They're All Just Like That!

Folks have tried to demonise other folks by claiming that individual responsibility defines collective character.  They then claim that collective responsibility defines individual character.  This view conflicts with the axiom of self-sovereignty: that you own your own life.  Your actions define your character.  You are responsible for how you turn out. 

So, through the years, different groups of folks were blamed for misfortunes because some of the group members committed atrocities

• Jews who manipulated financial events for their own benefit, canibalised children, and want to take over the world.
• Catholics who molested boys, tortured believers who didn't practice the faith correctly, and want to take over the world. 
• Germans who practiced Occult procedures, killed Jews, and want to take over the world.
• Communists who made everyone equally poor, killed landowners, and want to take over the world.
• Mexicans who stole jobs, reproduced indiscriminately, and want to take over the world.
• Teenagers who consumed without end, copulated all the time, and want to take over the world.
• Muslims who abused women and boys, killed non-believers, and want to take over the world.  

In each example critics claim that everybody in the referenced group wants to take over the world.   In each example some folks committed acts that reflected poorly on the group of which they were members.  In each example critics want to use coercion to address the concerns they have about their targeted group.   

I read that a group of folks witnessed a man hanging a seven-year-old boy, and didn't intervene.  How about that?  So now, somebody else wants to kill everybody in the area in which this man killed the boy.  She wants to blow up the whole town as an object lesson to others about what will happen to them if they kill, or permit someone else to kill, a child.  The objects of her ire are adherents to a belief system different from her own. 

An estimated two dozen teenagers at a dance watched some guys beat, rob, and rape a girl their age(15 years old) over a two-hour period.  They took pictures.  They shared those pictures.  They texted about what they saw.  Some laughed and cheered.  They went back into the dance or elsewhere.  They just went on with their lives.   Isn't that wonderful? Outraged folks have demanded that these bystanders should be busted for allowing the guys to assault the girl.   Some folks have actually suggested that those who shared the pictures should be busted on child porn charges.

In each case, folks condemn the bystanders because they did not intervene to stop the actions by the perpetrators.  In each case folks want(ed) government employees to bust the bystanders.  Or to kill them.

A problem is that when government employees act, they do so using stolen money.  Money that government employees collected from folks by threatening to harm or to kill them.

• Robbery is seizing another's justly-owned property without the owner's consent.
• In taxation, representatives of government seize subjects' justly-owned property without their subjects consent-always under the threat of severe penalties if they refuse to comply.
• Therefore, taxation is definitionally and morally synonymous with robbery.

Why is using stolen money to bust or kill people moral? 


14.06.2010