Posted on 02/02/2014 8:26:55 AM PST by B4Ranch
Most people would be terrified at the thought that their world might soon transform into a state of complete "anarchy." However, in one sense that is precisely what humanity needs.
To many, the term "anarchy" implies violent chaos and bloody mayhem, and a complete breakdown of organized society-- a situation no decent person wants. What the word literally means, however, is "rule by no one," a society without any ruling class. And while people are right to believe that authoritarian "law and order" is the opposite of "anarchy," they are wrong to put their faith in the former, or to fear the latter. In fact, those events which best epitomize the negative meaning of "anarchy"--chaos, death and destruction--have always been the direct result of government. Yet many people still fear freedom more than they fear government.
More and more people are now coming to realize that what society really needs is not a new flavor of authoritarian domination, but a complete absence of political power (which should not be confused with a lack of cooperation or organization). Whether "left" or "right," government is never about getting along or cooperating; it is about one group of people forcibly extorting and controlling everyone else. This is why government, by its very nature, is fundamentally incompatible with peaceful coexistence, is never moral or legitimate, and never leads to peace or justice.
To improve the world, people need to let go of the statist mythology they were taught, and embrace instead some very basic principles: VOLUNTARYISM is the belief that all human interaction should be voluntary, free from fraud, coercion or violence; THE NON-AGGRESSION PRINCIPLE states that it is wrong to initiate violence against another, and that physical force is justified only when used to defend against aggression; SELF-OWNERSHIP means that every individual owns himself, and therefore owns the results of his time and effort.
These ideas are so simple and obvious that the average person, when he hears them described, imagines that he already agrees with them. However, most people--at least at first--fail to realize that such concepts completely rule out the possibility of government of any kind. Only a STATELESS SOCIETY is at all logically or morally compatible with non-aggression, self- ownership, and voluntaryism, because government, by its very nature, is always coercive and violent, and--to one degree or another, in one way or another--always infringes upon the self- ownership of the individual. (Those who say they want a "government" which only protects individual rights fail to realize that any purely defensive organization would not be "government," since it would have no power to tax or legislate, would have no monopoly, and would have no special power or authority.)
People are so accustomed to hearing "master plans" from politicians that they often have a hard time imagining actual freedom--a society that doesn't try to create a one-size-fits-all agenda for everyone, where instead, people can organize and cooperate in a million different ways. In other words, ANARCHY. To achieve such a society does not require any election, revolution, or political movement. It simply requires the people understanding and embracing the ideas of self-ownership and non-aggression, and letting go of the insane idea that civilization requires each individual to abandon his own free will and conscience in favor of blind obedience to a centralized ruling authority. When that lie dies, perpetual war and oppression will die with it.
As more and more people awaken to this truth, the power of the beast known as "government" diminishes, and the power of humanity grows. In a very real sense, the world really is on the brink of "anarchy": a society of free, equal, peaceful human beings. The age of statism and authoritarianism--and all the pain, injustice, suffering and death it has brought with it--is nearing its end. The age of peaceful coexistence, and a truly free and voluntary society, is about to begin. Whether you will be one of those helping to make this change happen, or one of those resisting it, is up to you.
www.JosieTheOutlaw.com
Okay, got it. I would only say the purpose of all governments is to secure our unalienable rights. Our first right is to protect our lives and property.
For the DC denizens, their first duty is to secure our national borders.
In anywhere USA, the first duty of local and state authorities is to protect the law abiding from the criminal element.
These first duties of government have been forgotten or ignored, as say in Detroit, or abused as in at every airport, where the TSA’s purpose isn’t to provide security, but to turn a once free people into willing sheep.
It is easy to have this debate if you have never lived under a stateless/lawless society.
If you have lived under a lawless/stateless society, you might remember that when reasonable laws that protect property ( and the speedy and somewhat reliable )enforcement of said laws is lacking, this is a non-trivial task that must blue assumed solely by the property owner or surrogate.
You couldn’t leave the fields you tilled to go anywhere, lest your property be stolen or destroyed in your absence. Sure, then you begin to band people back together in increasingly larger and more complex groups which need rules to live by .
I don’t buy the basic premise of the article. Doesn’t mean I am afraid of liberty or I am a statist. I simply think anarchists and their mile wide and nanometer thick analysis is simplistic.
“Anarchy = nonsense.”
So true but a little anarchy goes a long way. Americans are anarchists by nature and its not necessarily bad. If they don’t like a law they ignore it. Do you always obey the posted speed limit? Do you always wear your seatbelt? Do you ever throw litter out onto the roadway from your car? Smoked a little weed on Friday night? Ever moved a road closed sign and gone on anyway?
Connecticut gun owners are largely ignoring the gun registration law.
A little anarchy is not a bad thing because Americans don’t blindly follow orders from headquarters.
Go to Europe. You never see a cop out on the highway because Europeans are very conformist by nature and its the honor system. They all obey the law because its the law. They don’t question like we do.
Ignoring human nature is what liberals do.
Anarchists embrace human nature and all that comes with it as freedom.
Conservatives take human nature into account (as the founding fathers did) and attempt to construct a working framework that protects those who are unwilling or incapable of functioning in an anarchical setting, but do not wish to live under tyranny.
In my world if someone is able and doesn’t work, they would starve. If a banker loans money foolishly then he’ll go bankrupt not get a free loan from government. If a man or woman wants to engage in deviate sexual acts they had better not get caught with minors in attendance. You would only slap your wife once before she shot you dead with support from all her neighbors. And so on.
