Nothing feeds conflict like government

Is there any good reason why conservatives and liberals, fundamentalist Christians and atheists, family traditionalists and polyamorists, free-marketeers and socialists, can't just get along, living alongside one another without turning every interaction into mortal combat? I mean, sure they have different ideas about life, but why shouldn't people live according to their own values without worrying about how the neighbors get along? There's no reason they can't, is there?

Sure there is! That reason is government. Government promises to give us all the power to boss around our neighbors and, unfortunately, it delivers. That means that rather than live side-by-side with people who share differing values, we all too often expend our energy organizing the state, lobbying the state and getting people elected to government office in order to send men with guns to intimidate the folks next door into changing their wicked, wicked ways.

And then, of course, after an election or two and a change in the political winds, our neighbors get the chance to do the same thing to us.

It's all rather bloody-minded, breeds never-ending conflicts, and raises the question of whether this whole government business is really such a good idea.

Anarchist philosopher Crispin Sartwell, an associate professor at Dickinson College, in Pennsylvania, and syndicated columnist, says it's not. He once wrote:

usually the first argument for the legitimacy of state power goes something like this: people (other than me and my friends) are fundamentally selfish and destructive. so they must be constrained from doing terrible things by force. they need a code enforced by an authority. this whole thing makes no sense if the state itself is a group of people. get me? this supposes that those who exercise authority are not subject to your general critique of humanity: that they are demi-gods, maybe ...

In the following interview, he shares more of his ideas about the flaws of government power and the growing tendency in our country for people to turn to government in order to get their way by force.

More of Sartwell's ideas on government and anarchism can be found in Against the State: An Introduction to Anarchist Political Theory.