Common governance awards all members of a given community equal rights — power is equally distributed. There is no coercive body delegating policy. Common governance is rooted in liberty, not enclosed by a monopoly of force and violence.

For the libertarian this approach to governance is ideal. We do not view freedom in the abstract — we hold it is critical to unleash the creative, innovative potential of human society. Consistent libertarians seek a stateless society. Beltway political circles dismiss the proposal as utopian and incompatible with modern civilization. These objections are easily refuted, however. We are inclined to decentralize. The emergence of democracy, for example, exhibits this societal trait.

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If there is one fact our collective history clearly reveals it is that large, centralized nation-states are the worlds most terrifying institutions. The 20th century alone is testament to this. The rise of fascism brought a premature end to nearly 100 million lives. The rise of the Bolsheviks tells a tale of an increasingly oppressive regime addicted to power. State capitalism and the rise of neo-liberal economics in the west are equally disastrous, responsible for a century of perpetual warfare.

Public intellectual Randolph Bourne once wrote, “war is the health of the state.” In the last century the machines of war reached frightening heights of power. The production of nuclear weapons can end all life as we know it. States may cause the greatest extinction in all of Earth’s history. This — the end of our species and countless others — is a real and looming threat.

The state is a system of power and domination. Such a monopoly serves to institutionalize the creeds of racism, sexism, class division, protectionism, biocentrism and more. This is true even in the most “democratic” of nations, including the United States. Such archism deserves abolition. The state is damned.

Yet, here in the fog, there too exists our beautiful struggle.

There is a great tradition in human history: Liberation. We long to be free. Human action continues to prove that with agency we can do great things for one another. We continue to labor, create, preserve and exercise goodwill.

Our inclined labor will produce a world where the children of humanity will live unbound by chains, where no fire or whip will meet their flesh. There will be no need to pledge allegiance to a nation, but all the reason to imagine a world of real and lasting peace. Not a world of dreamers, but a world of contracts, liberated economics and the splendor of the human condition. The peace of common interest, wildness and mutualism.

We must remember this. We must always remember those who risked and sometimes lost their lives and freedom for such an order. We must remember to love those who raised liberty’s hammer. Those who broke down the walls that caged us. We must remember so light will ever conquer darkness — so liberty will no longer be a simple flame, but a piercing, radiant torch.

We will be free. We will face the world without fear. We will stand together and howl into the face of those who wish to reign over us. We will ever challenge their rule. We will continue our embrace of liberty. Global movements have ignited. Join hands, unite the riot — coordinate and cultivate the free society. As we enter the new year, breath deep, let the winter air fill your lungs. Know that you are an animal, that you are alive and demand your freedom. Damn those who wish to deny you. Stare into the dark night and howl. Howl!

Sadly, this holiday season the United Nations released a study indicating that 2014 is among the worst years on record for the world’s children. Chronicled in the report is another disturbing history of war and state violence.

An estimated 230 million children currently live in political territories subjected to violent conflict. The executive director of UNICEF, Anthony Lake, as reported by the New York Times, states: “Children have been killed while studying in the classroom and while sleeping in their beds … They have been orphaned, kidnapped, tortured, recruited, raped and even sold as slaves.”

As we reflect on this year of violence, imagine alternatives and act for social change perhaps we may revisit an age-old political ideology as liberating, co-operative and peaceful as it is misunderstood. The rich political tradition to which I refer is anarchism.

In popular circles the word anarchism has come to mean complete disorder or chaos — a state of perpetual violence. This is unfortunate as liberty rejects violent coercion. Anarchic practitioners advocate highly ordered societies rooted in the principles of free association, mutual aid and cooperative labor.

This libertarian idea is deeply ingrained in the human spirit. Labor organizer Rudolph Rocker describes anarchism as “a definite trend in the historic development of mankind” which, “strives for the free unhindered unfolding of all the individual and social forces in life.”

