Political Systems and Nation States

[patlajan]

Without the nation, you wouldn't have a computer to type on

[Anonymouse]

Without the nation, you wouldn't have a computer to type on

Oh you got me! How did that elude me? I guess I'll sit down and have a smoke.

[surferarmo]

There is contradictions in the system. What you need to do is look at the nation state and the utilization of fear from the side of the nations harboring terrorists. The terrorists themselves fight for one thing, but they use the "evil Americans" as a tool of fear to keep control of the masses and rally people behind their cause. As far as I am concerned, our cause is better.

What must an individual gain through acts of violence? If I got in a fight today, whether I win or lose, I would feel stupid the next day. As for nation there is something different at stake. Economy and infrastructure. These are very important to the sustainment of the way of life we have been living. I openly admit that i like and enjoy living the way that I do.

What would you consider America? It is a nation definetly. But people in this country are from different backrounds, cultures, and ancestory. I therefore rally behind what this country strives for, rather than my culture. This nation, is special and very unique from others. People rally behind nations. Nations are usually organized by culture or ancestory. The USA can not do that. We rally behind a cause, and if freedom (political freedom) is our cause, and we need to fight another nation threatening that, then I will support my nation. How can you say that terrorists are not threatening our cause? Our pursuance of freedom? I cant even walk in an airport anymore without getting checked and sniffed by dogs.

[patlajan]

Oh you got me! How did that elude me? I guess I'll sit down and have a smoke.

Have a smoke? That is only gonna be happening if you run around the woods collecting tobacco leaves and rolling them tightly and then striking rocks together until you get a spark, because you are such an individual and don’t need anyone but your free will and creativity.
After blowing a whole day’s work on making a cigarette you can smoke relaxingly staring at the sunset and enjoying true freedom. That is if the lice in your crotch, the fungus in your feet, and your shortened life expectancy don’t bother you too much, as you laugh at the fools who waste their life being in the “herd”.

[surferarmo]

The fact is that humans came together under the ospices of the polity to make life easier for themselves. So that we may easily strive towards the common good, and live more securely. As paltjan put it in sarcastic terms. Alone you will die.

[Anonymouse]

This isn't about being alone. Patlajan has misunderstood what I have said and has yet to address the contradictions of the state and the criticisms I've offered. The misunderstanding about the individual vs the state and of lack of centralization, in essence, what anarchism is mainly about, hasn't gone ignored. I have yet to see him address anything new aside from the same old "anarchy is chaos" argument which holds no merit. Trivial examples such as cigarettes have nothing to do with what is the topic at hand. Cigarette production and in fact organization isn't absent from anarchism, but it is free of the industrial centralization that exists in the form of corporate globalization. The belief that stripping away the present system would take us back to stone age shows exactly the average persons misunderstanding with anarchism. In essence, such people have been conditioned to think that without a big daddy in the form of a government, no organization can exist.

As far as causes go, why is "our cause" better than theirs? These are people who are fighting for their ability for self determination and not have the U.S. meddle in their affairs. The U.S. history in the middle East is a brutal one and a closer look into it will tell you why they hate America. The continued U.S. support of the terrorist state of Israel with American taxpayer money is another major reason. The U.S. created these terrorists so now they keep the masses in fear to rally behind their cause, no differently than the U.S. does. The terrorists don't hate us because of cultural envy, yet many are conditioned to think so. So some dozen and a half "terrorists" carefully plotted and carried out the destruction of the WTC knowing full well that they were going to be killed in the process for no other reason than resentment of the fact that we have MTV and Calvin Klein jeans and women who can go out into public without being covered by a tent. I'm sorry but that's horse pucky.

Then you gon on attempting to seperate a nation and an individual by trying to justify violence. If individuals cause violence it is bad, but nations are justifed. But nations are the collective force of individuals. So what you're saying is violence when done by nation states is okay, but otherwise individuals aren't allowed to since the nation is greater than the individual, nevermind that all contributions to mankind and creativity flow from individuals, not nations.

To the extent you identify yourself with the state, you are distressed confronting the destructive nature of how all governments including the one under which you live behave. You project any negative qualities onto others, against whom you then take a morally righteous stance and insist upon punishing them for our inadequacies of character. If the United States has created chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, we will go to war with Iraq for allegedly trying to acquire such weapons for themselves. America will condemn North Korea for having nuclear missiles, even though the US is the only country in history that has actually used such weapons against civilian populations.

Your allusion that terrorists are ruining your "freedom" is a misnomer, since freedom in the absolute sense is just a word/idea. However, why are terrorists getting in the way of your liberty ( a more precise term )? That is because of the actions of America has a nation. Every since the Enlightenment, nations have been growing and getting bigger, and society is moving closer and closer to centralization and globalization, and power is amassing in the hands of fewer and fewer people, and the death toll is rising even more. There must be a reason why terrorists hate this country. As I've said, a country requires an allegience and an allegiance requires a cause, and so in order for this nation to exist they must create causes ( Red menace, Cold War, Terrorism ), in order to justify their existence and make you believe that your "freedom is threatened". What is our cause anyway? This neverending "cause" that all nation states supposedly speak of has been in action since the Enlightenment and all it has done is stifle individualism and creativity, centralized power and wealth in the hands of fewer people, and causes more bloodshed than anything else.

