Thank you for the apology. Our individual beliefs do not exist in a vacuum and it is important to refine them through interaction with others. I look forward to further conversation.

You understand Anarchism better than I do, fair enough. I will avoid making assumptions about ideals you have not clearly stated and ask questions where necessary.

From your about page:

“No other right than self-ownership, or the rights that descend directly from self-ownership (private property rights), exist, for if they did, this would necessarily entail the corresponding encroachment of rights against someone else. But, then, if it is not held equally among all humans—if it entails or implies a moral imbalance in which one person may do something that another may not—it is immoral and not a right at all.”

Your idea of self-freedom is dependent on everyone buying into the same system.

Humans are not born with a moral philosophy, it is acquired through free choice and experience. Morality is driven by survival on many levels, I understand that your devotion to Anarchism stems from a belief that the system will ensure your survival and well being.

I believe your flaw is seeing people as you want them to be, and not as they are. Defining behavior as wrong does not stop someone with their own free will from doing it. How are we born with equal rights when others have the ability to take them away from us? What do you do when the bully wants to take more than what you decide is his fair share? And no he is not a reasonable person.

In the end we all want to survive, we want our families to flourish, and we feel a sense of duty to our morals. You have your Anarchism and I have my State. I wouldn’t say that history has proven either of us right, but I consider mine a better adopted strategy given the aggressive landscape of humanity.

The threats that the military claims to protect us from today are terrorists. Yes, the military is responsible for the terrorist threat to Americans, and it is the reason that they want to kill us.

The presence of military bases and soldiers in well over 100 countries does not protect anyone from anything, and in fact is one of the many sources of hatred across the world that I alluded to in my post.

In the absence of American military adventurism, especially in the Middle East, whatever threats existed to Americans would not justify a gigantic, interventionist military or a war on terrorism that cost nearly a trillion dollars a year. So, yes, the title of the article is correct because the military endangers more lives than it protects. (This includes foreign innocents, which principled people do, in fact, hold in as high a regard as people living within the boundaries of the U.S. government.)

Anarchism is a prerequisite to freedom because States necessarily aggress against people and limit their freedom in order to establish their geographic monopolies. It is not my fault that you don’t understand that in order for a monopolistic State to exist in the first place, it must take freedoms away from its subjects. “Anarchism” and “freedom” are not exactly the same thing, which, I imagine, is why they are spelled and pronounced differently. However, when you said, “the anarchist will always back down because he or she has no greater concern for the cause,” I could only assume you were talking about the “anarchist” philosophy of this site, the “anarchist” philosophy defended in this post, and the “anarchists” who own and frequent this site. These are libertarians who believe in libertarian anarchism, which is a philosophy of freedom that you seemed to think was more self-serving and uninspiring than campaigns to get political candidates elected and to implement bills or laws or executive orders.

Now you can see my arguments are not straw men and that I understand my philosophy better than you do.

Let’s review the arguments you have posited in this comment thread.

1. The military does not create nearly as many threats from abroad as it protects us from, so it does a good job of protecting American lives.

2. There are people and forces out there that can take away our freedoms to a greater extent than the American government already can and does.

3. Therefore, the American government’s restrictions of our freedoms and the people it kills and endangers are justified.

4. Al Qaeda would “wipe out” all or most Americans if the United States military ended its war on terrorism.

5. I was granted political authority by the American government, and that this political authority is “unlimited” because it allows me the privilege of casting votes against its politicians and policies, which votes it proceeds to ignore and replace with the will of politicians anyway.

6. An anarchist system will never happen. (Happened twice quite successfully already, happened other places less famously and less successfully.)

7. Anarchists are more self-serving and short-sighted than politicians, political parties, and the people whose political efforts are limited to getting people elected and getting laws passed.

8. Anarchists have no greater cause to fight for (presumably, only their own lives or finances) because they don’t fight under the banner of the glorious State.

As I’ve tried to explain, the military endangers more people than it saves, by far, because it creates threats and provides itself as the savior from those threats. The only actual war it is engaged in is the war on terrorism, which would not exist in the absence of its prior interventionism. Its other efforts are obviously completely unjustified because other countries have not declared war on the U.S. nor has the U.S. declared war on them.

The anarchists on this page promote a philosophy of individual freedom and rail against the State for abridging that freedom. I can hardly be blamed for assuming your references to “anarchists” and our “cause” were relevant to this website. As it is, the only type of “anarchist” or “anarchism” I care very much about are the ones that also promote a generally libertarian philosophy, so it was natural for me to equate your “Anarchism is not a unifying cause” statement with “Freedom is not a unifying cause.”

Whether intentionally or not, your lumping of the anarchists on this website and the anarchism promoted on this website with whatever type of romanticized caricature of anarchism exists in your mind is a straw-man argument that is extremely boring to real libertarians. I don’t speak for “vandarchists” or Marxists or other idiots who call themselves anarchists.

Does the military create ALL of the threats they protect us from?

If the answer to that question is no then we need a military to protect us, and your original argument, i.e. the title of this article, is wrong.