This is my favorite description of anarchism. Liberty is not a doctrine, but rather a praxis innate to human thought and action — the underlying principle being that one should always challenge authority and dismantle unjustifiable concentrations of power. The result is a more libertarian relationship between people and their institutions. Anarchism is thus a human phenomenon.

When feminist movements organize for women’s agency over their own bodies and life without fear of violence, we see anarchism.

We see anarchism in Mexico as the population seeks liberation from violent drug cartels, complacent government and oppressive state policies.

We see anarchism in prisons as inmates band together in these dehumanizing institutions to demand living conditions free of violence and sexual battery.

We see anarchism in war-torn regions of the world where individuals risk their lives to save innocent victims of the drone strikes and barrel bombs of oppressive regimes.

We see anarchism in towns and neighborhoods challenging the monopoly of violence held by the police.

We see anarchism in movements that seek the protection of wilderness areas and native lands from the clutches of extractive industries and the iron fist of capital.

We find anarchism in the new technology and falling communications costs that allow all of us to craft markets and labor together free of regulatory restriction.

We see anarchism in our everyday social interactions — telling our family and friends we love them and being kind to strangers.

These are but a few examples. Anarchism is everywhere.

Human action counters systems of power and domination. We have witnessed movements rise against all the bad that has happened this year at the whims of the powerful. This is our age-old tale: History is a race between state power and social power.

So, in the spirit of the season, let us decide to embrace liberty. Let us no longer follow the whims of those who wish to command and control society. Instead, let us labor to coordinate and cultivate the free societies and communities we wish to live.

It is in anarchic order that we see everything humanity can be. Peace on Earth and goodwill toward all are not mutually exclusive — peace IS goodwill. It is our inclined labor that reminds us we can and will build a peace that makes life on Earth worth living — a peace for every child of humanity. When that’s accomplished we will know freedom; such grandeur is only attainable in liberty.

The research finds that people evaluate issues based on the desirability of policy implications. If said implications are undesirable people tend to deny a problem even exists. The study uses the subject of climate change as a specific example. Most discourse regarding climate simply asks after the role of the nation, or state, in addressing global change — to carbon tax, or not to carbon tax is the question. The Washington Post‘s Chris Mooney connects the dots and notes: “Conservatives don’t hate climate science. They hate the left’s climate solutions.”

This is interesting fodder for the libertarian. Beyond the subject of climate change, this study holds large implications for the entire state apparatus.

The scholarly definition of the state is: “A human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” State officials, ideology intact, make sweeping policy decisions for entire nations. After each election, parties gain or lose majority influence, but the problem of centralized governance always remains. It is impossible for a few elected officials to form desirable policy representing the whole public, even if they want to. Successful governance and state are ever at odds.

This cannot be more evident today. The United States Congress enjoys a miserable 14% approval rating and after recent mid-term elections the same miserable party affiliates are crafting policy to govern each and every one of us. It is time for polycentric, common governance.

Common governance awards all members of a given community equal rights — power is equally distributed. There is no coercive body delegating policy. Common governance is rooted in liberty, not enclosed by a monopoly of force and violence.

For the libertarian this approach to governance is ideal. We do not view freedom in the abstract — we hold it is critical to unleash the creative, innovative potential of human society. Consistent libertarians seek a stateless society. Beltway political circles dismiss the proposal as utopian and incompatible with modern civilization. These objections are easily refuted, however. We are inclined to decentralize. The emergence of democracy, for example, exhibits this societal trait.

Today it is of increasing importance to dismantle illegitimate forms of authority and spread power to as many individuals as possible. Systems of power and domination contribute to apathy and quiescence. This hinders the populace and denies us the ability to craft our own unique existence. We are too busy denying problems exist to fully engage and participate in democratic decision-making.

The beauty of common governance is its decentralized nature. The commons are built and sustained by individuals — empowering the commons, by default, empowers all individuals. A society operating under the principles of liberty necessarily rejects the concentration of authority and coercive claims to power. Such an order thus champions individual labor, place connections and civic participation in the political economy. Individual achievement exists not despite of, but due to liberty.

