There's No Government Like No Government: The Nonvoter's Manifesto

By Jackney Sneeb

There's No Government Like No Government celebrates the belief in the human spirit unmolested by state-worship. It extols the value of individual judgment, based on perceptions, experience, and reason, and in the process derisively mocks the mindless blind faith in the inherent righteousness of the law. It excoriates the belief that politicians ought to have, or even could have, the ability to alter morality simply by scribbling some words on a piece of paper.

It offers a systematic approach to debunking the myth of the state using a logical analysis of the concept of "government," in tandem with extracts of debates between the defenders of liberty and various authoritarians. The sheep themselves reveal the bogus nature of the supposed authority of all rulers, be they elected democratically or chosen otherwise, in their downright insane descriptions of "government." Variously described as "General Motors," or "a group of people we elect to guarantee our rights," or the agency that "doesn't have to be morally correct - that's why it is government," the insane belief deserves to be smashed, and this book is dedicated to doing exactly that.

Keep it on your coffee table, in plain sight for all the state-worshipping control freaks to see, to be used as your answer when asked, "Who did you vote for?"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Feb 26, 2007
• ISBN: 9781412247955

Jackney Sneeb

Jackney Sneeb is the pen name of William R. Malloy. Bill Malloy is a graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (Bachelor of Professional Aeronautics, 1980), University of Southern California (Master of Science in Systems Management, 1987), and Troy State University, Dothan (Master of Science in Counseling and Psychology, 1996). He served in the United States Army as a clerk, infantryman, and attack helicopter pilot and was awarded the Army Achievement Medal for twenty years' service, the Combat Infantryman Badge, and Master Army Aviator wings. He lives in Southern California and has a website at http://NoGov4me.net and email address at [e-mail].

Book preview

There’s No

Government Like

No Government

the nonvoter’s manifesto

Second Edition

Jackney Sneeb

© 2002 by Jackney Sneeb. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,

mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the

written prior permission of the author.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Sneeb, Jackney, 1949-

There’s no government like no government : the nonvoter’s manifesto /

Jackney Sneeb.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-55369-573-9

ISBN: 978-1-4122-4795-5 (eBook)

1. Voting—Abstention. 2. Sneeb, Jackney, 1949-—Political activity.

I. Title.

JF799.S63 2002 324 C2002-902498-6

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface To The Second Edition

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Delusion

Chapter 2 Authority

Chapter 3 Government

Chapter 4 Cult

Chapter 5 Conditioning

Chapter 6 Evolution

Chapter 7 Frequently Asked Questions

Chapter 8 Waste, Fraud, And Abuse

Chapter 9 Reality

Chapter 10 Deprogramming

End Notes

for Kim and Roger

Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge the contribution made by Larken Rose in both content and inspiration. His unselfish dedication to exposing the truth about the state and the fraud being perpetrated by the IRS marks him as a true humanitarian. I would also like to acknowledge the hundreds of adversaries in chat rooms and email groups who bravely offered their testimonies of faith in support of the Grand Delusion and without whose descriptions of government and tireless defensive efforts I would have had limited practical evidence of the absurdity of what Ernst Cassirer called the Myth of the State.

Thanks to friend (and self-confessed former Benighted Mocker) Dwight Thomas of Massachusetts for his excellent editorial contribution.

Although all who argued against the destruction of the myth did so stridently and often with venomous invective while I, of course, maintained emotional balance at all times, I truly hold no grudge or animosity toward any, for my own transformation from state-worshipping armed thug to sanity took several years, after all. Names like Dgill000, JohnCross, MoralValue, jessenowell, Jackson Harvey, Marv Edwards, Richard Macdonald, Roger R., Ron Allen, Yak Lord, Guttersnipe, owleye, Leconte2, Scott Weiser, JRobert484, James57516, Steven Wright, MLMH, DonnyBB, OneFriend, BrianBlu, ChiTeri, REX MOZART, spacejan, Mphs4Star, IanMatheson, Pridegrrl, Redfazey, iwog, Dali ii, ABaatw, ision, AtlasShrug, DrkMadR, and Earthww come to mind among the probably thousands of people I have chatted with online over the past six years.

And I especially wish to acknowledge the members of the email discussion group who helped frame the debate. If I can’t remember all of you, I apologize: BoyLiberty (who started the group in 1997 under the name TheRightIs), MOBODANGIT, [e-mail] (Larken Rose), PIEKOFF, ADD51, CheCheri, WriterCM, MRKGIB01, Simplycure, Goldie54, Hominid211, MoralRelativist, Mydonkeyisanass, BrianK83, Strmfthr, DowTimer24, Grn12, MrSully, Steven Downes, Frebob, EndlsRayne, WolfStr8, Philotimos, DethStrok, SaintJZ, AKoppel770, FSand28317, MollyWee, Dante111, Blankers, and Mvale24385.

