Wednesday, September 14, 2005

The Government has failed you...Mission Accomplished!!

"For what we are seeing in New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast region is the most egregious example of government failure in the United States since September 11, 2001."--Lew Rockwell, " The State and the Flood"
Our country would never survive in a Stateless society.
This is the charge made by people all over the political spectrum in the wake of the Katrina disaster.
Yet it was the State that caused the complete chaos in New Orleans that these Statists are using to suggest that we cannot survive without the State??
Lets examine the failures for a moment shall we:
1. Government mismanagement of the levees, not Katrina caused the flooding devastation that New Orleans finds itself in.
2. The roads themselves were not adequately designed to handle flooding so they were damaged, further delaying repairs to the levees.
3. The citizenry who lived in the area (those that lost their lives) were so dependent on the State that when tragedy struck they either didn't have the common sense, money, or both to get out of the way of the impending disaster.
4. The Government (yes the Government) actually blocked charities from entering New Orleans to tend to those truly in need.
5. People who had committed no crimes actually had firearms confiscated from them.
6. Government demanded there be no 'price gouging' at a time when private enterprise needed the most accurate information possible as to what the demands were for goods and services.
Even with all these failures of Government, people are seriously asking what Government can do to ensure this doesn't happen again??
Hello Mcfly! Government caused this mess!
Not only did they cause this mess, Government thrives on failure.
Everytime Government fails, it demands even more power to control your life.
Government requires things to fail to stay in business.
The market thrives on success.
As one wise columnist wrote:
"By its nature, the market system is success-oriented, while the state thrives on failure. But which model are people taught to despise and which to embrace as the means to their well-being? Will continuing to empower a system whose well-being is grounded in failure likely lead to any result other than the further decline of Western civilization?"--Butler Shaffer, "Failure Is the Health of the State"
I couldn't have said it better myself.
The Government has failed you...Mission Accomplished!!
Somebody needs to put that on a bumper sticker.
Patrick Sovereign,
Enemy of The State

Monday, September 05, 2005

Anarchy in New Orleans?? I stand corrected.....

"While mold and contagion grew in the muck that engulfed most of the city, something else sprouted in this most decadent of American neighborhoods - humanity."
In my previous piece I asserted that what we were witnessing down in New Orleans far more resembled the chaos of the State than the peaceful co-existing that would occur in an Anarchist society.
What I didn't know was that people were rising above the violence of the State and working together peacefully through voluntary cooperation:
"NEW ORLEANS (AP) - In the absence of information and outside assistance, groups of rich and poor banded together in the French Quarter, forming "tribes" and dividing up the labor."
"Some people became animals," Vasilioas Tryphonas said Sunday morning as he sipped a hot beer in Johnny White's Sports Bar on Bourbon Street. "We became more civilized."
The mutual cooperation noted throughout this piece is exactly how an Anarchist society would work.
I now have some questions for nonbeliever Statists out there:
1. If an Anarchist society (one based mutual voluntary cooperation and exchange) cannot work in the most ideal circumstances as asserted by the Statists then why is it working here in the worst of circumstances?
2. If the force of Government is the only way to get people to work together then why did these people work together without coercion?
The reality is that society depends on voluntary relationships and would collapse into endless violence if we abandoned the Anarchistic tendencies that exist in all of us.
Patrick Sovereign,
Enemy of the State

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Anarchy in New Orleans?? Well not quite......

"Anarchy doesn't force people to abandon their homes and businesses. Nor does it compel them to surrender their weapons before imprisoning them in "untenable" emergency shelters, as Nanny Kate herself characterized them."--"God Help You When the Government Does" by Becky Akers

As the conditions in New Orleans have deteriorated the news media has been bombarding us with article after article with Anarchy in the title usually followed by the word chaos.

I don't think this is a mere slip of the tongue either I think the clear intention here is to scare people into thinking that this is what happens when Government authority is removed from society.

But is it?

Last time I checked no Political official has resigned. On the contrary these camera whores are taking every chance they can to jump in front of the camera and proclaim how much the Government 'cares' and will do everything it can to 'help' the victims.

I have not heard of any Police or other Government assistance groups resigning either so if you ask me Government is in complete control and yet chaos still reins so what gives?

For one thing, no matter how omnipotent Government believes it is there is one thing even the control freaks in Government cannot control and that is mother nature.

For another, the people living this nightmare feel a level of desparation that is leading them to behave in ways that would not occur under normal conditions regardless if a Government entity existed or not.

Also, one of the things that is not being covered much is the fact that Government has prevented people from returning to their homes leaving their property completely unprotected.

Friends of mine have come up to me with almost gleeful self-righteousness and proclaimed,"SEE! SEE! This is why Anarchy can't work!"

Ironically what is going on in New Orleans (specifically the looting of private property) resembles the behavior of Government and not philosophical Anarchism.

Philosophical Anarchism holds private property as sacred and Government has utter contempt for it. The State's total existence depends on the looting of the citizenry.

What we have on full display in New Orleans is what happens when you put full trust in collective solutions for protection of life, liberty, and property.

You get substantial loss of life, liberty, and property.

How would such a tragedy be addressed in an Anarchistic society a friend of mine asked?

Well for one thing an Anarchistic society would not subsidize people who build homes in flood prone areas like New Orleans, like the Government does now.

People would be free to take such a risk mind you, but you and I would not be forced to foot the bill when their home got flooded out.

Since people would be responsible for their own risk taking there would be less inclination to build in these areas which would result in far less loss of life and property.

In the absence of the State, private charities would swing into action (just as they are doing now) to assist people who were affected by the Natural Disaster.

People would be free to return to their property to protect it from theft, which the Government is currently forbidding people to do.

I would like to close this posting with a great quote from an article linked in this posting:

"Katrina's tragic toll in lives and property is still being counted. But we can rejoice that there are some things no hurricane, however powerful, can destroy: resourcefulness, independence, liberty.
It takes Leviathan to devour those."--"God Help You When the Government Does" by Becky Akers

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Patrick Sovereign,
Enemy of The State