An Old Slur In A New Incarnation

     One of my pet peeves is – surprise! – the twisting of the meanings of words for unholy purposes. Yes, it’s a common occurrence in political cut-and-thrust, but it also features in exchanges between common citizens. Humpty Dumpty thought he could get away with it, but the rest of us need not be Alices.

     A long, long time ago, an elderly friend wrote a piece for a very minor publication I edited in which he argued that even in a wholly anarchic society, a State exists locally and temporarily wherever like-minded persons can muster a local preponderance of force. If we look at The State as its function – i.e., to wield coercive force for particular purposes – rather than as an institution, Ed was absolutely correct. Wherever you have a group united on a purpose and large enough to get its way, you have a State for local and temporary purposes.

     A lynch mob is functionally a State. That should give a few people pause for thought.

     That doesn’t mean that the anarchic society is impossible. It means only that our expectations of it must be tempered by our grasp of human nature. People do get exercised over things. They do band together for specific purposes. If they’re not opposed by equal or greater forces, they can impose themselves on others, against those others’ wills.

     Another friend of more recent vintage liked to say that “Anarchy is the perpetual Loyal Opposition.” He saw anarchy as beckoning from the sidelines. It keeps politicians and bureaucrats mindful that an alternative to them exists and always will. He had a good point.

     When a disorderly movement “pops up” in the midst of a normal – i.e., State-ridden – society, it sometimes gets its way. You may remember the Occupy Wall Street affair that arose in New York City in 2011, during Michael Bloomberg’s mayoralty. Bloomberg refrained from directing law enforcement to quell it for several weeks. It was a good illustration of the transient and conditional nature of State hegemony.

     Whenever a miscreant is treated gently by the “official” justice system, he faces the possibility that an “ad hoc State” will arise to impose a greater penalty. The more heinous his crimes, the more likely he’ll face “private justice.” Say what you will about vigilance committees, that was their genesis: “the authorities” had either failed to act against violent criminals or had given them the proverbial slap on the wrist. It doesn’t happen with perfect predictability or unanimous approval of the results, but it does happen. It’s why men convicted of raping children fear to go to prison.

     Heinlein made a point of this in his magnum opus The Moon is a Harsh Mistress:

     “All our customs work that way. If you’re out in field and a cobber needs air, you lend him a bottle and don’t ask cash. But when you’re both back in pressure again, if he won’t pay up, nobody would criticize if you eliminated him without a judge. But he would pay; air is almost as sacred as women. If you take a new chum in a poker game, you give him air money. Not eating money; can work or starve. If you eliminate a man other than self-defense, you pay his debts and support his kids, or people won’t speak to you, buy from you, sell to you.”
     “Mannie, you’re telling me that I can murder a man here and settle the matter merely with money?”
     “Oh, not at all! But eliminating isn’t against some law; are no laws—except Warden’s regulations—and Warden doesn’t care what one Loonie does to another. But we figure this way: If a man is killed, either he had it coming and everybody knows it—usual case—or his friends will take care of it by eliminating man who did it. Either way, no problem. Nor many eliminations. Even set duels aren’t common.”

     When young Fran first read that passage, he was as nonplussed as Stuart LaJoie, the tourist being tutored in Lunar ways by protagonist and first-person narrator Manuel O’Kelly Davis. But it’s the way human societies self-organize in the absence of a State. History does provide examples thereof, including medieval Iceland before Denmark incorporated it and pre-British-invasion Ireland.

* * *

     The above disquisition was triggered by – drum roll, please! – a slur aimed at a perfectly nice young woman on X who goes by the moniker “Libertarian Goth:”

You support pedophilia because you oppose State force to stop it. A libertarian fantasy society is a pedophile tolerant society.

— Sterling Reece 🗡️🇺🇸 (@SterlingReece26) August 28, 2026

     Anyone who might say such a thing to me would be invited to a pre-dawn kaffeklatsch with pistols at ten paces. Libertarian Goth was more restrained:

Despite me directly telling you my beliefs you say that I believe something else right after. Can you please tell me who my favorite band is? I want to listen some music. Or maybe I don’t. Do I? You tell me. 🤷🏻‍♀️ https://t.co/SdF6AyB8Q9

— 🥀 🖤𝔏𝔦𝔟𝔢𝔯𝔱𝔞𝔯𝔦𝔞𝔫 𝔊𝔬𝔱𝔥🖤🥀 (@LibertarianG0th) August 28, 2026

     I applaud that young lady for limiting herself to ridicule in response. Were I in her place, I might have used the kzinti method of issuing a challenge:

     Speaker-To-Animals said one thing more before he turned back to his table. "Louis Wu, I found your challenge verbose. In challenging a kzin, a simple scream of rage is sufficient. You scream and you leap."

     In short, the absence – or passivity – of a State does not imply the absence of justice. Pedophiles know it. Verbum sat sapienti.

Charlotte, NC RNC - Local Reporting

 I won't actually be IN the Charlotte area this upcoming week - family business takes precedence.

However, I will be monitoring the news, talking to people, and generally keeping an eye on the situation.

For now, it seems that the 'festivities' have started early. The demonstrators are out, and engaging in their usual polite and congenial interactions with the po-po.

I kid, I kid - the demonstrators have already attacked police not too far from the Convention Center.

Now, I've had the advantage of attending multiple events at the Charlotte site; it's located right downtown, near the south side of the commercial/shopping area. It's a typical modern center - multiple glass doors on different sides of the building. It works, because the place is set up to funnel compliant convention-goers through one entrance, with guards to monitor the attendees, register them, several businesses catering to the crowd nearby (snacks, Starbucks). Once past the guards, registration tables are generally set up just past the shops, and, from there, you move either down very spacious hallways, or take escalators/elevators to meeting rooms.

Large ballrooms are on each floor, followed by hallways leading to multiple meeting rooms, which can be expanded or contracted by folding walls. There are a few places to eat inside; most people leave the premises to find nearby restaurants.

The area just south of the center is freeway, a few businesses (not generally catering to the casual shopper), and some vacant lots. The highway construction has made it kind of a wasteland for pedestrians.

So. The center is relatively defensible (other than those glass doors, which will likely be shattered early). The biggest problem will be if conventioneers want to leave during the day.

I'm going to keep this up for the next week, and add to it, as necessary. I'll put the new stuff at the top.

The Problem Of Irrelevant Perspectives

     Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely – John Edward Emmerich Dalberg, a.k.a. Lord Acton

     The central problem of all political systems is the perverse distribution of decision-making authority. No matter what scheme is attempted – direct-democratic, federal, parliamentary, oligarchic, autocratic – authority will always come to rest with persons who, for whatever reason, won’t have to bear the consequences of their decisions.

