On politics and religion
The
devotion with which statists implore their only saving state is often
reminiscent of religious rituals of faith. When people keep saying that a world
without a state is simply not possible, it almost sounds like the Catholic
creed, albeit in small nuances: “I believe in the State, the holder of the
monopoly on the use of force, the creator of the laws over us all, and in its
government here below, its only legitimate representative, our master...”
The
strategy is obvious. The people’s age-old need for integration into a
comprehensive affiliation is being addressed. This is the essence of religion
(‘religio’ means incorporation), which nobody can object to. Above all because
religious incorporation doesn’t happen through legal coercion, but through free
faith, at least ideally. Of course, there have always been churches, religious
communities and sects with totalitarian tendencies. But these are, and were,
excesses that were sooner or later abandoned.
For
example, the Catholic Inquisition of the late Middle Ages, whose goal initially
had been to promote the faith, but which then chose wrong methods and gradually
became a violent thought-police. Its most effective instrument was to hold all
the levers of a comprehensive system of regulation, monitoring, prosecution and
justice centrally in one hand and thus to eliminate the potential for
correction of a structure of society built on checks and balances.
That
this ultimately led less to a living community of faith, but rather to a
totalitarian system of rule, was realized by the church itself, who then took
appropriate action. To believe means to believe and not to obey. Faith cannot
be commanded and it certainly can’t be enforced. So they abandoned the
Inquisition as an instrument of enforcement. The last remnants of it can still
be seen today as an advisory body that promotes faith. And the worst thing that
can still happen to an unbelieving church member today is excommunication, i.e.
exclusion from membership of the faithful.
The
present-day state is even more aggressive: It’s not enough for it that many
people believe in it and constantly recite the above creed. Nor does it content
itself with using persuasive advertising to win as many more believers as
possible as new members. Basically, it doesn't even care if anyone believes in
it. What it ultimately wants is not the faith of its members, but the obedience
of all. So it’s no wonder that it now digs around in the old box of the
Inquisition and uses this tried and tested instrument of combining legislation,
surveillance, criminal investigation, prosecution, sentence and execution of
judgement all in one hand. However, the fact that it calls this concentration
of powers ‘checks and balances’ has everything to do with faith – blessed are
those who see something and believe the opposite.
How easy
the solution would be: Excommunication from the membership of the state
faithful!
Translated
from eigentümlich frei, where the original article was published on 14th
April 2018.