Until consent replaces compulsion, until contract replaces decree, until society replaces state the world will continue to be a violent, impoverished, brutish, backwards place to live.
Consensual relationships are the sine qua non of civilized society. Their moral claim, as well as their efficacy and strength in action are evident to all. Everyone knows that you should keep your hands and feet to yourself and that you should pay for what you take or damage. Everyone also knows stealing and lying are wrong. If they think about it a little more they also know why: In a consensual relationship both parties benefit and all ideas and plans are allowed to compete on their true merit and the only way for the individual to get what they want is to give others what they want.
Young children understand these rules, and the vast majority of people live by them in their daily lives, but in the realm of politics, mankind seems stuck in infancy. Society at large is like a child in the “terrible twos”, oblivious to the inefficacy of force and unable to distinguish “mine” from “thine.” On the floor of the Yale Political Union, I have listened to thoughtful and intelligent students defend the actions of the United States Government towards the people of Iraq. This student would never force his way into someone’s home uninvited. He would never kill innocent people to catch criminals. He would never force his friend and acquaintances to pay for his personal projects and endeavors, no matter how worthwhile he thinks they might be. But when it comes to the actions of and between political bodies he embraces these forms of predation and exploitation as not only efficacious to good ends but as positive moral goods. These people are moral infants--barbarians masquerading as educated, enlightened human beings.
The history of the progress of civilization is the story is the story of the universalization of morality--the growing understanding that wrong is wrong no matter who does it or who says it. The Romans knew that crucifixion was a cruel and unacceptable treatment for Roman citizens but not for others. The old Norsemen understood their responsibility to each other and invented elaborate systems of law, custom, and reciprocal conduct but saw nothing wrong in raping and pillaging English villages. Many of the founders of our nation, some of the most humane and liberal men of their time, recognized the brotherhood of all white men while enslaving Africans and denying women equal rights. By fits and starts, mankind progresses as the sphere of our moral responsibilities is widened--but it is yet to reach its full extent. Patting himself on the back, the modern person thinks he recognizes the principle of human equality regardless of race, sex, religion, and class but sees nothing unnatural about the power and privilege of his political masters or the ways in which he uses the political tools to privilege himself at the expense of others.
The goal that this evolution is working to is this: that all individuals have the same rights regardless of age, birthplace, location, lineage, or position. Equal freedom for all is the logical endpoint of this progression. For all your talk and heartfelt belief in “equality”, students of Yale, have you recognized the fundamental principle of equality: that what it is permissible for one man to do it is permissible for all men to do and what it is wrong for one man to do it is wrong for all men to do? The liberal human being recognizes, that before just law and morality, there are no slaves, there are no kings, there are no foreigners.
This impulse to violence finds it’s most complete expression in the organized system of monopoly coercion called the state. What is the state but an organized, self-perpetuating system whereby different elements in society try to benefit at the expense of others and to impose their desires by force on the rest of society? What legitimizes its actions? To say it is legitimate because 51 percent of people chose it as the least bad of two political alternatives is as palpably false and mystical as the Divine Right of Kings. What is the nature of the contract between the citizen and the state? Is there a contract? How can I be party to a contract that no man has ever seen, that you or I never agreed to, that contains clauses that would legally invalidate any other agreement? No satisfactory answers have been found for these questions.
The truth is that the state is nothing but organized crime with inexplicably good public reputation. Government is the only one thing seriously wrong with the world. All social discord, all strife, all poverty can either be laid at the existing systems of coercion and fraud or are at least exacerbated by it.
The solution to the problems government can not be found in government. “Things are pretty bad.” You say. “If only my party could get in power, or these politicians would stop holding us back it would get better.” Don’t be ridiculous. These same parties and people you hold up as the solution nuked cities of civilians, tortured detainees, lied us into wars, and enslaved (impressed, drafted, they all mean the same thing) people like you to fight and die in foreign countries. No civilized society would trouble wonderful people like these to make decisions. People like this would not even be allowed to set foot in a civilized society--they would all hang from their necks like their counterpart in Iraq. Despite the deluded and fervent wishes of reformers and political tools, there are no “hot” slot machines in the crooked Casino of the state. It is time to cut our loses, cash out, and go home. The only people that win in politics are politicians. In the game of force, the peace team will almost always lose.
When we finally agree with H.L. Menken that “all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time,” the only sensible alternative for the liberal man or women is to smash the state and replace it with consensual, voluntary institutions like businesses, charities, fraternal organizations, churches, collectives, co-ops, universities, communes, militias, and clubs. Only then will people be able to pursue, and find, “life, liberty, and happiness.” The noble experiments of republican and democratic government have failed miserably. Anarchism is the true heir of the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution. As Benjamin Tucker said, “The Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats. They believe that 'the best government is that which governs least,' and that which governs least is no government at all.”
Is this utopian? I think it is more utopian to give all the guns to one group of people and expect them to defend the rest of us, to give the agents of government the power to appropriate wealth and expect them to use this power only for the public good, to believe, despite all historical experience, that a monopoly of governance, with the ability to unilaterally command society’s resources and tools can be counted on to pursue, or even perceive the good of society.