Don Boudreaux le da unas lecciones cívicas a su pequeño hijo Thomas Macaulay Boudreaux:
– Even in principle, government is not synonymous with society.
– In practice, government is an enemy of civil society.
– Even popularly elected government does not in any meaningful sense represent his interests or those of civil society.
– No one can and will represent his interests as well as he, personally, can and will do so (once he’s an adult!).
– People who seek political power are, with exceptions too rare to matter, never to be trusted; at best, such people are vain and officious busybodies.
– People who actually achieve political power are to be trusted even less than those who seek it without success; winning elections requires a measure of deceitfulness and Machiavellian immorality that no decent person comes close to possessing.
– He owes no allegiance to any government, regardless of the design of its flag or the familiarity of the hymns that it sings to itself.
– If he is ever asked to die for a government that claims a monopoly over his allegiance, he should politely refuse.
– In fact, government is not in the habit of asking for anything; instead, government coercively demands. So, if and when government demands that he soldier for it, he should refuse to do so. He should go to Canada, become a Quaker, fake an obsession with homo-necrophilia – that is, he should do whatever he must to prevent brutes in suits from forcing him to risk his life for their cause.
– Above all, he should be forever skeptical of received wisdoms and truths – but always understand that there is much genuine wisdom and many valuable truths in our world; skepticism is indispensable for sorting these relatively few gems from the pack of imposters.
