Stop Me Before I Vote Again

To tell you the truth, I reserve more mockery for the "firebaggers" and Young Turk fans who have suddenly discovered that Obomber wasn't the progressive hope they thought he would be (but will still vote for him again this year anyway) than the blind Obot liberals.

Anarchy forever!

might be difficult
finding
a spine
inside most contemporary liberal's
implicit
baggy
patchy
ever superficially innovative
sedulously protean
purposefully fragmentary
mime of a theory
of the modern state

i won't try

but the profound and quite radical
contradiction between small d democracy
and liberal values is too often over looked

father S above
does not over look this contradiction

one can believe they believe in democracy
and really only consider the Democrat party a lesser evil
NOT what it is
the great center for anti democracy
for protecting the popular flank
of the self perpetuating
luxury of open tussling
between the moities of the amerikan B class elite

guardian factions united in rule
thru
the existing split

Personally I don't think it's possible to be too severe on liberals. I save all my bitterest scorn and vitriol for middle class progressives.

i second saxo with the addendum of MAKE TOTAL DESTROY

It is belief itself which is transcendent, not the thing believed in.

I think I stopped a little short of anarchism, actually. Lenin would surely have agreed that the state is an instrument of class domination; he just thought the guns could be turned around. I'm fairly ignorant of anarchist thought, but I have the impression that anarchists are generally skeptical about Lenin's theory. Me, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

The social manifestation of the notional liberal ideal would be a considerable improvement, historically, in the lot of the Many and overall not too constraining of the perqs of the Few. It's quite pretty, on the whole, like a gentle social democracy.

But in my personal timeline, it became obvious long ago that the vocal majority of liberals don't think past the point of a having a nice coffee table ideology; something to show guests; something to spark courteous debates and coos of admiration. It's not something so desirable that that the vocal majority will actively support it. I set the bar as low as I can for that.

The material support they dedicate to the notional ideal goes mainly to creating an economic niche for professional liberalism, e.g. lecture fees and book deals for professional anti-wingnuts. In fairness, the professional rake-off does leave some trickle down money for the benefit of the Many. As an analogy, think disbursements from the collection plate passed around in a church property worth millions, where the accounting for the collection plate receipts and disbursements is rigorously honest.

I could laugh that away, but the liberal reaction to any manifestation of state displeasure—no matter how irrationally vindictive—always includes a search for scapegoats. They're not fussy about where they find them and they can justify thinning their own ranks without breaking a sweat.

In truth it's not the stated positions of liberals, progressives and other Donkle that is so noisome.

It's the fact that I rarely see anyone holding such stated positions acting in a way that is consistent with their stated beliefs.

Ultimately it's about hypocrisy of a blinding and painful-to-watch sort. And when that hypocrisy is combined with the Naturally Superior attitude of the donkey-in-question, there's little reason for a gentle hand or kind words.

I think the vulgar distinction, Mr. Smith, is that Lenin and his brigade of un-merry followers thought government could be improved and made useful. A decidedly ahistoric turn of thought, for a self-identified apostle of history. We anarchists - and I inivte and OPism, no doubt - are merrier, and therefore have a grasp at sobriety on that account: a gun is a gun. Sure, you can scratch your balls with it, if you want. But, inevitably someone's going to take hold of it and pull the trigger.

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2012/01/state-of-18th-brumaire.html

There's a great piece on how we cannot speak of The State as an eternal form passing through time to join us in every era.

"sharks" is metaphorical, but a mob of murderous monkeys is the literal truth

Anonymous,

The state doesn't have to be Formal for it to have a predictable and relatively enduring primary function.

As for anarchists on the state, I'm with Chomsky.

Meanwhile, this whole thread is way off the mark. The problem we face is not rooted in the nature of the state, and certainly not in any kind of liberal theory of it.

Politics in the USA is a phenomenon of private-sector money and marketing. The prize, the purchased sale, is control of the state. It could be otherwise.

Meanwhile, it is wildly unrealistic, bordering on dishonest, to say that all states are just guns in murderers' hands. States provide school for children, put out fires, maintain parks and ecological rules, run courts of law, facilitate elections and libraries and public infrastructures of a hundred types. They have also invented key technologies and sponsored basic sciences, including ecology.