     The great Robert Townsend, author of Further Up the Organization, was adamant that decision-making authority belongs with those to whom it will mean the most: i.e., those who would bear the consequences of the decision. A worker needs tools? Very well: give him a budget and let him select them. A supervisor needs another subordinate? Very well: Let him do the interviewing and hiring, and since his other subordinates will have to work with the new hire, encourage him to seek their input. It’s an entirely reasonable approach, and yet virtually no company actually uses it. Concerning political systems, the thing is quite literally impossible.

     In a quasi-parliamentary system such as ours, legislative authority rests with legislators (surprise, surprise) most of whom can exempt themselves from the consequences of their enactments. Their principal considerations are electoral: How would this affect my prospects in the upcoming election? Among those, the most prominent ones are the special interests who purport to command substantial funds and blocs of votes. Those who captain the special interests are often wealthy enough, influential enough, or both to avert the consequences of the legislation they lobby for. Then there’s the rest of us, who have virtually no recourse when our tax rates rise, our medical insurance is perverted, or our neighborhoods are flooded with Third Worlders who have no interest in assimilating to American norms and standards of conduct.

     To the legislator, our perspectives on such things are nearly irrelevant. If asked, we would express the same view of his perspective...but we have little capability for changing the distribution of decision making power.

     So it is, and so it will always be.

---

     It is said the ancient Greeks used a simple method to stop the multiplication of "laws." Perhaps we should try it on our Congress. Anyone wishing to propose a new law had to do so while standing on a platform with a rope around his neck. If the law was passed, the rope was removed. If the law was voted down, the platform was removed. – “John Galt,” Dreams Come Due: Government and Economics As If Freedom Mattered, First Edition.

     The problem is insoluble. Even the mechanism suggested in the semi-facetious quote above would fail. Only in the complete absence of government is it completely absent...but as I’ve written before, anarchy is as unstable as government. Every anarchy eventually births a State, through the same process that gives rise to the problem of irrelevant perspectives: delegation.

     Let there be an anarchic society that enacts a law in some fashion. Let it be one upon which every decent person would agree: perhaps a law against murder. Very well: we outlaw murder, fix a punishment for it, and deem ourselves done and well done. The problem is that we aren’t:

• Who is to decide when a murder might have been committed?
• Who is to pursue the alleged murderer?
• Who is to determine whether he will be punished?
• Who is to arrange for and carry out the punishment?

     The impulse to delegate each of those functions is irresistible. Though we might insist that the authority actually inheres in the law itself – the de jure authority certainly does – we have granted the de facto authority to particular persons. Those persons have acquired, willy-nilly on our part, an automatic and irremediable discretion over their realms of authority.

     Perhaps our delegates will exercise their authority responsibly for a time. But all men are mortal, all men grow weary, and so in the fullness of time they will be replaced. By whom? Who is likely to want those authorities? Among them, who is most likely to succeed in acquiring them?

     I’ve written about this before. So has Friedrich Hayek, most particularly in the chapter “Why The Worst Get On Top.”

     Strain as we might, over six millennia of recorded history we’ve found no escape route. The impulse to delegate the arduous and unpleasant tasks attached to any law whatsoever has never been successfully resisted. The dynamic that takes over at that point is inexorable. It’s why I maintain that just as every government eventually decays to an unsustainable absolutism and collapses, every anarchism eventually gives birth to a government.

     God grant that I’m wrong...but I don’t think I am.

---

     In the Foreword to Freedom’s Fury, I wrote:

     I shan’t attempt to deceive or misdirect you: I’m horrified by politics and all its fruits. I consider the use of coercive force against innocent men the greatest of all the evils we know. But I try, most sincerely, to be realistic about the world around us. In that world, peopled by men such as ourselves, anarchism—the complete abjuration and avoidance of the State—is unstable. In time, it will always give way to politics. Hammer it to the earth as many times as you may, you will never succeed in killing it permanently. The State will rise again.

     However, as we’ve learned to our sorrow these past few centuries, the State is unstable, too. It always deteriorates and falls, though not always swiftly. What follows it varies from place to place and era to era.

     As one who passionately loves freedom, I’ve striven to understand the processes involved, and to unearth a path to a stable free society. I’ve failed to find one.

     I haven’t ceased to look. Nor will I say a priori that one cannot be found. But the central problem is the process of delegation, which embeds the automatic production of perverse incentives via the creation of irrelevant perspectives. Averting the delegation of authority and responsibility is the key...but who has proposed a way to do that?

     I yield the floor to my Gentle Readers.

The Anarcho-Tyranny Chronicles

     If you’ve been a Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch for a goodly while now, you’re probably familiar with the late Sam Francis’s coinage anarcho-tyranny. For those who haven’t yet made the acquaintance of this useful term, here’s the original formulation:

     What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny – the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through "sensitivity training" and multiculturalist curricula, "hate crime" laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny. [From the essay Synthesizing Tyranny, written shortly before Francis’s death.]

     The longer I live, the more I come to view anarcho-tyranny as the terminal state toward which all governments tend as they mature and degenerate.

     But that’s a subject for a later tirade. For today, let’s have a look at the most conspicuous recent outcropping: the assertion of various courts that they possess jurisdiction sufficient to block the enforcement of President Trump’s temporary ban on immigration from several chaotic, violence-ridden countries.

     Mark Levin, in whose emissions I seldom take much interest – he’s simply too shrill for my tastes – captured the matter thus:

     “We have, ladies and gentlemen, rogue federal district judges now; we have rogue courts,” Levin exclaimed. “We have judicial anarchy taking place…where judges are seizing plenary authority from the president of the United States to keep this nation safe — to control our borders and to determine the nature of our immigration in this country.”

     Strictly speaking, there is no need to submit to "judicial anarchy." The courts have no enforcement arm for this very reason. With regard to the current foofaurauw, if the Attorney-General were to prepare a finding for the president that says the courts don't have valid jurisdiction over the subject matter, the president could ignore the courts, freely and without adverse consequences. Andrew Jackson did it; why not Donald Trump?

     The reason might be that the Trump Administration fears a popular backlash: i.e., an adverse reaction from the portion of the electorate that believes the courts to possess plenipotentiary authority over everything. This actually helps to illuminate both the current contretemps and the intra-governmental relations of the courts and the other branches.

