From Liberty For Allby Jessica Pacholski
Freedom is the only thing I have ever believed in, mostly because of everything I’ve seen in my life. It’s the only thing that works. Maybe I’m a pragmatist, maybe an idealist; I’ve never really been able to sort that out due to the fact that I’ve been labeled both. I have a hard time thinking that there are people in the world who can live my life for me or have a right to dictate to me. Mostly, I feel I do a very good job of governing myself. That doesn’t mean I’m a perfect human being, far from it, but my mistakes are mine and I am the one who pays the piper. I don’t feel I have a right to blame others for my shortcomings or impose my worldview on other people, no matter how much I disagree with them.
In the twentieth century over 200,000,000 people were murdered, not by war or other citizens, but by their own governments. There is even a term for this, democide. Lord Acton’s famous axiom about absolute power corrupting almost absolutely seems to have blossomed into the full scale horror that it always promised to be with the birth of the nuclear age. At no other time in history has humanity had the ability to completely annihilate itself within a matter of minutes. In light of this you would think that people would realize that government is the most dangerous institution ever created by mankind, sadly they don’t. In fact most people cling to the idea of a benevolent government that “supports” its people and they think if you disagree with the idea that government is necessary that you are advocating chaos and lawlessness. I see this as being the complete reverse of what anarchy really is.
Anarchy is the belief in self government, that all people have absolutely equal rights under natural law and that centralized hierarchical power is eventually destructive to the causes of peace, order, and liberty. Agorist philosophy states that the marketplace is the medium of the peaceful exchange of not only goods, but of ideas and cultures. Ergo, I am a Market Anarchist or Voluntaryist. I am anti war, anti state, and pro-market capitalism.
I believe that equality, peace and liberty come through individual interaction, not by collectivist ideology. I have no delusions that I can force others to be who I think they should be. Furthermore, I don’t possess the kind of ego that tells me that I should be able to force my ideas down anyone’s throat. The very idea that you can engineer a perfect society is ridiculous on its face. What is for the good of one group usually comes at the expense of another.
Posts
