Words can be harmful. So what? The petty tyrants of the world like to shut down free speech and control what we’re allowed to say online and offline as a matter of priority.

And one of the arguments they use to justify their censorship is that they insist that words are violence, which has always been funny to me because no one’s ever been punched in the pronouns, which makes a funny punchline, pun fully intended, but actually there is some truth to the claim that words can be harmful. That’s true. And free speech defenders such as myself, well, we actually make a mistake if we try and insist that that’s not true, that words aren’t harmful or hurtful because they are. The fact is words carry ideas and ideas are the most powerful force known to man and ideas can most certainly be harmful. So, the correct response when people say words are harmful is not to say no they’re not. It’s to say so what? A hammer can be harmful. Beef vindaloo can be harmful. Your fat uncle bending over and showing his butt crack can definitely be psychologically harmful. So what?

See, there’s a second unspoken assumption built into this idea. This idea that words are harmful and so the government should do something. And that is the idea that if something is harmful then the government is the solution because of course the government can fix it. What we often don’t realize when we have these sorts of debates about free speech etc is that the person on the other side of this issue doesn’t just see this issue differently. They see the whole world differently and that’s why they see the issue differently. There’s a set of assumptions of ground truths that they hold and they won’t change their perspective on this issue for as long as they’re looking at it through these unspoken assumptions.

So, today I’m going to challenge and rebut one of the biggest and most harmful assumptions of all.

The assumption that the government could fix everything if we just gave it enough power. And I’m going to give you the tools to spot when someone is viewing the world through this lens. And I’m going to give you the counterarguments that you need to help you to respond. But before we get to any of that, my name’s Topher Field. This is the Topher Project and I help busy people like you to cut through the crap and make sense of the nonsense that surrounds us. I’m 100% viewer supported. So please help me to keep the Topher project going by buying me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net. And if you appreciate my videos and how I help to clarify complex issues, then you’ll love my books. There’s my first best-selling book titled Good People Break Bad Laws. It’s all about government, power, human rights, and civil disobedience. Then there’s my second book, Good Christians Break Bad Laws, which is all about the theology of civil disobedience. You’ll also find the DVD of my multi-award-winning documentary, Battleground Melbourne. And you’ll find my t-shirts and hoodies in a range of designs, all available at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com.

And in case you haven’t heard yet, I am discontinuing these five designs. These are some of my favorites to make way for some new designs coming up soon. So, you’ve only got about a week left till the end of November to grab any or all of these designs, these five that you see next to me before they will be discontinued forever. And everything that you do buy from goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com is going to help me to keep the Topher project going.

Okay. Where does this idea come from that if something is harmful or hurtful or bad that we should get the government involved? Well, there’s a few theories on where that concept comes from. I personally believe that this is just one of many examples of our modern day idolatry, our worship of government. And yes, I do very much mean worship in the religious sense. As a culture, we are not an atheistic culture. We believe in God. We just think that the government is God to provide for us, to protect us, to rescue us, to heal us, to educate us, to tell us right from wrong, and to give us prosperity. These are all the sorts of things which humans once looked to God for. And you don’t have to believe in God to see that as a culture, we seem to believe that the government is God.

But I’d go even further. We’ve believed this lie that government can bring an end to suffering and harm, heaven on earth, a utopia. That if there’s something harmful and wrong and bad happening in the world, well, we should get the government involved because they’ll be able to fix it, of course. And if there’s still suffering in the world, clearly, we just need to write some more laws. Now, we need to accept that we, the voting public, actually share considerable responsibility for this very sorry state of affairs. Because historically at the ballot box, we reward politicians who promise to fix things, to keep us safe, to provide us with welfare or health care or whatever. Nothing buys votes in Australia faster than promising to spend the taxpayers’ dime on things that don’t work. So, unfortunately, we’ve brought this on ourselves.

Politics is appealing to people with a god complex.

Those are the sorts of people that want to run for office. People who really do believe that the world would be perfect if only everyone did as I said they should do and then unfortunately, we the voting public support and even reward those sorts of delusions of grandeur at the ballot box. Now, there’s more to it of course there are certainly cultural factors which make this a particular problem in Australia. Clive James famously reflected that the problem with Australians is not that so many of them are descended from convicts, but that so many of them are descended from prison officers. Hmm we hate to admit it, but Australia has a strong run to nanny reflex. Whenever we see or hear something we don’t like, we go off to do somebody in.

We saw this at work during Covid of course when the phone lines to do people in were shamefully busy. We’re seeing it again now with the Australian Taxation Office saying that they’ve received 50,000 tip offs about people avoiding tax in just the 2024-25 financial year alone. When someone is being naughty in Australia, we run to Nanny and do them in. When somebody hurts us, we run to Nanny. And then we wonder why Nanny has gotten so fat and belligerent and out of control. It was us. We gave her that power.

