They don’t make them like they used to. The basic premise being the natural instinct for people is to cooperate, and make peace meaning we don’t need the state, the government, the judiciary, the police, and the military. Its a bit Sir Thomas More and part religious messianism, but within a generally atheist context, although there is some roots for religious anarchism where God’s grace will replace the law and the ruler would be more like a herder of his flock; in any even central government remains an affront to human dignity. Which ideally is true. But a cause is only worthwhile if people do not fear dying for it. A means of sustaining human life that can encompass such diverse activities say as suicide bombers, the Normandy Invasion, martyred hebrews dying for the Torah, and so on. But to die for a cause like anarchism? If no one is willing to die for a cause, then they tend to die out.
Today, the pure-bred, dyed in the wool anarchists seem like antiquities from a distant past. Maybe the overall level of wealth, the welfare state; anarchism seems more of a middle-class activity, a split off of Marxist academia high on the pecking order of hip social capital. There is an adaptation to some of the externalities of anarchism, the Rudolf Rocker’s and Buber style, but without any real commitment; very much a superficial mission of social transformation like James Cameron’s style of Marxism or George Lucas’s public housing schemes, they fall into a category of “Enlightenment” figure, white, liberal, and infected with NIMBY disease. Unfortunately or not, freedom from oppression does not appear to be a goal most people want or have a profound desire to pursue. To the traditional anarchists, this is a heresy: a society moving in the opposite direction by way of complicity: submission to the control of the laws of capital, the sanctity of the market economy and the mass of legal and jurisdictional apparatus which protects it.
To some, religious anarchism, the martin Buber variety, is an alternative to traditional mysticism; a mystic perceives the world as an obstacle separating people from god,so acts to withdraw from it. A religious anarchist sees defined social and economic organization and structure as the barrier separating people from god, and therefore seeks either withdrawal or to overthrow it in an act of messianic violence; there is always the element of nihilism and the “shock of the new” and a definitive break from the past, in order build communities the way mystics built churches. Ammon Hennacy, who with Dorothy Day were integral to the Catholic Workers Movement, said:
A Christian is one who follows Christ; kind, kindly, Christ-like. Anarchism is voluntary cooperation for good, with the right of secession. A Christian anarchist is therefore one who turns the other cheek, overturns the tables of the moneychangers, and does not need a cop to tell him how to behave. A Christian anarchist does not depend upon bullets or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One-Man Revolution with which he faces a decadent, confused, and dying world.” — excerpt from The Book of Ammon.
ADDENDUM:
Asked why the occupiers had to have a “rape-free zone tent” in New York’s private Zuccotti Park, Schultz calmly replied
SCHULTZ: The NYPD was sending rapists down to the park.
HANNITY: So the NYPD — do you have any evidence about this?
SCHULTZ: This was in the NY Times, New York Times.
HANNITY: I asked you a question — the New York Times said that the police sent rapists to rape women down there?
SCHULTZ: They sent alcoholics. They sent offenders. They sent people who were convicted of rapes.
HANNITY: Do you have any evidence to back it up –
SCHULTZ: I can give testimony. I didn’t bring my files with me, but you can check this out –
HANNITY: The New York Police Department brought rapists in and as a result women were raped so a special rape protective zone was set up?
SCHULTZ: You got to admit, it was a really cynical, really effective tactic on the part of the authorities. They knew that we wouldn’t turn people away because we like to help people, like Christians should — even though most of us are not Christian.
HANNITY: You sound paranoid.
SCHULTZ: They definitely exploited a lot of our values and turned it against us and sent people that we tried to help –
…HANNITY: You don’t work. You get free money for school and you are complaining and whining –
SCHULTZ: Companies like Google, the most successful companies, they give away their products for and services for free, right? So people like us, we spend all of our time working on these social networks, providing content on social networks that they sell for ad space, we wo
br /> HANNITY: I have a suggestion for you –
SCHULTZ: Goods and services, capitalism is becoming increasingly free. My suggestion to you is you should listen because I am telling you some pretty futuristic crazy stuff right now….
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/05/anarchy_isnt_as_easy_as_it_looks.html#ixzz1wI14XBjI
Hennacy refused to register for the draft in WW I (for which he was jailed for two years in Georgia, a year in solitary confinement) and WWII, refused to ever pay taxes because they would support the military, and refused even to accept work other than casual labor for cash. Hennacy was an indefatigable radical who was arrested countless times for protesting war and violence of every kind. He died on 14 January 1970, six days after suffering a heart attack while protesting the scheduled execution of two men convicted of murder.
Hennacy’s legacy challenges anyone who would claim to be a Christian. He was driven by faith that Jesus’s message would not fail the world, whatever the fears and failings of the organized church and its caretakers. For Hennacy, change wasn’t pie in the sky that you might sing about on Sunday — and dismiss as an impossibility the minute you hit the parking lot. Hennacy did not expect political or institutional mechanisms to bring about change. Change begins when and individual turns her or his heart to God. And acts accordingly.Read More:http://faithjustice.wordpress.com/2007/07/24/ammon-hennacy-the-one-man-revolution-in-america/