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Where in modern history has anarchism worked well?
Considerations;
-A fairly modest population density of more than 300 persons per sq mi.
-For a period longer than 18 months.
How is that society doing today?
Why did they abandon anarchism?
Replaced it with what?
I have often said that I do not believe that Anarchy can not exist beyond momentary chaos.
As a world system,, it can not exist... The power vacuum would be filled by some manner of Authoritarianism.
It can work as a personal philosophy.. an individual decision not to accept any false authority.
I learned it in a cage.. and carried it with me since.
Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.
Ron Paul 2004
Registered Ron Paul supporter # 2202
It's all about Freedom
Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.
Ron Paul 2004
Registered Ron Paul supporter # 2202
It's all about Freedom
There was no such thing as police in Murica till 1838. The concept has its origin in slave patrols. http://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/ It's foreign to Freemen and abhorrent to liberty.
The Amish are the only 'working' group that I can think of that would even come close
to resembling anarchism, living much as they did 300 years ago, I applaud their
commitments to a way of life they believe in.
And there's nothing really incompatible with anarchism about individuals delegated their law enforcement authority that everyone has by nature to someone like that.
Likewise with courts.
The question is whether or not we ought to use violence to subjugate other people under our authority without their consent. God's law (which is all that really matters, notwithstanding the insistence of the utilitarians among us) tells us that we ought not do that. Whatever means we use to fight crime and follow due process in judging the accused, we ought to do it without committing more crimes in the process. There's nothing illogical about this kind of ethical purity, and no reason we can't affirm this standard even while we have to live in a world surrounded by others who don't.
Christianity tells us that the only rightful king of all the earth is Christ, to whom all authority in Heaven and on Earth has been given. All earthly regimes are satanic pretenders. Christ was offered statist rule by Satan. He refused the offer, and he commanded all who follow him also to refuse the offer and to repudiate the methods of the state, but rather to take up their own crosses and follow the path that he trail-blazed.
Provided we allow for the caveat that Christ himself is a legitimate ruler, and that the kind of anarchism in question is only one that denies the legitimacy of earthly rulers who subjugate others by the methods that Jesus commanded us not to use, while still affirming the unique rule of Christ himself, then anarchism is not only compatible with Christianity, but moreover it is the only political philosophy that is.
Last edited by Superfluous Man; 02-10-2019 at 04:45 PM.
OK. When you voluntarily exercise your liberty to pay taxes, anarchists won't resort to violence to prevent you from doing that.
I see no practical way to do that. And again, it's totally irrelevant. I can repudiate moral evils like taxation right here, right now, in this country, where I pay taxes and drive on government roads, making the most of life in an unfree world without feeling the imaginary obligation to pledge allegiance to it or contribute to its wrongs more than I'm compelled to do under duress.
Last edited by Superfluous Man; 02-10-2019 at 04:52 PM.
Perhaps. Banishment, along the lines of what was done in the ancient Greek polis, is certainly a possibility. But other forms of punishment, including those that are used in America now, such as imprisonment and the death penalty, do not require the state for their execution. That's not to say that they are good punishments. That's really a separate question. But there's nothing about anarchism that automatically disallows their use against those who through due process are found guilty of crimes that deserve them.
I may have read something that wasn't there in your mention of ; ''as long as we're not committing other crimes in the process''.
Assuming God is the only one that is allowed to make life and death decisions.
I'll have to read up a lot more on anarchism , there seems to be a sea of variations and interpretations.
I have no idea what the ''current'' popular/accepted interpretation would be.
I do like the idea of 'living free of Government' , I think a lot of people are attracted to that idea, but
a successfully functioning society is complex.
I may have already mentioned this here, but a guy with a 1000 acres or so depending on area, that is a
survivalist would do fine without a government , maybe even raise a family, but when we start
adding more families and begin to interface with the rest of the immediate world, things tend
to 'look' quite a bit more complex once again.
That assumption is well worth considering as a true ethical norm. However, one need not hold to that particular norm to be an anarchist.
Ancient Israel, under the Mosaic law, was to be a nation without rulers for centuries until it backslid into monarchy, which the law regulated but did not require. But it still had the death penalty for many crimes.
I tend to think that Christ points us to a higher moral law that supersedes that, and in which the death penalty is either excluded altogether, or at least greatly diminished in its applicability. But it's not my anarchism that compels me to think that.
Last edited by Superfluous Man; 02-10-2019 at 05:32 PM.
I've probably never even looked up anarchy or anarchism , since it has become something
that everyone already knows or thought we knew the definition of.
To most of us it is a generic term for complete chaos of course, but I can see that the pure
or original meaning is something quite different.
I'm guessing government interests looked after by CIA* and other groups have made sure
that Anarchism is never understood by the masses that the concept as I see it is
freedom in its purest form.
That is not to say that I believe it is practical in an instant , but that it should be understood
and taught so all' can get a deeper understanding of the difference between freedom and what
we think is freedom here in the US.
*What I'm trying to say is that the CIA has likely done a hell of a lot of co opting and
infiltration as well as agent provocateur false flags in order to project the concept
as horrible evil.
Last edited by Stratovarious; 02-10-2019 at 06:04 PM.
I totally think anarchy supports eliminating or strongly limiting the death penalty. But I can see where an individual could be banished from group living and some how marked so everyone could be informed that the person has murdered or caused harm to someone's property without remorse. However, the possibility of redemption and restorartion could be considered. If Jesus can forgive it I am also in favor of it.Originally Posted by Superfluous Man
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