Тег: Totalitarianism

The Law Named After a Dead Girl: How Someone Else’s Misfortune Becomes Someone’s Power

Do you know this phrase? It can shut down any discussion, any dispute about freedom, rights, and common sense. As soon as an official says “we are protecting the children” — that’s it, the opponent already looks like a monster.

American scientists from the University of Texas at El Paso decided to test how this actually works. Not on the level of “well, everyone understands,” but in laboratory conditions, with control groups, numbers, and statistics. The results were frightening.

Take a bill limiting solitary confinement for teenagers. Give people the dry text. 75% support it. Now add the story of a girl named Rosemary, who committed suicide after six weeks in solitary. Support — 100%. Not 90%, not 95%, but 100%. Or take a law on alcohol monitoring for parolees. Without the story — 60% “for.” With the story of a deceased teenager — 80%.

And then comes the most interesting part. The scientists separated the variables: here is just the victim’s name in the title of the law, here is a story without a name, and here is both. Guess what worked? Of course, not the name, but the story. “The Vasily Pupkin Law” by itself achieves almost nothing. But a three-paragraph tear-jerker triggers the “I’ll sign anything, just do something” mode.

The mechanism is very primitive: take a tragedy, link it to any law you need, and voilà — the population’s critical thinking is completely switched off. Now let’s look at how this works in our case.

2012: Dima Yakovlev dies — a little boy adopted by Americans who died of heatstroke after being left in a car by his adoptive father. A terrible tragedy. At the same time, US authorities pass the “Magnitsky Act,” hitting the wallets of Russian security forces and officials. And to retaliate, the State Duma passes a law completely blocking Americans from adopting Russian orphans (including those who had already met their future adoptive parents). And they named this act of political revenge the “Dima Yakovlev Law.” It doesn’t increase oversight of adopters, it doesn’t reform the system; it simply closes the border to all American parents and thousands of children who could have actually found a family.

Why? “To protect children from violence.” Although anyone who has ever looked at statistics knows: the probability of violence in a Russian orphanage is orders of magnitude higher than in a European or American adoptive family. But who needs statistics when there is a dead boy and a beautiful name for a law?

Same year, 2012. A registry of banned websites appears. The formal goal is to protect children from suicidal content, drugs, and pornography. Who would argue? “What, you’re for child pornography?” — and that’s it, conversation over.

Then begins what we have all observed. Teenage problems didn’t go anywhere, but the Roskomnadzor registry, created “for children,” gradually, like a boa constrictor, swallows everything in sight: opposition websites, independent media, pages criticizing the government, Social Network X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, VPN services, and generally any thought that does not align with the party line. The mechanism is already tuned, the censorship infrastructure is built; all that’s left is to expand the list.

What is this all leading to? Bureaucracy does not know how to empathize. When the state weeps for victims from a podium, it is simply lubricating with tears the very bolt it intends to screw into your civil rights. Creating laws based on isolated, most emotional, and horrific cases (lawyers call these “hard cases”) is a direct road to totalitarianism. Empathy is a wonderful human quality, and that is exactly why we must protect it from the sweaty hands of politicians.

Next time you are asked to give up a piece of freedom, the privacy of correspondence, or the right to choose in the name of “safety” and the memory of another victim — turn your internal skeptic to the maximum. Because these laws will not help the dead in any way. But you and I will have to somehow live with this repressive creativity.

Voluntarist, Bitarch

“The Game Is Over” for Tyranny: Science Confirms the Inevitable Drift to Freedom

We often hear complaints about how the world is plunging into a chasm, the state is tightening its screws, and people are only dreaming of a strong hand. However, the current situation is not as bleak as it’s commonly perceived, and libertarians have reason to be pleased – recent research by psychologists and sociologists says otherwise. If you look at the long term, authoritarianism (both left and right) simply has no evolutionary chances. Therefore, let’s examine two fascinating scientific papers that explain why the “market of ideas” will inevitably resolve in favor of freedom.

The first Swedish study uncovered a mechanism that works as a one-way valve of history. It revealed that the language of freedom is universal. Arguments based on care (do no harm) and justice (honesty, one rule for all) work with everyone. Everyone is willing to change their mind if you can prove that prohibitions or high taxes are unfair or harmful to people. But the language of coercion is more localized. Arguments based on loyalty, authority, and sacredness (“this is what our ancestors bequeathed us,” “respect power,” “this is for the greater good”), only work with conservatives, while those with more liberal views simply brush this noise aside.

What does this mean for us? In public debates, authoritarian conservatives have a broken “transmitter.” They can only persuade their own supporters. But arguments for freedom of personality – based on not interfering with other people’s lives – are able to attract people from both camps. Over time, this creates a “progressive drift.” Society is slowly but surely moving towards reducing violence and recognizing the rights of individuals simply because these arguments are understandable to everyone, while arguments against (based on tradition or power) cease to work for new generations.

The second study from Portugal dug even deeper. Scientists didn’t just look at what values people have, but how they prioritize when making choices. It turned out that the key difference is not that conservatives are “evil” and liberals are “good.” The difference lies in compromises: the progressive part of society places the well-being of the individual above the interests of the group, while the conservative part is willing to sacrifice the individual for preserving the group, hierarchy, and traditions.

But the most encouraging thing researchers found within the right-wing camp. It turns out that the right are far from monolithic. There are both “high moralists” – those very religious fanatics and shoe-lovers with skyrocketing loyalty and obedience to authority, but also “low moralists” – people who vote for the right (usually for economic reasons) but don’t give a damn about “creeps,” authority, and traditions. And this is precisely the split that we, libertarians, should be exploiting. “Secular conservatives,” who don’t need a Tsar but just want them to butt out, are good allies. And the old conservative model, which held up on authority, religion, and obedience, is only losing its base.

In a Portuguese study there’s another amusing detail – scientists frankly admitted: “We forgot to include the freedom scale in the study.” They measured care, justice, loyalty, purity… but forgot about Liberty. That’s where the treasure is buried! Libertarianism is unique because we take a universal basis (the principle of non-aggression (NAP) = care/justice), which is understandable to everyone, and discard all the rubbish about “duty to one’s homeland” and “sacrosanctness of power.”

Why is the future for libertarians?! If you put these two pieces together, the picture becomes clear. The old world, built on arguments like “you must, because I’m the boss” or “that’s how it’s done,” is slowly dying. This language simply stops being perceived by people. Conversely, the language of personal rights, honesty, and minimizing harm – this is the language of the future.

Voluntary, Bitarch