Pure and Simple Anarchism...

Anarchism is about objecting to any imposed authority. It is about voluntary association. It does not preach a particular rigid structure, that's not how it works. To be an Anarchist is to object to outside control via subversion, force or any other means. Anything beyond that is personal politics.

Communism, socialism, Marxism, et all are not part of Anarchism. They are the offshoots of personal taste, viewpoints and voluntary associations. The only reason capitalism doesn't jive with Anarchism is that it is in itself all about control of the people by a ruling elite in the name of profit and it necessarily requires the dissolution of personal identity for the good of the machine. Anarchists often identify themselves with hyphens, anarcho-this, anarcho-that. That isn't Anarchism, it is Anarchism with whatever other ideology to which one subscribes added.

The solidarity or unity that we need to work toward is the end of authority. The rest is up to the people to decide via voluntary association. I have no qualm with working with anyone who is an Anarchist despite personal differences as long as they are willing to WORK toward anarchy. I would not think of telling someone that their personal views on how society and the way it should be restructured are wrong, that's not up to me to decide. If I were to try and advocate only a specific offshoot of anarchism that would make me rather authoritarian.

The fact is, different groups of freely associating people with personal liberty will voluntarily agree on what will work best for them according to the needs of their particular group. As long as that group doesn't seek to infringe upon the liberty of others not in line with it's own interest what business is it of mine? We all want the same thing, Anarchy. The rest is academic, to try and say otherwise would be non-anarchistic. So what I suggest is that we set our differences aside in the interest of working toward our one common goal. Anarchy.

In order to work toward that goal I would suggest federalism, freely associated groups voluntarily working together despite personal differences, agreeing voluntarily to unite based on the common goal, not ruled by a particular group or even delegates from all groups, but actual direct democracy in that everyone has the choice to agree or not. If you don't want a part in it, who am I to say anything about it? THAT'S what liberty is all about, the ability to secede from any association based on personal, voluntary choice. The choice to agree or to opt out.

A Personal Note... A Son!

My significant other and I have, for the past 9 months, been expecting our third child to be a girl. Yesterday JP (my girl) went in for an ultrasound and it has been discovered that our third (and final) child will be a SON! Had he been a daughter he would have been named Liberty but having found out this exciting and head spinning news we have now decided on the name Nikolai Justice Lawhead. Nikolai means "people of victory" and Justice means "to deliver what is just". Interestingly enough he will be a Libra for which the symbol is the scales. This one will be a powerful force in the world, upholding the liberties of all men, bringing victory and justice to the people. I can't wait to meet him, already we share a connection that is unbreakable even through the skin of his mother into the womb. He reacts to me at the touch pretty much every time.

Anarchism Without Hyphens (Karl Hess)

There is only one kind of anarchist. Not two. Just one. An anarchist, the only kind,as defined by the long tradition and literature of the position itself, is a person onopposition to authority imposed through the hierarchical power of the state. Theonly expansion of this that seems to me reasonable is to say that an anarchist standsin opposition to any imposed authority. An anarchist is a voluntarist.Now, beyond that, anarchists also are people and, as such, contain the billion facetedvarieties of human reference. Some are anarchists who march, voluntarily,to the Cross of Christ. Some are anarchists who flock, voluntarily, to the communesof beloved, inspirational father figures. Some are anarchists who seek to establishthe syndics of voluntary industrial production. Some are anarchists who voluntaryseek to establish the rural production of the kibbutzim. Some are anarchists who,voluntarily, seek to disestablish everything including their own association withother people; the hermits. Some are anarchists who will deal, voluntarily, only ingold, will never co-operate, and swirl their capes. Some are anarchists who, voluntarily,worship the sun and its energy, build domes, eat only vegetables, and play thedulcimer. Some are anarchists who worship the power of algorithms, play strangegames, and infiltrate strange temples. Some are anarchists who see only the stars.Some are anarchists who see only the mud. They spring from a single seed, no matter the flowering of their ideas. The seed is liberty. And that is all it is. It is not a socialist seed. It is not a capitalist seed. It isnot a mystical seed. It is not a determinist seed. It is simply a statement. We can befree. After that it’s all choice and chance. Anarchism, liberty, does not tell you a thing about how free people will behave or what arrangements they will make. It simply says that people have the capacityto make the arrangements. Anarchism is not normative. It does not say how to be free. It says only thatfreedom, liberty, can exist. Recently, in a libertarian journal, I read the statement that libertarianism is anideological movement. It may well be. In a concept of freedom it, they, you, or we,anyone, has the liberty to engage in ideology or anything else that does not coerceothers, denying their liberty. But anarchism is not an ideological movement. It is anideological statement. It says that all people have a capacity for liberty. It says thatall anarchists want liberty. And then it is silent. After the pause of that silence, anarchiststhen mount the stages of their own communities and history and proclaimtheir, not anarchism’s, ideologies—they say how they, how they as anarchists, willmake arrangements, describe events, celebrate life, work. Anarchism is the hammer-idea, smashing the chains. Liberty is what results and, in liberty, everything else is up to people and their ideologies. It is not up to THE ideology. Anarchism says, in effect, there is no such upper case, dominating ideology.It says that people who live in liberty make their own histories and their owndeals with and within it. A person who describes a world in which everyone must or should behave in asingle way, marching to a single way, marching to a single drummer, is simply notan anarchist. A person who says that they prefer this way, even wishing that allwould prefer that way, but who then says that all must decide, may certainly be ananarchist. Probably is. Liberty is liberty. Anarchism is anarchism. Neither is Swiss cheese or anythingelse. They are not property. They are not copyrighted. They are old, available ideas,part of human culture. They may be hyphenated but they are not in fact hyphenated. They exist on their own. People add hyphens, and supplemental ideologies. I am an anarchist. I need to know that, and you should know it. After that, I am a writer and a welder who lives in a certain place, by certain lights, and with certain people. And that you may know also. But there is no hyphen after the anarchist.Liberty, finally, is not a box into which people are to be forced. Liberty is a spacein which people may live. It does not tell you how they will live. It says, eternally,only that we can.The dandelion, Spring 1980 by Karl Hess

Why Our Flag Is Black (Howard Ehrlich)

Why is our flag black? Black is a shade of negation. The black flag is the negation of all flags. It is a negation of nationhood which puts the human race against itself and denies the unity of all humankind. Black is a mood of anger and outrage at all the hideous crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of allegiance to one state or another. It is anger and outrage at the insult to human intelligence implied in the pretenses, hypocrisies, and cheap chicaneries of governments.

Black is also a color of mourning; the black flag which cancels out the nation also mourns its victims the countless millions murdered in wars, external and internal, to the greater glory and stability of some bloody state. It mourns for those whose labor is robbed (taxed) to pay for the slaughter and oppression of other human beings. It mourns not only the death of the body but the crippling of the spirit under authoritarian and hierarchic systems; it mourns the millions of brain cells blacked out with never a chance to light up the world. It is a color of inconsolable grief.

But black is also beautiful. It is a color of determination, of resolve, of strength, a color by which all others are clarified and defined. Black is the mysterious surrounding of germination, of fertility, the breeding ground of new life which always evolves, renews, refreshes, and reproduces itself in darkness. The seed hidden in the earth, the strange journey of the sperm, the secret growth of the embryo in the womb all these the blackness surrounds and protects.

So black is negation, is anger, is outrage, is mourning, is beauty, is hope, is the fostering and sheltering of new forms of human life and relationship on and with this earth. The black flag means all these things. We are proud to carry it, sorry we have to, and look forward to the day when such a symbol will no longer be necessary.

Howard Ehrlich, Reinventing Anarchy

Demand Justice! (Put an end to authority)

Not a day passes that I am not overwhelmed with videos, reports and articles detailing police brutality. One example is the case of a 15 year old girl in King County, WA in which it is alleged that Deputy Paul Schene rushed into the cell where this young girl was being held, kicked her full force in what appears to be the stomach or groin area, slammed her head into a concrete wall, slammed her head into the concrete floor, dropped his knee full force into her back, punched her twice in what appears to be the back of her head and then lifted her by the hair and dragged her out of the cell, all of this on video. 

The only solution to the abuse of authority is the END of authority. No person should ever have the right to control the actions, thoughts or beliefs of another. The police serve but one purpose, the imposition of the rule of the current ruling government. They are not here for you or for me, they do not preserve peace nor do they dispense justice. They exist as the militant arm of the domestic control grid. If one would ever seek to end the abuses of authority there is but one solution, anarchy. No rulers, no servants, true equality in a community based on the interest of personal freedom unrestricted by the dictates of either a ruling class or an unthinking majority.

The Great Partisan Swindle...

My friends I am sure we are all familiar with the phrase "Divide and Conquer". I have to point out something that has been keeping us all as people increasingly divided from one another. That thing is partisanship. The corporate media responsible for the propagation of the lies keeping the unthinking majority and even a good part of what I like to call the Liberty Movement divided has time and again sought to divide us in to different sects, pointing out what seem to be irreconcilable differences between the people. We need to look past this partisan swindle and realize that in essence we all want the same thing. We all seek to end tyranny. We all seek to defend liberty. We all seek to expose the lies being fed to our people and to our children. If we are ever to find the strength to regain control of our country and our world we need to see PAST this division. Stop pointing a finger at "The Liberals" or "The Conservatives", "The Left" or "The Right". We need to unify over the cause that is FREEDOM. Remind yourself that it is a manipulation tactic, not truth. Point the blame at the REAL enemy, the tyrannical World Government under the direct control of the Global Banking Community. It is not your neighbor that you need put under foot, for we are all under the oppression of the same enemy. Don't let them divide us any more. Politicians and their corporate puppet masters don't actually exist within this perceived partisanship, they ALL play golf together. We need to recognize that it is a ONE PARTY government whose policy is dictated by the ELITE that is in control. It's not the republicans, the democrats, or any other divided faction. We must find our strength in unity. We must end the brutal tyranny that is government. We must reject the lie that men are inherently evil and unable to get along with one another of their own accord. We must reject the idea of authority. Anarchy Now For Liberty's Sake!

Private Prisons (A new home for us all)

I find it interesting that the GEO group, one of the world leaders in the Private Prison Industry, was started in 1984 as a division of Wackenhut and since that time the prison population in the U.S. alone has more than doubled. The following graph shows in no uncertain terms exactly how vast that increase has been.



Given evidence of this nature and the indisputable FACT that GEO and companies like it (of which there are a mere handful) see an increase in the value of their stock in direct proportion to the number of inmates incarcerated in their prison, can there be any doubt that legislation for mandatory minimum sentences and the increased heat brought by the "war on drugs" have been directly lobbied into existence by the private prison industry? It's also worth noting that the U.S. leads the world in prison population.

Thoughts?