Opinion by Kyle A. Lohmeier
When is it “too late” in a pregnancy to have an abortion? When does a post-pubescent teenage girl’s consent become actual consent if she’s in the company of someone older than 18 years? How many wives should one man be allowed to have? In 2018 USA, the government “answers” these questions for us with its monopoly on the legal initiation of violence.
If the government says 20 weeks is the limit for abortion, that’s the de-facto limit. If the state says a girl’s opinion on what happens to her in the presence of another, older, human is immaterial until she’s eighteen, then she lacks the legal capacity to give her consent until that date is reached. And, of course, one legal spouse is all you’re allowed by the government.
It is when, however, government’s monopoly on violence is removed from the equation and these same questions are applied to life in Theoretical Ancapistan, that, for some, the questions become difficult to answer. After all, we’ve all long grown up with the government’s “answers” to these questions, answers that are enforced with guns and cages; for some, imagining other solutions absent guns and cages is difficult.
For many, the reflex is to carry on with the belief that something must be done by someone about these things. It is, after all, creepy for middle-aged men to be carrying on with teenage girls, just ask would-be senator Roy Moore. And abortion is murder, again, just ask Roy Moore. And, why shouldn’t marriage be between just one man and one woman? Roy Moore would agree.
While we can agree that most of us wouldn’t necessarily enjoy finding their seventeen-year-old daughter dating a forty-something; or contemplating a late-term abortion; or thinking of entering a polygamous marriage with a handful of “sister-wives” and one guy – we all of us need to see past the reflex of wanting there to be an armed gang available to do something about it. Because, friends, the armed gang only knows how to do one thing, violence; and so, the only something they can do about the above questions and ones like them is to direct violence against one party or the other, or both.
Sadly, however, many statists take this belief that something can and must be done about such situations as described above to its only logical conclusion – that the “need” for an armed gang to prevent these unseemly things from happening in fact justifies the existence of states and governments.
Does anyone really need to be put into a cage if a seventeen-year-old girl dates a guy in his 40s? Sure, every father of a teenage girl reading this may emotionally and reflexively think “Yes! And then just to protect him from ME.” But, is having the armed gang with a monopoly on the legal initiation of violence around to ruin every aspect of our lives really worth their “preventing” this uncommon scenario? Especially since they don’t prevent teenage girls from being talked into hooking up with older guys, they just fine and imprison said older guy after the fact?
And, isn’t a parent taking time to actually sit down with their teenage daughter, and explain to her how creepy the world can be, a far more effective prevention method than the aforementioned armed gang simply fining and caging the guy after the unseemliness takes place?
Is having a government exist to put up barriers between women and safe abortion procedures really “worth it” when that same government is going to bomb a bunch of brownish kids to death elsewhere on the planet as a matter of course? Governments have never been known to generate a net gain in “life,” and ours is no different.
There are all sorts of things humans can end up doing together that many of us other humans would find “immoral,” unseemly, or disgusting; things we would hate to see our children or loved ones involved in. Things like third-wave feminism, Scientology, the alt-right, hooking up with disgusting old guys, or polygamous religious sects. What we each first have to remember is that unless another’s action harms our person or property directly, it’s none of our business.
And, despite all sorts of busy-bodied rationalizations to the contrary, what post-pubescent humans do with their own bodies – and anything that might come to grow unwanted inside them – is absolutely none of our business to begin with. And, more importantly, those perceived problems in no way necessitate, excuse or justify the existence of an armed gang that punishes those who partake in said activities. Citing a desire to see humans punished by a government for those actions in no way justifies the existence of the state; such is merely the speaker rationalizing their desire to see those he or she finds “disgusting” harmed by some large assemblage of other humans tasked with that purpose.
Such is the exact same rationalization nazi, alt-right, white-nationalists cite for wanting to see the government use its monopoly on violence against the brownish people they find “disgusting.” Such is the exact same rationalization sheep use when demanding all of us “disgusting” gun owners be disarmed; or the same rationalization Bernouts cite when demanding all of us “disgusting” productive people be robbed wholesale by the government and the plunder be given to them.
We must learn to recognize that the most “disgusting” polygamous marriage, May-December romance or late-term abortion procedure isn’t half as “disgusting” as the desire to see an armed gang put in place to punish those who participated therein. We don’t need a government to punish people for doing things that harm the person or property of no one else – no matter how “disgusting” someone may be inclined to find said activities.
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