Overcome Stockholm Syndrome

Often in debates with non-anarchists, my expectations of a free, peaceful, spontaneously ordered society are met with great skepticism. I attribute this lack of imagination to the government indoctrination camps we are all forced through as defenseless children.

For example, in high school I partook in an AP Government course of United States History. For those not familiar with the Advanced Placement program, it's a statist invention that allows the more gifted students to take a course during high school followed with a test that counts for college credit, provided you receive a high enough score. I passed all of the AP tests I took except the government one.

At the time, the subject of government, particularly the lineage of Presidents, did not interest me. Now, the subject interests me in the same way that the gruesome carnage of a vehicular accident (somehow these always occur on government roads) attracts passing motorists. That is, I'm interested in government's numerous failures, inefficiencies, and manufactured emergencies. Fortunately, I can gorge my macabre attention with any daily news program. That's a market service!

But why would the high school, or more accurately the AP program, force knowledge of US history down my gullet? Instead of say, China or India, which both have 100 times longer history than the United States. They claim that it's important for me to know my heritage, but at the time I was more preoccupied with the future (and mostly still am). Yet, they didn't actually show me lessons that have ramifications today.

For example, did you know that all of the US Presidents that fought against central banking, or that tried to reduce its power have been assassinated? Is that coincidence or conspiracy? And it doesn't even have to be conspiracy, but merely self-interest. All it would take is a single individual with questionable ethics out of the affected group. Have you ever known a banker to willingly part from other people's money?

Or what about the introduction of the income tax? My parents and grandparents don't recall living without this kind of wealth slavery, but there was a time when America was a prosperous land without income tax. George Washington himself led an army against protesters objecting to an excise tax on Whiskey. (A tale beautifully recounted by Rothbard in When the Feds First Attacked the Americans) There was a time when nobody would take the job of tax collector because of social opprobrium.

I was taught to revere Abraham Lincoln as a political god that help to keep the union in tact. Whereas I now think of him as an exemplar politician, raping the constitution, violating human rights by suspending habeas corpus and imprisoning reporters, needlessly calling the country into war against itself, and stomping the basic sovereign right of secession. He even formed a special praetorian guard with initials SS. Lincoln is America's Hitler.

Ok, so the US government has an interest in all children learning a history approved by that same government. Any wonder these anti-government lessons were left out? Even in the "advanced" program I was fed mostly positive images of government, with outcomes of war written by the winners. An endless justification of criminally destructive behavior!

Also, my school didn't have any course with actually questioned the necessity of government. I was never introduced to Rothbard, Block, or David Friedman. I had to make these discoveries on my own much, much later! What I value most about my education, I cannot attribute to the state, but to my friends, myself, and my own relentless curiosity that somehow survived the indoctrination.

Sadly, I cannot say the same of those I talk to and interact with in daily life. They have been starved of these liberating ideas. And every time I suggest, even in one tiny aspect, that some service can be performed better through voluntary cooperation than through government coercion, I meet with desperate fanaticism, of the kind that can only come from 18 years of indoctrination. For the imprisoned so love the caves that protect them from outside illumination.

By finding this page, I know that your journey into mental freedom has already begun. Continue taking learning into your own hands. Don't trust the government school to accurately teach you the history of government.

Flush the state's deep programming from your mind by following a path of freedom and self-determination. Live your life as much on your own terms as practical, setting an example to others: the power of freedom!