Good Reasons to Reject Authority

From time to time I encounter a person who does not reject or even question authority. I always find them baffling at first because after all, blindly accepting authority is a patently unintelligent thing to do.

If a person has any intelligence and has not been actively brainwashed, they will at least question authority. Indeed, they have an inclination to question anything that seems illegitimate -- any bad argument or rationale -- and the prime example here is that of whether an authority deserves to have any power at all.

Children growing up naturally understand the importance of liberty and free inquiry. That understanding is hard to suppress. However children also fail to question their parents' authority so that the child can learn. What bad authority does is, it induces people to re-enter a childlike state, to give up desires for free inquiry and free action, and to give to that bad authority the enormous privilege of not being questioned or opposed.

After the natural inclination for questioning and liberty has been suppressed and the authority gains immunity from any challenge by the people it has duped, the problem becomes one of what the dupes don't do: The questions they do not ask. The thoughts they do not permit. The actions by authority that go unchallenged.

The Reasons

Why reject an authority? Ah, let us count the ways.

They are incompetent.

A mayor mismanages a city.
A CEO mismanages a company.

They are less intelligent than you.

The dumb gang member who tells bystanders not to videotape his broad-daylight drug deals.
The dumb criminals who videotape their own crimes and upload the videos to YouTube.

They are thugs.

The mafia boss who demands allegience and money.
The police-state goons who try to intimidate the public into submission.

They are corrupt and self-serving.

A government scientist deliberately ignores key evidence about 9/11.
The county health inspector who takes bribes.
The election official who is rigging elections.
The Congresswhore taking legal and illegal corporate bribes.

They punish independent thinking.

The religious leader who demands belief and conformity yet offers no proof of any supernatural beings.

They are allied with people who harm you.

Congresswhores take legal bribes from Israeli organizations. Note that Israel has been implicated in bringing about 9/11 by independent investigators and indeed about 60 Israelis were arrested after 9/11. Some of those arrested had been witnessed to be filming the collapse of the Twin Towers and cheering when they fell.
Congresswhores take legal bribes from corporations that are destroying the environment.

They are not paying you.

The employer whose paychecks bounce risks encouraging whistleblowers.

They have not done due diligence.

The city official who imposes a new ban or tax without asking for public input or without listening to it.

They are a rabble-rouser i.e. stoking public hatred.

After 9/11, much emphasis was placed on getting back at Muslims, because corrupt federal authorities told the world that Muslims did it. Even just a tiny amount of analysis or understanding of Physics however shows they didn't, and subsequently one realizes that indeed the government was behind 9/11. More information.