elfs | Another day, another closet

I don't know if I've ever actually said this in my journal, but since it came out recently I should jump out of this closet. At a recent dinner get-together someone asked me about my politics since it wasn't terribly clear; I have claimed to be a conservative, yet I have strong feelings about what many people perceive as "liberal" issues. It wasn't obvious to them if I was a Democrat or a Republican or what.

I'm an anarchist.

To be clear, I'm not one of those bomb-tossing disarchists who call themselves anarchist but who in reality are little more than bomb-tossing, Starbucks-wrecking adolenscents who sit around smoking dope and wishing for an end to The Man. But the principles by which I try to make political decisions are primarily anarchist principles.

Anarchism contrasts itself from its opposite, Statism. Statism is the blanket term for all the existing government forms we have: communism, republicanism, democratism, totalitariansm, and so forth on. All of these systems, no matter what, have one overarching characteristic: in all of them there exists an authority (in totalitarian systems, an armed force; in representative systems, "the people") that grants to one societal institution ("the state") a monopoly power: the power to use initiatory violence with impunity.

In short, the government is the only institution we have that, if you make it mad enough, will send armed agents to your door to "correct" you.

This is the primary lens through which I view all legislation and the elections of all legislators. One of the early lessons of Discordianism is that every new law creates new criminals. Laws exist to outlaw something either by prescription or proscription. Anyone doing that something before the law passed was not a criminal; afterward, they are.

Every proposal brought before the legislature or the people needs to be judged on this simple basis: do you feel strongly enough about whatever it is that you believe someone, somewhere should be shot dead for it? If not, don't vote to make it a law.

In a representative republic, the people authorize an organization to ensure that the people live under stable conditions. Anarchism argues that that is merely a layer of inefficiency; if people are capable of governing themselves by interposing government between themselves and others, they should be capable of governing themselves just as well without it. Government is a layer which promotes the concentration-- and therefore the abuse-- of power.

Given the current working conditions I have to accept that anarchism as a socially organizing force is damnably unlikely. Too many people insist that they (and by extension they want to include "you") require some sort of "big daddy" to keep their baser natures in check. So many, in fact, that convincing them that their neighbors mean them no harm is impossible.

But that mild despair is no reason not to be an anarchist, any more than the popularity of religious thought be it mainstream Christianity or as loopy as the Psychic Friends Network is a good reason to not be an atheist. It is no contradiction to be a law-abiding anarchist; one can have principles and apply them to one's politics without likewise advocating the violent overthrow of city hall.

Anarchism right now means questioning every law that enters any legislature that governs you and asking yourself the anarchist questions: Is this law about more, or less, freedom? Does this law concentrate power or place it into the hands of citizens? And finally, does this law really address a problem the only solution to which is the application of the State's unique monopoly power, deadly force?

Anarchism is the most hopeful of all political ideologies, one that believes that someday humanity will be grown up enough to govern itself responsibly without the imposition of a superstructure. I'm hopeful that someday we might even get there. Until then, I'll continue to raise the black flag.