"I have no plans to take part in the governments games, fuck em!"
Government bean counters. Last week we spoke of the government treating citizens like cattle – well, it’s now the season for the U.S. government cowboys to count up the herd. I want to encourage a little civil disobedience.
http://www.caseyresearch.com/displayCwc.php
Showing posts with label anarchist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anarchist. Show all posts
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Thursday, July 24, 2008
What Is Anarchy?
I have mixed feelings about the use of labels to describe philosophical views, whether of myself or others. It is difficult to avoid doing so because our efforts to understand and communicate about the world necessarily involve the use of words and words are, as Alfred Korzybski warned us, abstractions that never equate with what they are meant to describe. His oft-quoted statement that "the map is not the territory" offers a caveat whose implications for confusion are further compounded when addressing such abstract topics as political philosophy.
One philosophical abstraction that seems to befuddle most people is "anarchy." To those challenged by complexity – such as radio talk show hosts and cable-TV "newscasters" who are convinced that all political opinions can be confined to the categories of "liberal" and "conservative" – the word anarchy evokes an unfocused fear of uncertain forces. Images of bomb-throwing thugs who smash and burn the property of others are routinely conjured up by politicians and the media to frighten people into an extension of police authority over their lives. "Disorder" and "lawless confusion" are common dictionary definitions of this word.
One philosophical abstraction that seems to befuddle most people is "anarchy." To those challenged by complexity – such as radio talk show hosts and cable-TV "newscasters" who are convinced that all political opinions can be confined to the categories of "liberal" and "conservative" – the word anarchy evokes an unfocused fear of uncertain forces. Images of bomb-throwing thugs who smash and burn the property of others are routinely conjured up by politicians and the media to frighten people into an extension of police authority over their lives. "Disorder" and "lawless confusion" are common dictionary definitions of this word.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
The Shared Faith of an Unfree Society
Wilt Alston on what we can do about it.
As I read Butler Shaffer’s outstanding piece "The Messenger is the Message," which was ostensibly about Tim Russert, but was actually about so much more, several things occurred to me. First, Dr. Shaffer almost always seems to cover the concepts I’ve been considering better than I would have. Secondly, the timing of his essay was ironic given that I had recently been pondering something: would the State "work" if the population didn’t "believe" in it? The coercive apparatus of the State, fine-tuned in the U.S. since the time of Washington and Jefferson, has risen to a level of fine art as it generates a belief in its necessity while simultaneously remaining just out of view.
Given that we are both anarchists, it is no surprise that I have enjoyed Dr. Shaffer’s essays, most recently citing him in my "Anarchy, Anarchy – Wherefore Art Thou?" piece. That the solid logic that undergirds market anarchism – or whatever you want to call it – remains somehow in doubt is one of the most troubling and fascinating subjects to which I apply my available skills of analysis and modest writing talents. Why is it that almost any suggestion of even the possibility of a peaceful, anarchistic society is so often met with pseudo-intellectual derision or worse yet, insulting, pat-on-the-head "utopian dreamer" condescension? Excluding the corruption of those who enrich themselves from the State, it is met with these responses because honest people have been conditioned over years and years of public (Read: statist propaganda-laden) schooling.
Given that we are both anarchists, it is no surprise that I have enjoyed Dr. Shaffer’s essays, most recently citing him in my "Anarchy, Anarchy – Wherefore Art Thou?" piece. That the solid logic that undergirds market anarchism – or whatever you want to call it – remains somehow in doubt is one of the most troubling and fascinating subjects to which I apply my available skills of analysis and modest writing talents. Why is it that almost any suggestion of even the possibility of a peaceful, anarchistic society is so often met with pseudo-intellectual derision or worse yet, insulting, pat-on-the-head "utopian dreamer" condescension? Excluding the corruption of those who enrich themselves from the State, it is met with these responses because honest people have been conditioned over years and years of public (Read: statist propaganda-laden) schooling.
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