The Musings of Your Friendly Neighborhood Anarchist
The fact that the majority of Anarchists believe in co-operation is not what makes them Anarchists, just as the fact that the majority of Socialists believe in force is not what makes them Socialists.
When you allow an institution such as the state, to claim a legal monopoly on the use of coercive force, what you are actually allowing is an opportunity for the most evil individuals in society to legally gain control and oppress the masses.
What is the state? It is the group within society that claims for itself the exclusive right to rule everyone under a special set of laws that permit it to do to others what everyone else is rightly prohibited from doing, namely aggressing against person and property.
The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by governments.
Again I say: We will never end wars if we do not, at the minimum, understand why the garbage service should be removed from the jurisdiction of the police force, that is — government.
The enforcement of laws (including taxes) rests on the credible threat of lethal force. They will take your property and put you in a box. If you succeed at resisting, they will kill you. Government is violence. Advocating government action, is advocating murder.
Government is in its essence always a force acting in violation of justice, and it cannot be otherwise. Justice can have no binding force on a ruler or rulers who keep men deluded and drilled in readiness for acts of violence, and by means of them control others. And so governments can never be brought to consent to diminish the number of these drilled slaves, who constitute their whole power and importance.
When a child hits a child, we call it aggression.
When a child hits an adult, we call it hostility.
When an adult hits an adult, we call it assault.
When an adult hits a child, we call it discipline.
Haim G. Ginott (child psychologist and psycotherapist)