In the discourse of statists, there is a group of phrases of which one or more tend to be present in nearly every argument. While this is not an exhaustive listing of that group, it does contain twenty-five of the most common phrases that statists use in their arguments. As propaganda has a tendency to be repetitive, some of these phrases contain the same logical fallacies, and will therefore have similar refutations. As such, the phrases are ordered so that earlier rebuttals also apply to some later phrases.
1. “Our government” “Our” is the possessive form of “we.” This phrase assumes that a collective exists and has ownership of the government, which is another collective. To exist is to have a concrete, particular form in physical reality. To say that abstract objects exist is to beg the question of where they exist, to which there is no answer because there is no empirically observable entity. To say that collectives exist is beg the question of what physical form they take, as all available physical forms are occupied by the individuals which are said to comprise the collective. Thus, there is no “we”; there is only you, I, and every other individual person. By the same token, the government does not exist; each person, each building, each gun, etc. exists. As such, the phrase “our government” is meaningless. Additionally, to own something is to have a right of exclusive control over it. Part and parcel of this right is the right to physically destroy that which one owns. As governments use force to stop citizens who attempt to physically destroy the state, the citizens are not the de facto owners of a government.
2. “We are the government” This phrase confuses society with government, which is as serious an error as confusing an entire human body with a malignant tumor growing inside of that body.
3. “The social contract” A valid contract must be presented honestly and agreed to voluntarily, without duress or fraud. The social contract does not meet this standard because the state will initiate the use of force against anyone who does not voluntarily enter into the social contract. The state is also not automatically dissolved when it fails to uphold its obligations under the social contract, so the presentation is dishonest if it even occurs at all. Therefore, the social contract cannot be considered a legitimate contract.
4. “Our leader” In the case of the state, we are not speaking of just any kind of leader, but a ruler. No one owns the ruler, and the ruler falsely claims to own those who are ruled, as the ruler claims a right to exclusive control over the ruled and has no logically defensible basis for doing so. Thus the leader is not “ours.”
5. “The leader of the free world” “The free world” does not exist; each individual person exists. Again, we are speaking of rulers rather than all types of leaders. Free people do not have rulers; they rule themselves.
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