Decentralization is a requirement of successful governance. Concentrated power is unnatural. It holds a monopoly over decision-making. Concentrated power lacks competition, innovation and progress — it is static. Common governance, on the other hand, is dynamic. The commons allow all stakeholders to craft and emulate policy, creating desirable options for all participants. Thus, the commons can overcome barriers to meaningful social change as discussed in the Duke study.

Let us end the state monopoly on governance and reclaim the public.

There can be no prescription old enough to supercede the Law of Nature and the grant of God Almighty, who has given to all men a natural right to be free, and they have it ordinarily in their power to make themselves so, if they please.–James Otis, Jr.

James Otis, Jr. (2/5/1725-5/23/1783) of West Barnstable, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, began his tutelage under Reverend Jonathan Russell and, by fifteen, Otis entered Harvard College and graduated in 1743. He studied law for two years under Judge Jeremiah Gridley, a member of the General Court of Massachusetts. The young conservative (as Otis was earlier in life) then served the Boston vice-admiralty court as advocate general from 1756 to 1760.

In 1760, with the end of the French and Indian War and the accession of George III, his administration compelled customs officials in Massachusetts to apply for new “writs of assistance” in the king’s name. These writs were in effect, search warrants that gave customs inspectors the legal authority to inspect ships, warehouses, homes or wherever else they felt compelled to inspect. Smuggling was common in the colonies due, in part, to high tariffs on sugar and molasses. This encouraged American merchants to deal with French, Dutch and West Indies traders.

Royal officials in London tightened enforcement against smuggling by offering Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard with a third of the fines collected from such activities. To aid the call for tighter enforcement, Governor Bernard appointed Thomas Hutchinson Chief Justice of Massachusetts. In doing so, Bernard passed over Otis’s father, Colonel James Otis, Sr. This action infuriated the Otis family and led to Otis’s resignation as the king’s advocate general with the vice-admiralty. After resigning, Otis offered assistance to the merchants in their attempt to stop execution of the new writs.

On February 24, 1761, a case came before the Superior Court of Massachusetts by Charles Paxton, the Surveyor of Customs for the Port of Boston, for writs of assistance. Jeremiah Gridley appeared for the customs office. Otis and an associate represented sixty-three Boston merchants, in opposition. Gridley argued the Court of Exchequer had the statutory authority to issue them, that the province law of 1699 had granted the Superior Court jurisdiction in Massachusetts over matters which the courts of King’s Bench, Common Pleas, or Exchequer have, and further that such warrants were necessary in the collection of taxes and in protecting the state from foreign and domestic subversives.

When Otis spoke, one critic described him as “a plump, round faced, smooth skinned, short necked, eagle eyed politician,” but John Adams attended the trial and wrote down the account in his diary and again some fifty years later, “Otis was a flame of fire!”

Otis relied on English law to prove that only special warrants were legal and attacked the writs as “instruments of slavery.” Defending the right to privacy, he proclaimed that the power to issue general search warrants placed “the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.” In perhaps his most moving passage, Otis declared,

A man’s home is his castle, and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. This writ, if it is declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege. Custom house office may enter our houses when they please and we are commanded to permit their entry. Their menial servants may enter, may break locks, bars, and everything in their way; and whether they break through malice or revenge, no man, no court, can inquire. Bare suspicion without oath is sufficient. This wanton exercise of this power is not a chimerical suggestion of a heated brain. What a scene does this open! Every man, prompted by revenge, ill humor, or wantonness to inspect the inside of his neighbor’s house, may get a writ of assistance. Other’s will ask it from self-defense; one arbitrary action will promote another, until society be involved in tumult and blood.

