Paradoxes, Inconsistencies and Political Anarchists

Column by new Root Striker L.K. Samuels.

Exclusive to STR

The article below contains excerpts from L.K. Samuels’ new book, In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action.

Why do things rarely turn out as they should? Why do plans routinely backfire? Why is life so contradictory? Is there some logical explanation or theorem that would account for so many counterintuitive, incoherent, and contradictory phenomena? Or is the universe so mind–numbingly complex that paradoxes must permeate our time–space continuum? Whatever their causes, paradoxes have the dexterity to reveal profound truths, valuable insights, and oxymoronic contortions.

But paradoxes are more than just brawls between literal and figurative truths, semantics of grammar, or finite and infinite absurdities. Paradoxes have the quality of being infinitely divisible. They expand beyond Zeno’s “the all is one” conflicts and beyond the perplexities scientists uncover in nonlinear systems. In truth, paradoxes are good at piercing the armor of long–held assumptions and shallow beliefs.

One could easily dig beneath the surface of any issue and uncover counterintuitive findings that would better represent reality. Thorny paradoxes have a way of revealing profound patterns contrary to what one would expect. For instance, many chaologists would argue that when more order is imposed, the less stable the results. The larger the welfare program, the greater the poverty. The more spent on government education, the higher the illiteracy rate. The harsher the drug laws, the greater the use of illegal drugs. The more laws enacted, the higher the crime rate. The more public housing units built, the greater the number of people living in slums. The greater the effort by the Federal Reserve to stabilize the economy, the more turbulent roller-coaster rides of inflating and deflating bubbles. The more farm subsidies handed out to keep prices stable, the more drops in crop prices (because of the surpluses created by the subsidization). The longer unemployment benefits are provided, the longer joblessness will persist. The list seems endless.

But the paradoxes that libertarians find most interesting are the ones that flip around the whole meaning of how rulership comes about and why state-centric politicians often behave as if they were dedicated anarchists.

Rulers’ Paradox

For political wonks, the “Rulers’ Paradox” defies modern assumptions about how a democratic society operates. Under John Locke’s “consent of the governed” axiom, authorities derive their power from the citizenry, under the auspices of participatory democracy.¹ The people, via the election process, transfer their authority to governing officials, who serve in the best interest of society. This transfer of power and privilege resembles the power–of–attorney that bestows the fiduciary authorization to act on another person’s behalf. For instance, those in government can rightfully defend their citizens, because each person has the identical right to defend him or herself from an attacker.

But what if officials in a democratic government organize death squads to assassinate international leaders? Where does such authority to commit murder come from? What if a freely elected government takes property away from its citizens through “eminent domain” powers, incarcerates accused persons with neither due process nor habeas corpus, tortures suspects, kidnaps troublemakers, takes away money from citizens, or wiretaps citizens’ phone lines? Where and how does a representative government acquire authority to perform such coercive acts, acts disallowed for individual citizens?

If ordinary citizens could assassinate, steal, imprison, torture, kidnap, and wiretap without incrimination, that authority could be transferred to government for its democratic arsenal of policymaking weaponry. However, in most countries, the public does not have such rights or power. And if citizens were to do what governments often have done, they would be arrested and jailed. This idea is succinctly spelled out in a quote attributed to John Locke: “The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.”² Nonetheless, governments routinely exercise such abuse of authority on a grand scale, although most people adhere to the belief that nobody, not even their leaders, should be above the law.

But this paradox falls deeper into the rabbit hole. It is no secret that government officials concur that the people, for the most part, cannot be trusted to do the right thing. If this were not the case, legislators would abstain from passing thousands of meddlesome and nanny–like laws, confident that people are good and decent, and will behave appropriately. Yet, the ironic twist is inescapable: If people are unfit to choose the right thing, then the government agencies administered by people must also be unqualified. Thomas Jefferson noted this conundrum when he wrote: “Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?”³

The most important implication of this paradox is that if the consent of the governed is violated, so is the social contract. The social contract is considered the central pillar that binds society to a legitimate state authority. Elected governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed. If the government breaks its contract with the people, then the people are no longer bound by it, and they have a right to regain their complete sovereignty.

The Political Anarchist Paradox

One would not think of power brokers and lawmakers as exhibiting anarchistic traits. But save–the–world prima donnas tightly gripping their scepters are eager to push for more power, and fewer checks and balances. With a craving for everything in life, they cannot resist the egotistical urge to overreach their authority and thus to become the quintessential lawbreakers.

