’t feel remorse or guilt,"

And many such lines are either quoted or paraphrased throughout the presentation. One exception is noteworthy, however. At 2:21 we are told that

2:21 “…the antisocial personality also tends to be narcisistic ..”

This is significant because there is no such language in the Merck manual. In fact, Merck goes so far as to make a distinction between sociopaths and narcisists on this very point of motivation. It says of sociopaths:

“They exploit others for material gain or personal gratification (unlike narcissistic people, who exploit others because they think their superiority justifies it).”

How, then, can “the antisocial personality also [tend] to be narcissistic” when their fundamental motivations are dissimilar? If the author has drawn upon psychiatric expertise to build his argument thus far, why the sudden departure from that support? Could it be because no such expert support is available? Could it be a simple attempt to augment the hatred of government by exaggerating the case in an acrimonious fashion? In other words, could it be a bald-faced lie merely meant to increase our animus against the government?

Then we get to the real point of the video, which is:

3:36 “…government is…men and women providing a service at the barrel of a gun

First of all, why "men and women"? Does the author mean to suggest that the US Government of, say, 1790, was not, in fact, a "government" at all, since it was comprised only of men, and not of women? Or does he mean to suggest that a female administrative assistant today in the Department of the Interior walks about the office with a drawn weapon?

The great imprecision of this language may strike us as purely stupid or hurried at best, yet it may well be an attempt at conditioning the audience with such some technique as what is called Neuro-Linguistic Programming. http://en.wikipedia.org/w...

Clearly, it fails to win over the audience through sound logic and reason. Rather, it appeals much more to the emotions, conveniently glossing over its own contradictions and incongruities, as if the emotion is simply more important than is the message making sense.

Now continuing with the aforementioned segment, we note that the word “product” has been omitted from the opening question:

“Should a service or product be provided at the barrel of a gun?”

And why this omission?

Indeed, it happens again at 4:17:

4:17 “…government is nothing more than a group of men and women providing a service at the barrel of a gun.”

So what happened to the “product” portion of the original question? Why is it now discarded? Why set it up and not cash in on it? Why not give any examples of “products” being delivered “at the barrel of a gun”? Why bother to ask a question to which you do not intend to give a complete answer? Is this just hurried work?

If you ask me, I have a hard time imagining just what “product” the author would even WANT to suggest is “provided at the barrel of a gun”. Are Fruit Loops offered "at the barrel of a gun"? How about cotton balls? How about Bandaids or typing paper? Of course they aren't.

So why not just leave “product” out altogether? Indeed, when striving to create the “World’s shortest political quiz”, why add in two extra words to the question? Is there some strategic advantage to adding in the extra wording?

Could it be that the phrase “service or product” carries a different meaning, mood, implication, or importance that the word “service” alone? Indeed, “service or product” shows 1,040,000 returns in a Google search (http://www.google.com/sea... ) , and the reverse order, “product or service”, shows 23,000,000 returns (http://www.google.com/sea...), so it is certainly a common phrase.

It occurred to me to find out whether “service or product” (or “product or service”) might typically be more familiar to the language of business than to that of government, so I conducted two more Google searches to find out:

The first search was for [“product or service” business]. It showed 823,000 returns. (http://www.google.com/sea...) Meanwhile, the reverse order, [“product or service” business] showed 9,220,000 returns. All together, this makes for about 10,000,000 returns.
http://www.google.com/sea...

The other search, however, was much less impressive. The search for [“service or product” government] showed only 244,000 returns, while [“product or service” government] showed only 3,060,000 returns---only about a third as many:
http://www.google.com/sea...