I don’t advocate for a dictatorship or monarchy as an ideal solution. But now, by God, we have perhaps the worst of all worlds as government. We have the facade of a constitutional republic and the core of an evil, lawless and strengthening tyranny. This is Rome under Nero, SPQR existed but meant nothing. The potential for evil from our regime is, with all its surveillance and technology, limitless, and if something is not done soon, it will be too late.
A sovereign can at least act as a protector of individual rights. That was what the Magna Carta was all about; King John was forced to respect the rights of his subjects. Right now, we don’t even have that.
In your world someone who is not able would also starve, unless someone else voluntarily supports them.
For the best ever depiction of your world, I suggest Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
And even Heinlein recognized that such a world could at best exist only extremely unusual circumstances and then only temporarily.
His anarchic society only existed because the Lunar Authority squashed any efforts by the loonies to set up a government.
Dictators are not synonymous with monarchs.
Lacking a noble order, we’ll never have a monarch.
We have a tyrant and America is a police state.
“Go to Europe. You never see a cop out on the highway because Europeans are very conformist by nature and its the honor system. They all obey the law because its the law. They don’t question like we do.”
Uh, what do you think the tax compliance rate is in Italy or Greece? Ever notice all the graffiti on the buildings even in nicer areas? Sure, Germans are probably more conformist than Sicilians, but that doesn’t mean that they will slavishly obey any law.
You can only have a society like this if everybody, every single person, is living their life to be as much like Jesus as is humanly possible.
What should be obvious is what you said, insofar as the more one is controlled from within by Godliness then they need to be controlled from without. (But America engages in "God-control:" children are implicitly taught the state needs no help from a Creator, nor owes Him gratitude and obedience.)
However, when it comes to correct punctuation, i am somewhat an anarchist.
Correction: Insofar as the more one is controlled from within by Godliness then the LESS they need to be controlled from without.
Also, a society without overseers and a system of jurisprudence will result in communist subjugation. But even in a democratic republic who controls the government but the people by their votes. For while the Constitution should be the standard, this is interpreted by those who are elected. Thus a Christian influence on America works to provide wisdom in judging the character of men.
>>In your world someone who is not able would also starve, unless someone else voluntarily supports them.<<
True
>>And even Heinlein recognized that such a world could at best exist only extremely unusual circumstances and then only temporarily.<<
And what timespan is ‘temporary’? Fifty years? One hundred?
“Dictators are not synonymous with monarchs.”
True, but I would argue that it’s a distinction without a difference. Dictators and monarchs can have positive and negative qualities which are primarily dependent on the individual. Dictators and monarchs can have absolute power or limited power. Examples of dictatorships with limited power include the central committee of Soviet Union; the chief did have to contend with other members continually jockeying for power. Just ask Kruschev. It is true that over the past 300 years, monarchs have become a more benign force because of constitutional limits placed on their power. But the original concept of monarchy established absolute control derived from the theory of divine right of kings.
“We have a tyrant and America is a police state.”
You’ll get no argument with me over that statement. But it’s worst than that because the emerging tyranny is concealed by the great history and traditions of this country and the superficial appearance and vestiges of our constitutional government. 0bama has lulled the people into complaceny by operating under the facade of a once great constitutional republic. He is the assassin lurking in the shadows, and the people cannot see him for what he is.
Depends on who outguns whom.
Would you like to test your chances against people so dedicated to theft, all they do with their time is find the deadliest weapons to do you away with, while you raise a family and a living. There are no pooled-resource institutions like a government-controlled military to protect you in an anarchy.
Principled dissent, which the Founders exampled, is not the same as anarchy, which the Founders did not example.
Go to Europe. You never see a cop out on the highway because Europeans are very conformist by nature and its the honor system. They all obey the law because its the law. They don’t question like we do.
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IMPO such a world could never exist at all. Order in human society, usually imposed by the biggest and most effective thug around, emerges spontaneously when absent.
In Heinlein’s novel, the anarchic society he envisioned existed only because the Lunar Authority prevented such order imposed by natural leaders from emerging.
Nevertheless, when that society came into direct conflict with the LA and Earth, an ordered society popped up, for the fairly obvious reason that no society can successfully defend itself against another without leaders, rules, etc.
Another series of novels that portrays a much darker vision of the sudden absence of rule is the Dies the Fire series by SM Sterling. All high-energy processes, including electricity, internal combustion, firearms, etc. suddenly stop working, meaning that society is suddenly dominated by those who are quite literally “strong-arm men.”
95%+ of the world’s population dies in the immediate aftermath, and the survivors group together in self-defense under more or less feudal systems. IMO it’s pretty darn close to what might actually happen under such conditions, though I’d like to think Americans would develop a more egalitarian and mutual aid society than is shown.
One thing it does show very well is how the natural leaders emerge from the crowd under such stressful conditions and impose their own personalities on the variety of societies that develop.
I don’t suppose it would take much before a few friends go together and when hunting, mercenary style for such thieves. They might be inclined to go too far and wipe out the entire brood. That could be a problem if the thieves persisted with such behavior.
I view such books as a form of social engineering as it were. Fun to mentally task yourself as to what you would do in such situations but not worthy of much mental effort.
In a nation such as America where firearms are as common as stop signs I don’t think thugs would last very long. Remember fifty years ago when we carried rifles in the rear windows of our pickup trucks? There was probably fifty such trucks in my high school parking lot.
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