Have they done so perfectly or even well? No. Could they do much better, possibly? Yes.

Neither rotten origins nor bad practices doom the enterprise to impossibility, as much evidence confirms. Democratic breakthroughs have happened before and could happen again. Nadirs do not disprove advances.

I keep wondering why I still read SMBIVA. Posts like this are the reason. Maybe exhaustion really has won the day here?

we push the question back a step: Why do they want to believe this fairytale about the State?

That's a very good question. I've wandered away from mainstream American liberalism as I've noticed that liberals are terrified into incoherence by anybody who doesn't love the state as much as they do.

The left wing really seems to fear the Tea Party as much as the right fears Al Qaeda, which I just don't get at all. I tend to be kindly disposed towards groups of people who mainly spend their time complaining, and really, what are they gonna do that the Republicans weren't already trying?

And Ron Paul has driven otherwise normal leftwingers into frothing incoherence.

If you're right wing, you're wrong, but if you're against the state, you're actively terrifying. I don't really understand it myself. Not because I'm an anarchist, but because the state is clearly so entrenched that there's really no reason at all to be scared that Ron Paul's going to pull the whole thing down around us like Sampson.

Sure was nice of Mr. Dawson to come by and grade everyones' papers. You're all off the mark, D+.

JTG sez on 01.26.12 @22:39:
To tell you the truth, I reserve more mockery for the "firebaggers" and Young Turk fans who have suddenly discovered that Obomber wasn't the progressive hope they thought he would be (but will still vote for him again this year anyway) than the blind Obot liberals.

Damn' straight. Even inasmuch as the Teabaggers are a bunch of ignorant-assed mouth-breathing paste-eaters, I think that making fun of them is just going after the low-hanging fruit. OK, granted, I did a few cartoons about them a few years ago, but I got bored with making fun of the right wingnuts really quickly, and even reached the point of finding them entertaining; hell, while there was a lull in Leftie street action, I actually looked forward to covering Tea Party events with my citizen-journalist posse buddies because the Teabaggers were entertaining as shit, man, pure comedy gold.

In the meantime, my DW and many of her friends -- being among those disappointed Pwogs -- still amuse themselves sharing Jon Stewart clips on Fecesbook and getting all worked up over how stupid Michele Bachmann is, and it's sad, really; they think the Teabaggers are batshit -- and they are, undeniably -- but what they don't realize that the Pwogs and Democrats are just as equally, mindlessly insane, if not more so. The only difference is that while the Teabaggers' insanity is wonderfully, gloriously, comically entertaining, the Pwogs' insanity is just dull, banal, and annoying.

Off-the-hook Teabaggers give me hours of cheap laffs; similarly off-the-hook Pwogs just make me want to punch them in the teeth.

As a liberal, let me respond with two observations:

- Especially with democracy, the power of the state can be put to purposes that increase the general welfare. Roads can be built, schools and fire departments can be staffed, and other activities that are generally useful can be, and routinely are, done by the power of the state. The free rider problem would make some of these very difficult, otherwise.

- Society isn't made simply of individuals and a monolithic state, but of corporations, churches, cities, counties, states, and all of the other associations that we make. The state, at various levels, can be instrumental in curbing the power of the other institutions in society. When society has competing power centers, citizens can choose which to support in which matters and gain a measure of control over their lives. The government of Birmingham, Alabama put Martin Luther King Jr. in jail, but the Federal government gave him a holiday.

"When society has competing power centers, citizens can choose which to support in which matters and gain a measure of control over their lives. The government of Birmingham, Alabama put Martin Luther King Jr. in jail, but the Federal government gave him a holiday."

