Open Letter from an Anarchist
Dear friends,
I begin writing this morning because I am on a mission of peace. There is so much heated, emotionally-charged and counterproductive debate these days. It seems impossible to have sensible, polite discussions between adults with differing opinions on the issues of our day, but that is exactly what we need. We all have to live together; we have to be able to talk.
That is why I am writing to you today as an anarchist. You don’t agree with anarchism, that’s fine. I won’t try to change your mind. I only want to propose a dynamic which will enable us to talk productively and hopefully learn from one another: our essential agreement is that I don't believe there should be a State and you think there should. We can disagree about this overarching conclusion and still have ample room for discussion of specific laws and functions. My proposal is simply that the onus of proof is on the State.
It is too often taken for granted that State regulation is beneficial. You can believe in the necessity of a State whilst conceding that many laws or perhaps functions or branches of government are harmful. In fact, if your politics is concerned with subordination, oppression, and inequality, you would do well to look at the government from an anarchist’s perspective, from time to time. It should be subject to harsh and thorough examination. It should require a very convincing argument indeed before it does anything. Perhaps, in some cases, you would like to make that argument, the case for government. I’m sure that at other times we will agree.
Anyway, this is an open invitation to have a calm and rational discussion of the role of the State. To get the ball rolling, I have a proposition I think most people should find agreeable: the government has too much power over society. This is demonstrated often: it was seen in the lamentations upon Tony Abbott’s victory: he was not fit to govern and would destroy our country. We see it again now in the wake of Trump’s victory: he, too, is an unfit leader who may just destroy a country. It must eventually be seen that the problem is not with these individuals, but with the system itself. No one person should have that much power. There shouldn’t be an organization so powerful that it has terrible repercussions if it should get into the wrong hands. But that’s precisely what government, as it exists today, is.
Power ought to be dispersed, don’t you think?