---

     James Madison, often called “the father of the Constitution,” regarded the courts as “the least dangerous branch” of government. The widespread belief is that that was because the courts were allowed no enforcement arm, apart from the bailiffs allowed for keeping order during a court proceeding. However, this reverses cause and effect. The courts were allowed no enforcement arm because of the danger they would otherwise pose, as is well established by English history.

     The great majority of judges in pre-Industrial Revolution England, from which much of our legal tradition derives, were not government employees, neither elected nor appointed nor hired. They commanded deference on the basis of their personal qualities and their willingness to sit as judges; in other words, from popular respect for their wisdom and diligence. If you’ve heard the term “circuit judge” and have wondered about its provenance, it comes from the time when a judge would routinely “ride a circuit:” i.e., he would regularly travel a known route from place to place, hearing such cases as were presented to him in each place and ruling on them according to the “common law,” another American inheritance from England.

     To make this a workable living, a judge needed to be known and respected in each of the stops along his circuit. A judge’s enforcement arm was the willingness of the commoners whose cases he heard to enforce his rulings. Thus, he had to have a reputation for fairly and consistently applying both the common law and what precedents might exist for its enforcement. For a judge to become known as capricious or arbitrary – e.g., for promoting his personal views over the common law as English commoners knew it – would spell the end of his career.

     England’s problems with “star chambers” and the like came about because of courts whose authority descended from the Crown – i.e., whose enforcement arm was the force commanded by the King. Common-law judges posed no such problems, precisely because they had no enforcement power of their own. Indeed, it was often the role of a common-law judge to prevent a lynching or other variety of mob “justice:” something only a very well known, well respected jurist could do by force of character.

     Even though American judges are government employees, the essence of the English common-law judicial system – that the court have no enforcement arm of its own – was largely preserved by the Founding Fathers. The courts’ authority is essentially one of popular consensus concerning the probity and wisdom of the courts: i.e., that the courts are assessing the laws faithfully rather than whimsically or capriciously.

     But by innumerable capricious judgments: both failures to uphold the black-letter law and usurpations of jurisdiction that in no way belong to them, the courts have destroyed that consensus. Where, then, do we stand?

---

     Sam Francis’s thoughts on anarcho-tyranny are nicely illuminated by contemporary developments – and not just in the federal courts. A justly famous article about “the coming middle-class anarchy” makes the point quite well, albeit in language a bit rougher than is likely to be found in any judge’s opinions:

     When the backbone of a country starts thinking that laws and rules are not worth following, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to anarchy.

     TV has given us the illusion that anarchy is people rioting in the streets, smashing car windows and looting every store in sight. But there’s also the polite, quiet, far deadlier anarchy of the core citizenry — the upright citizenry — throwing in the towel and deciding it’s just not worth it anymore.

     If a big enough proportion of the populace — not even a majority, just a largish chunk — decides that it’s just not worth following the rules anymore, then that society’s days are numbered: Not even a police-state with an armed Marine at every corner with Shoot-to-Kill orders can stop such middle-class anarchy.

     Brian and Ilsa are such anarchists — grey-haired, well-dressed, golf-loving, well-to-do, exceedingly polite anarchists: But anarchists nevertheless. They are not important, or powerful, or influential: They are average — that’s why they’re so deadly: Their numbers are millions. And they are slowly, painfully coming to the conclusion that it’s just not worth it anymore.

     Once enough of these J. Crew Anarchists decide they no longer give a fuck, it’s over for America — because they are America.

     Please read the whole article, if you haven’t done so before. While it’s not merely the courts’ fault that this attitude is gaining strength, the descent of the courts – especially federal courts – are a major component of the machine steadily reducing us to anarcho-tyranny.

---

     For decades now I’ve flitted between minarchism and outright anarchism. If you’ve read my Spooner Federation books, you’re familiar with the process I consider inevitable:

• The disorder of the “state of nature” – read Thomas Hobbes – gradually gives way via natural processes to order, albeit without a recognized – i.e., a pre-indemnified – government.
• A well-ordered yet ungoverned society – i.e., the anarchist ideal – will slowly evolve into an (at first) well-ordered governed society with strong popular consensus.
• This gradually becomes an unjustly governed society owing to the dynamic of power-seeking: i.e., the men most likely to gain power are those who want it for its own sake and the benefits it can bring them personally.
• The unjustly governed society will steadily lose its order, and therefore its popular consensus: the consent of the governed. This will precipitate collapse.
• Collapse means a return to anarchy, which by dint of natural processes will slowly regain order, restarting the cycle.

     This cycle has overwhelming historical support. It suggests that there’s no way out of the cycle, which implies that for best results, one simply has to trust to luck – i.e., to be born in the right time and place – and mobility – the readiness, willingness, and ability to move from an undesirable society to a more desirable one. But where does that leave us of Twenty-First Century America?

     Why, right where we are today, of course: enmeshed in a steadily deteriorating, ever more anarcho-tyrannical context. At the moment, the only escape is to even less desirable places. That might change; developments in space flight and workable space habitats are ongoing, and it’s impossible to say if or when they’ll mature. But the cycle itself appears to be embedded in human nature. If that’s the case, then no matter where men go, the cycle will go with them.

     I yield the floor to my Gentle Readers.

Dismissals

     In a recent video, the invaluable Mark Steyn leans forcefully into a critical point about political discourse: it’s about persuasion. That, however, is something to which certain of the “discoursers” are unalterably opposed. Knowing how much it offends me to be on the receiving end, I try to police myself for such inclinations.

     Not everyone of a conservative or broadly pro-freedom mindset does so.

---

     What I have in mind at the moment is the following passage from a guest at Sarah Hoyt’s place:

     The Individualist is not trying to destroy all government. That’s the mark of the insane. What’s desired is lowering the dosage of government back down into the therapeutic range....Some regulation is desirable.

     I must differ, and very strongly at that.

     We could start with the last four words of that citation and work backwards. “Some regulation is desirable.” To whom? Who decides? According to what standard? A statement of evaluation is like that: it posits an evaluator and a standard, without specifying either. But the rest of us are entitled to question those unseen elements, and to differ with them – without suffering to be called “insane.”

     But there’s no need to work backwards. The faults start with the first sentence:

• Who is this “Individualist?” of whom you speak?
• What makes you so sure he would agree with your statement of his intentions?
• Are you prepared to have him call you "insane" should he differ with you?
• And this hypothesized "therapeutic range" for government...no, I can’t go on. The first 15 words were all I can stand.

     The author hasn’t argued against anarchism; he’s merely dismissed it and those who would argue for it. Insultingly, at that. Perhaps he felt he had to do so to continue on with his essay. Having read it, I’d say he should have spared himself the effort and written something worthwhile...perhaps a recipe for Franks & Beans.