Okay. So, what do we do about it? And specifically coming back to this issue of freedom of speech and the fact that words can be harmful. How do we respond when people use the fact that words can be harmful as an excuse for government censorship? Well, what we should not do is try and pretend that words are not harmful. They can be. When someone says that certain speech should be banned because it’s harmful or that people shouldn’t be allowed to say something like that because it hurts people’s feelings or that there ought to be a law against specific kinds of speech. Don’t try and argue that words can’t hurt because it’s a lie and it’s a losing argument.

Instead, ask them why they think that physical violence is the right way to respond to verbal violence.

I usually say something like, “Hey, I agree that violence is bad, but I’m kind of confused because it sounds like you’re saying we should use physical violence to stop people from saying hurtful words.” And usually they’ll object because the truth is they don’t actually understand what it is that they’re saying. So they’ll reply with something like, “I’m not saying we should use physical violence. I’m just saying it should be against the law to say those things.” And from there, I know I’m going to have an enjoyable conversation because something that I hold as a worldview, a lens, a perspective through which I view all of politics and all of law and culture is that the government and the law are violence.

That’s literally what they are. And to make a law is to make a threat of violence because a law is simply permission for approved people to use violence for approved purposes. When it comes to countering somebody else’s hurtful speech, you don’t need a law to speak out in response to speech that you don’t like. Nor do you need a law to walk away so that you don’t have to hear them anymore or to speak up and urge others to walk away or to call for a boycott or whatever it may be. You only need a law if you’re going to do something to them physically. Stop them, arrest them, find them, imprison them. Laws are permission for approved people to use violence for approved purposes. That’s what the law is each and every time. And that is okay in certain circumstances. People should absolutely be able to use physical violence when necessary to apprehend, for example, suspected murderers or thieves. But this rule that laws are violence is universal. It applies in every case. There are no exceptions.

So, when someone calls for there to be a law for the government to stop whatever in truth they’re calling for the use of violence. Again, people object. You can’t say that all laws are violence. They don’t use violence to enforce jaywalking laws. Yeah, they do. The only reason they don’t use violence is if you don’t try and stop them from enforcing that law on you. You better stop when they tell you to. You better give them your info when you when they demand it. You better pay that fine. Cuz if you run, violence. If you refuse to give your details, violence. Not in the sense that they’re going to beat you to a pulp, but they’re going to slap you in handcuffs, drag you down to the station, lock you up for as long as necessary until you do as you’re told.

That’s a violation of your human rights. That is violence.

If you refuse to pay the fine for long enough, well, eventually sheriffs with guns on their hips will show up at your door to take things from you. And if you say no, then well, you better believe there’ll be violence. If you don’t believe that violence is behind every single law without exception, even the pettiest of laws, it’s only because you’ve never said no for long enough to discover the violence behind. Eventually, if you keep saying no for long enough, the government will resort to violence. And they’ll justify it in all sorts of ways. Oh, he’s in contempt of court. Oh, he resisted arrest. But whatever the excuse may be, ultimately violence will come in the name of even the pettiest of laws if you say no for long enough. You’ll get imprisonment, extortion, threats, restrictions, violations of your human rights until you do as you’re told.

So, when someone says to you, “Words are violence, so there ought to be a law.” Reply to them that laws are violence, and using physical violence is no way to respond to verbal violence. Now, personally, I don’t want laws to stop hate speech or racist speech or any kind of speech because I want racist and hateful people to out themselves publicly. I want to know where they are so that I can avoid them, have nothing to do with them, ensure that I don’t employ them or use their businesses or have anything to do with them. We know that racists exist. We know that some people are hate-filled [….] That’s true. But silencing them doesn’t stop them from existing. It just gives them victim status which they use to spread their hate in whispers.

Let them speak publicly. Yes, it’s hurtful speech. Yes, that speech is harmful.

But then we respond with counterarguments and by exercising our freedom of association to have nothing to do with them. And when we do that, we ensure that their words are more harmful to themselves than they are to others. And we don’t have to use physical violence to accomplish that. And finally, this is a principle that applies to basically everything. Resist the urge to believe that the government can fix anything at all. That calling on nanny government is going to make things better. It won’t. As Ronald Reagan famously said, the nine most dangerous words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” It’s time we realized that government is not God. It can’t and it won’t save us. And every time we ask the government to create utopia, heaven on earth, by writing laws to fix our problems, all we do is create violence instead.

My name’s Topher Field. This is the Topher project and this is what I do. I bring perspective to the world and help busy people like you to cut through the crap, make sense of the nonsense, and to have an answer for people who see the world differently to you. Now, if you found this video in any way thought-provoking, then I suggest you get one or both of my books about government, power, law and order, human rights, and civil disobedience. My first book, Good People Break Bad Laws. This is all about the role of civil disobedience in a modern society. My second book, Good Christians Break Bad Laws, is all about the theology of civil disobedience. And I really dive deep into this idea of modern day idolatry in that book, The Worship of Government. You’ll find both my books on Amazon, but you’ll also find them at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com, where you will also find my DVD documentary, Battleground Melbourne, as well as my t-shirts and my hoodies in a range of different designs, including five original designs, which are about to be discontinued at the end of November. So, head over to goodpeoplebreakladaws.com and grab all your favorites while they are still in stock.

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