Mean ol' Alabama put Mr. King in the slammer, and then Citizens decided, "We don't like Alabama." They then went to Washington, D.C. "Mr. Federal government, as a competing power center, we would like to support you." BAM! And the cell door flew open!

mr dawson and jay are voices of obvious sanity in a lunatic comment thread.

this little punk alexander types flippant remarks. cute. he says nothing, never does. just plays dumber and lazier than he actually is. cute act. give the kid a contract.

mr op pleasures himself with his usual incomprehensible nonsense. complete with phonyy splling errers. what a fraud this one is.

mr smith makes good points about liberals and the many but not too hard to see he thinks he's one the few. wears his few-ness like a badge.

Paul Alexander: If you're saying that my one-sentence treatment of the Civil Rights struggle lacks nuance, then of course you're right. If you're trying to suggest that conflict between the federal government and southern state governments was not a major factor in that era of history, then you have a challenging case to make.

jay, when dealing with loonies, don't make eye contact. and dont wrestle with a skunk because you'll end up with his stench.

- Especially with democracy, the power of the state can be put to purposes that increase the general welfare. Roads can be built, schools and fire departments can be staffed, and other activities that are generally useful can be, and routinely are, done by the power of the state. The free rider problem would make some of these very difficult, otherwise.

By the same token concentration camps provide a meal and roof over the head... Yeah, regimes, to varying degrees, do nice things for their privileged classes; it's the exploration of the rest that gets left out by liberal apologetics--unless there's an example of a state somewhere who's road-driving, library-reading entitled citizens weren't the beneficiaries of the suffering of a large group of others?

Alabama put Martin Luther King Jr. in jail, but the Federal government gave him a holiday.

I’ve long-since become a Democrats atheist, too (assuming I ever really believed). It’s depressing how asleep everyone prefers to be these days (except, I guess, for those represented by the huge recent increase in American citizenship renunciations – something you won’t hear about from the media) – and you and me, of course. Is there such an animal as a liberal non-statist? I’m at the point where I’d even be glad to vote for Ron Paul if the occasion arose.

Paco Picopiedra sez on January 27, 2012 at 11:46 AM
In truth it's not the stated positions of liberals, progressives and other Donkle that is so noisome.

It's the fact that I rarely see anyone holding such stated positions acting in a way that is consistent with their stated beliefs.

At last, an explanation for all the goddamn' Volvo station wagons and Priuses (Priii?) I see around here with "War Is Not The Answer" stickers and Obama stickers on the same goddamn' bumper.

David Adams sez on 01.27.12 @22:27:
...It’s depressing how asleep everyone prefers to be these days (except, I guess, for those represented by the huge recent increase in American citizenship renunciations – something you won’t hear about from the media)...

Y'know, a couple of years ago I read a story on one of the wire services (I wish I'd bookmarked it now) talking about expat retirees and semi-retirees renouncing their US citizenship. The article made it sound as if taxes were the issue although, given it was reporting by a major wire service, I suspect those folks' reasons were far more deep and complex than just taxes.

Some of the regulars here may remember my discussion, a few years back, of my ideal goal for retirement... to retire permantently to Puerto Vallarta with the DW, move my money to a Mexican bank, burn my passport, quit political cartooning and take up watercolors, and spend my golden years kicking back at my favorite beach bar at sunset happy hour, knocking back margaritas and watching the US collapse on TV while I waited for the band to go on. This desire became even more acute as I saw the Obama "movement" taking hold, and most of the US left sitting down, shutting up, and drinking the Kool-Aid.

Let's say you knew a guy who had an attic full of women's corpses.

Let's say that he was also a member of the PTA, helped clean up trash on the weekends and volunteered with the fire department.

Would you say, "Well, if we could only get him to stop killing all those women he'd be a real asset to society"?

Alexander, you are an idiot. A state is not an individual.

Fucking amazing to see supposed lefties collapsing into less-than-half-witted state-bashing, exactly at the apex of market totalitarianism.

If this is where this whole enterprise is landing, then I prefer the Obama dupes.

P.S. At the end of the argument, what distinguishes no-government "anarchism" from Republican Party dogma? You're against all government? You blame current affairs on the abstract state, while excusing the private sector? Six = half-dozen, no matter how you get there.

