By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them (Paul Hein)

Paul Hein on war and economic injustice being tragic consequences of government:

For those of us who question the necessity, or desirability, of government, the incessant media blather about the November election is depressing. How can the people who listen raptly to this campaign news possibly take it seriously? In the lifetime of anyone alive today, has any election made a significant difference? If the President were to take his oath of office seriously, would it matter who he was? Or, if, as is the case, he ignores his oath of office, does it make any difference who he is? In my long lifetime I have seen American government grow increasingly totalitarian, regardless of election results. Whether the elected are liberal, conservative, Democrats or Republicans, the trend is increasingly leftward.

The idea of government is so ingrained that most people have simply never given a fleeting thought to the possibility of life without it. Like disease, it’s been around forever. In school we might have learned something of ancient Greece or Roman history, but what we learned was not the life of a typical Greek or Roman, but the activities of Greek and Roman governments, and their battles for control. In short, the study of ancient – and not so ancient – civilizations is the study of war, without which history books would be little more than pamphlets.

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