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Anarchy

          In The Book of Embraces, many of the stories Galeano writes show how horrible and abusive a government can become.  Even though most of the stories are about South American dictatorships, I still saw many connections with our government and what it does wrong.  It makes me think a great deal about what role our government should play in society, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that maybe, just maybe, an anarchist society might be better than what we live under now.

           Maybe complete anarchy is a bit of a stretch.  In a society as advanced as ours, we do need basic protection of life, liberty, and property.  But do we need any government interaction beyond that?  Government is basically a covenant, or agreement between the citizen and the state.  The citizen gives up certain things in order to give government power to exercise authority.  And if a government abuses its position, then it has essentially violated the covenant with the people, and should no longer be recognized.  And since every government in history has in some way exploited people unfairly, then it becomes clear that government in any form cannot be trusted. 

            Even in the United States the government abuses its power all the time.  Thousands of people are sent to jail every year without a fair trial, many of these are members of poor minorities who are targeted by the police.  Our jails are filled with non-violent drug offenders, victims of the futile Drug War that our government refuses to give up. Police, although required to respect the rights of all citizens, are trained from the beginning to persuade people into giving up their rights.  Police, for example, will attempt to search a person’s property, without a proper warrant.  They will simply ask the person permission to search, and use manipulation techniques to make people think they have no choice, when in fact they do.  When interrogating a person, police have been known to put pressure on a person until they reach their mental breaking point, which leads to a confession whether the individual is actually guilty or not.  There are also examples in the past of government officials taking the law into their own hands when it suited them.  Just look at the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas during the civil rights movement, when the president had to send in the National Guard because even the Little Rock Police were trying to prevent integration of the schools.  I can also recall the Mayor of Montgomery, Alabama ordering fire hoses to be turned on peaceful protesters. 

These just several of numerous examples of our government acting in a manner not fair or beneficial to it’s citizens.  And we have one of the most just and fair democracies around.  Our governments record is nothing compared to the cruel military regimes that are brought up by Galeano in many of his stories.  It is easy to see how governments like Uruguay’s are hardly deserving of remaining in power after the horrible atrocities they perform. 

            Without an active government, people would be free to do anything they want.  And I think in general our society is scared of this.  Our forefathers most certainly were; they did not even allow the people to directly elect Senators or the President.  But I think the common man doesn’t get the credit he’s due.  Since the vast majority of crimes in our country are drug-related, I think that an anarchy would be a safer place to live in, because people would not be forced to turn to crime to feed their addictions.             

There are some strong arguments for getting rid of government, but the strongest would involve the military.  We are now at a point of time where wars are very risky business; weapons have become so advanced that one war could conceivably end all life on our planet.  Without governments, there would not be any large-scale wars between superpowers that could end the world.  Also, people would not be forced to fight wars they do not believe in.  I have always thought the draft was the epitome of the two-faced style of government, because while the main purpose of government is to protect life, it can still send people to their deaths in times of war against their will.  Even if the war has a great purpose, if people are not given a choice to fight, then that means people are dying for nothing, something I don't believe in.

            It may be true that as a race humanity is not ready to live in anarchy.  But the only way for us to truly be free is by not living under a ruling body.  If there were such a thing as utopia, it would have to be an anarchy.