FROM THE ANARCHIST'S POINT OF VIEW

From Hawaii Observer courtesy of J. Orlin Grabbe:

At the first glance, this could suggest that all you pay the government for is failures: its failure to defend you against drugs, against crime, against poverty, against injustice, against terror, against wars... but there is no failure, because it never truly endeavoured to end these. It only planned to take your money pretending to fight them, and this it fully succeeded. If the government really wanted to eradicate social problems, it could stop creating them at any moment. If it cared the slightest bit about YOUR well-being, it wouldn't allocate 17 times more money to jail you than to educate you. It wouldn't keep 4 dollars for itself for every dollar forwarded to the needy. It wouldn't subsidize tobacco which kills 430,000 citizens and 3 million people worldwide yearly, nor continue atmospheric nuclear tests which irradiate everyone on Earth for no real purpose, causing an estimated 1,600,000 cancer deaths. It wouldn't have ignored for decades the deaths of millions of citizens from known diseases such as pellagra, a niacin deficiency. It wouldn't have conducted often lethal experiments on hundreds of thousands of unwitting citizens in its hospitals and other institutions, sending sometimes entire groups knowingly to death.

In no way do I support anarchism. Power abhors a vacuum: without government it seems highly likely that power would eventually accumulate in the hands of those who desire it the most--ultimately, only government can protect the people from individuals who seek to control them. Of course, I recognize that many governments are virtually synonomous with these power hungry individuals. That is to say, there are disadvantages when citizens accept any particular government: this is why I like anarchist theory. Even though I am quite skeptical of society without government, I really like anarchist critiques of the state. Ideally, governments should be constantly evolving such that their drawbacks are minimized. Anarchists (the principled ones, anyway) are particularly good at pointing out these drawbacks.

So that's why I'm linking to this essay--it does a good job of revealing the emperor's nudity. Be sure to read the comments at the bottom of the piece; it's a nice little debate.

Click here.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$