The apparatus of the state has neither the capability nor the inclination to protect any of your interests. To the contrary, you are expected to provide the means including your very lives in order to protect the state, hence why the people fight the wars for the state, not the other way around, so how is the state protecting your interests? This is why wars have always increased the powers of political systems as they diminish individual liberties. The state is as dependent upon wars as orthodontists are on overbites, or lawyers are on disputes.

Every war is conducted by the state against its own citizenry. If you doubt this, ask yourself these questions, whose liberties have been more greatly curtailed since Sept. 11th, bin Laden’s or yours ( The Patriot Act )? Whose belongings are being searched at airports and other public buildings, whose telephone, computer, credit card, medical, bank, and employment records are being monitored, Al Qaida operatives or yours? Whose taxes will be increased and whose children will be called upon to die in this eternal war, leaders of the Islamic Jihad or yours?

Come on folks, put things into perspective. If you have not already figured out the essential nature of the state, it s time for you to reasses things. Every political system is a racket, run by and for the benefit of the most disreputable people in any society, and employing those methods that, to any decent folk represent the lowest qualities in human behavior. Lying, threatening, coercing, killing, corrupting, deceiving, are such common characteristics in political life that we scarcely comment upon it anymore. Yet if your child grew up exhibiting such traits, you would rightfully regard yourself as a parental failure.

[patlajan]

You never defined or explained “anarchy”. You just keep saying that I do not understand it. Well what is it?

[Anonymouse]

I have defined what it is and what anarchism is about. Please read the posts before responding. You have managed to avoid discussing any and all criticisms of the state and continue to ask what anarchism means. I can give you a basic idea of what it is, and I have. You are asking me, for the sake of argument, to go in depth to define something that is clearly obvious.

I don't have the energy to put into a nice little cute post dedicated to anarchism in all of its historical complexity. I've already stated that the ideas I am typing about are the antithesis of centralization and the State as we know it. What's so hard to grasp about that? I've laid out many indictments against the state and political systems which I am to guess you didn't bother to read.

We've been conditioned to think that organization cannot exist without a Big Brother government telling us what to do. Self responsibility is not something we take too well onto ourselves. For centuries society existed on a barter system, before the rising of the still infant industrial capitalism. Like I pointed out, an individual is punished for a crime which the state is allowed to do without question. Why? That's just one of the things you've managed to be silent about.

Nevertheless, the supporters of statism will state that anarchism is utopian, primitive, etc. One might however argue differently. At every stage of history our concern is to dismantle those forms of authority that seek to oppress and survive from an era when they might have been justified in terms of the need of "security" or "economic development", but that now contribute to material and cultural deficit. Surely our understanding of the nature of man or of the range of viable social forms is so rudimentary that any far reaching doctrine must bet treated wth great skepticism, just as skepticism is in order when we hear that "human nature" or "the demands of efficiency" or "the complexity of modern life" require this or that form of oppression and autocratic rule.

As I've stated before, the America Civil War was a prime example of a battle for Federalism vs Anti-Federalism, the government rights vs the states' rights. That's when America became a "nation", with the defeat of the confederacy by the Federal government. Prior to that it was a Republic. It was merely following the trend of Germany, as were other countries such as Japan and Mexico, trying to establish "nations".

With the development of industrial capitalism a new and unanticipated form of social injustice began to rise, and it was libertarian socialism that has preserved the true message of the enlightenment and the classical liberal ideals that were perverted into an ideology to sustain the growing social order.

I'd recommend you read William Paul's "The State, it's Origins and Function" written right around 1917 a little before Lenin. So in essence the ideas of libertarian socialism have beed submerged in the past half century. The dominant ideologies have been state socialism or state capitalism. But there has been a resugrance of the ideas of libertarianism or anarchism. What anarchism is about is the natural order of man, as stated before, NOT the artificial order imposed by the state. Realize that. Why could society not as well be decentralized? "Progress" you say? You are thinking exactly as the imperialists that grew out of the enlightenment thought. How much blood should you spill for this "progress" and what "progress" has the state every come out with, that wasn't somehow the work of an individual? It's funny how we cheer at the Olympics for the different athletes of the different states, but WHAT IN THE HELL does athletic ability have to do with what political system they represent? So many contradictions and questions, so little time to examine them, for doing so only highlights the problem in color, as opposed to black and white, and many people fear this for they are so conditioned and dependent upon the system and this way of thinking, that anything counter to what is prescribed is anathema.

I will add more later since time constraints are preventing me at the moment.

[Anonymouse]

You never defined or explained “anarchy”. You just keep saying that I do not understand it. Well what is it?

Anarchy is not anarchism, thus where your misonception comes from.

[gorsenvadz]

lol my dear moog u deserve the award 4 writing the longest posts