I thought Paul Alexander's analogy was brilliant, actually, and it sorta pre-empted a post that was gestating in my head. Yes, Obromney is a mass murderer and a finance-capital drone -- but he speaks in complete sentences, and doesn't affect a phoney Texas accent. That's *something*, surely? The Ted Bundy alternative who killed and ate one less girl. Or rather, will kill and eat one less girl -- if he just gets a second term.

@2:35 Michael Dawson: "states" have not done any such thing. People have done those things, sometimes while taking paychecks from, or working at the command of, other people who may have manifested some connection to a "state." Attributing the accomplishments of these humans to an illusory entity is far more ridiculous than the citizens of Springfield cheering the accomplishments of the inanimate carbon rod.

People coming up with ways to organize certain things can be a tool for good, but the good should never be attributed to the tool. It belongs to us.

Theoccupy movement is a harbinger of
Any correct response to this liberal induced progressive quagmire

Small d democracy will only come when either thebig D outfit is
taken away from it's corporate tenders

or a new 4 party system emerges

We are back in the late 19th century two party box

Yes the rectification only led to regrouped fractions
But there was a clear change in party dynamics après the alternative party era
Of the 1870's and 80's

If our dear mr flug
Really wants to watch the collapse of the Yankee hegemony
he better find a fountain of youth

I guess the question becomes

Are there more reforms both tolerable and possible under the present
Institutional structure here in the belly of the beast ?

One looks at Tom thumb friedman and his average is over thesis
And might think
the liberal / corporate duet of a tussle has reached the disfunctionality point

Hey one has to abduct here no ?

My abduction

Reform is not only
Still possibly but likely
When the popular struggle gets cranked up
At the base of our key institutions

Of course this requires social activists re target the struggle on internal points of class conflict
Not uncle's earth cop depredations
Or the trans oceanic corporate resource potlatch and poison fest

One clear strategic position doctor Chomsky has held to since is public emergence in the 60's

The state here at uncle hedges house
will be with us during my public years

Hence his visions of the ultimate
anarchists black tidings ball
Are always muted

Noam's position has always left him open
to the shreiks and growls of ferral anti statists everywhere
Of course it has
He is the ultimate liberal behind the radical mask

Hell mr C
even let's ballot boxers with their lesser evil calculations
pass by his axe un wacked

Why ?

Maybe because he Chooses to struggle against
the existing hegemonic Nation state that calls itself America
then banish it to some devil's island of the mind

This might be worth chewing on
Even by the few flea infested specimens of savage blacked up breed
That for reasons of father S's literary charms
continue to circle
this Piteously Obscure camp site
With it's unbold caveats and prufrock shrugs

"P.S. At the end of the argument, what distinguishes no-government "anarchism" from Republican Party dogma?"

Abortion would be legal? The US wouldn't be the source of half the world's military spending? Foreign aid would probably be eliminated? The drug war would end?

Again, not an anarchist, but that's a pretty silly question. And for God's sake, let's not wander off into the "objectively pro-terrorist" thicket.

Chris

Your list
hardly looks like Ron Paul 's republican Amerika

Where all is permitted
save injury to others

Individual Liberty without the need of licenses

No armadas. Sailing the skies and seas of outrageous misfortune
no narco cops or vice boys

Hiding Legally under your hash pipe or inside your incestuous sheets
No war on mum's aborting any members of the fetus cohort
Inside her womb

Etc etc
If this is not today the dogma of the evangelines.
It certainly is the dogma waiting in the wings
It might yet topple that jesus crews grip on the GOP baser elements

No I have to say

It's not stupid to consider exactly what is that wouldn't or wouldn't that is

In a world without the chaotically dis organized
Unteeming Midget multitude of our motley black guard

Oh ya
Foreign aide
What ever would poor poor black Africa do without
Uncle Goo goo's foreign aide. Eh ?

Peter Ward: Consider the desegregation of the schools in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. Part of the federal government (the Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board) ordered the schools desegregated. Arkansas governor Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to prevent desegregation. President Eisenhower nationalized control of the Guard, sent them to their barracks, and sent the 101st Airborne in to enforce the Court's order.

