Let’s talk Anarchy

Currently the United States has a leader that is using any means at his disposal to divide Americans. Foreign leaders love it.  They even try to assist.

President Trump’s tactics are old, worn, and totalitarian, but still effective on those he can keep frightened.  Fear of such words as ‘black’, ‘liberal’, ‘looser’; and his latest: ‘anarchists’ are part of his tool kit..

The term anarchy has several definitions, depending on source. I have found definitions like: “A state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority.”, or “A state of society without government or law.”  Along with more transcendental definitions like: “Absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal.”

So, take your pick. It's a kind of an ideal disorder of society I guess.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon first coined the term anarchy in 1539, to mean "an absence of government". The definition stuck and has been a mainstay of civil disobedience ever since.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1864) wrote in his acclaimed essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience: “I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe—’That government is best which governs not at all’; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."

From demonstrations against slavery in the 1800’s, to the Vietnam war in the 1900’s and now persistent racial inequality in 2020, aspirations of ‘defunding' law enforcement or government has been a rallying cry of those calling themselves anarchists.

The question needs answering. Can we disassociate governance and the rule of law? And why are we here? Again? Now?

All of nature – from the universal law of the speed of light, to nature’s cycle of life – observes laws.  We cannot remove all the lines from our highways.  Laws are a natural structure of life. There is governance in nature as well. From the alpha members of a pride of lions, to the parenting of a human child, nature subscribes a certain amount of governance into life. Otherwise life will fail.

So, if true anarchy is against the laws of nature, how do we strive to be as free and ungoverned as possible?

In reality, the Constitution of the United States of America was designed specifically to provide the greatest amount of individual freedom, with the least amount of government, as possible, and sill have a progressive functional society. It is my belief that Thoreau would have approved if he were around in 1776.

However, our constitution has been misrepresented and wrongfully applied ever since.  We have ignored almost completely its intent since the second world war.  From the rise of the military industrial complex to supreme court rulings, such as the Citizens United decision, we have created exactly what the founders were trying to avoid.

I am as guilty as others when I attack Trump for present day divisions and dissent, but in truth, he is not the cause – he is the result. He’s the result of a return to a government that considers its people to be ‘subjects’ and not individuals. A government run by lobbyists, foreign influence, and profiteers. The very state of affairs we fought a War of Independence to escape. A war, by the way, the British considered an invitation to 'anarchy'.

America has been asleep at the wheel for 80 years now. We need to get back in the game before it’s too late. If it’s not too late already.

Read my Five Steps posts from July 2019. Then tell me what You think.

JWB