"Enough is enough." People usually say this in abusive relationships, when they are finally willing to end them.
If they’re courageous, they’ll leave that relationship. If they’re scared, they won’t.
In a personal relationship with another human being, the process of leaving is straight-forward. Ideally, you realize that the individual you’re engaged with is bad for you, and so you leave them or throw them out.
It’s far more complicated in abstract relationships, such as the one with the father state.
When it comes to government, people say “enough is enough” in regular intervals. Getting out of such an abstract relationship, however, is a little bit more complicated than getting out of a personal, physical relationship.
It’s far from impossible, people just don’t do it right.
With government, you don’t simply throw out the abusive individual, because the entire concept of government is based on abuse of power. Coercion is built into the system, and there’s no way of getting rid of it other than getting rid of government entirely.
Throwing out an individual, or even an entire cabinet, senate or committee, won’t do any good, because the successors are still going to operate in a framework that is characterized by the monopoly on violence.
Anything achieved by the government, no matter how altruistic or benevolent, looses its virtue because it is done by violence, or the threat of the use of violence, ie: coercion.
Think about your personal, physical relationships: what good would getting rid of an abusive partner do, if your next partner operated in the exact same abusive manner?
A good partner understands and accepts it when you say, “no.” A good partner understands they cannot control you!
Nothing in a relationship works without your consent. Consent is the very basis for any relationship.
The state never takes “no” for an answer to anything it has decreed. We like to believe that our relationship with the state is similar to a personal relationship where we get the chance to choose a “good partner” every four or five years.
But that is a great illusion.
Even if you thought it acceptable to only be able to get rid of an abusive partner every four years, instead of immediately, you still have to take into account the underlying system of coercion.
If the monopoly on violence wasn’t there, it wouldn’t be a government. The monopoly on violence is one of the defining properties that makes it government.
It only becomes government, because we believe these people have special rights, such as the right to use violence, or the threat of the use of violence, to achieve results.
So, in order to end an abusive relationship with the state, we need to first realize the grand illusion, the big lie, for which we have fallen as young children: that the people in government are in any way shape or form different from us.
You would laugh your abusive partner out the room, if they told you they had the right to control you, to coerce you into doing their bidding and to lock you away if you didn’t comply.
You would laugh, because you realize the absurdity of such a claim: the claim to have special rights.
You don’t laugh when state officials tell you they can control you, because you’ve been indoctrinated from a young age into believing there was some virtue to the control.
But there is never any virtue in adults trying to control each other.
Appendix:
In anticipation of the parent-child argument, which is generally brought up at this point to defend and justify control between human beings, I would simply suggest that you’re not a child anymore.
The whole point of growing up is to learn how to take responsibility for your actions and conduct yourself in a society based on voluntary interactions and exchange.
People who want an all-powerful nanny state are mental children that don’t want to take responsibility.
The solution:
The solution is quite simple. Stop legitimizing an institution that claims to have a monopoly on violence.
The reason this is so difficult to put into practice is mind control. You have to first realize that you were indoctinated, put under a spell so to speak, when you were far to young to think for yourself.
All that is required of you now is to think for yourself and realize the absurdity of the claims government makes. Which, of course, requires you to realize that you have been wrong for much of your life.