Thanks to Randy Darnell and Jim Muggeridge for the inspiration of the name Jackney Sneeb.*

Thanks to my brother-in-law, Lucifer741, for the logo on the cover.

And the greatest share of the inspiration for this idea goes to my lovely wife, Angelina, for encouraging me to write, as well as providing critical review of the content of each chapter.

Preface to the Second Edition

In writing this book I tried to integrate as much as possible the ideas of others on both sides of the government-or-self government debate. Naturally, my characterization of state worshippers is a little one-sided. That’s not entirely my fault, though. They continuously fail to offer any better arguments for their belief in government. Interesting to me is the fact that since I first published this, several former proponents of the government side have changed their minds and have discarded their belief in statist solutions. I like to take satisfaction in knowing that they have done so by using their own judgment, not by blindly following someone else. I point out as often as I can how no one has ever gone back to believing in government once he has fully examined the faulty logic of that belief, and has discarded it.

Some of those who have maintained contact with me have made suggestions for improving the book. When readers order the book directly from me, I usually include a critique form with their order and a self-addressed stamped envelope to return it with. While a few responded, I got most of the ideas for updating the text directly by phone, email, and in person. Modern technology makes it easy to incorporate the suggestions of readers in subsequent editions, and I hereby acknowledge the invaluable help of those who took the time to offer thoughtful suggestions. I want to thank Bem of England and Jeff Davis for pointing out that the section referring to Jesus might offend some people. I replaced it with an analogy to Pol Pot’s Angkar regime in Cambodia. Ed Akehurst suggested revising some awkward constructions in Chapter One and a clumsy transition into Chapter Eight. I also thank those who sent favorable comments.

I mention this to show that I sincerely welcome your opinion of how to make this a better book. After all, I started out as a Deluded Boob myself, and I needed help dislodging the belief in government from my own brain. So, I want this to be our book, not my book. Feel free to offer your own suggestions for improvement by email at [e-mail] or through the address on my website, nogov4me.net and I will be sure to incorporate all constructive ideas (based on my own judgment, of course).

Introduction

Do you ever wonder why so many people in America don’t bother to vote? Over half the eligible voters in any given election can be counted on to stay home, rather than exercise their privilege to vote. Do you attribute that to apathy, as many people so often do? Maybe there’s a different reason from the one spread by popular opinion and state propaganda. Perhaps there is a large corps of people who deliberately don’t vote for a very good reason. I for one can tell you that I refuse to vote, and it definitely isn’t due to any apathy on my part. It is a conscious act, a decision to not-participate in the process designed to enlist the support of everyone in their own subjugation and that of their neighbors.

The state rules by force and propaganda. They reserve the use of force as a last resort in order to gain your compliance with their commands and threats. Since that can be dangerous for them, they prefer to get people to cooperate voluntarily. They use the myth of Democracy to keep people mesmerized by the erroneous belief that their vote means they are somehow in control of the state, rather than the other way around.

Nevertheless, every law is backed by the ability and willingness to use deadly force. Of course, this isn’t immediately apparent in most cases. If you light a certain leaf on fire, and breathe the fumes, the enforcers of the law will jail you. Do they ask nicely for you to walk into jail? Yes … at first. If you say no, they get nastier. If they were not willing and able to escalate the matter to lethal combat, who would care what the law says? If there wasn’t that underlying unstated threat, people could just call their bluff and ignore them.

This book is about the truth concerning government. It is about finding the truth by stripping away delusions based on years of conditioning. Throughout the text the terms Deluded Boobs and Benighted Mockers refer to the two types of characters I have found in internet chatrooms who like to debate politics. Deluded Boobs refers to those with a conditioned response to the word government that makes them think of something other than an imaginary entity that could not possibly exist. Benighted Mockers are those who make fun of other people’s delusional beliefs while ignoring the fact that they themselves believe in an illusion and won’t admit it. Both Deluded Boobs and Benighted Mockers believe in something that does not now, never did, and never will exist—for human beings, anyway. That imaginary entity is known as government.

Why can’t government exist? First, I put government in quotes to distinguish it from self-government, a real concept with practical application. Self-government is based on sound principles of human behavior with respect to operating in a world with other human beings. It includes such spiritual principles as do unto others as you would have them do unto you, to thine own self be true, and no good deed goes unpunished. It is well-represented by the libertarian political maxim, I refuse to initiate the use of force against my neighbor. It respects the right of self-defense, an evolutionary imperative, and assigns all judgment of right and wrong to the individual himself.

