23A023 "Authority" by Jim Davies, 6/6/2023

From where does any government get it?

Authority, or power, doesn't grow on trees. Humans are not born in two categories (aside from gender) - one destined to impose authority on others, the other to obey. We all begin life the same way. So how come some end up as rulers, and the rest as ruled?

It's not "smarts", either; whether we mean brainy intelligence or "street smarts", which are just as important but in a different way. People in authority do not have an unusually high amount of either. For proof, I present Joe Biden.

Nor is it dedication to one's work. Some in authority work hard, but some spend more time on the golf course than in Congress. And many with no pretension to Authority work extremely hard.

Do rulers get authority sprinkled on them, like holy water; or crowned, like a monarch, so that the instant the crown settles on the head they are endowed with a mysterious power? - until recently most monarchs would answer "yes" to that, claiming the "Divine Right of Kings." Their reasoning was that since God had caused them to be first-born to the existing King & Queen, they were His choice to become the next one. That worked okay, until the premise that God exists was questioned.

The equally questionable belief in the need for government persists even today however, and in the 1700s that problem was solved (or rather, postponed) by inventing the idea that rulers rule by the consent of the governed. That is of course absolute nonsense, because if you consent to someone else's action you are not bowing to his authority; rather, you're just entering a contract with him as an equal. But if recited with a straight face and sonorous voice, it sounds impressive and has served for a couple of centuries to keep American and other governments afloat.

Not any more. It's very high time to Question Authority.

The fiction about "consent of the governed" has been bolstered by elaborate procedures for electing "representatives" of the people, with immense attention being drawn to the process. The further fiction is that the People, as Sovereign, are delegating authority to those elected, to act on our behalf for the public good.

All that is repeated ad nauseam just as if it were correct, from kindergarten on up. Not a syllable of it is true, for it's impossible for it to come even close to being true. Consider: what authority can a voter delegate to a representative?

Elected representatives are supposed to act on behalf of thousands of different people, whose wishes frequently conflict with each other. Obviously, it's literally impossible for him to act for them all; probably, not even for any half-dozen of them. In any case the terms of delegation are not spelled out; electors vote for him for a wide variety of reasons, most of them superficial, and in no case does any contract specify what actions the delegator authorizes him to take.

Further, and above all: since nobody has the right to rule anyone but himself, nobody can validly delegate the authority to do so to anyone else. Nobody has it, so nobody can delegate it.

So, it's impossible for government to derive authority from "the people"; the idea is ludicrous and it's amazing that any should believe it, just because it's repeated so often by government mouthpieces.

Accordingly, the entire theory that any group can validly set itself up to rule is bogus. Every person has the natural right to rule himself (and therefore nobody else) but nobody has authority to rule him unless he expressly contracts with that person with words like "Here's $1,000; please rule me for the next month." And I've not yet come across anyone that stupid.

So nobody can delegate to anyone else any task he himself has no authority to perform. You and I have no power (right, authority) to require someone else to pay for our kids to be taught at school, or for money to be handed to us, or for soldiers to guard us from foreign attack, or for police to guard us from domestic dangers, or to compel anyone to take part in a particular pension plan, etc; and so we cannot delegate such power to anyone else, such as an organization calling itself "government."

Accordingly, the entire theory under which government exists is completely bogus. We have been hornswaggled, every day of our lives. It's a total fraud. It needs to be caused to vanish. TOLFA students know how.

A footnote to the ZGBlog for 5/17 told of how Liam Morrison, a 12-year old at government school in Middleborough, MA, had defied its authority by wearing a T-shirt printed as shown here. Update: he sued the school board for the right to wear it, but the US District Court has deferred a decision, meanwhile not allowing Liam to to express his belief. Evidently, its judge never read Amendment One. This would be an excellent moment for all parents to remove their children from gov't schools and refuse to pay school taxes.