     It’s a fine example of what Steyn decried in his video.

---

     Mind you, I’m not arguing with the author’s political position. Though I differ with him, I would agree that a very minimal government is desirable...if it can be stabilized and its minions compelled to obey the laws that bind the rest of us; that’s where the challenge lies. What I dislike is his arrogance: his readiness to insult those who see things differently.

     Martinets don’t make converts. They alienate those a good argument might reach. While I’ll readily grant that not everyone is reachable, those who display a willingness to listen and to take what they’ll hear seriously should be given the benefit of the doubt. That includes the treatment of their positions as ones that could be sincerely held by a man of good will – perhaps positions that you once held, or would hold were certain evidence and reasoning not available to you.

     I’ll allow that in our time, with so many people hurling insults in place of argument, the urge to “join in” can become very strong. I’ve felt that urge. I’ve occasionally succumbed to it. And to be perfectly fair, sometimes you’ll do no harm by it, because the persons at whom you’ve hurled your epithets have proved, with insults and condemnations of their own, that they’re not reachable — i.e., not men of good will.

     But to dismiss a position that varies from yours as “insane?” To insult others who agree with you on the importance of freedom but differ with you on how best to safeguard it? To insult others who might otherwise regard you as an ally in a noble cause? To insult a man who, for all you know, might be one of the foremost scholars of his place and time? To insult someone who might just know the subject under discussion better than you?

     Don’t. Just don’t.

     Jesus of Nazareth said it best: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” There are no exceptions for political discourse.

Parallels That Instruct

     First, some relevant music to set the appropriate atmosphere:

     The lyric, one of ELP’s more apocalyptic ones:

Just a step cried the sad man
Take a look down at the madman
Theatre kings on silver wings
Fly beyond reason
From the flight of the seagull
Come the spread claws of the eagle
Only fear breaks the silence
As we all kneel pray for guidance

Tread the road cross the abyss
Take a look down at the madness
On the streets of the city
Only spectres still have pity
Patient queues for the gallows
Sing the praises of the hallowed
Our machines feed the furnace
If they take us they will burn us

Will you still know who you are
When you come to who you are

When the flames have their season
Will you hold to your reason
Loaded down with your talents
Can you still keep your balance
Can you live on a knife-edge

     Let that sink in for a moment before proceeding.

---

     It might strike you that this is a strange time of year to be discoursing on anarchism, but the mood is upon me, and I’ve resolved to follow where it leads.

     Courtesy of Western Rifle Shooters, we have the following “What If” found on Twitter:

     It’s worth a moment of your time, and a bit of emphasis:

How shall we distinguish, whether morally or practically, a State from an ascendant gang with a spatiotemporal preponderance of force?

     Go ahead; I fully understand your need for more coffee. I’ll wait here.

---

     In the Foreword to this novel, I wrote:

     The States of Earth exist in an anarchic relation to one another. Each has its own regional code of law, which might differ markedly from all the others. Despite several thrusts at the matter over the centuries, there is no “super-State” to enforce a uniform code of law over them all. More, they view one another as competitors in many different areas; their populations and institutions are often in sharp economic competition with one another. Thus, they are often at odds. They resolve important disputes among them through negotiation or warfare.

     Yet individuals manage to move among them with a fair degree of facility and (usually) little risk. Cross-border trade is commonplace, in some places torrential. Though wars are frequent, they seldom result in major alterations to the overall political pattern. The uber-anarchy of Terrestrial society exhibits more stability than one would expect from two hundred well armed, quarrelsome States, each of which perpetually schemes at snatching some advantage at another’s expense.

     I hold that the “archies-within-anarchy” structure of the world posited above is indisputable. There is no “super-State;” the UN, being unable to impose its will on a dissenting or divergent State, does not qualify. But being a believer in the ancient maxim “As above, so below,” I’m not about to stop there.

---

     Quite by coincidence, on this very date in the Year of Our Lord 2013, I wrote the following:

     Whatever our chosen tactics, we must always keep in mind the "so far, so good" nature of all things: the inevitability of failure, change, and subsequent developments. Governments cannot legislate that pattern away. O'Brien's vision of "a boot stamping on a human face -- forever" is as fallacious as the dream of a perfect freedom eternally unchallenged by the envious and the power-mongers who exploit their unholy desires.

     The moral should be clear. Regardless of your preferences in countermeasures, whenever you look at any institution the Left has succeeded in perverting, say to yourself:

"And this, too, shall pass away."

     Your task is to keep fighting -- and to survive.

     I haven’t written many things that I regard as imperative beyond all possibility of refutation, but that’s one of them. Keep moving. Survive. What’s going on around you is relevant to your decisions and actions only as it pertains to what you must do to survive. And as a perfect (and perfectly ironic) capper to the matter, I must add this: Eventually, you’ll fail.

     The mature know this. No one lives forever. The final triumph belongs to Time, which I sometimes imagine was God’s device for averting boredom. But just as no one lives forever, no thing lasts forever, no matter how carefully contrived or maintained.

     If I may be allowed yet another quotation from myself:

     For example, let's imagine that I own a sailboat -- I don't, having no interest in water recreations -- and that I've named it the NEWF, after my late, beloved, exceedingly moist Newfoundland Bruno. The good ship NEWF can be viewed:

• Holistically, as a unitary entity with a clearly designed-in function and an associated identity, or:
• Reductionistically, as an assemblage of anonymous (I hope) wooden, steel, rope, and canvas parts.

     When its function as a sailboat is being exercised, its holistic, functional identity is clearly the one of immediate interest. Yet if I were to shipwreck myself upon some lonely island -- perhaps Staten, with its forbidding landfills, or Fire, with its natives'...disturbing fleshly practices -- NEWF's reductionistic characteristics would come to the fore, as I made use of its planks for firewood and its sails for blankets. Many would claim that in that second case, there no longer is a good ship NEWF, merely a pile of useful, unnamed items.

     Here's the ultimate poser about identity: Imagine that, in the quite ordinary course of maintenance, I were to remove one of NEWF's deck planks and replace it with another -- but instead of discarding the removed plank, I laid it aside. Imagine further that, over the years, I pulled up and replaced (but did not discard) still more planks, until a decade hence, I had replaced every component built into the original boat with an identical substitute. Would it still be the good ship NEWF?

     Because we associate identity with continuity in function, we look at an institution as identical to itself over time despite “detail changes” to such things as personnel, location, particular operations, and other internal aspects. This applies to States quite as well as to any other corporate entity.

