The Right's Smug Approval of State Violence

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Many of us have met snitches and other apologists for authority. What do such people say when others upset authority? "You got in trouble!" "Don't cry when you face consequences for breaking the rules!" "I guess you shouldn't have made teacher/the police/your boss mad, dumbass." "Maybe if you were more well-behaved you wouldn't have these problems ." "Looks like you f-cked around and found out."
You may have noticed that this attitude on display among the right in response to government violence.

The GOP is the self-proclaimed party of Small Government. They repeat again and again their skepticism of government as an implicitly inefficient, immoral, and violent entity.

Yet, the right has been extremely consistent in their defense of violent government institutions and their acts of violence against citizens and non-citizens. The IRS? The Department of Education? The Department of Energy? These are treated as tools of government control whose mere existence is treated as evidence of state immorality. But, the police? The military? Any agency that carries guns for the government? The right engage in hero worship of anyone who carries a gun for the state (except for idk the ATF? But that's because of conservative legal philosophy about federal government--nothing to do with objection to state violence). Condemning the police and the military is anathema to the self-proclaimed Skeptics of Government. These are the same people who proudly snitch on protesters (who aren't obeying the law enough!!) and draft-dodgers (who dare to refuse to participate in state violence like a bunch of statist commies!!).

When the police or military kill someone, the Small Government crowd, with extreme consistency, come out in droves to defend the state employee with a gun. Emphasis is placed always on the supposed legality of the state's violence. Small Government types have total faith in the Small Government's rules that the Small Government set for itself about when it's okay for Small Government gunmen to kill people.

Small Government "anti-authoritarians" will explain with surprising smugness how disobedience makes state gunmen justified in killing people. "She shouldn't have made him feel endangered." "She disobeyed a lawful order--what did she expect?" "She shouldn't have interfered in enforcement of the laws of the State (Blessings and Peace be upon It)". Imagine calling yourself a Skeptic of Government and scoffing at anyone and everyone who was killed for defying the Violent State. It's like having a classmate who brags about how "You can't tell me what to do!", yet who is also one of the first people to tattle to teacher when something happens that they don't like.

The Small Government crowd loudly prides itself on obedience and submission to the state. If the Small Government is engaging in state violence (which Small Government types claim to hate), then there is no more dedicated defense attorney for the Violent State than the Small Government crowd.
Yet, of course, when someone the right likes is killed by the state, then they go rushing for their guns. Ashley Babbitt became a martyr and the police who shot her were suddenly murderous traitors. Yet, when the left talks about it, I have never seen them respond with the same smug endorsement of state violence. I'm an anarcho-communist, and I don't think any of the Jan 6 people deserved to be shot by police. It's not "She shouldn't have disobeyed police", it's "She should not have joined a lynch mob which intended to threaten Congress to overturn an election." Whatever happened to their "F--k with police and find out" attitude when it's their side antagonizing law enforcement? I think I answered my own question.

Please point this out at every opportunity when they do it.

They love state violence when it's directed towards their enemies, but they sure whine and moan when they face even the gentlest of non-violent behavioural correction from the state.

GOP=party of hypocrites.

I think the ICE situation is more simple than that.

There's a number that's hanging over our heads.... 38 trillion.

I think there's a realization that the upward wealth transfer that Batya Ungar-Sargon wrote about is over, we can't do it anymore, we're finally getting around the political prohibitions against saying 'When you take on enough people who don't share our cultural assumptions, such as liberalism, and you put them together somewhere they don't assimilate - rather they make this country more like their own', and ICE ends up being clean-up from decades in arrears of everyone just loving the cheap under-the-table work, the drop in freight charges from ghost fleets, being able to shove a bunch of people into a factory with high BAC's and no ventilation, pretty much (wealthy) Republicans and Democrats were massively enjoying the kickbacks of having something like unofficial slave labor, as well as sex slaves in some cases too, and with 38 trillion the room to play those games can't continue because the surplus that funded them is gone.

What's wild is when I hear about the offenders (murders, SA'ists) getting picked up in Minneapolis yeah - a lot of Laotians for some reason but also a lot of them have been on the docket to be deported for 25-30 years.

??? Are you blaming immigrants for the national debt???


??? You're blaming immigrants for the "upward wealth transfer"???

I can think of plenty of other, far more relevant things to blame, including:

1) Single-family zoning (making housing more and more unaffordable)
2) Lower taxes for the rich, ever since Reagan.


Where, exactly, is this happening???

There might be a valid reason to fear cultural displacement if we had truly huge numbers of immigrants all coming from just one place. But that is not the case.

The U.S.A. has attracted immigrants from many different countries around the world. Small communities of immigrants from particular countries, as part of a larger mosaic of immigrants from many different countries around the world, are not a real threat to anyone, and are certainly not making the country as a whole more like their own, except perhaps in very small ways such as introducing new foods.


The way to end "unofficial slave labor" is not by punishing the immigrants, but by reforming our immigration system.

In particular: The federal government should allow individual U.S. states and municipalities to sponsor immigrants.

Right now we have a system where various states and cities refuse to co-operate with ICE, but the illegal status of many immigrants makes them vulnerable to exploitation. Hence the "unofficial slave labor."

It would be far better to officially allow individual states and cities to have their own different, fully legal immigration policies. Some states and municipalities have the infrastructure and resources to handle a large number of immigrants, while others do not. Some states and municipalities have a NEED for immigrants (because their populations are declining or aging), while others do not.

We also should get rid of H1 and H1B visas, which by their very nature are a de-facto form of indentured servitude.


Huh??? Immigrants expand the economy and the tax base; they do not shrink it. If we are ever to have any hope of paying down the national debt, we will need more hard-working immigrants, not fewer. (We'll also need higher taxes on the rich, and less military spending.)


Well, yes, some immigrants are violent criminals, but the vast majority are not.

We have plenty of home-grown violent criminals too. Mass deportations are not the solution to violent crime.

Just one of many failed housing policies over the past 80 years.

As for state violence, I am more worried about it being used to enforce the evangelical Christian equivalent of Sharia law.

You and me, brother (about evangelical version of Sharia law). But who ever listens to us Lutheran guys?

This Is a Warning to Gay Men in America on the YouTube channel of Alexander Sterling:

I really doubt that we are going to see it at the same extremely oppressive level as Sharia in the near future.

^^^you ain't seen NOTHIN' YET!

I wouldn't be a bit surprised. Not only would LGBTQ, Americans adhering to Non-Christian religions, and atheists be on the outs, but so would be the rest of us Christians outside evangelical theology.

The Republican Party is hardly the party of limited government. That was true when it was still Conservative and is especially trump with Horsesh*t Trump. The difference between the Republican Party and the Democrat Party is not in spending, but in what they want to spend it on.

If you want a party that is truly a party of limited government, take a serious look at the Libertarian Party. It is not only the only party of limited government, it is also the only party that actually supports Capitalism.

I would vote Libertarian but the thing is they will never be able to compete with the Democrats and Republicans.

Would me as a Church of Christer be on the outs politically?

Using traffic cameras to track down a woman who had an abortion and left Texas seems extremely oppressive to me.

As part of this search, Texas law enforcement appears to have
reviewed footage from more than 83,000 automatic license plate reader cameras, including
cameras in Washington and Illinois, where abortion is lawfully protected as a basic right.2

Tracking a woman across state lines for this purpose—and allowing authorities in anti-abortion
2025-08-06.garcia-krishnamoorthi-to-flock-re-lpr-tech-and-tracking.pdf

Forgive me, but were the Church of Christ once called Congregationalists?