- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Rowan claimed:
Now as to the goody goody libertarians, I agree completely with Mike Sulzer, who said while I was either asleep or hiding my shame and not visiting the thread, "If libertarianism says that everything would be great if everyone would leave everyone else alone except for voluntary interactions, then the realist would say: but everyone won't. And because of that, and in reaction to that, we have governments," except that I would go further, and say that anyone who claims to believe that in the absence of "government" (and at this point one begins to wonder how they define "government") people would spontaneously revert to being nice to each other, is not just being naive, they are being disingenuous, by which I mean, they are sinister, cynical liars.
Even Noam Chomsky? Major statement there fellow; major accusation.
Now for a few favorites quotes be the people Rowan says are cynical liars:
"Anarchism is a tendency in the history of human thought & action which seeks to identify coercive, authoritarian, & hierarchic structures of all kinds & to challenge their legitimacy — & if they cannot justify their legitimacy, which is quite commonly the case, to work to undermine them & expand the scope of freedom." — Noam Chomsky
"So I said good-bye to government, & I gave my reason; That a really good religion, is a form of treason." — Kurt Vonnegut, anarchist, Cat's Cradle
"Many people say that government is necessary because some men cannot be trusted to look after themselves, but anarchists say that government is harmful because no men can be trusted to look after anyone else." -- Nicolas Walter (1924-2000) British journalist, philosopher, atheist, anarchist.
"If I had understood the situation a bit better I should probably have joined the anarchists." (Extract letter, October 1937 written by George Orwell to his friend Jack Common).
"Anarchism has but one infallible, unchangeable motto, 'Freedom.' Freedom to discover any truth, freedom to develop, to live naturally and fully." -Lucy Parsons (for the ladies, of cource)
"There is no horror, no cruelty, sacrilege, or perjury, no imposture, no infamous transaction, no cynical robbery, no bold plunder or shabby betrayal that has not been or is not daily being perpetrated by the representatives of the states, under no other pretext than those elastic words, so convenient & yet so terrible, for reasons of state." — Michael Bakunin
Liars all, Rowan?
