Do statists have Stockholm Syndrome?

[MrBogosity]

Something occurred to me today, wondering how statists can deny that taxation is force etc. It's about the only explanation I can think of that makes sense.

Stockholm Syndrome is a psychological syndrome where people who are captured begin to sympathize with and even defend their captors. This also explains why abused spouses make excuses for their abuser, and why it's so difficult to leave. The similarities between statists and abused spouses has been remarked on many times.

There are several features indicative of Stockholm Syndrome, which also comprise reasons why it's so difficult to rehabilitate them:

• They have positive feelings and even love for their abusers
• They have negative feelings for people trying to rescue them
• They support their abusers' behavior and reasons
• They act in support of their abusers, even helping them
• They have an inability to reason or otherwise work to gain their freedom from their abuser

I ask you, how does this not fit statism to a T?

I cannot think of any other explanation for why, for example, the Justice Department can just come right out and say it's okay to kill American citizens without warrant or trial just because one high-level official thinks it should be done, and not result in people crying for the Obama Administration to be impeached and imprisoned.

There is a theory called the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptiveness (EEA), which theorizes that in hunter-gatherer societies, support for the group was vital for the survival of the individual. A woman taken from another tribe, captured, even raped, will have a better chance of surviving and having more children if she accepts the new group, than if she rejects them and is killed or abandoned. It seems this evolutionary drive happens on the large scale, too.

Nothing else I can think of explains so well why people just submit to being sexually abused simply so they can fly on a plane.

I also can't help thinking it's related to the Cult of the Omnipotent State. As I've pointed out before, the tactics used by cults to maintain loyalty are remarkably similar to those used by the state, the media, and the statists themselves.

This is also something that gets me about psychology: psychological syndromes suddenly cease to be syndromes when applied society-wide. Religious believers fit every single criteria of paranoid delusions except one: when the delusion is not shared by the majority of society. Any skeptic should recognize that as argumentum ad populum, and reject that criterion; many other people having the same delusion does not make it real, and does not make all of the other aspects--such as reacting with hostility to contrary information--valid all of a sudden.

So, just as I think it's invalid to say that a delusional disorder isn't a delusional disorder just because most people in your country believe it (and does that mean it all of a sudden would be delusional if they simply moved to a country of mostly atheists?), I also think it's invalid to say that Stockholm Syndrome isn't Stockholm Syndrome just because most people behave that way towards their government.

What do you all think?

[Lord T Hawkeye]

Seems to be the cause of so many of our problems, that our instincts think we're still living in the caveman times.  How does one go about fixing that?

[VectorM]

I've seen this brought up many times before, by different people. Seems about right to me, but then again, does that syndrome apply to people BORN in that environment?

[Travis Retriever]

@Shane--that entire post--especially the bit at the end about the argument from popularity used by psychologists (and special pleading by it) is a full on win/fav quote.