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Then I lived in an anarchist sub-society, the hippie commune. What I saw there was initial enthusiasm as young people, for the first time in their lives, seized control of their own destinies. It was euphoric to take part in community discussion hammering out consensus decisions concerning our collective business. Each of us felt that we were experiencing, for the first time, REAL democracy in action. In that context it was easy to take responsibility for failure or pride in success, since there was absolutely no doubt that you, personally, had taken as large a part in the decision process as anyone else.

Then life got complicated. Situations arose where consensus seemed impossible to achieve, no matter how much time and effort was devoted to the problem. Worse, the importance of the decision had little or no bearing on how difficult it was to solve. In fact, the very first community destroying conflict arose over what to do about the huge collection of dogs we had acquired as new members joined our fold. At first, almost no one was willing to part with his/her animal. But, a lot of dogs together becomes a pack. Their nature is to cooperate and what they cooperate best at is hunting. So our dogs hunted our neighbors' farm animals. The "runners," like Greyhounds and Salukis, chased them down after which the stronger beasts would tear them to pieces for the dining enjoyment of all.

Something clearly had to be done, but after six weeks (!) of rancorous debate, the commune ended up fragmenting over the issue, nearly one third of the members departing rather than giving up their own personal dogs. The remaining two thirds culled the herd down to a single Golden Retriever named Mellow, whose main claim to fame is that he knew each and every commune member and could reliably signal the intrusion of strangers.

The point of all this is that anarchism takes time...lots and lots of time...to work effectively. After a while, everybody begins to pick and choose those...very few...issues that seem worth debating, and allows all other problems to be "solved" by whoever has the time and energy to solve them. Needless to say, at least in a small group, this quickly leads to rule by the strongest, most aggressive or simply most opportunistic members of the group. In short, it becomes a "mob," led by a "strong" leader, who might as well be called the "godfather," because that's who he is.

Recently, Charles Murray appeared on the TV show Politically Incorrect. He was promoting his new book which pretends to tell one how to be a libertarian, but is nothing but warmed over anarchism. Of course, one wouldn't expect much from an author (The Bell Curve) who is, in the mid 90's, trying to "prove" that the black "race" is intellectually inferior to whites and Asians. Under his high IQ and intellectual pretensions, this guy is really as dumb as a rock. Still, because of his notoriety he is attended to. Now, since he has chosen to promote himself as a libertarian theorist, he has unfortunately come once again to MY attention.

Bill Mahrer, the host of the show, put the test to Mr. Murray by selecting a passage in the book that dealt with whether or not our society should have restaurant and elevator inspectors (which Murray, like many other libertarian theorists, opposes). Now, Murray was simply making the point that such inspectors, for various reasons, often do more harm than good and that society could function just as well without them. I won't go into the details of this argument. Suffice to say that the rest of the guests pointed out a simple problem with Murray's reasoning. Most people do not want to HAVE to THINK about whether the elevator they are entering is safe or whether the food they are eating has salmonella. We desperately want to have other people take care of this and similar problems for us. For better or worse, we have chosen government to do this. Glib arguments about how much better off we would all be with government OUT of the process falls on deaf ears unless we provide, as libertarians, reasonable, practical alternatives.

At root, this is what is wrong with anarchism. It's simply too damned much work...for me, for you, for anyone! The Internet will serve...indeed, is already serving...as a vehicle to make anarchism easier. But not easy enough. So it is with libertarian theory in general. Too often we advocate the throwing out of the bathwater without noticing whether the baby is still in the tub. We speak blithely of privatizing social security while simultaneously ignoring the fact that this social service, with all its flaws, has almost eliminated poverty among the elderly. We ignore that our suggestion scares the hell out of half the people to whom it is suggested, but we react as if their opinion does not matter. Ditto for unions. Or gun control.

It is time that we pluck our heads out of our rectums and begin to address libertarianism from the standpoint of it being part of a democratic society rather than a replacement for it. We have to begin to subordinate theory to actual, existing practice. Also, lets send Charles Murray back to academia where he belongs.

Talk to you later...

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