This is no accident. As reported in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, narcissists tend to become leaders. If a group has no leader, it is the narcissist who usually steps up to the leadership plate. “They like power, they are egotistical, and they are usually charming and extroverted. But the problem is, they don’t necessarily make better leaders,” asserted Amy Brunell, the lead author of a study at Ohio State University at Newark.⁴

The effects of narcissism have always been a major stumbling block to peaceful society. The politically addicted always want others to follow, blindly, their intransigent agendas. They may appear to be the embodiment of absolute law and order, but beneath their badge of officialdom, they are more interested in keeping everyone else at bay for their own personal satisfaction. Arrogantly self-righteous, they don’t particularly like competitors interfering with their social or economic policies. In fact, some have referred to the politically engaged as “anarchists in drag.”

Narcissistic politicians feel exempt from the rule of law, and routinely violate or ignore it. For instance, President George W. Bush claimed that he had the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted by Congress during his terms in office, contending that they infringed on his power as commander in chief. He made that rash assertion when he got caught violating a law requiring the federal government to obtain warrants before wiretapping telephones in America.⁵

According to legal scholars, it has not been uncommon for presidents to refuse to execute some congressionally enacted laws, claiming that they were unconstitutional. . During a 1977 television interview with David Frost, Richard Nixon asserted that presidents were above the law, arguing that “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” But the scale of President Bush’s ignoring of the law was unprecedented. Bush actually violated laws he himself had signed, secretly engaging in conduct that those laws criminalized.

For political narcissists, no outside laws or authority apply, except those they agree with. An anarchist could ask for no less, except that the philosophical anarchist wants control over only his own life, while the political anarchist wants control over everybody’s lives. The political anarchist is so bereft of conscience that he will twist, distort, and break any law to gain the authority he feels entitled to.

In a sense, many political leaders are identical to bomb–throwing anarchists, in that if they don’t get their way with foreign leaders, they will send tanks and bombers across international boundaries. Historically, the destruction from warring nations has been far more catastrophic than anything cooked up by small bands of sophomoric anarchists.

The anarchist–tyrant mindset of narcissistic politicians allows them to defy the law while simultaneously presiding over the creation and enforcement of those very laws—an obvious conflict of interest. Authors Morris and Linda Tannehill in The Market for Liberty confront this anomaly, writing: “The contradiction of hiring an agency of institutional violence to protect us from violence is even more foolhardy than buying a cat to protect one’s parakeet.”⁶ This political lawlessness represents an anarchistic duplicity, a paradoxical role that is difficult to identify, since pathological narcissists disguise their true, egotistical intentions under a law–enforcement uniform.

Obviously, political anarchists are attracted to the adrenaline rush of power, because that is where they can get the largest dose of self–gratification and audience admiration. In truth, most politicians imbibe the spirit of both anarchistic and authoritarian criminality, blending moralist and amoralist camps into a sort of schizophrenic artifice that has led to epic disasters of almost unimaginable proportion.

L.K. Samuels is the editor and contributing author of Facets of Liberty: A Libertarian Primer, first published in 1985. He was President of Rampart Institute, which he and Robert LeFevre founded in Orange County, California. His In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action was published by Cobden Press in 2013. Visit his website at www.lksamuels.com. For more information on L.K. Samuels, see his Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.K._Samuels

^1 Consent of the governed was succinctly expressed in the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), initially drafted by George Mason, which proclaimed that “all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people…” The declaration also contends that the people had the right to rebel against “inadequate” government.
² This quote is apparently a paraphrasing of Locke’s ideas, since its exact wording is not found in his major works.
³ The Rulers’ Paradox is my invention, formulated to highlight the contradictions in how power is routinely abused in democratic nations.
⁴ “Narcissistic People Most Likely to Emerge as Leaders,” Science Daily, posted Oct. 10, 2008. http://www.ScienceDaily.com/releases/2008/10/081007155100.htm. Main source: Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, “Leader Emergence, The Case of the Narcissistic Leaders,” Sept. 15, 2008.
⁵Charlie Savage, “Bush challenges hundreds of laws; President cites powers of his office,” Boston Globe, April 30, 2006.
⁶ Morris and Linda Tannehill, The Market for Liberty, self–published in 1970, p. 41, reprinted in 1993 by Fox and Wilkes Books, Center for Independent Thought, NY: New York.