NIOF Reconsidered
by Lindsay Perigo
In the lives of all of us there come defining moments when cherished "truths" turn out to be not so unassailable after all. We are reminded that solid rocks are made of malleable clay, & we say, "Here I stand!" at our peril. The choice we confront at such moments is: to succumb to false pride & evade our new-found awareness, clinging stubbornly to false "truths" even as they crumble, or to accept that we have been mistaken, acknowledge the fact openly, make any amends that might be necessary, & move on.
I have had such a moment with the non-initiation of force (NIOF) principle.
"Whatever may be open to disagreement," said Rand, "there is one act of evil that may not, that no man may commit against others & no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate - do you hear me? No man may start - the use of physical force against others."
She was wrong.
My belief in NIOF has withstood much. It withstood the improbable ethical dilemmas so beloved of useless professors whose main dilemma is that they're not sure of their own existence. It withstood even the bizarre scenarios concocted by Liberty magazine editor R. W. Bradford to demonstrate that NIOF was of necessity expendable in certain situations, such as falling off your balcony, grabbing the flagstaff on the balcony of your downstairs neighbour & hoisting yourself onto his property. (If he pushes you off, who has initiated force? He or you?) My belief in NIOF, I say, withstood such hobgoblins. I did, after all, understand the difference between a rule & a principle.
But certain real-life commonplaces have caused me to modify my adherence to NIOF. In such matters I am now an enthusiastic advocate of the initiation of force. Swift & terrible force. Induction cries out, & deduction confirms, that in cases such as these, the need to waive NIOF is irresistible.
Vegetarians, for instance. There is much more to this than Miss Rand's dismissal of vegetarian food as "grass." The very existence of vegetarians is an egregious affront to the heroic virtues so dear to all our stout hearts. Vegetarians quail at the sight & taste of flesh & blood, on which all budding heroes should cut their teeth. Vegetarians' brains atrophy for want of protein. It is a scientific fact that brains fed on plant food shrink to the size of a pea, by a dialectical process of photothesis, photoantithesis, & photosynthesis. (Readers are referred here to the works of Dr. Chris Matthew Sciabarra.) Vegetarians, in other words, are effectively brainless, which is why so many of them are Buddhists.
Vegetarians are sociopaths. Their fetid flatulence is more fatal than the most maniacal, marauding, mass-killing madman. Vegetarian farts have been known to stop squillions of skunks dead in their tracks, instantaneously & literally. Yet offending vegetarians, pasty of face & loose of bowel, continue to walk the streets, willfully offloading their "foul & pestilent congregation of vapours" (there were vegetarians in Shakespeare's time, obviously) into the pristine atmosphere. A strong case could be made, actually, that the assassination of vegetarians would be an instance of retaliatory force, but I leave that argument for another day. What is incontrovertible at this point is that vegetarians are death-worshippers, who should be impaled on giant carrots or drowned in cabbage juice, thence to be despatched to the lowest rung of hell that has been prepared for them by God, Who is indisputably a carnivore (remember all those sacrificial lambs? He wasn't much interested in offerings of burned broccoli, was He?).
Also consigned to that destination should be teetotallers. These cowardly creatures, mindful of 'in vino veritas,' are afraid of making fools of themselves while under the influence of alcohol. All well & good, but they deprive the rest of us of some healthy, life-affirming, unwholesome entertainment by their abstinence. This is damned inconsiderate, to say the least. To say more, their propensity to drink water as an alternative to alcohol is downright unseemly. What fish do in water is common knowledge, & recent research shows that 100% of people who die have drunk water at some time in their lives. Those who deliberately opt for water & eschew alcohol are profoundly, irredeemably anti-life - & insufferable wowsers to boot. Force of the most fiendish kind should be initiated against them with alacrity.
Then there are academics.
Academics.
Not the honourable, true intellectuals of yore, but the contemporary crop of loquacious lickspittles.
Academics.
They flatulate with footnotes, quiver with equivocation, warble with waffle, simper with sophistry, vibrate with verbosity, pulsate with pomposity - all amounting to precisely nothing. Like those of their species called economists, they could be laid end to end & not reach a conclusion. They say, "It could be argued that ..." & refrain from saying whether they are arguing it. They say, "It seems to me that ..." & always avoid, "It is the case that ... ." They are virulently, militantly anti-certainty, thus anti-reason, & thus, anti-life. Let us therefore force an end-point upon them - the lowest rung of hell - so that a certain facet of reality - that flames are excruciatingly hot - may impress itself upon them unambiguously. (Or will they still say, "It could be argued that what seems to me to be a luminous body of burning gas that appears to be flickering around what some have called my rectum is what some might describe as inimical to what I might regard as my comfort & ongoing viability"?)
Need I go on? Is it not clear that we have a clear & present duty expeditiously to execute the likes of the above? (To this list, naturally, should be added gum-chewers, people who mumble, rap artists, MBA graduates, most women, & anyone else I find irritating.)
Yes, SOLOists, we have arrived at a defining moment. Whether 'tis nobler in the flesh to suffer the slings & arrows of outrageous deadbeats, or to take arms against this sea of sapheads - & by opposing, end them.
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