It is a very American thing not to trust the Government. The 2nd Amendment is justified by the fear of allowing an armed Government to exist unchallenged by a disarmed People. And, of course as with everything there is A Truth to this. But, it is not the Whole Truth. The key problem is this "straw man" thing called Government and People.
Politics is the process of creating divisive ideas and then working to get support for those divisions. The general process is to cause a division and then get people to support one side against the other. Classic divisions/dualisms we have seen are Roundheads/Cavaliers in English Civil War, Loyalists/Patriots in US Independence War, Communists/Capitalists in Cold War, Socialists/Imperialists in 18/19th century revolutions, Collectivist/Individualist or Group/Individual and we have Government/People.
What is Government? The extreme view is that it is a Closed group of super powerful people who are unified against the rest of Humanity. In the most extreme view they are not even Human themselves, perhaps Aliens like in the Carpenter film "They Live". Perhaps they are humans but are racially insular like Jews, perhaps they are like "us" but are just super powerful like Bilderberg or Illuminati. But in reality no "group" is really like this. And of course as soon as we take sides in a division like this we join a group and become collectivist ourselves. This is a logical problem with dualism itself.
I'm no expert on the widely read and deep thinking Stefan Molyneux, he certainly seems to have risen to prominence in the Anarchist movement, but from what I hear from supporters he must be misunderstood. Ayn Rand also runs into a similar problem with the concept of "group". Perhaps easier just to do a straight paragraph on that.
ANARCHISM AS I UNDERSTAND IT IS THE TRUTH. We are all always free to be whatever, whenever. Even if I am imprisoned by a powerful state I am still completely mentally free. I just have some superficial limitations to my physical movement and circumstances. Even in a perfect world I can get a stroke and get locked in syndrome. Has my "freedom" really been taken by the stroke or state? The TRUTH is always true and ANARCHISM is the truth that we are always free to chose. But we must accept the situation before we chose in any world. I may chose to save myself, but I need to know what I am saving myself from first else I will fail. The Anarchists are quite rightly reminding us this: WE MUST MAKE WISE CHOSES. It is the same message as all the Religions: we will be judged alone for what we do. Sin is ours and ours alone. We must therefore chose well. It is the foundation of Protestantism and Western ideas of Individuality and Democracy. It is an old and very important idea, simply being rehashed.
So far so good. So how has it gone wrong. The problem is that Alt-Right Anarchism has become politicised and has formed into Groups. A person who choses to work with government or socialism or communism or anything that is deemed "anti-anarchistic" is viewed as not-Anarchistic even if they have made a well reasoned decision. Yet the whole point of Anarchism is that we must make a choice for OURSELVES. Some people think that government is a good thing. As Anarchists they must chose that. So there is a form of Anarchism that has arisen that is deeply ANTI-ANARCHIC but believes it is true Anarchism. Ayn Rand and Stefan Molyneux seem to be the worst offenders here. The argument is that a member of a political party has lost all freedom to chose. But this isn't true. They chose whether to follow party line or risk their carriers (I'll deal more with compromise below).
Ayn Rand knew this problem. We must be extremely careful as ANARCHISTS not to become influenced by the group. Our choses must be OURS and not the GROUPS. Anarchists will argue that being a member of a political party will compromise ones choices and therefore cannot be allowed. But what if I chose compromise? Reality is actually all about compromise. I consider a stupidly simple example of a compromise we all make.
I want to go on holiday with my partner and children. This means I must chose a time which is convenient with them and they with me. So we work together and pick a suitable date that works BEST. "Best" might not be "my" choice were I holidaying alone. But since I want to spend my holiday with my family the parameters change and I chose a different date that suits that wish. There is no absolute "right" answer. Anarachists seem to think there is a single "true" choice I will make when unhindered by "The Group". You cannot escape "the group" to make "free choices". Even if you buy something a group made that.
Obviously there are times when "The Group" seems dangerous. Hitler's Germany, Mao's China, Stalin's Russia, Pol Pot's Cambodia with the mass killing. How is it that a mass of people can be organised into a killing machine that terrorises the country like this. The panic answer is that people must realise for their own good not to organise into mass movements that can become unstoppable killing machines. But wait a second, this conclusion is based upon complete bias. The Allies were an even greater killing machine than the Axis powers. The American War of Independence where the American's fought off British rule and the English Civil war where we fought off the King were achieved by mass killing machines. War is about matching mass killing machine against mass killing machine. And the bigger killer wins. This is why the US currently spends more on weapons of mass destruction than any other country. They understand that "freedom" depends upon punching harder. So Anarchism must be saying if we want Peace then we must not organise into government, nations or even armies. There is great sense to the last one. I no one ever joined an army or picked up a gun then war is over. But we have the contradiction now: what to do with people who use the 2nd Amendment. If they think this is correct then as Anarchists we must respect their decision.
And so it goes for government. There is an argument that government is both unavoidable and essential. I may as well make that now.