     As an illustration of that observation, let’s continue one more paragraph into the above-cited screed:

     I'll take you a step further: Imagine that I'd saved all the replaced components, and out of sheer philosophical whimsy built a boat from them that was identical to the original. The replaced components, torn one by one from the original structure, have now been reassembled into...the original structure! But...but...the "original" -- the one that now contains no component built into the NEWF at its moment of christening -- is sitting over there, at that dock! Which one is the good ship NEWF?

     Dizzy yet? The application to States “should be obvious,” but that’s a phrase two of whose three words I try not to use. Conceive of it this way: At this time, the Obama Administration is, for all practical purposes, the State that governs the U.S. However, as of the coming January 21, that will no longer be the case according to our Constitution. But what if every single component of the federal executive branch as it stands today were to “re-assemble” somewhere after 1/21/2017 and assert that it’s still the government of the United States?

     Clearly there are only two possible outcomes to such a development: raucous laughter and civil war. Hope for the former.

---

     A free man is one who acknowledges no temporal master. To the free man, the State, whatever adaptations he must make in light of its impingement on his existence, is merely a sometimes-unavoidable inconvenience. For he is aware that This, too, shall pass away. It might have a successor. That successor might be immediate or long delayed. Its policies might be identical to those before it or wholly different from them. All that truly matters to the free man is the nature and magnitude of the attendant inconvenience.

     For these reasons I propose that the question asked by the image above must be answered “Yes, that’s exactly what it is.”

     Serve no master but God.
     Exhort those around you to do likewise.
     And above all else, Keep moving. Survive.

Fran’s Tirade Of Tirades

Now the rainman gave me two cures,
Then he said, "Jump right in."
The one was Texas medicine,
The other was just railroad gin.
And like a fool I mixed them
And it strangled up my mind,
And now people just get uglier
And I have no sense of time.

If you’re around my age and have a good familiarity with the works of noted poet Robert Zimmerman, you’ll recognize the source of the above. If not, be patient; I’ll get to it in due course.

These days, it’s unusual for me to go a day or two without writing something for this site. That was also the case with Eternity Road and The Palace of Reason of loving memory. But this piece isn’t about my prodigious output; it’s about the reasons for it.

The more I allow myself to observe, analyze, and dwell on what’s going on around me, the less able I am to resist writing about it. (Fortunately for the relatives and close friends to whom I would rant and rave about such things vocally, they don’t exist.) This might well be the case with many others in the Internet Commentariat, though it would be arduous, not to say pointless, to conduct a confirming survey.

Not only is the world going to Hell in a handbasket, the bottom of the basket is being ripped away by flesh-eating zombies. When I confront the various bits of evidence to that effect, my blood pressure spikes, and I write. The matter is exacerbated sharply by the dearth of others ready, willing, and able to comment on these matters knowledgeably, incisively, and fearlessly.

Oh, there are a few others. (See the blogroll for my favorites.) But the great preponderance of comment, even in the Grand and Glorious Age of the Internet when anyone can say anything (and anyone else is free to ignore it), is either pusillanimous or bilious, and without noticeable leavening by actual thought.

Other people make New Year’s Resolutions. I make wishes. This year, my fondest wish is for a return of hard thought and moral courage to this Republic. This is especially my wish for those who write op-ed for general consumption.

---

When Ruthie says come see her
In her honky-tonk lagoon,
Where I can watch her waltz for free
'Neath her Panamanian moon.
And I say, "Aw come on now,
You must know about my debutante."
And she says, "Your debutante just knows what you need
But I know what you want."

Nearly all opinion-editorialists have some political agenda. Surely that comes as no great revelation to my generally intelligent and observant Gentle Readers. But even you few, you happy few, you band of brothers tend to resist going deep below the surface of that reality.

A political agenda inherently assumes that politics – the struggle over who shall rule and who shall submit – should apply to the subjects the op-ed writer addresses.

That’s a bedrock truth, people. That’s the Alpha from which nearly every op-ed writer starts every column, regardless of its specific focus. And it typically goes without question by the writer’s readers.

Why?

Time was, the American mantra was “Mind your own BLEEP!ing business.” It’s been years since that was the case. These days, it’s “There oughta be a law.” The shift in attitudes could hardly be more dramatic.

The evidence is everywhere. Just one example: What’s the Republican slogan about ObamaCare? “Repeal and Replace.” Why “replace?” Why not simply repeal the monstrosity and let people make their own decisions about how to pay for medical products and services, as free people once did? Too simple? Too easy to measure against a standard for achievement? Not “compassionate” enough?

Stop kidding yourself. Politicians worship political power. They want politics involved in everything. If they could get away with it, they’d pass laws about how you should sit on the toilet – and a hefty schedule of fines for violations. Their party alignment makes no difference whatsoever.

Virtually every op-ed writer currently blathering has chosen to align himself with some political ideology. Virtually all such persons routinely cheerlead for one or the other of the two major political parties. They might well be sincere in their convictions. They might well be benevolently inclined toward the rest of us: they might sincerely believe that the political agendas they promote and support would be for the best, and that once they’re in place, we would all be as happy as kings.

It doesn’t matter. They’re pushing politics – the pursuit of power over others – as the cure for everything that ails us. Even those who argue solely for the repeal of this or that oppressive law are pushing politics.

In Ursula LeGuin’s first truly great novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, she has her co-protagonist Therem Harth rem ir Estraven, the disgraced former prime minister of Karhide on the chilly world of Gethen, reflect that “They say here ‘all roads lead to Mishnory.’ To be sure, if you turn your back on Mishnory and walk away from it, you are still on the Mishnory road. To oppose vulgarity is inevitably to be vulgar. You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.” Estraven concludes that reflection with “To oppose something is to maintain it.” This is not quite literally true, but beneath its surface lies the bedrock truth I cited above.

A subject once politicized remains in the political domain until a sufficient number of persons accept that politics is irrelevant to it, and refuse to allow politics to influence their decisions about it.

There’s a word for such a refusal. No, I shan’t tell you what it is...yet.

---

He made, in his inexperience, the classic mistake: he tried to explain. Life had not yet taught him how futile that approach is, with men and women alike. He did not know that the only respect-compelling attitude toward any accusation, true or false, is: “Take me or leave me as I am, and be damned!” – Frank Yerby, An Odor Of Sanctity

What set me off today were two striking columns:

• “Microaggressions”, “Trigger Warnings”, and the New Meaning of “Trauma”
• UNTITLED

...which broadly address the same subject. Both are worth your time – but set aside a fair amount of that precious commodity. (If you think I write at length, the cited pieces will readjust your perspectives.)

