Violence against the state

[I_Ryan]

@DMI1

Considering I’m a Christian, I think you can guess what my answer to that is. But I realize that’s not a good enough reason for everyone and the reason why I’m asking is I want to know what others think on the issue. If your answer is “There IS no abstract sense of morality and one must always keep practical considerations in mind” then thank you very much for answering.

I will try to answer your original question.

@DMI1

Is not incurring in violence against the state (and its army of bureaucrats) a justifiable act of self defense?

Of course not.

If you met somebody who had systematically tortured and killed domesticated mammals owned by other people in their neighborhood, what would you conclude about his personality? It would be clear that he is a violent psychopath with little respect for private property rights, and couldn’t be trusted to not do the same thing to other people. I would be wary, to say the least, of somebody like that, because that sort of behavior seems to imply that he would be much more likely to torture and kill you or somebody else than the guy who lives next door to you and waves to you whenever you pass by, and because that lack of respect for those private property rights seems to imply that he might break other private property rights, if he thinks that it would better his situation, and he could get away with it. I want to stay away from people like that.

But, if you met somebody who had been a part of systematically “stealing” money from people in the form of taxes, what would you conclude about his personality? It would be clear that he is probably just another statist who thinks that taxes are for the public good, and that somebody not paying his taxes is in a sense stealing from the rest of society and being selfish. I wouldn’t be wary at all of being around somebody like that. Would you expect the guy to steal your television? Would you be wary of him maybe breaking into your house and stealing your computer? Would you expect that him to be violent? Probably not.

@David Hume

Men are not blamed for such actions as they perform ignorantly and casually, whatever may be the consequences. Why? but because the principles of these actions are only momentary, and terminate in them alone. Men are less blamed for such actions as they perform hastily and unpremeditately than for such as proceed from deliberation. For what reason? but because a hasty temper, though a constant cause or principle in the mind, operates only by intervals, and infects not the whole character. Again, repentance wipes off every crime, if attended with a reformation of life and manners. How is this to be accounted for? but by asserting that actions render a person criminal merely as they are proofs of criminal principles in the mind; and when, by an alteration of these principles, they cease to be just proofs, they likewise cease to be criminal.

What is left is just what they are doing as state employees, because them being state employees doesn’t seem to say that they would do anything violent in their ordinary life. Being a state employee means that you are involved in the “institutionalized theft”, but doesn’t give us any idea that they would engage in theft or violence in their ordinary life. So the only thing that we can blame them for is being state employees.

So what is the most effective way to limit the number of state employees, and the damage that they do in their capacity as state employees? Or, to make this more specifically an answer to your question, would violence against state employees limit how many state employees there are, and how much damage they do? You already answered that question in your original post. Commiting violence against state employees isn’t going to limit how many there are, and might even increase the number, because of a bunch of reasons that are pretty obvious, such as that people would gain for sympathy for the state, think that we need more state security because of the attack, and so on.