Psychology of Authority, or why it's fine for cops to shoot my dog

[TDB]

is a talk by Michael Huemer, from porcfest, from a chapter of his recent book The Problem of Political Authority. The first part of the book attacks ideas such as the social contract that conventional philosophers have used to try to justify the state. Chapters 1-5 show how little thought philosophers have spent on this, and how slapdash. Chapter 6 addresses the idea, if justifying the state is so difficult and philosophers have failed on the rare occasions they try, why is it that ordinary people believe so strongly that the state is justified and resist even thinking about it?

[Carter1984]

12 years of propaganda during a youth's most impressionable stages of development might have something to do with it.