I'm done believing in an organized murder, pillage, and rape machine just because we call it "government."

in freedom •  4 years ago 

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It was about ten years ago when I made the transition from minarchist to anarchist. Basically, although I think we can be optimistic about the future of humanity, I think that Henry David Thoreau was correct when he said that the state has never bolstered any enterprise but for the alacrity with which it got out of its way.

I mean, rather than supporting the Wright Brothers, the government decided to pump tax payer money into a big sling shot in air travel experiments. When the government couldn't figure out how to deal with the problem of dead horses polluting the roads, the market came through with cars. It's the government that decided that traditional African hair-braiders need a full cosmology licence despite traditional braiding not being part of the curriculum. It was government who decided that you need to be licensed to be a florist. During the twentieth century, excluding wars, you were six times more likely to be murdered by a government than by a fellow citizen. The bigger and more global governments get, the worse they get. Every member of the UN, even "Peacekeepers" have diplomatic immunity and we act surprised when "Peacekeepers" start raping the locals in broad daylight without consequence.

We've been running this experiment for twelve thousand years. When are we going to give it up?

My one lapse in judgement on this issue happened a few years ago when some fellow libertarian anarchists started arguing for the privatization of colleges so they wouldn't be bound by the First Amendment and they could restrict speech as they see fit. They're, of course, right on a First Amendment basis; but, they're wrong at every level of ethics. That's when I started to see some value in government again.

I don't see that value anymore. Really, the state is constantly trying to throw people in jail for speech. It's a miracle that the Supreme Court has been so good at defending the First Amendment over the last several decades; but, if Oliver Wendell Holmes can send Yiddish-speaking socialists to prison for protesting America's involvement in WWI, it can happen again.

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