{"id":1934,"date":"2012-03-05T02:14:42","date_gmt":"2012-03-05T06:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/?p=1934"},"modified":"2012-03-05T04:22:08","modified_gmt":"2012-03-05T08:22:08","slug":"rules-without-rulers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/?p=1934","title":{"rendered":"Rules Without Rulers"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the course of announcing that he’s running for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Mark Bennett writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I believe that the answer to \u201chow much government do we need\u201d is, and probably always will be, \u201cless,\u201d but\u00a0I am not an anarchist.<\/p>\n

Do away with government<\/em>, the anarchists say, and the market will fill the role of the state\u2014keeping us free, protecting our property, keeping us safe<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t share the anarchists\u2019 rosy view of human nature. Do away with government, and for a while the strong will dominate the weak. Then the weak will band together and dominate the strong. Then the strong will band together and dominate the weak again. Some of the weak will join the strong until finally more than half of the collective power is dominating less than half. Whatever this dominant 50+% is called, it will be, for practical purposes, the state. Over the long term, anarchy is impossible.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

Libertarianism in national government serves authoritarianism in state and local government. Traditional conservatives\u2014Santorum conservatives\u2014if they favor less government, favor less federal<\/em> government, as though state governments are benign.\u00a0I suspect that their reasoning is that government is not dangerous when it is close to home. And for those in the majority, this may be true\u2014it\u2019s easier to remove a school board member who disagrees with you than to remove a senator.\u00a0But for anyone who might not share the political views of the majority, the opposite is true: the nearer government is to us, the more it can intrude in our lives and interfere with our liberty.<\/p>\n

I am cheered to see Ron Paul pulling down good numbers (maybe\u00a0better than you\u2019ve heard<\/a>) in the Republican primaries. He may have some influence on the party\u2019s platform, if not on its choice of candidate.<\/p>\n

But libertarianism can\u2019t be imposed from above. Libertarianism in federal government but not in state government is not libertarianism, but mere federalism. Libertarianism\u00a0has to start at home and grow from there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I understand the reluctance to call oneself an “Anarchist.” One of the greatest lawyers and Anarchists who’ve ever lived, Lysander Spooner, apparently refused<\/a> to do so. The same could be said for Henry David Thoreau, who wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

But, to speak prac\u00adti\u00adcally and as a cit\u00adi\u00adzen, un\u00adlike those who call them\u00adselves no-gov\u00adern\u00adment men, I ask for, not at once no gov\u00adern\u00adment, but at once<\/em> a bet\u00adter gov\u00adern\u00adment. Let ev\u00adery man make known what kind of gov\u00adern\u00adment would com\u00admand his re\u00adspect, and that will be one step to\u00adward ob\u00adtaining it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But Anarchy simply means “without rulers.” It doesn’t mean “without rules,” or “without law,” or “without government.”<\/p>\n

To speak practically and as Thoreau advises, the kind of government that would command my respect would be one without rulers. One step toward obtaining it is to recognize that those who purport to rule us in fact have No Authority<\/a> to do so. Another step is to recognize that government without rulers is possible<\/a>, however remotely<\/a>, and practical<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A man’s claim to exclusive possession of the yard on which his house is built is the fundamental building block of government, and is in a sense itself a government. Indeed, there is no law which says governments must govern a territory of a certain size, and we could theoretically imagine a world composed only of such “governments.” Why would such a world necessarily be any more “anarchic” than the rulerless anarchy which prevails between nations at this very moment? But the man’s claim to his yard, like the claim of larger governments, has no inherent legitimacy his neighbors are necessarily bound to honor. Georgism<\/a> supplies that missing legitimacy, and is the mortar for building from the ground up rulerless governments whose purpose is to “secure these rights,” rather than governments<\/del> States whose purpose is to serve the interests of the rulers at the expense of the ruled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the course of announcing that he’s running for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Mark Bennett writes: I believe that the answer to \u201chow much government do we need\u201d is, and probably always will be, \u201cless,\u201d but\u00a0I am not an anarchist. Do away with government, the anarchists say, and the market will fill the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1934"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1939,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934\/revisions\/1939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}