Self-government is all there is, folks. There is no other government. There are groups of people who agree among themselves to take action to accomplish certain objectives. Some are dedicated to securing a living for the membership, as in private enterprise for profit groups like General Motors. Others are designed to secure a living for their members through non-profit enterprises, such as the United Way—although the term profit must be narrowly defined if one wants to exclude any money-making operation such as the United Way from the category of profit-making. Still others are protection rackets, which secure a living for their members through extortion, theft, and even legitimate business enterprises in direct competition with other protection rackets, which often invent rules for excluding each other with the objective of becoming a monopoly. Examples of these types of corporations are the Mafia and the United States of America.

Notice I call the United States of America a corporation and a protection racket. It is both, just as the Mafia is. There is no difference, except in the fact that some people, wishing to lend more legitimacy to one of them, call it by a nice name that doesn’t imply evil. That euphemism is the term government.

Now, most people will respond at first, That’s silly, of course there’s a government! Who builds roads? Who do you pay taxes to? What about that cop who gave you a ticket? That’s what government is, and they would be wrong. I will explain in the following pages a) why they are wrong, b) what it is that does exist, and c) why there is a pervasive misconception about the existence of government. I will then offer suggestions as to what to do about it.

Here and there, throughout the book, I have sprinkled examples of internet chatroom dialogue between an anarchist and a Deluded Boob (DB). The anarchist will be either Larken Rose (BowToNoOne), or me (XCobraJock). Some of Larken’s public correspondence with such DBs will be reprinted also, where identified.

I include several dialogues with various DBs as examples of authoritarian reasoning. Most authoritarians are indistinguishable from reasonable people, except for their belief in government. In that area, they are completely irrational, as evidenced by the contradictions inherent in their lunatic philosophy of political organization. The examples range from people who are simply average to the fairly intelligent, since all are at least literate enough to use a computer. In some cases the dialogue is my paraphrasing of what an individual said, or a compilation of what more than one DB said, while a few are actual transcripts of online conversations. Also, where noted the dialogue between Larken Rose (BowToNoOne) and a DB is a transcript of an actual conversation. The names have been omitted so that no one ought to be needlessly embarrassed, and since authoritarians are for all practical purposes identically deluded, conditioned by the same process, no one can prove it was he (or she) who might have been maligned by my including their remarks in print.

Besides, the prospect of winding up in court over such a humiliation is tantalizing. Attorney for the plaintiff: Your Honor, plaintiff intends to prove that the words characterized by the author as ‘the lunatic belief in a mindless cult of extortionists’ belong to the person referred to as ‘Deluded Boob,’ and furthermore my client intends to prove that he is in fact that Deluded Boob …

The playbook of the authoritarian control addict includes, and is not limited to, the following shibboleths:

• If everyone were moral, there would be no need for government. Government isn’t necessary for the good people. It is only to restrain the bad.

• Government protects your rights.

• If you don’t like it here, you are free to move to Russia, or any other totalitarian dictatorship you might imagine.

• Without a government, there would be no roads, police, fire department, schools, or any other services (now financed by extortion).

• While government isn’t perfect, it’s better than chaos and destruction.

• If you are against government, you probably live in Montana. This one really gets the Numbskull of the Book award for a) an obvious non sequitur, and b) obliquely insulting the good people of Montana.

• If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain.

The following pages are dedicated to blowing away these hackneyed high school civics class propagandistic slogans.

Chapter 1

The Delusion

a persistent false psychotic belief regarding

the self or persons or objects outside the self

The idea of government is of course an abstraction. It means different things to different people. When people discuss the idea of government, they generally expect others to know exactly what they are referring to, and in most cases conversations rarely falter over confusion about the meaning of government. Also, most people identify with a political faction, such as Liberal, Conservative, or Libertarian. These factions exist because, although everyone assumes government means the same thing for everyone, each person has his own idea of what government is for. So, people find others who agree generally on what they believe the proper function of government is, and identify with that group.

Notice that I distinguish between what people think government is, and what they believe it is for. That is because people generally hold an unfounded assumption that government is real, and that it is to be used as a tool, or more likely, a natural force such as electricity, to be harnessed to serve man’s needs. While the factions conflict with each other on what government is to be used for, rarely do they define what it is. Everyone just assumes (a conditioned response, by the way) government is real and that everyone else accepts its reality as a given. The notion that it may not be anything real at all hardly crosses anyone’s mind. Few question where it came from, what it is, how it works, or even why they think they need it. Here is a good place to start asking some questions. How did government come to be in the first place? Larken Rose tells us how he sees the origin of government: "The reason people believe in ‘government’ today is the same reason they worshipped volcanoes a few thousand years ago. The matter of practicality is just what modern lunatics use to try to make their delusion sound rational. To them, elections sound like a more ‘reasonable’ basis for their delusion than some story about the Lady of the Lake. In reality, it has the same legitimacy: none.