And since when did anarchism become interchangable with freedom? because you paraphrase me saying:

“anarchism is not a unifying cause”

into

“freedom is not a unifying cause”

your straw man arguments and emotional attacks show that you are not interested in discourse but rather the sound of your own voice.

But hey this is the internet, what was I expecting?

It requires a spectacular amount of willful ignorance to posit that the military doesn’t create those threats and then claim to protect us from them. Foreigners and terrorists hate the American government for its military interventionism and hypocrisy.

“How is it that you rail against a State that has granted you unlimited political authority (through the right to vote) by virtue of your simply being born?”

Congratulations. You win the award for the stupidest thing ever typed into a sentence.

“The funny thing is history and common sense have shown that the rise of an anarchist system will never happen. Survival above the tribal level requires sacrifice of individual advantage in order to preserve the State. Anarchists preach such a self-serving brand of survival that they can only collaborate and evolve to the point before such sacrifice is necessary. When push comes to shove the anarchist will always back down because he or she has no greater concern for the cause.”

Your comment gets worse and worse. You are pathetic because you know nothing about anarchism, nothing about political philosophy, but you are commenting on an anarchist-libertarian blag. Medieval Ireland and the Icelandic Free State were quite successful anarchist societies, which lasted far, far longer than the United States will under its Constitution.

Um, there is nothing self-serving about anarchism. It’s a philosophy of equal rights, freedom, and non-aggression. For everyone, everywhere, forever, equally. Affiliations with political parties are obviously more self-serving than a philosophy of equal freedom for all humans because they entail the enforcement of the winners’ wishes upon the losers. You obviously aren’t aware that anarchists already have risked their lives and livelihoods, now and throughout history, to stand up for their beliefs, and will continue to do so as our rights are further abrogated by your beloved State.

I wasn’t prepared for someone to leave a comment as ignorant and short-sighted as (paraphrasing) “Freedom is not a unifying cause that would ever make people band together and sacrifice anything for the cause.” If, that is, I interpret your “thoughts” correctly.

By the way, Thi, why is non-violent non-participation a violation of your moral code so severe that it warrants the death penalty?

Ah, why am I bothering, he isn’t coming back here…

This line disproves your original thesis. Our military protects us from unknown threats to our lives and our freedoms that may arise. Not always easy to explain but still very important.

For the sake arguing something lets stay with your obvious disagreement with how the military is currently utilized.

Your casual mention of other countries occasionally threatened throughout history seems to discount the rather violent past of the human race. War comes as a result of population pressure and struggle over limited resources. We as a species have at some point waged war against everything on planet earth; each other, the environment, and other animals.

I will agree with you that terrorism is a direct result of the US waging a conventional war against a diminutive opponent. We forced the Al Queda to be resourceful and they have shown themselves able to strike back. Many military strategists have written on this.

Where you get it wrong is the idea that we can go back to the way things were before tanks vs. terrorists, McWorld vs. Jihadists. Back down in the face of aggression and we will be wiped out, just ask the extinct species of this world. We will have to outsmart them, and part of that may involve decentralizing our currently very vulnerable systems. John Robb’s “Brave New War,” is excellent reading on this.

How is it that you rail against a State that has granted you unlimited political authority (through the right to vote) by virtue of your simply being born?

The funny thing is history and common sense have shown that the rise of an anarchist system will never happen. Survival above the tribal level requires sacrifice of individual advantage in order to preserve the State. Anarchists preach such a self-serving brand of survival that they can only collaborate and evolve to the point before such sacrifice is necessary. When push comes to shove the anarchist will always back down because he or she has no greater concern for the cause.

One of the major points of my post and of libertarian theory in general is that America’s military adventurism spawns the very threats it claims to be protecting us from. Another example of why the military is the ultimate State program: it creates problems and imposes itself as the solution to those problems.

Cory: “There is some validity to this blog, but the third paragraph rant is a half baked rationality.”

You remind me of one of the main reasons that most libertarians found their blags: to point out that it is Statism, not libertarianism, that is absurdly unrealistic.

“Maybe anarchy could be utopia to some”

And you don’t let us live our lives the way we want, outside of the coercive monopoly of corporate-State socialism. Why not? Have I ever harmed you? Do you have any reason to threaten murder against me for keeping my own money, doing what I want with my body, and living my life the way I want only with other like-minded people? Why is non-violent non-participation a violation of your moral code, a violation so severe that the ultimate penalty is death? And why does no Statist ever answer that charge?

“but the reality is that all forms of government of any size need guidelines.”

Which are imposed upon the government by the government itself. This is supposed to work by some form of checks and balances and periodic elections. Obviously you are not paying attention, or else you would realize this idea is one of the most spectacular failures suffered by any human undertaking in our entire history.

davehm, the “Democrat party”?! Only them? Really? You typed your name, your email address, and then that, and then read over it probably once, and then clicked Submit Comment, and you were fine with that? Really? I mean, thanks for reading; you must have a slight interest in libertarianism or you wouldn’t have been perusing the Reddit Libertarian page (I’m guessing, here); but hopefully if you come back in the future you’ll learn something about the one-party system we have in this country and the crimes that every one of those professional criminals commit on an almost-daily basis.