Government of Security

As previously stated, properly formed law exists in society to protect Essential Liberty and resolve conflict between two or more individuals pertaining to those liberties. Further legislation only serves to reduce liberty by presuming the government is more capable than the individual in making decisions for that individual. Even should that be the case, as it certainly sometimes is, for one to be more capable than the other qualitative statements must be made about capability which the two opposing forces may not even agree with at a fundamental level. As soon as the government becomes involved in things other than protecting liberty, the things in which it must become involved increases exponentially as it must make normative and qualitative claims to do so. Legislation must then define terms beyond Essential Liberty, it must make purely pragmatic claims instead of ideological, it must justify law that does not exist to protect liberty, and it must deal with the logical implications of that law. The confusion that it is the responsibility of government to provide security, the right to life in excess, suffers from this exponential growth of legislation.

The government must protect an individual’s right to life, the most fundamental component of human society is to gather in order to protect each other from that which might harm us. Initially this imperative was for predators and we were protecting one another from the wolves, to be iconic. Anywhere two people gather, there is conflict. The government then became an intermediary body meant to resolve dispute as favorable to blood feud; this is still a direct protection of life, from other humans as predators. Even a militia, military, or law enforcement community may exist as an entity to protect a people (individually or in group) from other humans as predators. As human society advanced, industry began to damage the environment and even that is an indirect threat to an individuals life. All of these things are thought to be traits of security (as a consideration beyond Essential Liberty) but their function is to protect life. The over extension of the right to life (security) is when an individual is subjected to legislation directing them to not perform certain actions not for another individual’s safety but for their own. Security often subjects citizens of a government which employes it to undue scrutiny justified as a preventative measure.

To legislate for individual safety [1] not only assumes a government is more capable of making decisions than a specific individual but, as laws properly apply to all, it assumes the government to be more capable than every individual. As casually accepted earlier, no individual or community can be reasonably expected to be the most capable in every situation and in every instance. The hallmark of security, the thing that makes it unacceptable, is that security requires (under threat of violence, the ultimate authority of a government of dominion) an individual to act in a certain way they may know to be wrong even if no other individual is involved, endangered, or in dispute. Security, in this sense, is the coercion of an individual or a group by the government justified by the claim it is for ‘their own safety.’ This safety, the protection of the individual from themselves by a government of dominion, is the essence of security and the assumption made by the government of the individual (that it is more capable) assumes a government of superiority in direct defiance of equality.

The trappings of security [2] are such because they are inherently indiscriminate as tactics and machinery. The government, as the superior entity, enacts surveillance upon the individual. Justified publicly as allowing the apprehension of those who would harm others, surveillance can not possibly be limited to that use. The government, as an entity that is not truly superior, will inevitably make a mistake and in doing so will investigate an innocent individual. At that moment, when surveillance is not used to protect Essential Liberty, the government will be placing a person under secret criminal investigation without the support of the ideology which justifies the existence of the government itself. A clandestine event in which some individual will be secretly observing another individual in an unanticipated way, a violation of equality allowed by the assumption of governmental superiority. The observer is placed in a position of power as one individual over another, as the government is itself a collection of individuals.

The dynamic of a government of dominion allowing certain individuals, under guise of governmental authority, to violate equality and exert unjustified power over another is The State. The police are often seen as the paragon of this condition due to the justification of surveillance as security and the role it plays in policing. While police in The State certainly do exist in this role, as violators of equality by enacting surveillance, this is not a necessary state of law enforcement. It is incidental to the true cause, excessive legislation and dominion exerted by the governing body. It is conceivable that a government could exist without Kratos, without dominion, and that law enforcement could exist in that government as simply champions to protect Essential Liberty from those human predators who may violate it. The resistance of the police as the enforcers of The State is like striking the hand of an attacker instead of a vital organ. As the government of dominion and security, The State should be resisted on a foundational level by explaining and disseminating the ideology of Liberty in contrast to the actions of The State so that the best of us may be informed and the worst of us exposed.

[1] That is, to create a law dictating an individuals action for their own safety, not to resolve conflict.

[2] In this sense, those things which are used by the government upon the populace, not used by an individual within their own space.