You are Either a Libertarian or a Nazi: there is no in Between

I won’t get into the specifics of being a libertarian as the term has been popularized incorrectly, and so, most people’s impression of the term relates to irrational sovereign citizens or anarchical lawlessness: neither have anything to do with libertarianism.
 
Put succinctly, libertarianism = “least force”, meaning, all rules should be applied with the sole purpose of minimizing the force imposed on any individual by any other individual (or group, including the government). Examples of this application infect every aspect of life, and its implementation can be difficult to wrap one’s head around when we are constantly exposed to propaganda that makes us feel terribly incapable of being responsible for our own lives.
 
To exemplify this as accurately and simply as possible, we will examine seatbelts.
 
First there were horses, and after horses came cars – when cars first came about, there were no requirements for seatbelts. In fact, seatbelts only became seriously enforced in the late 80s – for 70 years, people were responsible for their own safety – driving safely and defensively was up to the individual to protect themselves and their passengers (note that when we think about this, we immediately think we are threatened by the lack of enforcement; as if other drivers were somehow more threatening if seatbelts weren’t enforced – but another driver wearing seatbelts has nothing to do with your safety – this is an example of propaganda in effect).
 
Now, the immediate sentiment that arises when we talk about seatbelts is safety – perhaps it wasn’t enforced back then, but now that we know how much they improve your safety if a car accident happens, what’s wrong with rules that improve safety?
 
Good question. Let’s dig in.

Nazis Know; Libertarians Don’t

You believe wearing seatbelts is good for you. Would you say 100% of the time? What if 1% of the time, not wearing a seatbelt is better?
 
What if your father is physically uncomfortable one specific day, and he wears the seatbelt for fear of being ticketed, and suffers a terminal heart attack, and the doctor tells you that even the slightest bit of pressure against his rib cage for an extended period of time could have aggravated it, and in fact caused the disruption in blood flow that resulted in his demise? And that his discomfort was his body telling him to alleviate that pressure?
 
What if your son suffers from claustrophobia and every time you try to put the seatbelt on him, he starts having panic attacks? What if you tried to circumvent the shoulder strap to stick with the waist strap only, but then were ticketed as it was illegal to wear the seatbelt incorrectly?
 
What if your car necessarily places the seatbelt across the abdomen of your pregnant wife and you’ve heard that this can be dangerous for the child in the case of an accident? What if you get into a simple fender bender, and instead of your wife relying on her hands and an altered seatbelt that’s comfortable for her (which is illegal), the strap shocks the unborn child, and your unborn child is lost?
 
The point here is that despite your eternal confidence in an idea being good, one must always, as a hard rule, be humble to the things they have not yet contemplated, and blindly defend individual freedoms to make room for them. There are far more people in the world than you can possibly contemplate, and each one of these people has legitimate requirements that you have never, in your wildest dreams, even imagined.
 
The idea that seatbelts are good for you and must be policed is an indoctrinated belief that makes as much logical sense to you as Jews being rats that spread disease was in Nazi Germany. The common ground between you and any individual in the 3rd Reich that gloriously heil’d the Fuhrer is a lack of humility; they never imagined that there could possibly be a beautiful, empathetic, loyal, and patriotic German Jew, just like you can’t imagine there being a legitimate reason not to wear seatbelts.
 
Nazi Germany teaches us a most important lesson: we can be confident about what we think we know, but must always be humble towards what we don’t, and fight to allow others to believe things in opposition to what we may think is certain. The moment you believe your belief should be legislated and enforced unto others, no matter how protective or necessary you think it is, that is Nazism.

The Proverbial Slope > Nazism

Having established a binary switch – humble to what we don’t know versus legislating what we think we do – we now enter Nazi territory.
 
Everyone who screams for seatbelts and helmets to protect children and minimize the damage from accidents is doing so in pursuit of increasing the life experience of members of that society. And by legislating it, they are attempting to enforce their belief in this increased safety unto everyone around them. And the most popularized argument behind the support of this and other mandates is “it’s not a big deal to conform to it”, with the underlying unspoken assumption being that “everyone knows it doesn’t hurt and probably helps”.
 
Nazism, however, is not about seatbelts. It is about enforcing what any individual or group believes is “inherently beneficial for society”. Nazism is, plainly put, the arrogant narrative of any individual or group illustrating a threat and dictating that there is a solution that all must adhere to, to conquer this threat.
 
Legislating seatbelts doesn’t appear so benign once we see that the precedent of imposing what we think is safer on others can breed unpredictable results. We now see a flaw and the unspoken horror of the underlying mentality that could drive such arrogance.
 
What if, under the same mentality, Indians were deemed a threat to safety? Or Muslims? Or women with short hair? Or girls that dress like boys? Or boys that dress like girls? Or salt? Or alcohol? Or caffeine? Those latter examples seem more scientifically provable than the innate corruption of an entire ethnicity, yet millions of people adopted such vigilant beliefs in these narratives that they supported the literal eradication of an entire race.
 
