Did I rub off on you friendly sword?

;]

"-Nobody enforces them without a state. You can have all rights you want in your mind, but if there is nobody who enforces them you got nothing."

...what? How do you enforce principles anyway? Your statements aren't inaccurate as taken individually, but everything you've said, when taken together, is incoherent. There is no cohesive message.

What you're now saying is that you need a state to punish those who attempt to suppress a freedom. First of all, while a state is better-equipped for this, you don't *need* a state to do it, so the claim that the freedom would go away is inaccurate. And aside from that... so what?

Say I want to tell a robber to go fuck himself. It doesn't matter if there is a state or not: I'm gonna get shot and killed because I exercised my freedom of speech. The state didn't protect that right -- it's just going to punish the shooter. Might that be a deterrent? Theoretically, yes, but I think Ghost (or was it FS?) covered the myth of deterrence by a state-run policing system. And the fact remains that no one is actually *protecting* my right to speak in that instance.

"-Exactly! Nobody protects you if you where suppressed or punished for saying the "wrong thing" in somebodys opinion. The freedom of speech is a "negative right" protect by the state. Nobody is allowed to forbid your opinion."

Neither does a state. See the previous point, these two are related. Plus, it strikes me as not following that someone wouldn't silence me because of the state. Someone mature enough to handle what I'm saying, though they disagree or even consider it "wrong," isn't going to snap and become a psychopathic killer because the state won't hunt them down for it; likewise, sinners won't become saints because of the state.

"-Same story, nobody protects you if somebody supresses or punishes you because of your religion. Nobody is allowed to forbid your religious practises."

Sure they are. The state forbade animal sacrifice, for one, though that's an extreme example. And again, if a jihad-driven radical Muslim wants to shoot me for my atheism, too bad for me, they'll do it without care for the state's existence. My right to [abstain from] religion isn't protected there.

And honestly, I know western democracies are the primary example, but... come on! Look around the world, look at history. As states have relinquished more control through history -- from monarchies to republics and democracies -- people have become MORE free to practice religion in particular. It was the DECENTRALIZATION (sorry for caps, no boldface) of the state that increased freedom. The state isn't the answer to freedom. You guys raise Somalia all the time... what about Iran, that bastion of Muslim theocracy across the world over? Surely an anarchic realm there would be more religiously free than what's currently there, no?

@FS - not really once I think about it. I guess I'm used to an older crowd where a glass of wine with dinner or an after dinner drink is the norm. Even at a poker table, there is usually only one person drinking to the point of "high/buzzed/drunk" on a given night. But yeah, I should have thought about my former employers. Last place was median age of 27 or 28 with a lot of 22-25 who got drunk at every opportunity. And prior to that I worked at a place where the boss was a beer guzzling Nascar rootin' good ol' boy!

@sword

"Noticing that the southern courts failed to sentence lynchers even when they were arrested and noticing that the Police often helped the mobs of white people but prevented mobs of black people is not the same thing"
Now its only "southern courts", a post before you claimed national goverment for doing so! Sorry you can´t say two differneet things, one a conspirancy theory and the other an example for a not existing law-system (anarchy), and then come up with this.

Certainkly not through your arguments Sic ;)

My High School experience consisted of Religious Centrist -> Secular Liberal -> Atheistic Free Marketeer -> Marxist -> Crazy ass Anarchist. It's been fun. Now I have found first year University to be more conservative and corporate in outlook than I expected.

@Eden - all those rights are completely there, protected by yourself. Nobody can make you worship. It's just your right to life that becomes forfeit if you refuse and practive your freedom of speech or religion/non-religion. But those freedoms and rights still exist and you have the right to chose to practice them, understanding the consequence may be your physical life or freedom.

And forbiding a practice (sacrifice whether it be nimal or human) because it infringes on the more basic freedoms of others if not forbidding your right to religion. It's just curtailing it so as not to infringe upon others rights: rights of a higher order than your freedoms. Rights come first, the freedoms. But this forum has had this discussion in the past.

Miro, I said both. Sure the Democratic Government in power in Washington saw in interest in allowing opression against Blacks likely to vote Republican.