The world of “victims” has grown badly overpopulated, for a single reason: Victim status has become a political currency. If you have enough of it, you can use it to buy legal and political privileges. So group after group has rushed pell-mell into Victimism Valley, hoping to slurp up some of that soup before sensible people dam the river. The “angry ugly girls” have been particularly active these past few months, but let’s not neglect the racialist mouthpieces, the Muslims, or the environmentalists (yes, they claim we running-dog lackeys of the patriarchal capitalist conspiracy are somehow oppressing them, not merely “Gaia.”)

Look hard, Gentle Reader. Force yourself to look at the premises beneath the victimists’ contentions and demands. The set always reduces to the same ones:

• Free people have made choices we, the victimized, dislike;
• That makes us angry;
• We’ll use whatever means are at our disposal to get them to stop making those choices;
• Failing political access – no, we won’t stop trying – we’ll use unearned guilt, intimidation, volume of voice, perhaps even harassment and vandalism.

What makes their successes possible?
Who makes their successes possible – especially should the State remain uncooperative?
Might it be the bloke staring back at you from the bathroom mirror?

Do you know what the victimists fear above all else? Being ignored. It’s why they put so much time and effort into getting in front of every microphone, every camera, and every so-called journalist in the world. If a sufficient preponderance of us were simply to ignore them, their influence would drop to approximately zero. Indeed, the power of that tactic – what Arthur Herzog called in The B.S. Factor the “mass yawn” – is so staggering that it can even nullify state and federal laws, without recourse to the political process.

Consider the plaint of Scott Aaronson, whose travails are cited in the UNTITLED column. He wasn’t coerced into demeaning himself at gunpoint; he surrendered to the angry ugly girls:

At one point, I actually begged a psychiatrist to prescribe drugs that would chemically castrate me (I had researched which ones), because a life of mathematical asceticism was the only future that I could imagine for myself.

He wanted something he thought he could get from them, so he allowed them to destroy his self-respect. If he considered the alternatives at all seriously, it isn’t apparent from the cited article. But that isn’t the end of his wanderings in the intellectual and moral wilderness:

No woman “owes” male nerds anything; no woman deserves blame if she prefers the Neanderthals; everyone’s free choice demands respect.

I added the emphasis. One guess as to why.

---

“My friends, you have a right to nothing...except what you can earn in a free market, or what others are voluntarily willing to give you. -- Robert Ringer, How You Can Find Happiness During The Collapse Of Western Civilization

“Rights.” Got any? What are they? Enumerate them. Justify them as best you can. And be prepared to defend them – against me. Because if I decide you don’t have such rights, I’ll ignore your demands while I’m able, and fight back viciously should ignoring you or your political patrons fail to suffice.

I’ve often spoken and written about natural law. The laws of nature aren’t artifacts of legislation; they’re consequences of the structure of the universe. To the extent that we have natural rights. they must be implied and upheld by those laws. The ‘rights” everyone and his halfwit Uncle Elbert have been demanding of us have nothing to do with them. They use the word rights to characterize their demands because it has a special power in American thought.

In point of fact, there is exactly one natural right. But let’s think oh-so-briefly about what we might do to verify or falsify the claim that this or that demand constitutes a “right.” Can we come up with criteria by which to assess such claims? I think so:

Can everyone alive exercise the claimed “right” simultaneously, without giving rise to conflicts that can only be settled by force?

No imaginable conception of “rights” dependent upon enforcement can be made consistent with that standard. Natural law guarantees that once force is made the arbiter, force, whether exercised or withheld, will determine everything. In microcosm, this is easily grasped: your “rights” have no power against a mugger with a gun to your chest. For us who have been steeped in statist notions, the implications are the tough part:

"Rights are an archist concept. Rights have no meaning except when confronted with superior power. They are what is left to the people after the government has taken all its wants. Your country's Bill of Rights defines your most cherished freedoms how? By limiting the legal power of government to encroach upon them." [Eric L. Harry, via fictional anarchist theorist Valentin Kartsev in Harry's blockbuster Protect and Defend.]

Governments cannot define rights in any morally defensible sense; they can only wield force and intimidation. Eric Harry saw that clearly. So do the victimists.

Note again the emphasized snippet from Scott Aaronson’s plaint:

[E]veryone’s free choice demands respect.

What if I ignore your demand for my “respect?” What if I laugh in your face? What then? Will you go to the Omnipotent State to demand that it enforce your will upon me? Because unless you’re willing to take the risks inherent in trying to coerce me personally, that will be your only recourse...and trust me on this: those risks are quite a bit greater than you might think.

Power-mongers and power-seekers know this, from which arises the concluding theme of this tirade.

---

Now the bricks lay on Grand Street
Where the neon madmen climb.
They all fall there so perfectly,
It all seems so well timed.
And here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice.

[Bob Dylan, “Memphis Blues Again,” from Blonde On Blonde]

The political class and its hangers-on fear exactly the same things as the victimists: being ignored. Were they to become aware that no one is paying any attention to their enactments and decrees, they would soon slink away. Some might even enter productive trades, perhaps as cheap prostitutes.

They haven’t done any such thing because we continue to pay attention to them, and for no other reason. They do have their tools: the media, the many interest groups they support and encourage, political favors to the amoral and weak-minded, and of course a considerable amount of potential force. But none of these things are irresistible. Indeed, they pale in comparison to the force available to the citizenry.

He who yearns for a return to freedom cannot repose his hopes in the State, in politics, or in any imaginable “movement.” He must simply say to himself, “I am free; I shall do as I please,” and sincerely resolve to endure the consequences. There is no other avenue; all other roads are “roads to Mishnory.” While we remain on it, we’re inexorably fated, not to “go through all these things twice,” but to go through them over and over ad infinitam.

This is not a brief for political anarchism, as intellectually attractive as that is. It’s an exhortation to applied practical anarchism, perhaps alternately phrased as individualist anarchism: your personal refusal to grant the State unmerited attention or respect. That includes ignoring statist dictates that have no moral basis. (You might already be doing exactly that on subjects near and dear to your heart.) If you’re uncertain how to determine which such dictates are morally unfounded, you need only look to the Gospel According To Matthew:

Now a man came up to him and said, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to gain eternal life?” He said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” “Which ones?” he asked. Jesus replied, “You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false witness, honor your father and mother and love your neighbor as yourself.” [The Gospel According To Matthew, 19:16-19]

And really, when one has the Son of God for his Counselor, why would he need any other?

---

“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.” – Professor Bernardo de la Paz, in Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

I expect to return to this theme several times over the course of the Year of Our Lord 2015. Politics hasn’t just failed us; it’s misled us into apotheosizing it and its favored ones. There are no longer any plausible courses toward freedom but delegitimizing politics through a Herzogian “mass yawn.” But as with a good golf swing, the follow-through is critical.

