Anarchists are bad guys?
My wife, the lovely Miss Puddy, accompanied me to the latest Sherlock Holmes movie last night. In the movie, a series of bombings, supposedly perpetrated by anarchist, was terrorizing Europe. It got me thinking, what is an anarchist?
Dictionaries define anarchists as people who rebel against government or other authorities or “powers that be,” especially by using violent actions to overthrow the government. I don’t agree with an individual’s using violence to get rid of a Senator or mayor or President he doesn’t care for (much less the whole government!), but I do support the idea of resisting too much government intervention in our lives.
If anarchists are people who want no government at all, it follows that the opposite of communism (the 100% control of society by government) is anarchy (the 0% control of society by government). Jefferson envisioned a society in which freedom would flourish to be somewhere around 10% control of society by government. In his model, government would act as a referee to arbitrate contracts in the courts and to provide for mutual defense as well as to secure private property rights. This is an oversimplification of his aims, but it does reflect what I see as the amount of government that is appropriate for enabling freedom to exist.
Socialism, on the other hand, probably sees somewhere between 50% to 90% government control of society. In my estimation, under Obama’s governing philosophy, government organizations bumped control of our society to about 65%. In the past year alone, thousands of new laws were passed that further restricted society.
Every time our lawmakers pass a new law or a new rule, we relinquish a little more freedom and march a little closer to 100% government control. God gave Moses only 10 Commandments to follow. Jesus simplified these to just one law, the Golden Rule. Somehow government feels the need to expand these with tens of thousands of laws each year!
In the movie V for Vendetta, the main character wears a Guy Fawkes mask and overthrows a future fictional totalitarian government in the UK that controls every aspect of daily life. V tells the people they can manage their own affairs without the help of such an all-controlling government. Admittedly, Guy Fawkes himself was not an anarchist, and most likely the character of “V” was not either, but both represent a move away from oppressive governments.
Perhaps anarchists (people who believe in 0% government control) are not that bad if they can pull us back down the scale closer to Jefferson’s 10% government.
I’ve identified several functions of government that are being done or could be done by the private sector. Collection of trash is already done privately in many parts of the country. Many water, gas and other utilities are privatized. There are private toll roads in some states. Insurance investigators could look into property crimes. On a larger scale, the government hires private companies to handle many messy details of the wars it fights. Money itself could easily be privatized if legal tender laws were abolished; private firms that use digital gold banking accounts could easily facilitate trade without the use of government central banks. Even space travel is now being privatized.
While extremism is usually bad on both ends of the spectrum, and I don’t endorse the violence some anarchists employ, I do find myself aligned closer to the 10% government envisioned by Jefferson and, therefore, closer to anarchy than the present administration’s 65% control of society, which is closer to communism. Maybe anarchists aren’t all bad?
“More law, less justice.” — Cicero
“Men fight for freedom, then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.” — Unknown
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