Quoth Andre: > Anarchy is simply the absence of government.
Not exactly. Anarchy (in the political sense, versus the "chaos, rape and murder" hype) is the absence of _the state_, which is a very SPECIFIC form of "government." We'll always have "government," because "government" is simply any system under which a discrete group administers the mutual affairs of the group's members. A state is an organization claiming, and attempting to enforce, a monopoly for itself on determining and administering the process of government within, and on matters relating to, a given geographic area and the people residing within that area. As geography continues to become less important, it may attempt to claim such monopolies over populations bound by other criteria than geography, but that's been the main basis for the last 400 years or so. Al Qaeda is a throwback insofar as its goal is to coerce the political allegiance of Muslims (under "sharia" law) just as the medieval Holy Roman Catholic Church coerced the political allegiance of Christians. As feudalism developed, a geographically-based state polity displaced "christendom." The industrial revolution and its attendant upheavals tended to free people from feudal bonds of serfdom to lords self-selected on the basis of ancestry, but geography remained the obvious basis for polity for some time thereafter -- the automobile and the airplane didn't make travel fast enough, nor did the telegraph and telephone carry information fast enough, to supersede geography. Now we have the Internet, which makes exchange of information on a large scale nearly instantaneous, and it is now possible for self-selected groups of individuals who may not be geographically co-located to seriously consider various forms of self-government which invite/request support for their goals rather than demanding allegiance to self-proclaimed monopolies. Not without kinks and exceptions, of coruse, but it's coming. Tom Knapp ForumWebSiteAt http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