Robert Ringer’s declamation quoted above should be at the forefront of the mind of any man determined to be free. However, the proper focus can make all the difference. It would be insufficient to delegitimize politics as practiced in America’s capitals. We must first resolve to ignore those claiming absurd, wholly unjustified “rights” and striving to bend us with the quasi-political tools of unearned guilt, intimidation, screaming, and harassment. That’s where the effort must start.

They have a right to exactly nothing.
Grant them that and nothing more.
We do not need their approval.
We do not need them to welcome us.
We certainly don’t need their respect.

It’s time to be free.

Jeb Bush? I Mean, WTF, But...JEB BUSH?!

And he's already out-polling all the other Republicans that have been mentioned as potential presidential candidates!

Can’t we do better than this? Aren’t there enough other generally acceptable candidates that we don’t have to go back to that well?

Or are the differences among them more apparent than real?

He was, in fact, characteristic of the best type of dominant male in the world at this time. He was fifty-five years old, tough, shrewd, unburdened by the complicated ethical ambiguities which puzzle intellectuals, and had long ago decided that the world was a mean son-of-a-bitch in which only the most cunning and ruthless can survive. He was also as kind as was possible for one holding that ultra-Darwinian philosophy; and he genuinely loved children and dogs, unless they were on the site of something that had to be bombed in the National Interest. He still retained some sense of humor, despite the burdens of his almost godly office, and, although he had been impotent with his wife for nearly ten years now, he generally achieved orgasm in the mouth of a skilled prostitute within 1.5 minutes. He took amphetamine pep pills to keep going on his grueling twenty-hour day, with the result that his vision of the world was somewhat skewed in a paranoid direction, and he took tranquilizers to keep from worrying too much, with the result that his detachment sometimes bordered on the schizophrenic; but most of the time his innate shrewdness gave him a fingernail grip on reality. In short, he was much like the rulers of Russia and China.

I’m beginning to wonder whether Shea and Wilson might have struck the jugular.

Objectives And Constraints

Forgive me, Gentle Reader. I'm feeling unusually philosophical this fine Saturday morning, which renders me reluctant-approaching-incapable of writing about the newsgarbage as I normally do. If you find what follows boring, or too high-flown for your tastes, just remember: it's only Saturday.

---

"Know how to make God laugh? You tell him your plans." -- Origin unknown.

I employed that line in Shadow Of A Sword, to emphasize the inescapable uncertainties inherent in even a successful plan. The speaker, presidential candidate Stephen Graham Sumner, is troubled by the unintended consequences of his successful drive for the Oval Office. Sumner, a bright and knowledgeable man, is aware that every cause has more than one effect, and that there had to be "extra" consequences to his campaign than just the vote totals. Yet he finds himself edging away from his goal because of the violence his pursuit of the presidency has elicited.

(To my fiction readers: Yes, there will be future stories about the Sumner years. Hang in there.)

Those of us who make and chafe at unsuccessful plans -- i.e., everyone -- sing our laments in a different key, of course. But that's in the nature of Nature. We can plan; we can implement our plans; we can pursue them with all the force and skill at our disposal...but we cannot guarantee their outcomes.

The one thing it's within human power to guarantee is that we shall not do some particular thing, or some category of things. All else is subject to being overruled by the laws of Nature.

---

Isabel Paterson was the first writer I encountered to enumerate these critical characteristics of Mankind:

1. Man is a rational animal, capable of inferring causal relations from his observations of reality;
2. Each of us is self-motivating and self-actuating -- i.e., our desires and decisions are individual;
3. Each of us possesses the ability to inhibit himself -- i.e., to refrain from an action, however desirable he might deem the rewards that might flow from it.

That third characteristic is the one on which I'd like to concentrate for the moment.

Why would Smith, who has conceived of a course of action that he expects would bring him some greatly desired reward, voluntarily refrain from taking that course?

• He might be too risk-averse to pursue it;
• He might doubt his own forecast of success;
• He might be uncertain that the reward is real;
• He fears unforeseeable unintended consequences;
• The reward would be accompanied by a loss of equal or greater magnitude:
• His conscience forbids it.

That last possibility brings us into the domain of ethics and ethical psychology, which makes it difficult to analyze by impersonal means. However, the others are bald recognitions of the inherent uncertainties of life under the veil of time. In effect, they concede the primacy of Natural Law, which operates continuously, offers no exemptions, and is indifferent to individual desires, opinions, and identities.

We cannot be certain that any positive course will eventuate in the outcome we seek, Only one certainty is granted us: that if we refrain from doing a particular thing, then we will not do that thing. A man's firm decision not to act cannot be overridden by any external agency.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote that "among these [rights] are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," that bit of wisdom might well have been uppermost in his thoughts. As Robert A. Heinlein observed in Starship Troopers:

And the third 'right'? — the 'pursuit of happiness'? It is indeed inalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives — but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.

All we can say for certain is what we will not do; all else is subject to the whims of time and chance.

---

If our personal certainties are so limited, what does that make of our ability to plan and to execute our plans?

Only this: it demands that we be mindful of the possibility of failure. Given that that possibility applies not merely to a complete plan but to each step in such a plan, the farther forward we plan -- the more linkages of cause and effect we insert between our current position and our intended destination -- the less certain we can be of the outcome. More, every single action will have at least two consequences, at least one of which will be undesirable. (See the Second Law of Thermodynamics for a rigorous explanation.) Thus, when toting up the costs of a plan, those negative consequences belong on the debit side of the balance sheet -- and as they're normally just as impossible to be certain about as any other aspect of our plans, the element of risk will always be larger than we can foresee.

Though I've stepped through this evolution of thought as slowly and carefully as natural language will allow, the knowledge itself is something we grasp not by theorizing but from life itself. Indeed, one cannot lay claim to any degree of maturity without first absorbing it.

---

If you simply must have a political hook on which to hang the above, it does pertain to the utter failure of nearly all government action. Governments, especially left-leaning governments, are obsessed with outcomes. They're forever telling their subjects about how this or that plan will bring about some desirable state of affairs. They're correct so seldom that the great question is why any half-bright human being ever takes their assertions seriously.

It's an old saw that you can always tell when a politician is lying: his lips move. If I exercise all my Christian charity and completely suspend my well-developed cynicism about men who regard themselves as worthy of wielding power over the rest of us, I can grudgingly allow that every eon or so, a politician who promises some rosy outcome from a proposed course in public policy might just sincerely believe it. He still won't be correct. Those who sincerely imagine that "social progress," however they define it, can be brought about by political action might lack mens rea, but the harm they do when allowed power will not be lessened by their warm hearts or their good intentions.

