Half-baked ideas are pervasive, infecting not just the minds of ardent statists but even those who claim to champion freedom.  These ideas are often embraced without logic, which makes them resistant to reason.  When someone hasn’t arrived at a misguided conclusion through logical thought, it’s unlikely that logic will be what changes their mind.  Remember, it’s not always about convincing that one person—it’s about reaching those who are listening in the background.  A sound idea, after all, never requires force to prove its worth.

Many hold romanticized notions of statism, blind to the reality that these are nothing more than half-baked ideas propped up by coercion.  History is riddled with the catastrophic consequences of such ideas, and they are not relics so ancient that they’ve been forgotten.  Statism, in its various forms, has left a trail of death and destruction.  The only way one could be ignorant of this is through willful blindness.  Don’t be fooled by the pleasant-sounding names these ideas are given; they all share the same core: the violation of private property.

At their heart, these statist fantasies depend on the rejection of freedom.  To impose these ideas, people must first be dehumanized by their so-called leaders.  Labels and categories will be invented to divide and control the masses.  These tactics are not new, yet many fall prey to the illusion that these ideas are innovative or progressive.  The truth is, these ideologies have been tried repeatedly, each time leaving unimaginable devastation in their wake.  The variations are minor, but the outcomes are always the same: failure and suffering on a massive scale.

Even those who claim to be for freedom can be misled by corrosive ideas.  Various thoughts float in and out of their discourse—some may even lead to the right conclusions, but they arrive there by accident rather than sound reasoning.  Freedom’s foundation is, and always will be, rooted in property rights.  Yet even with a solid foundation, errors can be made in applying principles.  Human reasoning is fallible, but those who build on the bedrock of freedom are far more likely to reach correct conclusions than those who build on the shifting sands of statism.

The real pandemic today is the spread of intellectual poison.  The earlier this poison takes root, the harder it becomes to cure.  A prime breeding ground for such toxic ideas is the statist-controlled education system.  The state seeks to inject this poison into the minds of children, indoctrinating them with falsehoods from an early age.  These ideas derive their strength from the innocence of youth, and the statist system is hostile to both true education and religion—two forces that challenge its authority. The state craves absolute power, and it can’t coexist with the independent moral and intellectual structures that education and faith provide.

The fight, then, is not just for freedom but for truth.  To resist the spread of these half-baked ideas is to defend against a far-reaching intellectual assault.