Anarchy

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Anarchy

Anarchy is the theory of life and conduct under which social interactions

exist without government interference or assistance. It is not chaos,

nor terrorism, and has no connection to senseless violence; anarchy is

simply existing without being governed. Harmony in such a society would

be obtained not by submission to laws, or by obedience to any form of

authority, but by freely entered agreements between individuals.

The United States has strong ties to anarchy, a rather paradoxical

situation. It was conceived by, and is even to this day constantly being

refined by anarchists; people who maintain the view that the highest

attainment of humanity is the freedom of individuals to express themselves

unhindered by any form of external repression. Men such as the likes of

Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers, whose views can best be

summarized in something he preached, "If you think people incapable of

exercising their choices with wholesome discretion, the solution is not to

take away their choices, but to inform their discretion."

So where did the concept of anarchy come from? Could it be inherent in

human nature, a hold over from adolescence perhaps? Could it be people

are naturally opposed to being told what to do? Abraham Lincoln, during

the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, said something that summarizes human

view towards being governed, "No man is good enough to govern another man

without that other's consent."

The modern concept of anarchy as being a sort of ethical civil society

came during the French Revolution, around 1848. A man named Pierre Joseph

Pfoudhon envisioned a society in which people's ethical nature and sense

of moral responsibility would be so highly developed that government would

be unnecessary to regulate and protect society, and is thus credited with

fathering modern anarchy. Anarchy requires a lot of commitment on the

part of the individual. How does the old saying go With freedom comes

responsibility.

On an individual level, no one wishes to be dominated, but at the

same time the individual does not want to be infringed upon by others. A

Russian-American anarchist and women's rights activist named Emma Goldman

wrote, "I want full freedom and cooperation to evolve as a human being, to

gain wisdom and knowledge." She does not refer to freedom of others,

merely herself. Greed of freedoms is understandable because it is so hard

to trust others to always do what is good. Socrates might respond, "To

know the good is to do the good."

Can the idea of an ethical civil society, a term coined by Adam Michnik in

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