The ability to inhibit himself, humbly mindful of his fallibility and ethically constrained from doing harm in his desire to do good, is the most important characteristic a ruler could possibly possess. Our present agonies reflect how vanishingly rare such figures really are.

What's that you say? From the above I seem to be advocating anarchism? Why, Gentle Reader! Whatever gave you that idea?

Happy Winter Solstice.

Shutting Them Down

"Gentlemen, you see that in the anarchy in which we live, society manages much as before. Take care, if our disputes last too long, that the people do not come to think that they can very easily do without us." – Benjamin Franklin, to the Constitutional Convention of 1787

The so called "government shutdown," which the Obamunists and their hangers-on claim will "blow up the economy," along with miscellaneous other horrors to be inflicted on the poor, Negroes, children, women, homosexuals, grandmothers, the snail darter, the Delta smelt, and the spotted owl, has now been in effect for a little more than a full day. My neighborhood is just as it was before. New York State is lumbering along in its usual quadriplegic fashion. The stock markets appear to be taking it calmly. No one has invaded us. So why all the fuss?

Because of the Benjamin Franklin quote above, of course.

The Ruling Elite is far more threatened by the shutdown than any other sector of society. Granted, some of us, myself among them, might need new jobs if it were to go on indefinitely, assuming private enterprise doesn't pick up where the Pentagon leaves off. But we have skills...well, most of us, anyway...that can easily be transferred to other applications than killing people and breaking things. But what about politicians and bureaucrats? Except for the ones that hold credentials of other kinds, what would they do to stay in coffee and cakes?

Bureaucrats are persons who read and write memoranda. That's a skill made valuable solely by government; therefore, once government is gone, there will be no niche for them. Except for the ones that pack guns, of course, but I'm sure the private sector can deal with them...one way or another. However, I can't think of any portion of the private economy that has a grinding need for officious, self-important bastards consumed by a lust for power but are incapable of anything but vilifying one another. Can you, Gentle Reader?

Franklin's caution to the Constitutional Conventioners might yet be realized in this year of Our Lord 2013. Whether he would look upon today's developments with alarm or satisfaction, I cannot say.

---

The late Samuel Francis is probably best known for his conception of anarcho-tyranny:

What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny – the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through "sensitivity training" and multiculturalist curricula, "hate crime" laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny....

The laws that are enforced are either those that extend or entrench the power of the state and its allies and internal elites ... or else they are the laws that directly punish those recalcitrant and "pathological" elements in society who insist on behaving according to traditional norms – people who do not like to pay taxes, wear seat belts, or deliver their children to the mind-bending therapists who run the public schools; or the people who own and keep firearms, display or even wear the Confederate flag, put up Christmas trees, spank their children, and quote the Constitution or the Bible – not to mention dissident political figures who actually run for office and try to do something about mass immigration by Third World populations.

This crossbreed between the tyranny made possible by an overweening political power and the chaos too many persons have associated mentally with "anarchy" strikes the superficial as impossible. Governments exist, they argue, to enforce order; therefore, while they can tyrannize, to attribute chaos to them, simultaneously at least, is misconceived. What the superficial manage to miss is that while a government can "enforce order," it need not do so for everyone. Indeed, the history of governments is without any examples of a government that enforced a truly uniform order, in which the same laws have applied to everyone regardless of his identity, his occupation, his wealth, or his station in society.

Go ahead. Check me on it. Then come back and read the rest.

---

"Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us." -- Leo Tolstoy

"I was never molested by any person but those who represented the State." -- Henry David Thoreau

I have come to agree with the late Mr. Francis on nearly everything he thought, said, or wrote. Moreover, the "red thread" that runs through every significant malady of American society, both the ones he cited in the quotes above and any others you might care to name, is that of government. Governments at all levels are the creators and perpetuators of the disorder, the poverty, the social tensions, the suppression of enterprise, and the seemingly irremediable failures of core institutions that plague these United States.

Note that any government in operation is solely an instrument of violence. Governments are distinguished from other organizations in that within the zone of their sovereignty, they are indemnified, de jure or de facto, against penalty for doing what a private individual or organization would be prosecuted for. This privilege frees governments from having to do anything but coerce the rest of us.

Sometimes, such coercions have no imaginable purpose but the assertion of the privilege of coercion itself:

Fifty-seven year old Texas homeowner William Keith Hall shot "a career criminal" who broke into his home on September 26 and was subsequently shot by police after refusing to drop his gun once they arrived.

In fact, Police say he pointed his gun at them when they reached the scene.

According Fox News, 30-year old Jerry Wayne Hale broke into Hall's home and was shot. Thereafter Hall allegedly pointed his gun at the man who called 911 and then allegedly pointed at witnesses who were near Hale.

The 911 caller said Hall actually tried to "fire at the witnesses but his gun apparently jammed."

Fox News carried a report from The Dallas Morning News saying the police did not realize Hall had shot Hale in defense of his home when they arrived. Therefore, when Hall refused to drop his gun--and even "pointed the pistol at police officers," according to Maj. Jeff Cotner--police opened fire.

Hall died with Hale at the scene.

Decide for yourself whether to believe the self-exculpating claims of the police who gunned down a homeowner in his own home.

---

"The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from the violence to which it owes its very existence." -- Mohandas K. Gandhi

We may have happened upon a stroke of good fortune. Owing to the most recent developments in Congress, we have an opportunity to observe, while the federal government is (partially) closed down, whether conditions will deteriorate or improve.

Even if nothing were to change except for the removal of government -- if "society manages much as before" -- I would count it as a massive improvement. We would have shed the dead load of government, which coerces, mulcts, and hobbles us in so many ways. That alone would open possibilities governments have repeatedly obstructed.

In writing the above, I am mindful that no change so sweeping would come without cost. In particular, we are not our colonial ancestors, accustomed to looking after ourselves and one another without the "help" of the State. There would be a period during which many addicted to government payments would be at the mercy of their neighbors. There would be a period during which criminals -- "private-sector" criminals, that is -- would perceive increased opportunities for plunder. And there would be a period during which the other nations of the world would have to defend their own borders...hopefully, a period never to end.

But human beings adapt. At least, we do so once we've been convinced that it's adapt-or-die, and that there's no way back to the swaddling comforts of the past. And really, what did our colonial forebears have that we don't, except for Tyrant George across the Atlantic to rebel against?

Give it some thought.