Parts of the federal government were instrumental in accomplishing a positive change in this case. The Arkansas state government, and some parts of the federal government (e.g. the FBI), were against the change. My point is that simply reducing the power of the federal government would not have resulted in greater liberty in this case, because the federal government is only one of many potential oppressors, and rarely the worst. Playing one level of government off against the others can be a successful tactic.

As for the rest, I quote Kant. "Of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made." It's not within our power to make the world transcendently just. We do have a certain ability to make it a better place to live in, and small changes tend to add up over time.

One of the biggest problems I have with liberals in this country is their America-centrism, and as much as I respect Michael Dawson, this is where I think that Paul Alexander's "socially engaged serial killer" analogy is spot-on.

We Americans are in a privileged position to say that the federal government should be empowered because the oppression of the individual states is worse, but--to stick with Eisenhower--somehow I don't think that the citizens of Iran and Guatemala had any doubt that the roots of their oppression and misery stretched back not to Birmingham but to Washington, D.C. To say that the federal government is "rarely one of the worst" oppressors is to ignore the millions of human beings who have been slaughtered and oppressed abroad while Americans were pacified by improvements that were often linked to the machinery of war and oppression (somebody mentioned the building of roads--think of the military basis behind the construction of Eisenhower's highway system).

When I hear liberals point out that the state can be reconfigured and put to positive uses, I am reminded, as I often am, by the prophetic words of Randolph Bourne, who posed the following question to pro-war intellectuals: "If the war is too strong for you to prevent, how is it going to be weak enough for you to control and mould to your liberal purposes?"

Replace "war" with "state" and ask yourself: How indeed?

Playing one level of government off against the others can be a successful tactic.

Mostly, though, it's three-card monte.

A liberal faith in good governance requires an immensely powerful government. To do us a little good, a president must have the power to do us a great deal of ill. I would say that a society is already in its terminal state if it yearns for a king to restore it to health. Progressives observe a rotten president in office - i.e., your average president; and yet they would not abate his powers one jot lest a good president, whenever he should grace us with his arrival, would not be able to preside in all his benevolence.

The same principle applies to the workplace. Employees loathe the manager who has the power to make their lives hell; but many of them dream of being manager one day, and so they would not put any limits on the manager's power.

It's as if a man of means were to have a physician living full-time in his home. The doctor is there, ostensibly, to provide care whenever needed. He is also welcome, of course, to give advice on healthy living. After a while the doctor becomes a despot to the man, who cannot resist his prestige and appeals to authority. "Doesn't it feel terrible," you ask him, "to live this way?" "Yes," he says, "but who knows? One day he might save my life."

Nothing sounds more reasonable than meliorism. In practice, however, it requires such an unending and meticulous adjustment, so much of a faith in traditional "checks and balances," that it could never go far wrong in its attempts to make things right. Is there anyone here who still believes in such a government?

Ask people who has the power to declare war. Most of them will say it's the president and not the congress. They will be wrong in fact but not at all in practice.

Peter, you have quoted Kant. I will quote Goethe: "Speaking for myself, I too believe that humanity will win in the long run: I am only afraid that at the same time the world will have turned into one huge hospital where everyone is everybody else's humane nurse." That's meliorism of a sort, I suppose.

And it's not as if there is an alternative in libertarianism, which fears a many-headed government but is indifferent, at best, to an equally monstrous marketplace. In a libertarian society, the government couldn't harm you much; but your bosses at work could do whatever they pleased. As dire fortune would have it, we are plagued with both monsters. They get along well with each other.

Great replies to the liberal and the left-statist positions, here. Just fantastic.

Every time some "leftist" suggests that roads and child day care justify a defense of government, I'm reminded of how government pays the bills. And it's usually by bombing the roads and child day cares of some other country's protection racket.

From what I've been reading and hearing, it appears Iran will soon be thwacked with our crooked timber.

The answers to these questions are usually informed by which end of the drone\intervention\waterboard\police billy club one is on.

cz,

I think you are right (on both accounts, really).

The hot war in Iran, to culminate a decade of Uncle Sam funded terrorism, two decades of punitive sanctions and three decades of isolation, looks like it's really coming for sure.

