Those who are curious about how Anarchists expect their ideas of lawless order and consensual cooperation to work out peacefully in a free society, those who are sure they have a knock-down argument that Anarchism cannot possibly work, and those who are just interested to learn more are all invited to come to our upcoming Anarchist Cafe event tomorrow at 6:00pm at the Coffee Bean (4550 S. Maryland Ave.). Part of the night’s event will be a freewheeling “Ask An Anarchist!” Q&A session in which you can ask your questions directly, and you can find out more about how Anarchists would respond to them.

(For example, questions such as “How would people defend themselves from violence without government law-and-order?” is nothing that Anarchists have not heard before. Our literature table, in fact, carries pamphlets that address precisely that question.)

goingbust, regardless of what I, personally, am or am not capable of defending myself from, if you think that Anarchists advocate a society without peace or social order, then you have misunderstood what Anarchists advocate. We advocate a society without rulers, not a society without rules. Perhaps you think that without government laws, there can be no rules of orderly social conduct and no organized defense against violence; but if so that claim is something you’ll need to prove.

Anarchists (or at least, those who believe in the kind of Anarchism that I advocate) have no beef with peace, order, civilized society, or organized self-defense. What we believe is that peace, order, and civilization can emerge from the social connections between free and equal people, without having to be imposed by a central government. In such a society order is achieved by means of community-based (rather than government-based) self-defense, a peaceful and competitive selection of private mediators and arbitrators for disputes (rather than monopolizing mediation in an overwhelmed and constantly rigged government court system), and voluntary associations for community, trade, and mutual aid (rather than government welfare bureaucracies, government-privileged-and-government-subsidized corporations, and government-controlled “public spaces”). If you think that such an arrangement is impossible or impractical, again, that’s fine, but you’ll have to give some explanation of what’s wrong with it, rather than simply assuming it away, if you want anyone else to agree with you.

mred, I agree with you that the American Right is not consistently opposed to invasive big government. That’s part of the reason why I’m an Anarchist rather than a Rightist.

Anarcha-feminists believe that government should not intervene in any way in women’s decisions about their own bodies or about their own reproductive healthcare. So they oppose any form of government prohibitions on birth control (or abortion). There is no one particular anarcha-feminist position on whether women ought to choose to use birth control, and if so what methods they ought to choose; that’s something that each individual woman needs to work out for herself in her own life. The important thing is that she be free to choose and able to get all the relevant information needed to make the choice.

Hope this helps. And if you’ve got more questions, again, come on down to the A-Cafe tomorrow night and you can ask them directly.

It’s certainly an injustice that former soldiers who turn to drugs as a way of coping with the return to civilian life should be thrown in prison for a nonviolent offense that hurts only the drug abuser himself.

But I think I have a better suggestion for how to deal with that injustice. Instead of inventing special courts so that former soldiers can be treated as if they were legally superior to everyone else — why not just stop imprisoning anybody at all for nonviolent drug offenses?

Any reason you could give that would make it reasonable not to imprison former soldiers with non-violent drug problems would be just as good a reason not to imprison anybody else with a non-violent drug problem. You don’t need special courts; you just need to realize that the government’s campaign for drug prohibition is stupid, destructive, and is destroying the lives of all too many peaceful people.