Otis’s oration took some four or five hours and was not taken down stenographically, but it left an indelible impression on the young Adams. With a “profusion of legal authorities,” Adams tells us, “a prophetic glance of his eye into futurity, and a torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried away everything before him.” Adams continued, “every man of a crowded audience appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance.” Adams concluded his summation of the event by pronouncing, “Then and there, the child Independence was born.” Otis challenged not just the royal governor of Massachusetts, not just Parliament, and not just the King, but also the entire British government, with a solid appeal to the Rule of Law. Thus began the American Revolution.

Following the Otis oration, the members of the bench had been swayed, with the exception of Chief Justice Hutchinson, who delayed the vote in an attempt to buy precious time. Hutchinson succeeded in having the writs upheld when, in November of that same year, the case was heard a second time. George III was the new monarch, and the Court of Exchequer routinely issued writs of assistance in England. The Massachusetts judges felt they could no longer refuse to issue them in the colonies as well. Hutchinson had won a temporary victory. In 1765, Hutchinson’s Boston home was destroyed by an angry mob.

Otis’s battle against the writs of assistance won him great public favor for a time. In May of 1761, he won election to the Massachusetts General Court. The news of the election reached a Worchester dinner party. Attending the party were John Adams and Brigadier Timothy Ruggles, who was chief justice of the Common Pleas Court and later a Tory exile. Ruggles declared to Adams, “Out of this election will arise a damned faction, which will shake the province to its knees.”

Ruggles’s prophetic prediction proved even more accurate than he expected for it was 1761 that triggered the Revolution, and the Otis family, father and son, set the wheels in motion. That same year, James Otis Sr. was reelected as Speaker of the House, and together, they succeeded in pushing through an act which forbid any writ which did not specify under oath, the person and place to be searched. However, under the advice of the Supreme Court, Governor Bernard refused to approve the legislation. Nonetheless, the public sentiment had shifted, and talk of an independent nation had begun.

In 1764, Prime Minister George Grenville and the British Parliament had imposed upon the colonies the Sugar Act. The new law placed tariffs on sugar, wine, coffee and other products, and spelled trouble for many American businesses. At the time the Sugar Act was passed by Parliament, Grenville had also submitted a resolution for a Stamp Tax.

Otis was vehemently opposed to the proposition of these new taxes and wrote a pamphlet entitled The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Approved. In this pamphlet, Otis denied any fundamental difference between internal and external taxes. The Parliament dismissed the pamphlet as propaganda while the emotions of the American colonials were sparked.

Otis became an instant celebrity and a month later was elected to a seat in the General Court (legislature). As time passed and the list of American grievances against the Crown grew, Otis played an ever more prominent role in advancing the colonists’ interests. In 1764, he headed the Massachusetts committee of correspondence. The following year he was a leading figure at the Stamp Act Congress in New York City. In 1765, the Stamp Act was passed and Otis stood as one of the Acts most vocal critics. Under the pseudonym “John Hampden,” Otis published in the Boston press a sweeping denial of Parliaments right to tax the colonies without representation.

Otis’s open advocacy of American rights grated on many officials’ nerves; his election to the speakership of the General Court in 1766 was voided by the governor’s veto. Undeterred, Otis teamed with Samuel Adams to confront the next crisis: enforcement of the Townshend Duties in 1767. The firebrand duo drafted a circular letter to enlist the other colonies in planned resistance to the new taxes.

Otis’s pamphlet to the Parliament drew resolute approval from the Whigs in England.

Otis began a gradual loss of his mental faculties. His continued verbal assaults grew worse. In 1769, Otis was in a coffeehouse brawl with a customs official and received substantial injuries to the head. This quickened the pace of his failing mental capacities and two years later, his old adversary, Thomas Hutchinson, appointed a sanity commission which found Otis to be a lunatic.