And one of my younger brothers was a fairly solid defender of public schools while he was teaching in one. Now that he's employed by an Orders school somewhere near to the Lincoln Tunnel, he has a vastly different opinion of public education.

The "tells" for me re hot war: one NYT article after another laying the groundwork, plus NPR programs that feature sociopathic lunatics, er, Foreign Affairs writers, making the case for war in serious, somber tones.

And Arianna Huffington's contemptible fashion rag has been running and featuring a daily dish on Iran for almost five weeks, now.

Maybe it'll be Obie's October Surprise. Some dire threat will have to be ginned up, of course -- a Shiite plot to detumesce the Washington Monument, perhaps.

I meant to add, re the NPR hosts: they present the matter with suitable alarm and grave concern that barely masks their tumescense.

To antonello- It was me, Jay, who quoted Kant; my post was in response to Peter's.

I certainly would prefer to roll back the American Department of Defense by about 70%. That preference is not enough to make me support Ron Paul, but I see some of his points.

I also see that imperfect-but-fairly-functional meliorist governments exist throughout western Europe. Each has flaws, but so do we, and on balance I'd prefer to steer our government in that direction.

To troville - It's true that American power has done many crappy things in the third world. It's also true that, for the most part, the third world was screwed up when we got there and will be screwed up when we're gone. America bears only a fairly small proportion of the blame for third world misery. When a reasonable plan to help comes along, I'll be in favor of it. Until then, I do what I can with what I've got.

Your points sound reasonable to the untrained ear. Very NPRish.

Yeah, the key being "to the untrained ear." Are you fucking kidding me? "The third world was screwed up when we got there and it will be screwed up when we're gone?" Did you even read what I wrote? "Crappy" doesn't begin to encompass the violent overthrow of democratic regimes, the suppression of dissent through the employment of trained death squads that torture and murder thousands of people, the direct military interventions that reassure the inhabitants of other nations that their "rights" are nothing more than privileges to be granted or taken away at the whim of Uncle Sam. You fucking liberals just don't have a clue, or else you choose to ignore and rationalize the monstrous and unspeakable evils that your precious government visits on the citizens of weaker countries.

"If this is where this whole enterprise is landing, then I prefer the Obama dupes."

Indeed. Correct me if I'm wrong (really), but wasn't Michael Dawson one of those dupes? Under the circumstances, and in the context of the original topic, I'd say he'd be proving himself all-too willingly duped.

to troville - We're living on a planet with seven billion apes who are just smart enough to be really, really dangerous. Persistent injustice and violence should not surprise you. Violence and injustice have never been news, because they were ancient when Heroditus invented news.

jay is more the wilsonian then the jeffersonian
vrand of liberal eh ??

Sadly, in modern America I seem to count as a liberal.

I can understand if that scares the hell out of you.

OTOH, I've stated my support for drastic cuts to the DoD. The only two politicians I've heard talking about defense cuts are Ron Paul and Barack Obama. Only one of those men will ever be president.

"We're living on a planet with seven billion apes who are just smart enough to be really, really dangerous."

So you think it's a good idea to appoint the smartest and most dangerous apes to lord over you. Got it.

In these comments, Jay is providing an excellent snapshot of the liberal mind, and all I can say is it's no wonder liberals can be lead so easily into supporting war. After all, there's already violence and injustice in the world--so what if we contribute a few million more corpses and displaced refugees. It's not like we're the ones having our intestines ripped out of our bodies by American cluster bombs or our skin melted off with napalm or white phosphorous. Just as long as the middle class makes enough money to go on vacations every year.

People coming up with ways to organize certain things can be a tool for good, but the good should never be attributed to the tool. It belongs to us.

So does the bad? Winner nonetheless.

to Troville - I'm actually against war (except against nations or organizations that attack us or our treaty allies). I think the current overfunding of the DoD is dangerous, because all those soldiers have to justify their existence. I'm for a Western European style state that focuses on taking care of its own.

Humanity actually has states like that. They can be built. They work, well enough.

My basic point is that thinking of society in terms of the many vs. the few is too simplistic. There are many groups, and each thinks of themselves as "the few". Society is a set of groups in tension, and weakening "the state" empowers other forces that are not necessarily better.

