The State Is More Dangerous Than Anarchy

In statist societies, where the law is controlled by a monopolistic institution, it is force that dictates law. This is especially true in democratic countries, where social life is marked by the competition for the control of the political “center,” i.e., the power to distribute resources, favors, and privileges. Schmitt’s critique of the hypocrisy of liberal democracy is confirmed by the Italian elitists. The latter were convinced that in every political system there is a small group of men (an organized elite) dominating the large disorganized mass. As Pareto noted, the corruption of the parliamentary system meant that the interests of the majority were seconded to the interests and passions of a small and highly organized group. These were ready to use any means to extend their influence and dominate the country. For this reason, democracy exists only as a political ideology devoted to protecting and legitimating the power of a minority capable of taking advantage of its higher organization. (The Myth of National Defense, Bassani and Lottieri, Pg 49-50)

While many worship their god – “democracy” - others ask how people can be duped into thinking democracy (or any form of State rule) is worth killing and fighting for, or that it is a system worthy of our allegiance. As stated in the quote above, democracy exists only as a political ideology devoted to protecting and legitimating the power of a minority capable of taking advantage of its higher organization. Democracy is nothing more than a dominant minority ruling (and manipulating) the subservient majority. Many people submit to the yoke of tyranny, but why? Why are so many people willing to be enslaved by the State? Some do it out of fear. Others submit because they have believed the lie that the State, or their “nation”, is a God-ordained center of authority over their lives. Even some professing Christians, who should be speaking against the evils of the State, are servants of the State. Why do they buy into the propaganda of “my country right or wrong?” People have allowed Governments to determine truth for them, and in the process, truth and liberty have been sacrificed. Families allow the State to determine truth for them and to enslave them. Many churches allow the State to determine truth for them and they bend the knee to the State’s dictates. Communities allow themselves to be enslaved. Government is god in the eyes of many, and that’s why they will pledge their allegiance to its flag, its constitution, or its representatives. They will do what the Government allows, and will avoid what the Government disallows. How is it all enforced? By Government hirelings. Those who wear Government uniforms are Government hirelings, doing what they are told, no matter what it is. They are not serving humanity, they are serving themselves, earning a paycheck, and they don’t care what happens to those the Government says to kill, arrest, or imprison. They are just “doing their job.” The founders of the US were against standing armies and a police state, but today, political conservatives and liberals sing the praises of both. They are not for freedom, they are for control – and their hirelings enforce their tyranny.

I don’t get caught up in political labels but I consider myself the equivalent of a Christian anarchist. Because people are “linguistically challenged”, they only know definitions that are spoon-fed to them, but anarchy is not chaos and disorder. One can look at a dictionary definition and see different meanings of the word. It would do people well to remember that a dictionary is not infallible, and that the general understanding of those in a particular society can be influenced by the bias of those in control, thus they can take a word such as anarchy, which means the absence of political authorities or political rulers, which they claim will always lead to disorder and chaos as a way of protecting their power and making their existence seem necessary, so they make the unfounded logical leap to – anarchy means chaos and disorder.

To say anarchy is the absence of order is misleading. Disorder can be present in anarchy, because many humans, in the words of Robert Higgs, “are no damn good.” But Higgs (and many others) also argue that disorder is most prevalent under State control, not the other way around. In one of his speeches, he said that because of the way humans are, an anarchist society can be bad, but statist societies are worse, because the State accumulates power and control over others that could never happen under an anarchist society, where people are responsible for coming together for their own good and they are not forced to abide by tyrannical dictates. With this in mind, to say that anarchy is the absence of governance is misleading. An anarchist society can have governance, and will (the Old American West, ancient Ireland, and others), but it will not have a monopolistic controlling Government (big “G”) that ignores property rights. In an anarchist society, rules can be enforced through social norms and mutual agreements. A tyrannical, monopolistic State is not necessary, and in fact where it is present, true chaos and disorder persists. Anarchy, then, does not mean looting and rioting, it is in fact, in the words of my friend Christopher De Milo - ordered liberty. It is not lawlessness or unruliness, it is the absence of rulers. It is not an absence of law, it is an absence of the State. If only people could understand how they have been sold out by their forbears to State rule, and indoctrinated with State propaganda, perhaps many of them would disengage from the system. I do not agree with the idea of attempting to infiltrate and influence the system, I am of the opinion that people of conscience should forsake the system as much as possible. The State is not something that can be redeemed, it is an entity that should be starved. It survives by claiming my resources and yours as its own. We should “come out from among them”, according to Higgs, and I agree.

Many won’t, however, because they like living under a Nanny State. They like being told what to think and what to teach their children. They like receiving money from the Government that was taken from someone else so they can sit on their backsides in front of a television. They like having Big Government provide them with food and medicine. They like the “security” of State control. They don’t mind letting the Government run their lives. Others of us burn with anger at the thought of some politician telling us what we must do and what our families must do. We despise the thought of being someone’s slave. We hate the idea that the State thinks it knows better than the fathers and mothers. The State is the real cause of disorder and chaos. It has always been that way. Just look at the theft committed by the State every day, the senseless killings by the State, the curtailing of liberty, the lies, the tyranny, the many harms caused by lockdowns, the number of people imprisoned (creating concentrations of pure evil), the debt foisted upon the people, the murders in the womb, the disregard of God’s design for marriage and the family, the number of unsolved murders, and on and on and on.

Listen to Higgs again:

“Most people fear that without government (as we now know it), social and economic conditions would be horrible, with rampant crime, including theft, extortion, robbery, rape, and murder; chronic fighting among warlords and organized criminal gangs; and low rates of saving and investment, hence little or no economic growth, owing to people’s inability to form reliable expectations about the future, even for the intermediate term, in an atmosphere of great threats to private property rights. Yet, with government (as we now know it), all of these social and economic conditions prevail nonetheless, and many of them, especially the death and destruction caused by war and constant preparation for war and the domestic extortion and threats to private property rights, are institutionalized and carried out on a vast scale that almost certainly could not exist without government’s huge resources to maintain them. Moreover, with a traditional government in place – a government that ruthlessly smashes any rivals for its monopoly of “legitimate” coercion and brooks no competitors to coexist alongside it -- people have virtually no ability to protect themselves against the entrenched threats to life, liberty, and property posed by the government itself.” (Go here to listen to his speech about this subject)

In the Bible we see that God expects us to respect people and their property when he forbids murder (and rape – an equivalent crime), and stealing. The State kills, overpowers, and steals, and does so with impunity. We are not allowed to govern our own lives – we must obey the State. A person I was having a casual conversation with the other day made the comment that we cannot govern ourselves. I pointed out the absurdity of this statement (he was only repeating what he had heard). He was buying into the idea that people cannot govern themselves, so instead we should give them the power to govern others, or we should submit to the control of those who cannot govern themselves. This is sheer insanity. For anyone who says, that’s why we have the rule of law, not the rule of men, I say that is equally absurd. Under State rule the powerful write the laws, enforce the laws, ignore the laws for their own benefit, and tell us what we can and cannot do. It’s just another way of saying the same thing – we must obey.

The truth is, we do not have property rights under State rule. To say so is to believe a tremendous lie. In a free society, a society governed by voluntary agreements, a true system of anarchy, we could govern our own lives and we could do as we wish with our own property. The only thing we couldn’t do is use violence against others and their property. Those who do would suffer the consequences.

Again, anarchism rightly understood is not chaos, though chaos can exist in any societal structure. Chaos is not to be equated with any form of “Government”, per se, though some forms are more likely to result in chaos, and I agree that statist societies are the perfect breeding ground for chaos.