Throughout the remainder of his life, Otis had intermittent spells of clarity, but he played very little role in the Revolution. He was placed in the care of various friends and family members. While under the care of his sister, Mercy Otis Warren, at Watertown, Mass., he heard rumor of battle. On June 17, he slipped away unobserved, borrowed a musket from a roadside farmhouse and joined the minute men who were marching to the aid of the troops at Bunker Hill. He took an active part in the battle and afterwards made his way home again. In 1783, James Otis, Jr. was struck dead by a bolt of lightning while standing in the doorway of his sisters’ home. A tragic end to an outspoken leader who sent the colonists in the direction of a revolution.

This little bit of history should be remembered by the current administration in their endeavor to allow warrants without recourse to local judges’ permission. This is how the American Revolution was touched off. If the Bush administration is not careful, there is little doubt in my mind that there will be unintended consequences in America’s future!

Memorial Day is often used by pro-war forces to promote more military action, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It can be a simple remembrance of the victims of war. These said victims can be both fallen soldiers and civilians. It need not be a jingoistic holiday used to justify further militarism.

A related issue is whether one should support the troops or not and what group of troops. Charles Johnson has written the following on this issue in the context of the Iraq War:

1. The things done in the prosecution of the Iraq War are evil.
2. There are some (many) American soldiers who willingly do the things done in the prosecution of the Iraq War.
3. If soldiers willingly do things that are evil, they bear (at least some) moral responsibility for them.
4. You shouldn’t support people who bear (at least some) moral responsibility for doing things that are evil.
5. Therefore, there are some (many) American soldiers you shouldn’t support.

What about supporting the troops in other contexts, where they display different behaviors? That could be permissible, but a libertarian shouldn’t support troops when they are engaged in mass murder.

Is contempt proper in this scenario? Roderick Long writes:

If a basically decent person has been unfairly manipulated into carrying out an unjust policy, despising that person is hardly an appropriate response. But neither is support.

Short of surmising that the vast majority of human beings are psychopaths committed to aggressive violence, we can probably safely hypothesize that the vast majority of troops are basically decent people interested in only defensive force.

It may also be possible to not support all the troops but only particular ones like Chelsea Manning. Kevin Carson writes:

Let’s get something straight. Manning may be a criminal by the standards of the American state. But by all human standards of morality, the government and its functionaries that Manning exposed to the light of day are criminals. And Manning is a hero of freedom for doing it.

Another question pertains to whether we should honor or respect soldiers for defending our society or freedoms. The statement that they have done so or are doing so is merely an assumption until sufficient proof is provided. A lot of U.S. wars have been unjust wars of aggression or imperialism, so I have a hard time swallowing the idea that we owe the troops for protecting our freedoms or genuinely defending us. It can also be dangerous to honor or respect someone, because they perceive themselves as protecting the society you happen to live in. This was no doubt the view of Confederate and German soldiers during World War 2.

The final thing to consider is whether warrior-ship is a virtue or not. The perspective presented here is a bit unsure. On the one hand violence or coercion is awful, but it’s difficult to say that defensive violence is a necessary evil without unjustly indicting the moral character of those involved in using it. One can clearly say that aggressive violence or coercion is an unmitigated evil. Let’s work to put an end to this.

Few aspects of the modern state are more irritating than the control of borders. Our movements are circumscribed by the nationalistic regimentation of migration and travel. This makes it more difficult to vote with your feet. One polity may be particularly oppressive, but the entrance requirements of another can be rather repressive too. This renders it more difficult to escape unjust conditions and reside in a more just area.

I am only here on a visit, but I could very well be migrating to another country sometime in the future. It will be a nightmare to go through this again with different immigration authorities. One of my fears relates to how they will treat my computer and other valuable items. I could be stopped for my political activites too. It would be the restriction of my liberty based upon a political disagreement.

Nation-states have other major disadvantages, but the restriction of movement is definitely one of the worst. A basic human right includes the liberty to move about without arbitrary restrictions on said movement. What could be more arbitrary than imaginary lines drawn in the sand by military and police power? Not much! All such borders are political fictions that benefit ruling classes.

