Book Club and Book Reviews

JasonNobody wrote:Looking for a book to read.
Any recommendations?

Statists often say, “Show me an example of where society without government (anarchy) has worked.” Of course, since they are speaking of societies consisting almost entirely of thoroughly indoctrinated authoritarians, human society without a ruling class is rarely even contemplated, much less attempted. Yet the statists use the fact that they have never tried true freedom-because the concept is completely foreign to their way of thinking-as proof that a stateless society “wouldn’t work.” This would be akin to a group of medieval doctors who all use leeches for every ailment, arguing, “Show me one case where a doctor has cured a headache without the use of leeches.” Of course, if none of them had ever considered any treatment other than leeches, there would not be an example of alternative methods “working.” But this would be a testament to the ignorance of the doctors, not the ineffectiveness of treatments which have never been tried.But the more important point is that “anarchy” is what is. To say that society cannot exist without “government” is exactly as reasonable as saying that Christmas cannot occur without Santa Claus. Society already exists without “government,” and has from the beginning. It has been the people imagining an entity with the right to rule-hallucinating a thing called “authority”-which has made the story of mankind consist largely of oppression, violence, suffering, murder and mayhem

By its very nature, “government” adds nothing positive to society. It creates no wealth and generates no virtue. It adds only immoral violence and the illusion that such violence is legitimate. Allowing some people to forcibly dominate all others – which is all that “government” ever does-does not contribute to society one speck of talent, or ability, or productivity, or resourcefulness, or ingenuity, or creativity, or knowledge, or compassion, or any other positive quality possessed by human beings. Instead, it constantly stifles and limits all of those things through its coercive “laws.” It is destructive and insane to accept the notion that civilization requires the forcible limiting of possibilities, and the violent restraint of the human mind and spirit-that civil society can exist only if the power and virtue of every individual is forcibly overcome and suppressed by a gang of masters and exploiters-that the average man cannot be trusted to govern himself, but that politicians can be trusted to govern everyone else-that the only way for the morality and virtue of mankind to shine through is to crush the free will and self-determination of billions of human beings, and to convert them all into unthinking, obedient puppets of a ruling class, and a source of power for tyrants and megalomaniacs-that the path to civilization is the destruction of individual free will, judgment, and self-determination.

If you love death and destruction, oppression and suffering, injustice and violence, repression and torture, helplessness and despair, perpetual conflict and bloodshed, then teach your children to respect “authority:’ and teach them that obedience is a virtue.If, on the other hand, you value peaceful coexistence, compassion and cooperation, freedom and justice, then teach your children the principles of self-ownership, teach them to respect the rights of every human being, and teach them to recognize and reject the belief in “authority” for what it is: the most irrational, self-contradictory, anti-human, evil, destructive and dangerous superstition the world has ever known.