Thursday, September 11, 2008

Happy Anarchist Day

I saw a news article that said today was September 11th. I hadn't even noticed that there was anything special about today until I read that headline. This date has been given a name: Patriot Day.

Today is the day when I think back and remember how Harry Browne and all the libertarians always said that meddling in the affairs of foreign countries would make them hate us and attack us sooner or later.

I hadn't called myself an anarchist until relatively recently - I was calling myself a minarchist and advocating a small government instead of self-government. I feel better psychologically when I call myself an anarchist and advocate for small communities of people taking responsibility for all of the functions supposedly performed by government. And they are to do as much as possible to avoid behaving like government: use talk and negotiations instead of force and imprisonment; allow variation between communities instead of government's one universal rule for everybody no matter what their circumstances; and so on.

Fortunately, I don't know anybody who's really gung ho about celebrating Patriot Day and arguing that government is something great to be worshipped. It's very tiring to try to communicate with people who are talking that way. I'd rather talk to people who at least partially agree with me so that we don't have to write a list of word definitions for every single word of every single sentence.

There better not be any decorations put up. In the past few years I have become disgusted by the sight of the American flag on all the vehicles and everywhere else.

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