As far as global injustice goes, I'm like everyone else. I'm against it in general, but I don't really worry about it unless it happens to somebody that I know. I'm pretty sure they aren't worrying about my problems in the third world, and I don't worry much about theirs. If somebody suggests a practical way to help them, I'll listen, but I'll be the first to admit that I don't know what's good for any random third-world country.

America's defense: The little girl lived in a bad neighborhood. She was pretty. Just entering adolescence. I was driving by in my Bimmer. She was about to walk down a very dark alley. Probably would have been brutally raped and murdered by someone anyway. So.....

"As far as global injustice goes, I'm like everyone else. I'm against it in general, but I don't really worry about it unless it happens to somebody that I know. I'm pretty sure they aren't worrying about my problems in the third world, and I don't worry much about theirs. If somebody suggests a practical way to help them, I'll listen, but I'll be the first to admit that I don't know what's good for any random third-world country."

Here's a practical way to help citizens in the "third world": Stop destroying their infrastructure and killing them.

Fucking liberals...

Also, if your view of society is one of tension between the state and private tyrannies (i.e., corporations), you're deluding yourself: http://charliedavis.blogspot.com/2011/09/end-of-loser-liberalism-and-myth-of.html

to Troville - My point was mostly about interactions between different centers of state power. For example, in the civil rights struggle mentioned above, both sides made use of state power.

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that the FBI can't attach a GPS device to a car without a warrant. This is a minor victory for freedom, but both the FBI and the Supreme Court are branches of the federal government. Somebody challenged part of the federal government in another part of the federal government, and won.

The American government was designed to be its own worst enemy, a principle called "separation of powers" in the textbooks.

Libertarian theory, as I understand it, makes a huge distinction between private individuals and the state. Libertarians tend to suggest that any victory for the state is a loss for the people, and vice versa. I disagree, because society (of which governments are a part) is more complicated than that. A loss for one part of the state may be a victory for some worse part of the state, or for some repugnant non-state actor.

I agree that public and private actors are often so intertwined as to make the distinction irrelevant.

Congrats, SMBIVA,and MJS, on collapsing into old-man-ism. What a disaster. You think it's brilliant to think of the state as a criminal individual? Wow! To channel mjosef, perhaps then you might spare is your Greek and Latin?

Not that I care anymore about this zeroed-out dump of pointless stupidity.

Depressing to see the juvenile thinking that passes for anarchism, despite the living example of Noam Chomsky.

Anyhow: Fuck off, you douches.

We are in very, very big trouble in this society.

"Of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."

Why? Because the sage of Konigsberg said so? The same man also championed an epistemology which claimed to show the self-grounding of rational knowledge - a metaphysics to end hierarchical metaphysics and establish human reason as the ordering principle of our world as it is for us. This of course led to a moral philosophy the foundation of which is the most radically egalitarian in the history of philosophy - each rational being must be treated as an end in themselves.

So, why is it impossible for us to create a just world when the world we live in is created entirely by us?

to Lucid: Partly because we don't agree on what the word "just" means, but mostly because we're a bunch of hypocrites. Further information is available in any introductory psychology text.

At the end of the argument, what distinguishes no-government "anarchism" from Republican Party dogma? You're against all government? You blame current affairs on the abstract state, while excusing the private sector? Six = half-dozen, no matter how you get there.

Dawson's idiocy is paramount here.

He's back in fine form. At bottom/on bottom, he's just a Donklebot, a-skeered of Evil Rethuglicans.

Like his Idol, Bin-Yummin Net & Yahoo, he'd like to purge the world of his Enemies.

And he's running around using a character from LOST as his pen-name. That's hilarious. An ineffectual, paralyzed-by-self-loathing character too.

It would be great if SMBIVA had more than one author. The multiple "characters" inhabited by its writer are so one-dimensional and boring and wrongly idiotic as to render this place useless, except to rope goats.

Sorry cowboy. Your lasso can't hold me. Go back to Brokeback Mountain and rope someone else who is looking for your game.