The State’s Monopoly on Violence

American Thinker.com ^ | February 23, 2022 | Max D. Dublin

[Kaslin]

It is too early to say yet how future historians will view the present moment in history. But as we are learning about the true costs of the pandemic lockdowns—and also learning how negligible have been the benefits—it’s not unlikely that these historians will view the lockdowns as a massive exercise of violence by so-called liberal democratic states on their people.

This view is in keeping with the German sociologist Max Weber’s contention years ago that one of the characteristics of the modern state is that it reserves for itself and jealously guards a monopoly on violence. Weber’s basic idea is that in feudal times the right to exercise violence was shared from superior vassal to inferior vassal down the line in classic feudal relationships, but when those relationships dissolved and were absorbed into the modern state it accrued to itself a monopoly of violence.

In the present political moment, violence is usually thought of as being physical. But quite often, in fact increasingly more often than not, it is psychological or financial violence in the mode that sometimes is referred to as passive aggressive. Examples of the type of violence of the state on the people by unprecedented and foolish (but some would say deliberately manipulative) lockdowns are too obvious to ignore and too numerous to list.

First and foremost, and most concerning from my point of view, is the violence done by the lockdown to children. We mustn’t forget that the public school system is an agency of the state. Closing down the schools for two years has hurt our children, and in particular our most marginalized and vulnerable ones, immeasurably in terms of mental health deterioration, including anxiety and depression, attempted suicide and suicidal ideation, the destruction of socialization opportunities,

[fruser1]

A concept that applies to all governments but the US thanks to 2A.

[not_under_duress]

If school lockdowns have hurt our children then there is something wrong at home. Mandatory public education is NOT beneficial to a child and is also a relatively new idea in America. This notion that if it wasn’t for the government our children will suffer is the kind of thinking that has got us in the terrible mess we are in today. If you ain’t woke you ain’t going to be allowed to be in any part of the government school system. As for private/voucher/parental control, that is also up to the parents to manage. Mandates are always evil. Whether it’s schooling or masking IMO.

[The Duke]

What about the ‘mandate” to not yell “fire” in a crowded theater? What about the “mandate” to stop at red lights?

What about a “mandate” to take a universally trusted and 100% effective vaccine against a highly contagious, 100% fatal, disease?

[I want the USA back]

The State retains the right to kill citizens through the police, and to not be held accountable.

[zeugma]

# A concept that applies to all governments but the US thanks to 2A.

Nope. Try to resist the government in any meaningful way, and the State will drop the maximum amount of violence on you immediately.
There are so many examples of this, that it doesn’t even bear mentioning.