Even the most dogmatic mind is able to understand that not only in the course of human civilization, but literally every five years, what any given society deems a “clear and present danger” to its citizens changes dramatically, and legislation often follows the outcry surrounding the sudden realization of these “dangers”. At some point it was alcohol. Then homosexuals. Then AIDS. Then sex. Then drugs. Then vapes. Then swearing. Then COVID. Then nudity. And on it goes. What future dangers will suddenly become the ire of the loudest, and force transient politicians to legislate?
 
And year after year, these “safety” nets that are implemented, forcing different individuals to adhere to a stricter set of guidelines, is almost never reverted. Old impositions are maintained while new ones are introduced. This, clearly, poses an endgame that is not realistically feasible. More and more individuals will fall off the cliff of the fringes until a significant amount of the populace will be corralled into an extremely homogenous and restrictive set of behaviors. Could there be any more effective a description of Nazi fascism? And we came about it by adopting one simple principle:

“What I deem unsafe must be cured by increased rules enforced by the government.”
 
That is it. That is the formula to Nazism. There is no middle ground. That mentality, in any way shape or form, will always lead to fascism eventually, and those that think they are on the right side of things will eventually end up persecuted as well. It’s just a matter of time.

The Unique Bedfellow to Nazism: Prevention

Interestingly, the untethered slippery slope we outlined above rarely follows consequential actions; rather, they are almost always preventative. Penalties for hitting an individual do not get more grave – yet the penalties for driving fast, drunk, sleepy, drugged, or using one’s phone get harsher and harsher.
 
This, of course, makes no sense. If the penalties for any consequential action became more grave, it would necessitate that either people will adapt and self-regulate, or the penalties imposed will reduce their ability to cause further damage. It is clean – cause and effect. But that is not what is happening. For some strange reason, prevention rather than consequence has spread like wildfire, restricting what people can eat, drink, see, do – how fast they can drive – where they can live, what they can do in their own homes – all in the name of preventative safety.
 
Are you more likely to drive carefully because hitting someone else will result in you losing your home? Or if you are staring at your speedometer to avoid getting ticketed?
 
You see, prevention goes hand in hand with Nazism. All the euphoria that surrounded the elimination of Jews from Nazi Germany was preventative; there was no proven consequence the persecuted Jews were imposing on others – it was a threat deemed too great, and therefore, a preventative measure had to be imposed. First, it was identifying Jews. Then it was wearing patches. Then it was isolating them to certain areas. Then it was removing them from businesses. Then it was corralling them into ghettos. Then it was elimination.

The absolute necessity of this prevention was as certain to the average German as seatbelt safety is to you; arguing it seemed asinine.
 
All preventative; there was no consequence that preceded any of these safety measures. Only a blunt force argument that “something is wrong” and “this is the cause” with completely reasonable reasoning.
 
Let’s go back to seatbelts. Seatbelts are one hundred percent preventative. The argument being that people die in car accidents. Seatbelts will reduce these deaths.
 
Blunt force – just like Jews in Germany. It may not make sense to contemporary us – but what if Jews were rich? What if they preferred trading with other Jews? What if they traded poorly with Germans? What if there were huge networks of Jew owned markets where Germans could not enter? What if certain industries were monopolized by Jews? Wouldn’t it start to make more and more sense that eliminating them will open the market to Germans, and therefore, be better for Germany?
 
Prevention is the work of the coward – the unintelligent – the child who thinks one step ahead instead of the ten after. The exploitative believe in prevention, because the more there is to prevent, the more control they have over others. Prevention is an unending, unlimited chasm; being left handed may result in statistically more accidents than right handed individuals – does that mean left handed babies should be thrown to the wolves? Or conditioned otherwise?
 
Seatbelts or a lack of them do not kill people – dangerous driving kills people. And so, if consequential rules were readily implemented, blindly, that any individual that is hurt in your car due to your poor driving means you lose your house, you will drive slower and more carefully than any sign could ever dictate – or better yet – the free market would develop seats and seatbelts that actually, comfortably, and effectively save people, as consumers would vie for them to protect themselves from liability without government oversight - after all, are we so stupid that we wouldn't pursue cost effective ways of increasing our own safety?

Enforced Prevention Always Leads to Long Term Horror

There is no need to qualify this premise for every individual situation. It is likely that if Hitler were questioned about the authentic viability of his argument that Jews were the bane of Germany, he would produce innumerable documents, certified by statisticians and scientists, asserting that Jews are genetically inferior, that their brains operate in a destructive manner, and that they are economically suffocating the rest of the country.
 
Similarly, for all the speed limits, AI cameras, drunk driving traffic stops, movie ratings, drug restrictions, and banning of smoking ads, to name a few, there is undoubtedly going to be document after document asserting why they improve the safety and reduce the number of children or adults who may suffer from some form of adversity or another as a result of exposure to these various calamities.
 
But let’s examine the long term horror.
 
Drug prohibition in any form leads to the criminalization of these substances. We only contemplate children not injecting heroin into their veins; what about the vulgar beheadings in Mexico by drug cartels, whose power comes only from the fact that drugs are illegal? What about the gang rapes non-violent drug users face in jail and prison? What about the innumerable number of people who suffer, daily, with serious mental health issues, including deep rooted depression that holds them captive for days, months and years due to a lack of access to potential medicines?
 
