God was dead, but God has returned to life in the form of government. This essay examines a terrifying proposition: taken together, the number of people who are willing to do violence to others on behalf of their government greatly exceeds the number of people willing to do violence to others on behalf on any other mentality or ideology. Worship of government is its own religion.

For those who follow the Government religion, any pronouncement from the government is the same as if the clouds have parted and the voice of God had boomed from the heavens. The government simply cannot lie – its size and power makes it both omnipresent and omnibenevolent. Therefore, every law and decree passed by government is regarded by its followers as if it was written in holy scripture.

If all the available scientific and medical evidence says, for example, that cannabis is medicinal and can be used to treat nausea and insomnia, but the government says that cannabis is not medicinal, then the followers of the Government religion will say that cannabis is not medicinal. The scientific literature and all the evidence be damned – the government says it’s not medicinal, therefore it isn’t.

Before any decision can be made, the question has to be asked: does the government approve of this? This is the government-worshipper’s equivalent of the Christian question “What would Jesus do?”. All actions must be viewed through the prism of whether they serve government objectives. If not, those actions are sinful and must be discouraged.

Police officers are usually fanatical followers of the Government religion, which offers a ready excuse for them to discharge their baser, sadistic instincts on members of the public. Without the Government religion, Police officers would not have the authority to physically abuse people without punishment. The Government religion raises these people, who would otherwise mostly be criminals, into a position of prestige, and they return the favour with obedience.

Mental health workers are another. The job of a mental health worker is to determine when a person has lost touch with reality and to guide them back to it. The problem with this is that they have no natural or philosophical explanation of the nature of reality and so they rely on the government to provide one. This means that the government literally decides what reality is for mental health workers. They are consequently hopelessly mired in the religion.

Bureaucrats are a third, and arguably the worst of all three. Bureaucrats are to the Government religion what the cardinals are to Catholicism. They are the ones that seek to organise the world so that their religion might be dominant. In the case of the bureaucrat, the objective is to use Police officers and mental health workers to destroy those who oppose the religion.

If one reasons by analogy to dogs, we can see why government workers behave the way they do. Dogs are completely loyal to the people that feed them, on account of the gratitude created from that dog no longer having to worry about where its daily food comes from. In a state of Nature, the majority of creatures must live in a state of extreme anxiety on account of the pressure to acquire sufficient food resources to live. Anyone feeding a dog takes all that anxiety away, and the resulting gratitude leads to loyalty.

By the same token, the natural stress of finding enough money to live on has been alleviated, in the life of the government worker, by the government. Therefore, the government worker regards the government with the same undying, arse-licking loyalty that a dog regards its owner with. The government provides food and shelter like God provides manna from Heaven, and in exchange the government worker obeys the orders they are given.

Because Government-worshippers treat the desire of their government as if it was the Will of God, they are capable of causing immense destruction and human suffering. All of the death camp guards on both the Nazi and Soviet side were Government-worshippers, as were the Chinese mandarins responsible for the mass starvation of the Great Leap Forward. Those responsible for destroying their own young people through conducting the War on Drugs on them also commit their crimes out of a sense of the holiness of government directives.

Because Government-worshippers are responsible for most of the crimes against humanity committed throughout history, the rest of us need to oppose the spread of the cult and the fanaticism of its followers, for our own good. The best way to do this is to cause the Government-worshipper to realise that the authority they worship is fallible. This is why they are extremely reluctant to consider the possibility, much like any religious person.

The discovery that the government may have actually been wrong about something is enough to shatter the life of the government-worshipper. This will cause them to have a crisis of faith, which, like the crises of faith suffered by followers of other religions, can lead to the complete rejection of the Government religion.

The more doubt a government worker has in the infallibility of their paymaster, the less likely it is that that worker will commit a human rights abuse. Therefore, causing people to lose faith in their government is essential to keeping the rest of us safe. Making Government-worshippers realise that the authority they worship is fallible is the key to undermining the Government religion.

*

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis).