Why it is your duty to stop supporting the government → how tax resistance fits the bill → isn’t some government worth paying for? → doing without government → problems with having governments

Some feedback:

I thought it was important that before I begin considering whether to or how to resist the government that I start by withdrawing my support for it. I think many of the people who are out on the streets with their signs and chants are fooling themselves if they think they oppose the war — their chants don’t take a nickel from the bottom line of their actual support.

How to or whether to resist the government is another matter. I think that a compelling case for the need to resist the government can be made. Now, finally, I have the luxury of being able to weigh that case. Once I stop supporting the government, I can make the decision of whether to wash my hands of it or whether to actively oppose it.

Until I stopped supporting the government, my “opposition” to it was a matter of opinion and had pretty much as much weight as any other opinion does — less than nothing unless the weather is hot enough so that air exits my mouth at less than the ambient temperature.

I don’t spend much time anymore thinking about what a good government would look like. I’ve come to disbelieve in government — not in the sense of disillusionment, but actual non-belief. I think that what we call government is really just people and places and buildings. The actions of “government” are really just the actions of people following certain rules and roles and norms.

Which isn’t to say that “government” isn’t a useful shorthand for referring to a set of institutions, employees, legal algorithms, etc. But this shortcut doesn’t in itself have an existence. The mistake is like saying that you want to refer to the creative, life-giving entropic momentum in the universe by the name “god” — (“okay,” says the skeptic) — then you start to personify “God” and give Him opinions and motives and eyes and a crown and such. Pretty soon, you’re not naming an abstraction so much as creating literature and living in a fantasy world.

So the question isn’t “what kind of government is good,” “what can a just government demand of its citizens,” etc. but “how should people behave towards each other, since the idea of an external government to which we must relinquish our consciences is a myth?”

It’s like asking an atheist to tell you what kind of god he thinks made the world, or what kind of responsibilities God has toward his creation, or what kind of responsibilities we should have towards God, or how God would have us live. The atheist would say none of those are meaningful questions, since there is no god.

The questions the atheist would ask are: “how should we live, given that we can’t rely on a god to tell us how to live?” “how was the universe created, if it wasn’t God who did it?” and so forth.

I think it’s important to awaken in people their own consciences and their sense of responsibility for their own choices. I think that’s more important than dreaming up some institutional or algorithmic structure designed to take these burdens off of our shoulders.

When a government agent steals from me, it is just a person stealing from me. When a police officer threatens to make me a hostage, it is just a person threatening me with kidnapping. That they use the excuse of having a job description or “government” that authorizes such behavior is their hallucination and their problem (though I certainly will take into account the threatening delusions of my well-armed fellow citizens), and I feel as helpless trying to reason with them as Elizabeth Smart must have felt in the clutches of her God-authorized child-snatcher. My feelings towards reform of government are much as my feelings towards any large criminal syndicate that threatens me: reduce the threat as much as possible, and keep my head down meanwhile.

My problem isn’t with the use of abstractions or shorthand symbols but with the confusion this causes when people forget or deny that they’re using abstractions.

When people say that the reason they’re performing an action is because the government requires it, they’re using “government” as an excuse for their behavior in a way that is often dishonest. The problem with the shorthand version is that it covers too much ground — it’s ambiguous. It pretends to explain something, but actually leaves it unexplained.

The shorthand of “government” or “law” as an excuse for behavior hides behind it a jungle gym’s worth of evasions of personal responsibility.

My feeling is that people do not have the capability to abdicate their consciences. They can make trade-offs, they can decide to defer to the judgments of people they consider better-informed, or whatever — but in doing so they are exercising their consciences. If you make the wrong decision by following someone else’s judgment — you have made the wrong decision, not the someone else (who may also have made the wrong decision, but you know what I mean.)

And this is the problem that “government” (among other things) pretends to cure. “Government” says “I will make some of your decisions for you, and I will take all the blame if things go bad.” That’s snake oil. Can’t be done. It’s like a perpetual motion machine.

And, crucially, it killed almost two hundred million people in . Which is to say, people killed almost two hundred million other people in , shooting them in the back of the head, starving them to death, stuffing them into gas chambers, etc. thinking all the while that it wasn’t them who was doing these things but the “government.” (And that isn’t even counting the deaths when armies met on the battlefield).

If you decide to go along with the law or the majority or what have you because you’re not confident that your own judgment is any better — that’s a plausibly sensible heuristic and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But your decision and your action is ultimately yours, and you are responsible for the consequences. If it turns out to be a screw-up, the right thing to do is to consider alternative courses of action that won’t be so screwed up — the wrong thing to do is to passively hope that the law / majority / whatever will improve so that your moral laziness won’t have those consequences anymore.

It’s tempting to object to this by saying that the law is different, because it really is an implicit gun-to-your-head that eliminates your freedom of choice.

But even a gun to your head doesn’t eliminate your freedom of choice — it just adds to the set of consequences your choices may produce. It becomes a factor that you add up along with all of the other factors before making your decision. In the case of a gun to the head, it’s a pretty big consequence and a pretty overwhelming factor, but it doesn’t change the basic rules of the game.

You ever have one of those boyfriends or girlfriends with control issues? You know the type — they’d decide where you were going out to dinner or what movie you were going to see or whose friends you’d be visiting this weekend or when it was time to have serious discussions and when it wasn’t.

Maybe it was kind of endearing at first (you called it “assertive” or “confident;” maybe you melted a bit inside when they said “don’t you worry your little head about this, sweetie; I’ll get the check”). But ultimately this person annoyed the shit out of you because their attitude betrayed an egotistical sense of superiority that degraded and disrespected you.

Politicians all seem to be cut from this cloth. It’s a prerequisite for wanting to seek office. They all want the opportunity to spend your money for you and make your decisions for you and decide on the limits of your behavior because they’re smarter than you, better than you, and are confident that they know what they’re doing.

They’re all assholes, in short.

And while you could spend the rest of the night in that singles bar picking nits about which asshole is the least objectionable one, you’re still better off yet choosing another bar where you can hang out with people who think of you as an peer and an equal.

I really wish the liberals in the U.S. would leave the electoral meat market behind. Pinning your hopes on getting a Democrat or a Green into office is a guaranteed loser. (And don’t get me started about the Republicans who still believe that their party believes in “smaller government.”)

A lot of time when I talk to people about their government I feel like I’m talking to someone in an abusive relationship. “Yes, the government steals my money and lies to me and threatens to throw me in jail and it’s always going off on these destructive binges, but there’s an election coming up and I think maybe it’ll change this time for real and I don’t want to just give up on it after putting in all this time and emotional investment.”

Grow up! No, the government isn’t going to change — not in any meaningful way — so stop investing yourself in it. Stop leaning on it and counting on it and looking up at it hopefully as if it were your friend. As much as you can get away with, divest yourself from it. Do things for yourself that it offers to do for you, hide your money from it when it comes home drunk from adventures overseas, start seeing other forms of social organization.

There’s not much we as individuals can do about dumping the rule of politicians. But we can do what we can, and that is to say “no” to government whenever we’re asked, to resist it in whatever ways we feel are appropriate, and to replace it with our own positive efforts where we can.

“It is one of those things not easily accounted for, that men who would scorn to do an injustice to a fellow man, in a private transaction, — who would scorn to usurp any arbitrary dominion over him, or his property, — who would be in the highest degree indignant, if charged with any private injustice, — and who, at a moment’s warning, would take their lives in their hands, to defend their own rights, and redress their own wrongs, — will, the moment they become members of what they call a government, assume that they are absolved from all principles and all obligations that were imperative upon them, as individuals; will assume that they are invested with a right of arbitrary and irresponsible dominion over other men, and other men’s property.” ―Lysander Spooner

Abu Ghraib and the Nature of the State (excerpt):

No one in his right mind would prefer living in Pol Pot’s Cambodia to George W. Bush’s America, unless he was a moral monster who anticipated that Pol Pot’s Cambodia would allow him greater latitude for committing evil. But such a distinction is not very different from the fact that some slave-owners were far more decent to their slaves than others. Similarly, if you knew that your neighborhood was bound to be taken over by one of a pair of mobsters, no doubt you would rather Sammy “The Prudent” Giamboni won his gang war against Jimmy “Mad Dog” O’Sullivan. But the fact that the behavior of some slave owners or mob bosses is less onerous than that of others does not obviate the immoral nature of slavery and protection rackets. Nor can any state justify its existence or its actions by noting that the some other state is even more despicable than it is.

The fact that the soldiers involved were operating with the authority of a state behind them ought to figure prominently in any analysis of what occurred at that prison. They had been taught, most likely from childhood and certainly since joining the military, that loyalty to the state ruling over them is a sacred obligation. They were told, again and again, that the vital interests of the State can negate any limits that traditional moral strictures might place on their behavior.

The individuals at Abu Ghraib who were the immediate source of the abuse suffered by the prisoners certainly should have known that their actions were immoral. The nature of the institutional setting in which they found themselves does not relieve them of responsibility for the crimes they committed. Nevertheless, that setting helps make their evil deeds more comprehensible.

I found a copy of the out-of-print collection Leo Tolstoy, Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence, at a used bookstore . I’d been interested in reading this because Tolstoy’s Christian pacifist anarchism bears some resemblance to my own project, although mine is not quite pacifist and not at all Christian.

Tolstoy’s writings on tax refusal can be found in the book We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader.

Tolstoy appeals to individual conscience and he calls for individual action. He didn’t want to reform the government or the church, to institute a utopia or to join the revolution; he wanted you to disregard the government and the church and to behave as (he felt) God and Christ demanded — the rest would take care of itself.

Here’s an excerpt in which he ridicules the idea that the way to peace is through better treaties or through international law:

The government assures the people that they are in danger from the invasion of another nation, or from foes in their midst, and that the only way to escape this danger is by the slavish obedience of the people to their government. This fact is seen most prominently during revolutions and dictatorships, but it exists always and everywhere that the power of the government exists. Every government explains its existence, and justifies its deeds of violence, by the argument that if it did not exist the condition of things would be very much worse. After assuring the people of its danger the government subordinates it to control, and when in this condition compels it to attack some other nation. And thus the assurance of the government is corroborated in the eyes of the people, as to the danger of attack from other nations.

“Divide et imperia.”

Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, and conscience, and a slavish enthralment to those in power. And as such it is recommended wherever it is preached.

Patriotism is slavery.

Those who preach peace by arbitration argue thus: Two animals cannot divide their prey otherwise than by fighting; as also is the case with children, savages, and savage nations. But reasonable people settle their differences by argument, persuasion, and by referring the decision of the question to other impartial and reasonable persons. So the nations should act today. This argument seems quite correct. The nations of our time have reached the period of reasonableness, have no animosity toward one another, and might decide their differences in a peaceful fashion. But this argument applies only so far as it has reference to the people, and only to the people who are not under the control of a government. But the people who subordinate themselves to a government cannot be reasonable, because the subordination is in itself a sign of a want of reason.

How can we speak of the reasonableness of men who promise in advance to accomplish everything, including murder, that the government — that is, certain men who have attained a certain position — may command? Men who can accept such obligations, and resignedly subordinate themselves to anything that may be prescribed by persons unknown to them in Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin, Paris, cannot be considered reasonable; and the government, that is, those who are in possession of such power, can still less be considered reasonable, and cannot but misuse it, and become dazed by such insane and dreadful power.

This is why peace between nations cannot be attained by reasonable means, by conversations, by arbitration, as long as the subordination of the people to the government continues, a condition always unreasonable and always pernicious

But the subordination of people to governments will exist as long as patriotism exists, because all governmental authority is founded upon patriotism, that is, upon the readiness of the people to subordinate themselves to authority in order to defend their nation, country, or state from dangers which are supposed to threaten.

Grab-bag time:

  • Wired reports that among the lessons learned from the study of the collapse of the World Trade Center is that you obey the advice of official authority at your peril:

    After both buildings were burning, many calls to 911 resulted in advice to stay put and wait for rescue. Also, occupants of the towers had been trained to use the stairs, not the elevators, in case of evacuation.

    Fortunately, this advice was mostly ignored. According to the engineers, use of elevators in the early phase of the evacuation, along with the decision to not stay put, saved roughly 2,500 lives.…

    We know that US borders are porous, that major targets are largely undefended, and that the multicolor threat alert scheme known affectionately as “the rainbow of doom” is a national joke. Anybody who has been paying attention probably suspects that if we rely on orders from above to protect us, we’ll be in terrible shape. But in a networked era, we have increasing opportunities to help ourselves. This is the real source of homeland security: not authoritarian schemes of surveillance and punishment, but multichannel networks of advice, information, and mutual aid.

  • Among the authorities you are best-advised to ignore (void where prohibited) is the Transportation Security Administration, which has wasted no time in the years since its post-9/11 founding in becoming a stupid and wasteful bureaucracy. Among the items that showed up in a recent audit of the agency were a $526.95 domestic phone call, $1,180 for conference-room coffee, and $1,540 to rent 14 extension cords for three weeks.
  • The Boston Globe reports that (please quell your gasps of astonishment) “Congress, taking advantage of wartime support of national defense spending, is using the military’s budget to steer billions to pet projects that apparently have little to do with Iraq or the ongoing war on terrorism, according to congressional documents, government budget officials, and watchdog groups.”
  • And if that’s not enough for you, take a look at this London Review of Books article about the orgy of cash squandering in Iraq since the invasion.

Here’s an interesting melding of satyagraha with the libertarian non-aggression principle and anarchist revolutionary thinking from Gandhi’s deputy Vinoba Bhave:

SATISH KUMAR: For the you have been on the march. What are you aiming at?

VINOBA BHAVE: At revolution. In other words, I am aiming at the liberation of people from all kinds of suppression and exploitation. We need to be liberated from the institutions which exercise authority in the name of service. Institutionalized religion, for example, is an oppressive obstacle to the free experience of spirituality. Similarly, institutionalized politics in the form of state, parliament, and parties have killed the sense of participation.

SK: You want to liberate people from the government, but some good governments do a lot of good work.

VB: Good work which is done by government services is very far from good in its effects upon the minds of the people. When elections take place the ruling party will ask for your votes because of all the good work they have done. If it is true that they have done good work, the people will be oppressed by the sheer weight of their charity and that is exactly what saddens me.

SK: Why don’t you protest strongly when the government does something wrong?

VB: It is true that I do not make such protest, but I do raise my voice when the government does something good. There is no need for me to protest against the government’s faults, it is against its good deeds that my protests are needed. I have to tell the people what sheep they are. Is it a matter of rejoicing if you all turn into sheep and tell me how well the shepherds look after you? What am I to say? It seems to me that it would be better if the shepherds neglected their duty. The sheep would then, at least, realize that they are sheep. They might then come to their senses and remember that they are, after all, not sheep but men, men capable of managing their own affairs. This is why my voice is raised in opposition to good government. Bad government has been condemned long ago by many people. We know very well that bad governments should not be allowed but what seems to me to be wrong is that we should allow ourselves to be governed at all, even by a good government. To me the politics of government is not people’s politics. We must find the courage to believe that we are capable of managing our own affairs and that no outside authority can stop us.

SK: It seems that you want no government at all, Vinoba.

VB: I want self-government.

SK: What is the characteristic of selfgovernment?

VB: The first characteristic is not to allow any outside power in the world to exercise control over one’s self and the second characteristic is not to exercise power over any other. These two things together make self-government and people’s politics. No submission and no exploitation. This can be brought into being only by a revolution in the people’s conscience and mind. My program of giving and sharing is designed to bring it about. I am continually urging that believers in nonviolence should use their strength to establish a government by the people and put an end to government by politicians. There is a false notion in the world that governments are our saviors and that without them we should be lost. People imagine that they cannot do without a government. I can understand that people cannot do without agriculture or industry, that they cannot get on without love and culture, music and literature, but governments do not come into this category. I would suggest that all our administrators and politicians should be given leave for two years, just to see what happens in their absence. Would any of the ordinary work of the world come to an end? Would the dairyman no longer make butter or the market gardener not sell vegetables? Would people stop getting married and having babies? If the government were to take leave for two years it would destroy the popular illusion that a government is indispensable.

SK: But some kind of government will always exist. Can you give some constructive suggestion to make governments better?

VB: It is difficult to make governments better, but if there is any ideal form of government then I would say that the best kind of government is the one where it is possible to doubt whether any government exists at all. We ourselves should be seeing to the affairs of our own village, or community, or town, or locality, instead of doing just the opposite and handing over all power to the center. The less activity, the better the government. An ideal government would have no armies, no police force, and no penalties. The people would manage their own affairs, listening rationally to advice and allowing themselves to be guided by moral considerations.

SK: The need for government varies when we have conflicting situations and a clash of interests between the classes.

VB: It is impossible for the real interests of any one person to clash with those of others. There is no opposition between the real interests of any one community, class, or country and those of any other community, class or country. The very idea of conflicting interests is a mistaken one. One man’s interests are another’s, and there can be no clash. If I am intelligent and in good health, this is in your interest. If I get water when I am thirsty it benefits not only me but you also. If we imagine that our interests conflict, it is because we have a false notion of what constitutes our interests.

SK: You command a significant influence on the government. Why do you not insist that the government passes a law to socialize the land? Why do you have to wander so from village to village?

VB: The spreading of revolutionary ideas is no part of the government’s duty. In fact, revolutions cannot be organized and brought about by the established institutions of politics. The government can only act on an idea when it has been generally accepted, and then it is compelled to act on it. We say that in India we have democracy, then the government is the servant and the people are the masters. When you want to get an idea accepted, do you explain it to the servant or to the master? If you put it before the master and he approves, he will instruct his clerk to prepare the deed of gift. That is why I am putting my ideas before you — it is you, the people, who are the masters.

SK: If the revolutionaries are in power they can bring revolution in the society.

VB: As I explained, the authority of the government is incapable of bringing about any revolutionary change among the people. The day revolution gets the backing of the government it declines, becomes bureaucratic, institutionalized, and conformist. A very good example is the Russian revolution. You can see how revolutionaries become power mongers and office-seekers. Similarly, the decline of the Buddhist faith in India dates from the day when it received the backing of the governmental power. When the Christian faith was backed by the imperial power of Constantine, it became Christian in name only. The power of religion practiced by the first disciples of Christ was seen no more and hypocrisy entered the life of the church. In our own country history shows that when the movements of revolution and religious reforms won royal favor they were joined by thousands who were not really revolutionaries at all but merely loyal devotees of the ruling king. Therefore, do not allow yourself to imagine that revolutionary thinking can be propagated by governmental power. On the contrary, if there should be any genuine encounter between them, revolution would destroy the power of the state. The two can no more exist together than darkness and the sun. The exercise of power over others is not in accordance with revolutionary principles. It is clear from a study of history that real social progress has been due to the influence of independent revolutionaries. No king exercised the influence which Buddha exerted and still exerts on the life of India. The Lord Buddha renounced his kingdom, turned his back on it, and after his enlightenment the first person he initiated was the king, his own father. Later came the emperor Ashoka and a political revolution took place in India.

SK: Until we achieve this utopia what should we do?

VB: We should do everything at our command so that the need for a government should progressively diminish. In the final analysis the government would give up all executive power and act in a purely advisory capacity. As the morals of the people improve, the area of the authoritarian government will be reduced and government orders will be fewer and fewer. In the end it will issue no orders at all. The ultimate goal of my movement is freedom from government. I use the words “freedom from government” and not absence of government. Absence of government can be seen in a number of societies where no order is maintained and where anti-social elements do as they please. A society free from government does not mean a society without order. It means orderly society but one in which administrative authority rests at the grass roots level and every member of the community has active participation and involvement. For this reason the purpose of my march is to rouse the people to an awareness of their own strength, to get them to stand on their own feet. I want to see all the village lands in the hands of the village and not under private ownership. And to that end I am trying to get the common people to realize their power and organize it independently.

SK: How will you go about bringing this people’s power?

VB: The establishment of such a participatory, nonbureaucratic, self-directing society calls for a network of self-sufficient units. Production, distribution, defense, education, everything should be localized. The center should have the least possible authority. We shall thus achieve decentralization through regional selfsufficiency. I do not expect that every village should immediately produce all its own needs. The unit for self-sufficiency may be a group of communities. In short, all our planning will be directed towards a progressive abolition of government control by means of regional selfreliance. Our goal should be that every individual becomes as self-reliant as possible.

SK: Is that what you call freedom?

VB: Yes. Because no real freedom exists today and we shall not get it so long as we carry on with our representative democracy. We shall not get it until we decide to make our own plans with the use of our own brains and carry them out in our own strength. As long as a few individuals are given all the power and the rest of the people hope that the government will protect them, this is not real freedom. The present kind of democracy is a guided democracy, whereas in a free society we will have a direct democracy. We shall not hand over all the public services to the few representatives. In America all the power is in the hands of the President. If he should make an error of judgment he might set the whole world on fire. It is a terrible thing that such power should be entrusted to any representative. That is why throughout the world today there is no real freedom but only an illusion of freedom. To obtain this real freedom, we must form village councils, community councils, peasants’ councils, workers’ councils, on a small scale, and these councils should run their own affairs, settle their own quarrels, decide how their children should be educated, undertake their own defense, and manage their own markets. This way there will be a general renewal of self-confidence and common people everywhere will get experience of public affairs.

SK: The proposal you are making will turn the whole system upside down and social life will be upset. Does this fit in with your philosophy of non violence?

VB: To many people nonviolence has come to mean that society should be disturbed as little as possible. Our present set-up should continue to function without hindrance. Some people understand by nonviolence merely that the changes necessary will be carried out extremely gradually. Let there be no painful sudden change and so nonviolence is rendered innocuous. But this way revolutions are never carried out. Things remain pretty much as they are and people get satisfaction by adopting an ideal, paying it lip service, and talking about it. This concept of nonviolence is very dangerous for revolution and very convenient to the cause of lethargic society. So I beg you not to adopt any “go slow” methods of nonviolence. In nonviolence you must go full steam ahead, if you want the good to come speedily you must go about it with vigor. A merely soft, spineless ineffective kind of nonviolence will actually encourage the growth of the status quo and all the forces of a violent system which we deplore. A non-revolutionary nonviolence is a conservative force and, therefore, it is not nonviolence. Nonviolence is an active and effective weapon to fight against injustice and at the same time to build an alternative society.

Caleb Johnson has written a piece for the New Hampshire Free Press on “Why I Am An Anarchist” that has the stateliness (so to speak) and deliberateness that I usually have to go back to prose to find.

I like that sort of thing, but I’m afraid to most modern readers it’ll seem in costume, like someone wearing a bowler and spats.

Which is too bad, because it contains some gems:

“What… are we to do about murderers? Let them run the streets?” Now, this is a curious question, because states are themselves murderers, only they accomplish their killings by the millions rather than individually. And we not only let them run our streets, as it were, but we let them patrol them. So it is as if we hire the bank robber to keep the children from stealing from our raspberry bush; not only that, we give him the key to our safe. Then we console ourselves that our bank robber is not as bad as the one that the neighbors hired to safeguard their raspberry bush.

And my favorite paragraph, which puts me in mind of Thoreau’s warning that “Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.”:

Last year, I did not steal, nor did I rape, nor did I plunder or kill or defraud. Nor would I have done those things even if they had been legal. I needed no law to inform me of right and wrong; nor, I trust, did you. On the other hand, how many men did things that they otherwise would not have done, merely because the state said that it was okay? Would hundreds of thousands of young men, merely on their own initiative, have armed themselves to the teeth and journeyed to Iraq to torture, kill, and terrorize? No, to accomplish that great evil they needed a state to tell them that it was all right to do what they would otherwise find repugnant.

This morning I leave for the NWTRCC Conference at the Birmingham Friends Meeting house in Birmingham, Alabama. While I’m away, assuming I can find an internet connection to work with, I’ll post some pre-prepared selections from the book I’m assembling — documents from the first two centuries of Quaker war tax resistance in America.

These excerpts can also be found in the book American Quaker War Tax Resistance.

James Logan was a close associate of William Penn who had, , many roles in the government of Pennsylvania, including Chief Justice. He was a successful businessman and negotiator, published scientific papers on various subjects, and mentored Benjamin Franklin in philosophy and science.

, having left political life, crippled by an accident and a stroke, he wrote a powerful critique of Quaker pacifism in the hopes of getting the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to revisit its discipline in this regard. The Meeting more or less completely blew him off.

My Friends,— It is with no small Uneasiness that I find myself concerned to apply thus to this Meeting: but as I have been longer and more deeply engrossed in the Affairs of Government, and I believe I may safely say, have considered the Nature of it more closely than any Man besides in the Province: as I have also from my Infancy been educated in the Way that I have since walked in, and I hope without Blemish, to the Profession; I conceive and hope you will think I have a Right to lay before you the heavy Pressure of Mind that some late Transactions in this small Government of ours has given me; through an apprehension, that not only the Reputation of Friends as a People, but our Liberties and Privileges in general may be deeply affected by them.

But on this Head, I think fit to mention in the first Place, that when above , our late Proprietor proposed to me at Bristol, to come over with him as his Secretary, after I had agreeably to his Advice taken time to consider of it, which I did very closely before I engaged, I had no scruple to accept of that, or of any other Post I have since held: being sensible that as Government is absolutely necessary amongst Mankind, so, though all Government, as I had clearly seen long before, is founded on Force, there must be some proper Persons to administer it. I was therefore the more surprised, when I found my Master, on a particular occasion in our Voyage hither, though coming over to exercise the Powers of it in his own Person here, shewed his sentiments were otherwise:…

This is Logan’s oblique reference to an episode that is told more explicitly in Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography (see The Picket Line, ). as his secretary, at one point the people on the ship thought that they were being persued by an enemy vessel. The captain armed the crew and passengers and told them to await an attack, although he said he knew that it was Quaker policy not to take up arms. The Quakers, except for Logan who was already a dissenter when it came to pacifism, went below-deck to hope for the best. It turned out to be a false alarm. Penn then chastized Logan in front of the others for taking up arms, and Logan replied acidly, “I being your servant, why did you not order me to come down? But you were willing enough that I should stay and help to fight the ship when you thought there was danger.”

That jab aside, the important part of these introductory paragraphs is where Logan reminds his readers that “all government… is founded on force.” He will work this point as a way of showing the inherent contradiction of being a pacifist legislator, or in believing in government on the one hand and believing that no violence — not even defensive violence — is ever justified, on the other.

…but as I have ever endeavoured to think and act consistently myself, observing that Friends had laid it down as a Principle that bearing of Arms even for Self-Defence is unlawful, being of a different Opinion in this respect, though I have ever condemned Offensive War, I therefore in a great Measure declined that due Attendance on their Meetings of Business that I might otherwise have given. I must here nevertheless add further; that I propose not in offering this, to advance Arguments in Support of the lawfulness of Self-Defence, which amongst those who for Conscience Sake continue in a Condition to put strictly in Practice the Precepts of our Saviour, would be altogether needless; but wherever there is a Private Property, and Measures taken to increase it by amassing Wealth according to our Practice, to a Degree that may tempt others to invade it, it has always appeared to me to be full as Justifiable to use Means to defend it when got, as to acquire it: Notwithstanding which I am sensible our Friends have so openly and repeatedly professed their Principles on that Head to the Government, and they have thereupon been so much distinguished by their Favours as a peaceable People, from whom no Plots or Machinations of any kind are to be feared, that I shall consider this, as I have said to be their standing and avowed Principle, and only offer to your Consideration, what I conceive to be a clear Demonstration, that all Civil Government as well as Military is founded on Force; and therefore the Friends as such in the strictness of their Principles, ought in no manner to engage in it;…

Or, to summarize: I’m not going to try to convince you that using violent force for self defense or the defense of one’s property is justifiable, though it is, but I do think I can convince you that violent force is an essential and omnipresent part of government, and you cannot reject the one without rejecting the other.

He then reminds his readers that their colonial government is part of a larger system of governments in which there are some quasi-contractual reciprocal arrangements that rule out pacifism — the grant by which Pennsylvania was founded included — and that the benefits people hope to have from having a government (the ability to suppress violent crime, the just adjudication of civil disputes, the preservation of liberties against foreign despots, and so forth) all rely on the government having the ability to deploy violent force, even if only as a last resort.

…As also, that as We are a Subordinate Government, and therefore accountable to a Superior one for our Conduct, it is expected by that Superior, that this Province as well as all the other British Colonies shall make the best Defence against a Foreign Enemy in its Power, as it was required to do by the late Queen Anne in the last French War, upon which the then Governor raised a Militia of three Companies of Volunteers, but for Want of a Law for its support, it dropped in about two Years after — and the like Orders may undoubtedly be expected again, when another War with France breaks out which is said now to appear unavoidable. That it is of the greater Importance to Britain, as it is for other Reasons most assuredly to Ourselves that the country should be defended, as it lies in the Heart of the other British Colonies on the Main: And that it is well known in Europe that from the vast Conflux of People into it from Germany and Ireland, numbers who can bear Arms are not wanting for a Defence, were there a Law for it, as there is in all the other British Colonies, I think without an exception.

That all Government is founded on Force, and ours as well as others, will be indisputably evident from this — King Charles Ⅱ., in his Grant of this Province to our Proprietor, directed that the Laws of England for the Descent of Land and the Preservation of the Peace, should continue the same, till altered by the Legislative Authority: and our Government continues on the same Plan, with Judges, Justices, Sheriffs, Clerks, Coroners, Juries, &c., all of whom who act by Commissioners, have them from the governor in the English Form: the English Law is pleaded in all our Courts, and our Practitioners copy as near as they can after the Practice in Westminster Hall. By that Law, when the Peace is commanded even by a Constable, all Obedience to that Command manifestly arises from a Sense in the Person or Persons commanded that Resistance would be punished; and, therefore, they choose to avoid it: but in Civil Cases of more importance the Sheriff who is the principal acting Officer executes the Judgments of the Court upon those they were given against, which they are obliged to comply with, how much soever against their will, for here also they know Resistance would be in vain; or if they attempt any, the Sheriff is obliged by the Law, without any Manner of Excuse, to find a sufficient Force, if to be had in his County, to compel to a Compliance. And in the Pleas as the Crown, besides that he is obliged to put to Death such Criminals of by the Law have been condemned to it, He, as general Conservator of the Peace, is likewise invested by the same Law with proper Powers for suppressing all Tumults, Riots, Insurrections and Rebellions on whatsoever Occasion they may arise, as far as the Posse or whole Force of his County may enable him; and for this end he receives, together with his Commission, the King’s Writ of Assistance, requiring all Persons within his District, to be aiding to him in these and all other cases, by which if need be, they may freely use Fire Arms and all manner of destructive Weapons, and are not at all accountable by the Law for any Lives they may take of those in the Opposition, anymore than a man is on the High Road for killing another who attempts to rob him: And such as refuse to assist the Sheriff are by the same Law liable to Fine and Imprisonment, from whence ’tis evident there is no Difference in the last Resort, between Civil and Military Government, and that the Distinction that some affect to make between the Lawfulness of the one and the other is altogether groundless — as none are killed in the Field, so none are punished with their Good will; a superior Force is employed in the one case as well as in the other, and the only difference that I have ever been able to discover in their Essentials is, that the Sheriff being but one Person in his County cannot possibly assemble any very great number together on any regular Method or Order, as in case of any Insurrection in the city Philadelphia would soon appear: but on the contrary in a regular Militia every man knows his commanding officer, and whither to repair on a proper call — and from these Premises it certainly follows that whoever can find Freedom in himself to join in Assembly in making Laws, as particularly for holding of courts, is so far concerned in Self-Defence, and makes himself essentially as obnoxious to censure as those who directly vote for it.

In other words: If you take part in enacting laws, or relying on courts and law enforcement to protect you and your property, you are employing violent measures of self-defense by proxy. Anyone who has scruples against supporting the violent self-defense as practiced by the military ought to feel just as tender around the conscience when it comes to supporting the judiciary, the police, and the jails.

But further, it is alleged that King Charles Ⅱ. very well knew our Proprietor’s Principles : To which ’tis answered, that amongst the other Powers granted to the Proprietor and his Deputies, He is created by the charter a Captain General with ample powers to levy War against any Nation or People not in Amity with the Crown of England, which in case he were not free to do by himself he might by his Deputies: and if he is invested with Powers to make an Invasive War, much more is it to be expected that he should defend his country against all Invaders. And I am a Witness that in , or somewhat less, that the Proprietor took the Administration on himself when last here, He found himself so embarrassed between the indispensable Duties of Government on the one hand, and his Profession on the other, that he was determined if he had staid to act by Deputy.

If I understand the preceding passage correctly, Logan is saying that Penn, having realized that his government was going to have to participate in military action despite his own scruples about it, planned to appoint someone to act as a sort of ethical insulator — whom Penn would empower to make the necessary military decisions that Penn himself was unwilling to make.

It is further alleged by our Friends, that no other was expected than that this should be a Colony of Quakers, and it is so reputed to this day: that they are willing themselves to rely on the sole Protection of Divine Providence, and others who would not do the same should have kept out of it, for nobody called or invited them. But it is answered to this, That the King’s Charter gives free leave to all his subjects without Distinction to repair to the country and settle in it: and more particularly the Proprietor’s own Invitation was general and without exception: and by the Laws he had passed himself, no Country, no Profession whatever, provided they owned a God, were to be excluded. That ’tis true our Friends at first made a large Majority in the Province, but they are said now to make upon a moderate computation not above a Third of the Inhabitants: That although they allege they cannot for conscience sake bear Arms, as being contrary to the peaceable Doctrine of Jesus Christ, (whose own Disciples nevertheless are known to have carried Weapons,) Yet without Regard to others of Christ’s Precepts, full as express against laying up Treasure in this World, and not caring for Tomorrow, they are as intent as any others whatever, in amassing Riches, the great Bait and Temptation to our Enemies to come and plunder the Place: in which Friends would be very far from being the only sufferers, for their neighbors must equally partake with them, who therefore by all means desire a law for a Militia, in a regular Manner to defend themselves and the country as they have in the other Colonies.

A frequent argument used against Quaker pacifists exploited the fact that many of them were well-off. In this argument, the military was acting to protect their lives and property from pirates, Frenchmen, Hessians, Indians, and other such plunderers, for which they had every reason to be thankful, but they were nowhere to be found when it was time to join in and help out. In its crudest form, it’s just an appeal to envy designed to appeal to poorer frontier settlers and non-Quaker recent immigrants.

Logan’s superficially similar argument is more interesting. It has two branches:

  1. Pacifist Quakers insist on strictly following Christ’s teaching that you should love your enemy and turn the other cheek because all who live by the sword shall die by the sword:

    Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

    But they don’t seem to take the same attitude toward a verse like this one:

    Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

    Is this hypocritical?
  2. Furthermore, could it be that it’s a package deal? That by storing up for yourself treasures on earth, you then come to rely on a government to protect those treasures — violently if necessary — against those who may want to take them from you?

The threat against the treasures Pennsylvanians have stored up on earth was not just in the abstract:

That in the last French War, Pennsylvania was but an inconsiderable Colony, but now, by its extended commerce, it has acquired a very great Reputation, and particularly that Philadelphia has the Name of a rich City, is known to have no manner of Fortification, and is, as has been said, a tempting Bait by Water from the Sea: and by Land the whole country lies exposed to the French, with whom a war is daily expected: That the French in their last War with England were so greatly distressed in Europe, by a current of yearly Losses, that they were glad to set quiet where they might, but now it is much otherwise, as they appear rather in a condition to give Laws to their Neighbors: That our Indians unhappily retiring Westward have opened a ready Road and Communication between this Province and Canada, by their settling at Allegheny, a branch of that great River Mississippi, which branch extending a thousand miles from its Mouth where it enters the said River, reaches even into this Province; and between its Waters, and the Western Branches of Susquelianua, there is but a small Land-carriage: That the French exceedingly want such a country as this to supply their Islands with provisions, and our Rivers for an easier Inlet into that vast country of Louisiana which they possess on Mississippi than they now have by the barred Mouth of it, that empties itself a great way within the shoal Bay of Mexico: and they have many large nations of Indians in Alliance with them, to facilitate their conquests: for all which Reasons our numerous back Inhabitants, as well as others, ought to be obliged to furnish themselves with arms, and to be disciplined as in other Colonies for their own proper Defence, which would be no Manner of charge to the Public, and but little to Particulars.

These, I think, are the principal Arguments adduced by those who plead for a Law for Self-Defence, to which I shall add these other weighty considerations, that may more particularly affect Friends as a People.

There’s another thing Logan would like to remind people of: if the Quaker-dominated legislature of Pennsylvania insists on dragging its feet in supporting the mother country’s military plans, the mother country may have second thoughts about holding up their end the charter under which Quakers in Pennsylvania have enjoyed unprecedented political liberties:

The Government, and particularly the Parliament of Britain, appear to have this War very much at Heart, in which they spare no charge in fitting out large Fleets with Land Forces, and expect that all their Colonies will in the same Manner exert themselves, as the Assemblies of all the others have in some measure done, ours excepted, not only in their Contributions, but they have also generally a regular Militia for their Defence.

Our Friends have recommended themselves to the Government not only by their peaceable Deportment, as has been already observed, but by complying with its Demands in cheerfully contributing by the payment of their Taxes towards every War. Yet they are admitted into no Offices of the Government above those of the respective Parishes where they live, except that some have undertaken to receive Public Money: and though tolerated in their Opinions as they interfere not with the Administration; yet these Opinions are far from being approved by the Government, that when they shall be urged as a Negative to putting so valuable a country as this, and situate as has been mentioned, in a proper Posture of Defence, those who plead their Privileges for such a Negative, may undoubtedly expect to be divested of them, either by act of Parliament, or a Quo-Warranto from the King against their charter, for it will be accounted equal to betraying it. And this, besides the irreparable Loss to ourselves, most prove a Reproach and vast Disadvantage to the Profession every where.

In other words, if we keep this up we may end up not just screwing ourselves, but Quakers back in England as well.

’Tis alleged the Governor made a false step last year, in encouraging or suffering our Servants to enlist, for which he has been abridged by the Assembly of the Salary for a year and a Half, that had for many years before been allowed to our Governors. But as this is interpreted by the Ministry as a Proof of his extraordinary Zeal for the King’s Service, his conduct herein, as also his Letter to the Board of Trade, however displeasing to us, will undoubtedly recommend him the more to the Regard of our Superiors, in whose Power we are, and accordingly we may expect to hear of it.

The episode Logan just described came up in Isaac Sharpless’s history of Pennsylvania that I reprinted here on . In short: indentured servants had been enrolled in a voluntary militia, which annoyed their masters. When the Legislature voted one of its £3,000 “for the King’s use” look-the-other-way grants, it attached a condition that the militia stop accepting these servants, and discharge those that were enrolled. The Governor got indignant, refused to accept the money and the attached conditions, and recommended that the crown come up with some way to ban Quakers from colonial legislatures. This pissed off the Quaker legislators, who responded by refusing to pay the Governor’s salary.

Our Province is now rent into Parties, and in a most Unchristian manner divided: Love and Charity, the grand characteristics of the Christian Religion, are in a great measure banished from among the People, and contention too generally prevails: But for the weighty Reasons that have been mentioned in this Paper, it is not to be doubted that those who are for a Law for Defence, if the War continues and the country be not ruined before, must in Time obtain it. It is therefore proposed to the serious and most Weighty consideration of this Meeting, Whether it may not at this Time be advisable, that all such, who for conscience sake cannot join in any Law for Self-Defence, should not only decline standing Candidates at the ensuing Election of Representatives themselves, but also advise all others who are equally scrupulous to do the same — and as Animosities and Faction have of late greatly prevailed amongst us, and at all times there prevails with too many, an ill-judged parsimonious Disposition, who for no other reason than to save their money, though probably on some other pretense, may vote for such as they may think by their opposition to the Governor, may most effectually answer that end: That such Friends should give out publicly before hand when they find they are named, that they will by no means stand or serve, though chosen: and accordingly — that the meeting recommend this to the Deputies from the several Monthly or Quarterly meetings in this Province — all which from the sincerest Zeal for the Public Good, Peace of the Country, and not only the Reputation, but the most Solid Interest of Friends as a People, is (I say again) most seriously recommended to your consideration by Your true Friend and Well wisher, James Logan.

The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting referred this letter to a committee, which looked it over and rejected it from consideration on the excuse that “the Letter containing matters of a Military and Geographical nature, it was by no means proper to be read to the general meeting.” One member of this committee objected. One account puts it this way:

Robert Strethill singly declared that considering that Letter came from one who was known to have had abundance of experience, was an old member, and had a sincere affection for the Welfare of the Society, he was apprehensive should this Letter be refused a reading in the Meeting, such a proceeding would not only disgust him but the Body of Friends in England, especially as it might be supposed to contain several things that were intended for the good of the Society at these fickle and precarious times — but John Bringhouse plucked him by the coat and told him with a sharp tone of voice, “Sit thee down Robert, Thou art single in thy opinion.”

So at the time, Logan’s plea landed with a thud, and seemed to have no effect. It was prophetic, however. In , the French did attack Pennsylvania, through their Indian proxies. Quakers from the mother country did put pressure on Pennsylvania legislators to take the pressure off. Quaker legislators did go further than before in bending the rules to vote for military requisitions. And , Quaker Meetings in which pacifist principles were still maintained did ask their members to resign their positions in the legislature.

Many people who are concerned about degradation of the environment tend to imagine that answers to environmental problems will take the form of government action: whether that means stricter and better laws, or government subsidies for environmentally-friendly economic activity, or what have you.

People tend to underestimate how much environmental benefit might come from reducing or eliminating government action. Coincidence has dropped into my lap some recent examples that demonstrate this.

The first example concerns some organic farmers who want to reap the environmental and economic benefits of harvesting the rainwater that falls on the roofs of their farm buildings. This way, they could water their crops with stored rainwater rather than using water that had been processed for potability somewhere else and pumped out to their farm.

So [Kris Holstrom] asked the Colorado Division of Water Resources for a permit to collect runoff from building roofs — and was denied.

“They felt that the water belonged to someone else once it hit my roof,” she says. “They claimed that the water was tributary to the San Miguel River” — which runs some three miles from her place and is fully allocated to other users downstream.

The article this comes from also quotes “the proprietor of Utah’s first LEED-certified car dealership, who wanted to capture rainwater that fell on his property to use in landscaping and to wash the cars on his lot. “The state said no.” Across the country, rainwater harvesters are operating underground, illegally, without permits, like bootleggers during prohibition, just to use the rain that falls on their own property.

A seminary in New York is trying to go Green. They’re drilling a quarter-mile down into the rock beneath to get at some geothermal energy:

The wells are a source of energy because the water is 65 degrees year-round, so it is being used to cool seminary buildings in the summer and heat them in the winter. Once all 22 wells are running, the seminary will shut down its boilers. By replacing fuel oil with geothermal energy, the seminary will reduce its annual carbon dioxide emissions by 1,400 tons.

But it wasn’t easy. “We had to answer to 10 agencies,” [seminary executive vice president Maureen] Burnley said. “It took three times as long as it should have. The left and the right hand did not know what the other was doing.”

[T]he people at the seminary are, in Ms Burnley’s phrase, “institutionally exhausted” by the four-year siege of red tape, and after spending 50 percent more money than they had expected.

“At a certain point we became angry, and determined, and wouldn’t give up,” she said. “But you can’t create public policy that depends on having obsessed, hardheaded people to get these projects done.”

At one point, the seminary waited three months for the city Department of Transportation’s permission to drill into the sidewalk, Ms Burnley said. “The conversation went like this: ‘What is the status?’ ‘It has no status.’ ‘Do you need more information?’ ‘No, we have what we need.’ ‘Then how can we get it moving?’ ‘You can’t get it moving.’ ”

The on-line service PickupPal enables people to coordinate ride-shares anywhere in the world. Are you driving from Phoenix to Albuquerque? Check PickupPal and see if anyone needs a lift. “PickupPal’s objectives are to reduce carbon emissions, combat road traffic congestion, fight high gas prices and enable people to connect and improve the environment.”

And then the government stepped in.

It’s good for the environment. It’s good for traffic. It just makes a lot of sense. Unless, of course, you’re a bus company and you’re so afraid that people will use such a system rather than paying to take the bus. That’s what happened up in Ontario, as earlier this year we wrote about a bus company that was trying to shut down PickupPal, an online carpooling service, for being an unregulated transportation company. TechCrunch points us to the news that the Ontario transportation board has sided with the bus company and fined PickupPal. It’s also established a bunch of draconian rules that any user in Ontario must follow if it uses the service — including no crossing of municipal boundaries — meaning the service is only good within any particular city’s limits.

Remember Joel Salatin, the “beyond organic” farmer who played the hero in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma? Everything He Wants to Do is Illegal.

What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a farmer?

Anyone familiar with me would have to smile at this question, knowing that my answer would be and continues to be the food police. The on-farm hurdles we’ve faced, from drought to predators to flood to cash flow, are nothing compared to the emotional, economic and energy drain caused by government bureaucrats. Even in the early 1970s when, as a young teen, I operated a farm stand at the curb market, precursor of today’s farmers markets, the government said I couldn’t sell milk. The first business plan I came up with to become a full-time farmer centered around milking 10 cows and selling the milk to neighbors at regular retail supermarket prices. It would have been a nice living. But it’s illegal. In fact, in I finally wrote Everything I Want to Do is Illegal, documenting my run-ins with government officials.

And things like this don’t even touch on the fact that the nation’s worst polluter is the government, which exempts itself from its own regulations when they become inconvenient. (That Strontium-90 in your milk didn’t come from any greedy, heartless corporation, folks.)

As Henry D. said, “this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.” That goes double for environmentally responsible enterprise.

I’ve lately been reading a paperback collection of anarchist writings that’s a wee bit older than I am, and long out-of-print: Patterns of Anarchy.

I’m really not very up on debates amongst anarchist theorists, and their debates with socialists and communists and such. If you asked me to tell you some primary ideological differences between Kropotkin and Bakunin or Stirner and Godwin or Goldman and Spooner, I’d have to say “I dunno.”

And anarchist insight into the nature of taxation is usually pretty predictable (it’s bad, they’re against it, there’s no excuse for it). If you buy the rest of the argument about the illegitimacy of the state, you’ll have no trouble following that lemma to the obvious conclusion about taxation; if not, probably not.

This excerpt, from John Beverley Robinson’s The Economics of Liberty (), is a pretty concise and well-put example:

Third in our enumeration, although primary in its nature, among the methods of obtaining a portion of the products of the community, without taking part in production, the oldest and simplest is taking what is desired by force.

This, when done by the upper classes, is called taxation.

In the monarchical military organizations of the past, the character of this privilege is easily seen. The tax was levied in the name of the king or war leader, to whom the natural subservience of human nature spontaneously rendered submission.

It was the king’s army, the king’s people, the king’s taxes; and he who questioned the propriety of the royal prerogative of taking from his people without return or accounting, was reckoned, and felt himself to be, a criminal, guilty of the highest crime of disloyalty.

Such is still the attitude of the generality. To evade the customs tax, to “swear off” the income tax, is still felt by most people to be the immoral avoidance of a just claim, even though they permit themselves to be guilty of these delinquencies.

Although the form of society has been much modified, the industrial having begun to supplant the military, the nature of taxation remains the same. It is still the taking of other people’s possessions without their agreement, even if with their tacit consent; that is to say, no opportunity is offered by which the payment may be withheld, on the ground that the services offered in return are not worth the amount demanded, or are not wanted at all as would be done in ordinary mercantile transactions.

It is often said by reformers that government should be conducted upon business principles. This is impossible, because business rests upon doing its work well in return for what is freely given in payment; whereas government demands and takes its income, whether its work is well done or not, and whether it is wanted or not.

The distinction is ineffaceable.

The officials of a governmental organization, whether autocratic, constitutional or democratic, are in the position of those of a corporation of which the chief expenses are the salaries of the officials and employees, and the income is obtained by forcible levies.

It is impossible that an income so obtained should be expended as carefully and economically, and as much in the interest of those who pay it, as if it had to be obtained by offering a fair equivalent to taxpayers, and convincing them that the proposed bargain was to their advantage, leaving them free to accept or decline at their pleasure.

For this reason denunciation of governmental corruption is entirely futile, indeed, laughable to them who have once clearly comprehended the true state of affairs.

The functions fulfilled by government today are chiefly of a commercial character, yet the service given is remunerated, not by bargain and sale, but by forcible levy. It is inevitable that officials should use this force-collected income to secure their own continuance in office by conferring valuable privileges upon their supporters, who, in turn, use every effort to strengthen the government.

The fact of this co-operation is well known. Everybody knows that behind each political party stands a group of rich men, and that their influence over the votes which are to elect the officials is given in return for the continuance of the privileges by which their wealth has been created.

This power of taking money from the individual without his consent, is the fundamental privilege upon which all the others are based, and by which they are licensed. It stands upon no logical ground, but is the royal prerogative — the will of the prince — in the language of former days.

It will perhaps be thought that a tax imposed by a representative assembly loses the character of a forcible levy, and becomes practically a mercantile transaction. Brief consideration will show that this is not the case. Although the severity of taxation by an autocrat is much mitigated by constitutionalism, the principle remains the same. Taxes are no longer imposed by leasing the collection to a pacha or proconsul, and letting him plunder unchecked. Modern governments have learned the importance of keeping the goose in good health, that it may lay more golden eggs.

But the vote is useless against taxation. Whichever party wins, taxes go on, and must go on. It is not possible to vote for a representative who will oppose taxation, for it is from taxation that he gets his bread and butter.

The essence of economic exchange is the freedom of both parties to withhold consent to a bargain. Even if it could be shown that the equivalent given were fully equal to the assessment levied, it would still lack the freedom of choice of the individual to permit it to be ranked as a commercial transaction.…

Great as is this forced deduction from the products of the workers, the damage inflicted by taxation indirectly is still greater. First must be placed that caused by taxes upon imports. These restrict freedom of exchange in two ways; by limiting or preventing trade between the nations which impose them, and by fostering monopolies among producers.

When nations give up the last remnants of the military state of the past and become fully commercialized, these tariffs will be abolished, and production and exchange incalculably stimulated.

Much of the more challenging argument in Robinson and in some of the other examples I’m reading are about to what extent things like rent and, in general, the benefits of legal title to property the owner doesn’t occupy or utilize, are of the same variety of illegitimate privilege as taxation. What is “property” without a state to adjudicate and enforce legal title?

I’d be curious what Robinson would make of Robert Nozick’s argument that even in a world governed only by liberty and free exchange, some variety of proto-state is inevitable. Would this make him reconsider any of his arguments above, or would he see this as more of a challenge to Nozick than to him?

I noted some of the ways the government gets in the way of people who are trying to practice environmentally-sustainable living techniques. Here’s another example.

You can enrich the soil in your garden by composting kitchen scraps and such. Lots of people do. And it has many advantages: you send less potentially-useful organic material to be wasted at the landfill, you spend less on soil additives, you frugally regain nutrients in the food you grow yourself, and so forth. And that much is legal… probably… so far, anyway.

Some people supplement their compost piles with scraps from local restaurants — the Starbucks coffee chain, for instance, has a policy of making its used coffee grounds available to gardeners. However, in California anyway, once a single coffee ground from outside of your own kitchen hits your compost pile, you’d better have a solid waste facility permit or the State might shut you down.

There’s a myth about how Leon Czolgosz became an anarchist that goes like this:

Czolgosz came from a Roman Catholic family, but despite their religious beliefs, on their way back from celebrating in Cleveland they stopped in at the modest home of a notorious soothsayer.

When they arrived, there was already a small crowd of people who had come to hear if the old man had any predictions for the coming century. He did. There was a woman leaning down with her ear to the old man’s mouth, listening to what he said and trying to translate the gist of it to the assembly.

“He says that mankind will be decimated by its rulers in the coming century — there will be great wars that kill millions of people.” She leaned down again. “Millions of people will be killed in these wars, but even worse slaughter will come when the governments of the world turn on their own people — they will literally decimate their people.” She leaned down again. “Literally ‘decimate’ — if the angel of death traveled over the world today and visited each person, man woman and child, and killed with its breath every tenth person it visited, it would extinguish fewer lives than the governments of the world will murder off of the field of war in .”

Someone muttered “anarchist” and turned on his heel and left with his family, and that’s when Leon became an anarchist. He shot and killed William McKinley, then president of the United States government, in , and was executed . As it turns out, the prophecy came true, fifteen years ahead of schedule.

Albert Jay Nock, in his essay “On Doing the Right Thing,” meditates on propriety as a governor of behavior distinct from law and conscience and whim — on “doing the Right Thing” in what he thinks of as an Englishman’s sense of the term:

Given a certain set of circumstances… an Englishman may be trusted to take a certain course of conduct, and to take it with energy, resolution, and courage, for no reason in particular except to satisfy some inward sense of obligation. He may not, usually does not, have much light on the subject; doing the Right Thing may be far enough, indeed, from doing right. In other circumstances, too, where the inner sense is quiescent, he may do something much worse; but in those circumstances he is sure to carry through with a darkened and instinctive allegiance to what he believes to be the Right Thing.

Another thing about this curious sense of propriety:

When an Englishman is bitten by a sense of the Right Thing, it seems never to occur to him, for instance, to raise the question whether the Right Thing, after it is done, will have enough practical importance to be worth doing. Again, it seems never to occur to him to put a mere personal desire, however strong, in competition with the Right Thing, and then to cast about him for plausible ways of justifying himself in following his desire.

Nock divides human conduct into three sorts:

  1. “[T]he region in which conduct is controlled by law, i.e., by force, by some form of outside compulsion.”
  2. “[T]he region of indifferent choice, where, for instance, a man may use one kind of soap or safety-razor rather than another.”
  3. “[T]he region where conduct is controlled by unenforced, self-imposed allegiance to moral or social considerations.”

Nock then speculates that the reason why the English have such a strong sense of propriety and strictly govern their own behavior by these self-chosen, unenforced codes, is that in England the first of his “regions” — the region of law and compulsion — is small, particularly in comparison to America. “He has too many laws, of course, and the present tendency over there, as everywhere, unhappily, is to multiply them… but as compared with the American, he lives in an anarchist’s paradise.” (He wrote this in the mid-1920s, at the height of Prohibition in the United States; he notes also that “fornication” is not a crime in England the way it was in most of the United States.) The English are also, Nock says, more tolerant of individual idiosyncrasy, at least in superficial things like mode of dress, whereas Americans would be more likely to gather and mock anyone who steps too far out of line in fashion.

As a result, the two regions of choice do not shrink and atrophy, as they do when the legal/compulsion region grows. In America, on the other hand, “the region where conduct is controlled by law so far encroaches upon the region of free choice and the region where conduct is controlled by a sense of the Right Thing, that there is precious little left of either. What is left, moreover, is still further attenuated by the pressure of a public opinion whose energy and zeal are in direct ratio to its meddlesomeness and ignorance.”

The result “is the serious and debilitating deterioration of individual responsibility under this state of affairs. In this respect, living in America is like serving in the army; ninety per cent of conduct is prescribed by law and the remaining ten percent by the esprit du corps, with the consequence that opportunity for free choice in conduct is practically abolished. This falls in very well with the indolent disposition of human nature to regard responsibility as onerous and to dodge it when possible; but it is debilitating, and a civilisation organised upon this absence of responsibility is pulpy and unsound.”

Those who have noticed the disturbing effects of this have mostly misunderstood the cause, Nock says. Instead of proposing to shrink the legal region as a way of aiding the recovery of the regions of choice and morality, they propose to improve and expand the legal region. But “any enlargement [of that region], good or bad, reduces reduces the scope of individual responsibility, and thus retards and cripples the education which can be a product of nothing but the free exercise of moral judgment.”

Freedom, he says, “seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fibre can be developed.… In suggesting that we try freedom, therefore, the anarchist and individualist has a strictly practical aim. He aims at the production of a race of responsible beings.”

The anarchist does not want economic freedom for the sake of shifting a dollar or two from one man’s pocket to another’s; or social freedom for the sake of rollicking in detestable license; or political freedom for the sake of a mere rash and restless experimentation in system-making. His desire for freedom has but the one practical object, i.e. that men may become as good and decent, as elevated and noble, as they might be and really wish to be. Reason, experience and observation lead him to the conviction that under absolute and unqualified freedom they can, and rather promptly will, educate themselves to this desirable end; but that so long as they are to the least degree dominated by legalism and authoritarianism, they never can.

I think this essay makes a good point, and its conclusion is solid, but I think we’d be wise to be more skeptical of blind propriety than Nock is. I think in practice, it is often enforced by the same sort of social pressures that Nock mocks when they’re being used to make life miserable for Americans who refuse to toe the line of current fashion. And, as Nock recognizes but doesn’t much wrestle with: propriety can go badly astray — cementing popular bigotry, generating tendencies like patriotism that can easily be exploited for evil purposes, and giving people near-irrefutable quasi-reasons not to examine their motives or the results of their behavior.