"I’ll try to make this short, without explaining the whole issue of ‘Universal Intention’. When an animal species developed (I won’t bicker how right now) the capacity to understand morality (right and wrong), it really messed with their predictable lives. It doesn’t take any effort to follow an instinct. Sure, sometimes instincts conflict (like the instinct of horny birds going against the instinct of not flying underneath a motorcycle I was riding … SPLAT!), and that requires something resembling a thought, however that doesn’t usually happen.

"Morality was (and is) a relatively new aspect, and people didn’t know what to do with it. If your toaster gained consciousness tomorrow, I suspect it would be rather existentially confused. That’s basically what happened. In reaction to this new level of existence, people tried to turn it off.

"The fact that it came from morality is shown by what most religions say. They say that murder is bad, stealing is bad, etc. Yet people weren’t (and aren’t) ready to face the terrifying prospect that they alone had to figure out right and wrong for themselves, so they set up an ‘authority’ to tell them what was right and wrong. The commands of this new ‘authority’ were inherently righteous, and obedience was obligatory. Luckily, individual moral judgment didn’t disappear, despite their best efforts. So when power-hungry agents of the supposed ‘authority,’ together with various now legitimized evil desires of the masses, started committing major evil, some individuals (not many) would still dare challenge the righteousness of the ‘authority.’

"So what happened (and is still happening) is a long line of ‘authorities’ that usually start based on correct moral judgments of individuals, which then get corrupted into an anti-judgment ‘authority,’ which gets worse and worse, until individual judgment starts to kick in again, and the ‘authority’ gets tossed out … only to be replaced by a new one.

"While the evil bastards who slaughter millions are responsible for their actions, their lust for power is not the root cause. It is the desire by the masses to be able to live as humans without using their own judgment. For example, when some smart honky, wig-wearing dudes realized that human beings have rights that should not be violated by anyone, they were on track … until they tried to make a new ‘authority’ to be the agent of this truth. Same thing happened when Jesus was telling people how to be good human beings. The people could, with their own moral judgment, see the truth in what Jesus said … and then blew it by setting up an ‘authority’ as the agent of that truth-which, sadly, then went around terrorizing and killing people, supposedly to enforce the words of a pacifist.

"Even the thinking people still have this deep desire to short-cut and bypass the inevitable truth that every human being has the responsibility to determine right and wrong for himself. This doesn’t mean that truth is whatever he decides it is. It means that the truth about morality, which objectively exists outside of him, cannot be accepted second-hand from anywhere, without individual judgment being the final and ultimate arbiter of beliefs.

"I think this tendency is finally starting to fade in myself. Even after I intellectually understood the disproofs of ‘authority,’ which are actually pretty damn simple, I still caught myself doing the reality-escaping, authoritarian stuff.

"Who are your intellectual heroes? Do you feel an internal twinge when they get something wrong, in your opinion? Do you have an internal, irrational desire to not want to admit that the Constitution has mistakes in it? People have a tendency to want to give their soul away to whoever will save it for them. The national psychological crisis that exploded when that bastard Clinton was exposed for what he is (and I don’t mean the screwing around) was a result of that same phenomenon. All the Democrats could see that he was at least a lying scumbag. Why was there the deep attachment? The same reason there is a deep attachment among Americans to the Constitution. Humanity is young, and people still have an impulse to avoid humanity by handing their souls and minds away to whatever ‘authority’ will save them from thought and responsibility.

While I think I can truly say I have removed this from myself, I would ask anyone who sees a sign of it in something I say to smack me senseless.

Larken exposes the origin of government as the result of an unacknowledged fear among newly conscious human beings of their own judgment and the responsibility that accompanies it. They invented a god to which they would look for guidance. They appointed ministers to interpret god’s law and tell them how to behave. When they began to think this god was more than just omniscient, that it was omnipotent as well, they asked it to do more than just tell them how to behave. They wanted god to do things like vanquish their enemies, and make crops grow. They figured out early on that the Lord helps those who help themselves, so they did most of the work themselves (actually all of the work—and fighting for that matter—since the god they invented was a fiction).

As time passed, they discovered that god either couldn’t or wouldn’t stop plagues, famines, wars, crop failures, or floods, and he wasn’t very good at vanquishing enemies, either (or even building roads). In fact, the other side always had a god, too. So, god only worked at best half the time for things like war, where the opponent was another force with a god on its side. Discouraged with the way god worked, they decided on the next best thing: government—out with god, in with government and the rule of law. Now, people could really believe in this arrangement, because it did not depend on some imaginary entity that no