David McElroy

When you’re a part of the political power structure, you lose perspective about what matters. Before you know it, the thing that’s most important is yourself, your group and your place in the power structure. Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell provides the latest example of that.

For sane people who can do math, it looks probable that the federal government is heading inevitably toward defaulting on its debts one day. It’s just not possible to keep borrowing at this rate and still pay the money back at levels of taxation that people will put up with. For years, there’s been a need for a president and a Congress to face that reality and quit borrowing money and spending more, but it’s not political reality to expect that. And it hasn’t happened.

So now the two mainstream parties are locked in the latest deathmatch over control, each hoping that the other party will blink first. Republicans are demanding modest budget cuts before they’ll agree to let the government go on borrowing. Democrats are trying to avoid the cuts and offering insane plans of their own. Neither side offers any plan that deals with long-term reality.

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Christopher Brosius is apparently an olfactory genius. He’s known for a line of perfumes evoking scents of childhood. (Among his perfumes are Clean Baby Butt, Green Bean and Baseball Glove.) But Brosius was ready for the ultimate challenge. He wanted to develop a perfume that no one could smell.

He tried all sorts of chemical combinations to get the non-smell just right. He says that his early efforts smelled terrible. Just the fact that you smelled them meant he was failing, didn’t it?

New York magazine had a long and respectful article about this a few months back. My first thought was that I kept having to check and see whether I was reading the Onion. My second thought was that this guy should work for the state.

Remember the kids’ story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes“? It was my favorite. It’s about an emperor who gets conned by a couple of crafty tailors who tell him they’ve created fine new clothes that can’t be seen by stupid or incompetent people. The emperor doesn’t want to admit that he can’t see the clothes — and neither do his other subjects — so he walks around without clothes. Then one boy speaks up to point out that the guy isn’t wearing clothes.

To me, that’s what this is. Nobody wants to admit how absurd it is to create a scent that has no scent. (Give me a cup of really clean water and I’ll sell it to you as odorless perfume at a good price.) But this is what governments do to us regularly. They control us. They take our money. They create various rules to help others — and they claim it’s all for our own good. They say it’s with “the consent of the governed.” When something is absurd and irrational, we need to be willing to say so — whether it’s about lies from the state or absurdist claims from perfumers who want to sell you perfume that’s designed not to be smelled.

I never agreed to be ruled by a state, yet philosophers and political scientists confidently speak of “the social contract” as though it’s something we voluntarily enter into. It’s a coercive fraud.

If a car dealer unilaterally parked a vehicle in your driveway and demanded that you started making payments for it — payments that he determined on a car that he chose for you — there’s little question that you would refuse.

“By what right do you make this choice for me?” you would ask. “What gives you the right to set the price and the terms? And why do you think I’m obligated to an arrangement I never agreed to?”

That’s exactly what states do, though. The idea of us all having a “social contract” with one another is supposed to make it legitimate and legal. It’s a justification that serves to keep you from demanding to be left alone.

I said something a couple of days ago about this so-called contract and I was planning to write something about it this week. But I just came across an article by Robert Higgs at the Independent Institute’s website that does a great job of showing what a sham this so-called contract is, so I’m going to ask that you read that instead. Would you sign this thing voluntarily?

Consent of the Governed?