Therefore, we can reason that “service or product” is generally more suggestive of business than of government. This tends to mislead the reader as to the intent of the question. For instance, if the question were, “Should government officials ever use guns?”, would we not see people responding differently than to the question “Should a service or product be provided at the barrel of a gun?” Similarly, the question “Should UPS deliver packages at the barrel of a gun?” would have seemed outright absurd to us, for no such thing happens in real life. Therefore, the question was crafted as carefully as possible to elicit the desired response. But even if it succeeds with the average listener in eliciting the “no” reponse, there is a bait and switch that occurs when the listener is told later that

4:17 “…government is nothing more than a group of men and women providing a service at the barrel of a gun.”

So now the listener sees that the question was about government all along. Why not have asked it in straight-forward fashion, then? "Should government have guns?" would be quite straight forward, wouldn't it not? Yet there would be no manipulative value in such a question. Rather, the goal of this video is to get the viewer to answer with an adamant and angry "NO!", and from there, to transfer that animus to "government", which is portrayed as the culprit by the end of the video.

And so we see the absurd conclusion that “government is nothing more than a group of men and women providing a service at the barrel of a gun.” Having already answered “no” to the original question, the viewer is now supposed to conclude that all government must, therefore, be bad. After all, government is “nothing more” than violence, right? It’s not postage stamps or pavement. No, it’s only violence. It’s not speed limits and pot holes, but only guns. It’s not law and order, but only the threat of violence. This, of course, is demonstrably false and irresponsible. And this from a man who claims to have “the only show dedicated to bringing about a voluntary society” (0:07) Tell me, Mr. Stevens, in a "voluntary society", do you get people to do what you want by manipulation and deceit? And if so, just how is that morally superior to "at the barrel of a gun"?

But it doesn’t stop here. He goes on to make the patently false claim that:

3:39 “…with government, you either pay or you get shot.”

After this, we see an enraged trooper pulling a woman from her car while pointing his pistol at her. Of course, this is a repeated clip from earlier in the video, where we saw him put his pistol away thereafter without shooting the women. Nor do we see the woman “paying”, of course. Nor are we informed that this traffic stop was made because the woman had failed to “pay” something. But what we DO see is a crazy cop, sure to inflame the senses of any rational person, though the episode likely has absolutely nothing to do with the content matter of this video. If this clip were indeed about the government shooting a lady for failing to "pay" something, wouldn't it have been 1,000 times more effective if we had been TOLD such?

And the video continues:

3:48 “…Only psychopaths provide services at the barrel of a gun.”

Thus we are supposed to conclude---I suppose---that all police and military personnel and private investigators and body guards and hunting guides are “psychopaths”, and that anyone in favor of the police and military must themselves suffer from an “antisocial personality” (0:51)

How instructive it is that many self-proclaimed anarchists take such great offense at the common idea that anarchy=unchecked violence when their champions, such as this Marc Stevens, deliberately choose such absolute definitions of government themselves. It is clearly a double standard of argumentation. It is as if to say, “How dare you suggest that all anarchy necessarily entails unchecked violence---you must be one of those sociopathic, collectivist, statist, government lovers who believes that a service or product should be provided at the barrel of a gun and that those who don’t let the government steal their possessions should be shot.” If it is so absolutely necessary that we go to great pains not to assume that all anarchy will entail unchecked violence, ought not anarchists have the common sense and decency to recognize a demonstrable fact---that not all governing is conducted at the point of a gun?

That this sort of presentation passes as sound argumentation is a sad, sad commentary on those who approve of it and promote it.

If the cause is really so great, why not make a logical and responsible presentation in support of it?

Jack Pelham
Rule of Law Revolution
www.ruleoflawrevolution.c...

A good friend of mine was thrown into a cage and murdered by the California Department of Corrections because he didn't pay THEIR taxes.

Nor does he specifically state that anyone was shot for failure to pay taxes.

Having your bank accounts frozen, assets seized, imprisoned, etc are merely example of the government's "legal" gun to impose penalty for non-compliance.

In other words, it is a "metaphor"

Alli

http://SmArgus.com

"None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Should a service or product be provided at the barrel of a gun?

Easy enough.
Gordon Kahl