Border restrictions especially hurt lower class people who need to get to a better locality. Such individuals are out to create a better life for themselves and deserve our moral support. They are the ones with the least amount of resources to fight immigration laws. The laws are thus biased against lower income people. They are the most restricted and affected by them.

Strong border controls allow rulers to pick and choose who enters a given territory. It priliveges some people at the expense of others. The individuals who have political connections are at an advantage relative to those who don’t. A base of support can thus be created and cultivated amongst the immigrant populace. Let’s work to open the borders and end nation-states.

The reason that many people don’t understand perfect freedom is due to the conflation of personal and sovereign freedom. Instead of recognizing that so called sovereign freedom involves the ability to exercise power over others, they use the two interchangeably. Some might say that one’s man freedom is another man’s oppression. This confuses the subjective with the objective. What may be experienced by an individual as oppressive may not really be so. A racist might see the court mandated end of Jim Crow as restricting his or her freedom to avoid African-Americans in public places. This is hardly an instance of oppression. Perfect freedom depends upon seeing how this is not truly repressive.

As long as we delineate the boundaries protecting each individual’s autonomy, we will be in a position to understand the difference between personal and sovereign freedom. The encroachment upon the legitimate space of another is not about liberty. It isn’t in keeping with the law of equal freedom. You act as if you possess more liberty than the other person by not respecting his equal rights. What you really claim is license to violate the rights of another. This creates an inequality of power and status.

Another good example of this is a person claiming that liberty requires he or she be allowed to control the actions of employees. In this instance; the person is claiming sovereign dominion over people based on business ties. Left-libertarian, Kevin Carson, has described this as contract feudalism. A concept about the preservation of feudal relations between lord and serf in the modern workplace. You may contract into it, but you have little choice about working for somebody else. Independent employment is harder to make successful.

A final instance of so called sovereign freedom pretending to be about liberty involves claims by nation-states pertaining to independence from external forces. This is really about the uncontested control of territory and prerogative to order others in that physical space around. Let’s work to put an end to sovereignty and increase personal freedom.

Toine Manders works at the Haags Juristen College (Hague Lawyers Board) and specializes in tax avoidance. Manders refers to tax avoidance as a moral duty. Tax revenue is used by the state to pay for war, prisons, the militarization of the police force and the regulatory agencies which constantly privilege big business. This moral duty is connected the Haags Juristen College’s former business practice which was to help individuals avoid the military draft. Avoiding the draft and avoiding taxes are both ways by which personal contribution to state oppression and war is reduced. Calling this a moral duty is not a far-fetched idea.

Tax reduction is a promise often made by conservative and neo-liberal politicians. Acknowledging taxation as theft might very well place this editorial on that side of the political spectrum. However, opposing taxation altogether is not a right-wing sentiment. Through taxation big business uses the power of government to socialize the costs of running the state’s operations. Additionally the state grants economic privilege to those very same corporations. When neo-liberal politicians argue for tax reduction they are merely saying that the current tax percentage is too high in relation to the economic privilege their corporate campaign contributors receive. Grant them more privilege and you won’t hear them complain.

Those on the left claim that taxation is necessary to achieve economic justice and that taxation counterbalances the enormous wealth that is held by the rich and powerful. However it is the state that grants economic privilege to corporations and it is the state that insulates them from competition. At best taxation is a secondary intervention meant to rectify the economic privilege of corporations. The road to economic justice is not to increase the taxing power of the state but to strike at the root of the problem. Economic privilege should be abolished and taxation will falter and fall soon after.

Opposing taxation is not an excuse for big business. By opposing taxation we root for the entrepreneurs, small business owners, worker cooperatives and the self-employed. However “Taxation is theft” must be followed by, “and economic privilege is bribery” otherwise it is rendered meaningless to those who truly seek liberty.

Economic privilege should be dismantled. In the meantime tax avoidance and even tax evasion are tools by which we can lessen our personal contribution to the state’s murder machine. Taxation is theft and if you don’t pay up you go directly to  jail – do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Free Toine Manders!