How did government arise? There is the Feminist argument that Patriarchy is a conspiracy of men against women. But how did *that* arise? A few options: If they were never equal it is not a conspiracy. Men are just more powerful. If they were equal then women allowed men to conspire against them. Either way there was a due process. There was no "unfair" conspiracy. The anarchist argument is the latter. People were all equal and the mass allowed an elite to conspire against them. This is the call to arms for the mass to rise up against the elite. Ironically this is exactly the process of Socialist Revolution; an uprising that the elite are genuinely afraid of, which is one reason why Communism is so hated in the West. The problem with this view is that it is once again part of the truth. Some history to illustrate.
In Ancient Greece the highest level of organisation was the city state (Polis). An Anarchist utopia where every city state of a few thousand people had its own rules, customs, economics. Some were Oligarchies, some Democracies, Theocracies, Plutocracies.. the Greeks had names for all the ways of organising a city. One thing that was constant tho: there were hereditary families of great power that could travel freely between the city states and mess up the politics. Alcibiades is a famous character of noble background who had constant changing allegiances between Athens, Sparta and elsewhere. This money class had their good uses as well as bad. Athens used to tolerate them because they were forced to pay for the many public festivals that were held. But occasionally this relationship turned sour and the Aristos would rise up and take over. But before long power shifted and the Demos would wrestle back power and castrate the power of the elites. This constant battle between oligarchs and people is as old as Humanity.
In Britain we have one of the world's worst class systems that goes back to the invasion of the Island by the Normans. The Saxons were put into slavery and the Nobles developed the class system we have today. This is the typical way in which inequality is generated. The reward for victory in battle is supremacy and the vanquished are subjected to the power of victors. The series of victories that the US has enjoyed over the last 100 years means that many countries including Britain are now subjects of US power. Britain is only granted so much power to deal with trivial local matters. Important matters are decided in Washington. This kind of process is the key structure across all history.
On a small scale you see it with gangs. You are not in a gang. You get threatened so you either agree to join, or you go and join another gang that you think will support you. By doing this you make the gang stronger and you increase the problem for people who want to avoid gangs. England could have remained in defiance of the Normans, it could defy the Americans. But would it benefit or is it better just to accept the situation for now. But by doing this it must fight in US Led Wars and so makes the problem harder for countries that want to avoid being in the US Gang. This is the problem.
Power is the name of the game. Power exists. If I can't do something by myself I will ask a friend. Together we are stronger. But by doing this people who disagree with me must join forces also. This is the nature of things. It is called Politics. Even many fake Anarchists, as already said, have joined forces now against government and supporters of socialism and government etc. This process of actual political alignment is the process to watch, not the divisions in some intellectual argument.
Can we--like Ayn Rand and Molyneux argue--all join together to reject this "evil" tendency to gang up against each other? The problem is that this is really hard to define. I want to build an oil pipe line so I form a company and contract out skills and everything seems fine. That is until a bunch of people say that I am building on Spiritual Land. I have no idea what they are talking about, I never even thought of it. Suddenly my innocent collective of people bringing needed oil to market has become an offensive force against some people. Naturally they see us as a powerful force so they gang together to attack us. What did we do wrong? People must work together, and when they do this they will necessarily work against the interest of some people.
The solution is called Politics. This is where we don't try to kill off power (baby and bath water) we simply accept THERE IS SUCH A THING AS POWER, but we argue out who is going to get this power. Sometime it is around a table, sometime it is by force. These laws are bigger than any social organisation. Anarchists are RIGHT in that we must always remember around that table or in that army that we are making choses for ourselves and not to live unthinkingly. If we obey the orders of our Sergeant we do so willingly because we think it is best, and if it turns out he was an idiot and we made a mistake to trust him that is our responsibility. If we are told to shoot on protesters this is a decision we must take for ourselves. No one in Nuremberg should have been able to say they were "following orders". But obviously no army would operate with people disobeying orders so people joining an army need understand that the Army is fundamentally opposed to freedom of thought. This is something for their consciences to work out. No blog entry or you-tube channel can replace a person's conscience.
The problem for anarchists tho is that most people are too busy earning a living to really have the time to think everything through. Only the elite like Plato and Molyneux have the time. I call Molyneux elite because he lives through a You-tube channel discussing philosophy. Traditionally this was the lifestyle of highest elites. It is the main fault of Capitalism ironically-- the thing championed by the anarchists--that having to depend entirely upon ourselves for our income we have very little time for higher thought. Even the elite Aristotle argues free time is essential for politics. But historically Free-time has always been bought by slavery and elite power. The rise of Capitalism has destroyed politics and with that the elite have been able to take over in a way never seen before. In the Middle Ages, despite the Tudor propaganda, people were highly literate and fully engaged in politics. The Peasants Revolt led by Walter Tyler in 1381 gives some idea the political intelligence of the "peasant". Equally the ignorant mass of the French Revolution were actually an intelligent politically engaged peasantry. The irony is that the modern industrial worker has no political capability. We are the drones and zombies that Anarchism is riling against. But we are the product of industrialisation, mass production, machine labour, TV, internet and electronic progress. It is not a simple disease that the Anarchist argues against. It is not something with a quick fix. It is certainly not a political debate with sides.
What we are seeing is just the ancient battle of Good against Evil, or people's hearts, souls and consciences. Sadly it appears to me a political popularist dogmatic consciousness had crippled any meaning, intelligence and debate in the always present issue of how we live.
