Tag: anarchy

State Intervention and Anarchy

In Against the State, Lew Rockwell emphasizes that the assault on our liberties from the state is not merely “the product of temporary malfunctions. To the contrary, the state is by nature evil.” Rockwell shows that the state is founded on coercion and maintains its power by use of force.

In recent years, following the rise of environmentalism, public health “safetyism,” and the war against “hate,” state interventions have encroached even further into private and family life. Against the State shows that these interventions are not only coercive but also antihuman in prioritizing their goals above human life. A striking example of this was the lockdown policy of closing schools and playgrounds, on the basis that children are resilient and so there is no reason why the state should not keep them under house arrest for several months of their lives.

Another example is the prioritization of the needs of the socialized medicine behemoths such as the United Kingdom’s cultish National Health Service: the British journalist Sherelle Jacobs comments that “with NHS spending now more than that for education, transport, the Home Office and defense put together, Britain is arguably now merely a health service with a state attached.” Similarly, in Canada, private healthcare is banned, and citizens struggling to cope with life are offered state assistance in killing themselves.

With the state on the rampage enforcing the “public good,” its defenders see no need to limit the power conferred on it to achieve that goal—after all, if the goal is noble and worthy, why should there be limits on the power to achieve it? In this way, the ideal of limited government is extinguished.

Rockwell also highlights the fact that the state creates the very problems for which it is then said we need state power to resolve:

The state is not a neutral observer. It will pass environmental legislation. It will regulate relations between races and sexes. It will put down this religion in order to raise that one up. In each case, the intervention only exacerbates conflicts, which in turn creates the impression that there really is an intractable conflict at work.

An example of state interventions fueling conflict is the protected status given to different groups based on their identity, notably race, sex, religion, and gender.

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WILL AARON BUSHNELL’S DEATH TRIGGER ANARCHISM WITCH HUNT?

AARON BUSHNELL’S DEATH by self-immolation in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington last month has provoked nationwide soul-searching about the war in Gaza. For the U.S. government though, the airman’s death excites a different kind of search: for so-called extremists, particularly left-wing ones. 

Last Wednesday, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., former Army officer and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asking why and how the Pentagon could tolerate an airman like Bushnell in its ranks. Calling his death “an act of horrific violence” that was “in support of a terrorist group [Hamas],” Cotton goes on to ask about the Defense Department’s internal efforts to address extremism and whether Bushnell was ever identified as exhibiting extremist views or behaviors.

Cotton’s agitation to find Hamas supporters in uniform twists Bushnell’s political act, which Bushnell said was in support of the Palestinian people. But it also follows a longstanding urging by other members of Congress like Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa — ranking Republican of the Judiciary Committee and former president pro tempore of the Senate — for the military to pursue some kind of similar treatment for leftists.

While studies show that support for extremism is similar or even lower among veterans than the general population, extremism in the active-duty military has become an obsession of the Washington brass since January 6. Soon after taking office, new secretary of defense Austin, a retired Army general, directed the military to conduct an all-hands “stand down” to address extremism in the ranks, commissioning a number of panels and studies to evaluate white nationalism and neo-Nazi support among service members.

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Anarchy in Central Park

Politicians have big plans for us.

President Joe Biden repeatedly says, “I have a plan for that.”

“I alone can fix it,” shouted President Donald Trump.

But most of life, and the best of life, happens when politicians butt out and let us make our own choices.

Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou called that “spontaneous order.” Thousands of years later, economist F. A. Hayek added that order comes “not from design, but spontaneously.”

Did you eat a banana this morning? No central planner calculates how many bananas should be grown, who will pick them, when they’ll be harvested, how they’ll be shipped, or how many to ship. We get bananas and most everything in life through billions of individuals, planning, cooperating, and reacting on their own.

“Think about spontaneous order on a road,” says The Atlas Network’s Tom Palmer.

Right. Millions of people, some of them morons, propel 4,000-pound vehicles at 60 miles per hour, right next to each other. We rarely smash into each other.

There are rules, like “pass on the left,” but for the most part, people navigate highways on their own.

Likewise, no one invented language, but the world has thousands. “Experts” tried to invent better ones, like Volapuk and Esperanto, which supposedly would let us communicate better.

“No one speaks these languages,” says Palmer, because language evolves spontaneously. “That is always superior to top-down systems that rely on the information in one brain.”

Amazingly, my town, New York City, has twice now allowed spontaneous order that makes my life much better.

City government once managed Central Park. When it did, trash was everywhere, and most of the grass was dead.

The city then agreed to let a private nonprofit, the Central Park Conservancy, manage most of the park. Without a government plan, people came together, giving money and time to turn the park around. (Disclosure: I was one of them, and now I’m a conservancy director.)

Now Central Park is beautiful. Forty million people spend time there every year. Despite the crowds, the park works well without strict government rules.

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