Have you ever contemplated what it might be like to tie a noose up and kick the chair out from underneath? What level of long term hopelessness and unbearable isolation would push someone to do something so drastic and terrible? And have you further contemplated that many of these events could have been prevented if people were allowed to experiment with different drugs, both natural and synthetic, to find something that may help them either heal or cope? How many people live on a daily basis with joint pain that now, after years of prohibition, are able to use CBD oil to lessen the pain?
 
If you are not a libertarian, all this human pain, this black pool of hurt and ongoing misery is your doing – it’s your choice to support the enforcement of that on others, now, with cruel and knowing intent. There is no middle ground.
 
Speed limits appear to save lives – less drastic accidents lead to less drastic damage – both in the car and out of the car.
 
Short term vision.
 
How much more pollution is created by a thousand vehicles travelling 10% slower on the roads? How does this pollution lead to millions of animals dying? How much more wear on vehicles does this 10% excess use cause? How much more plastic and junkyards and wasted steel is created?
 
In New York, approximately 1.6 million people drive every day, and on average, they drive 1.5 hours per day. If speed limits are reduced by 10%, that means each driver spends approximately 9 minutes extra on the road. That’s a total of 14,400,000 minutes, or 240,000 hours, or 10,000 days. 10,000 days of human life is wasted every day due to that 10% reduction in speed. That is 27 years of human life extinguished every single day.
 
You see, short term, Nazi thinking results in dramatic visions of children being killed in car accidents, or odd caricatures of Jews with big noses poisoning the German water supply. Long term libertarian thinking contemplates the true cost of prevention, and illustrates, unequivocally, the true horror of these practices. Contemplate the added long term pollution, human life wasted, increase in frustration, decrease in time spent with family, decrease in autonomous time, and the increase in raw material wastage that speed limits impose on the populace. Then contemplate the singular beneficiary of all of these impositions: the regime in power.
 
If your car breaks down sooner, you have to buy a new one, and the regime collects taxes.
 
If you need to buy more fuel, the regime collects taxes.
 
If you are more frustrated, you are more likely to react violently to situations. You then increase the need for police and prisons, justifying increased taxes.
 
If you spend less time with your family and are dissatisfied, you are more likely to break the family. This results in more welfare requirements and divorce proceedings, all which require government intervention, and lawyers, that all increase the tax revenue.
 
If you speed to avoid all of this misery, you are fined, increasing the revenue the regime gains.
 
See a pattern?

Totalitarianism is all about Economics

And now, finally, we get to the core of fascism, or any form of totalitarianism, which can manifest as socialism, communism, or any regime where the government increasingly dictates the terms of living to its own people.
 
There are those who form cogs in the machine, and there are those who are suppressed by it. The only motivation the cogs have is money/power. And like any intelligent individual, they use that money/power to assert control over others in order to extract more money/power.
 
And the most effective way of doing this is to manifest as many threats as possible and enforce preventative measures onto the populace. If prevention was not enforced, there would be no financial benefit to manifesting threats. Speed limits, for example, could be suggested without any policing whatsoever – this educates the populace to use their best judgment. But, in this case, it only benefits the populace and does not provide the cogs with increased money/power.
 
When we think of Nazis in uniforms, arresting Jews, beating homosexuals, and saluting Hitler, we assume they were all patriotic Nazis; this is completely false. Nazis in uniform, from the police to the soldiers, were making a living, just like the voluntary Americans were when they were lighting women and children on fire with napalm in Vietnam. Just like the police in Australia that entered private homes without warrants, demanding identification during the COVID panic. Just like the police that arrest individuals in the UK for online messages.
 
Everything is driven by economics, and therefore, the power to survive – that is all money is – the ability to provide food, shelter, and protection. And so, when we look at the seemingly benign act of ticketing someone for speeding, we should rephrase that in our heads – this isn’t a $100 fine. It is 15 loaves of bread. The government is taking 15 loaves of bread from people for driving faster than they deem safe. Do you see the issue?
 
When you work at your job, you work for loaves of bread. And for every 30 loaves you create, the government takes 8. You don’t know where those 8 loaves are going, but they are gone.
 
And the more bread the government can legally take from you, the more they can dictate terms to you in order to allow you to eat.
 
That is totalitarianism. That is fascism. That is what it is to be a Nazi.
 
So, from now on, when you contemplate money being taken from people to prevent some possible calamity or another, don’t look at it from the lens of righteousness; look at it as the government finding every reason they can to take bread out of your mouth so they can gain more and more control over your life and feed their vested interests your bread.
 
For all forms of enforcement begin and end with economics. All censorship is economics. All speed limits, drug prohibition, curfews and control are driven by economics. Either money is taken from you, or you are prevented from making money. Which goes to the heart of fascism, whether it be Stalin or Hitler or Pot Pot: I dictate the terms of your life for what is best, and you will suffer starvation if you resist.