But 'the State' implies channels of coercive power in an area that claim sole legitimacy. It doesn't matter whether it takes the form of National or Provincial government. It's all part of the State.

And it isn't 'only southern courts'. That was one of many examples I brought forth Gah, read what I said! mate. I have humoured you so far but you are being trollish.

Also, does everyone think I still mean absence of order or plain and simple chaos when I refer to Anarchism as a system of human politics? Because I don't, and no Anarchist does. Anarchism is human organization without coercive and abusive centralization of power plus all of the nasty stuff that comes with it.

And I should calrify, you don't have a right to religion (or non), but a freedom. Rights are "life, liberty, pursuit of happines". Freedoms are "press, speech, religion, bear arms, etc." Right to life is first and foremost. It is the highest right. any other right or freedom is subjugate to that right or freedom costing another their right to life.

@Eden

"There is no cohesive message."
If your ethical principle for a society is nobody is allowed to kill and there is nobody going after the "killers", you have no right to remain safe cause nobody enforces it.
Is that so hard to understand?

"It was the DECENTRALIZATION (sorry for caps, no boldface) of the state that increased freedom. The state isn't the answer to freedom"
The decentralisation? You are coming up with this without naming one example?
I doubt you know what decentralisation means...can you explain it?

Please note that once again this is a philosophical notion of how human interaction ought to be guided; not something that must be provided or given by a higher power (ie Government).

@sword

"Sure the Democratic Government in power in Washington saw in interest in allowing opression against Blacks likely to vote Republican."
Without evidence. Just a conspiracy theorie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States#Reconstruction_.281865.E2.80.931877.29

"The first heavy period of violence in the South was between 1868 and 1871. White Democrats attacked black and white Republicans. This was less the result of mob violence characteristic of later lynchings, however, than insurgent secret vigilante actions by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan...

...Lynchings to prevent freedmen and their allies from voting and bearing arms can be seen as extralegal ways of enforcing the Black Codes and the previous system of social dominance. The 14th and 15th Amendments in 1868 and 1870 had invalidated the Black Codes....

....From the mid-1870s on in the Deep South, violence rose. In Mississippi, Louisiana, the Carolinas and Florida especially, the Democratic Party relied on paramilitary "White Line" groups such as the White Camelia to terrorize, intimidate and assassinate African American and white Republicans in an organized drive to regain power. In Mississippi, it was the Red Shirts; in Louisiana, the White League that were paramilitary groups carrying out goals of the Democratic Party to suppress black voting. ...

....The Democrats' campaign of terror worked. In Yazoo County, for instance, with a Negro population of 12,000, only seven votes were cast for Republicans. In 1875, Democrats swept into power in the state legislature......

.....Law-enforcement authorities sometimes participated directly or held suspects in jail until a mob formed to carry out the murder.....Only rarely were lynchers punished, or even arrested, for their crimes.
....."

This is the last time I respond to you unless you provide something worthwhile Miro.

You do realize, Sword, that Lincoln was a "Democrat". It's just that the parties roles and names changed. So far you have cited (from a dubious source at times) how the Southern Democratic Party did these things, but not how the White House or Congress or any one in actual power in Washington was involved. We had our own share of issue this last election at the conventions with picketers and newsreporters being hauled off to jail even when they were on public sidewalks. That was the people in power behind the parties, not the people in power in the government. Those two, despite what conspiracy theorist would have us believe, are not one in the same.

@FS
"authoritarian state" you have no idea what one looks like. You can move around your country as you want, you can live where you want, you can have as many kids as you want, you can follow any religion you choose, you have a choice of political parties, you can even start one if you wish, you can leave the country without asking the government for permission; Chinese cannot do this.

WTF are you whining about? A couple of frankly minor rules that you do not like. Do something about it. Campaign, get support, get the rules changed.

@Sword

"Although some states took action against the Klan, the South needed federal help to deal with the escalating violence. President Ulysses S. Grant and Congress passed the Force Acts of 1870 and the Civil Rights Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, because it was passed to suppress the vigilante violence of the Klan."

Read the whole article you genius...the whole thing was struggle for power, republicans against democrats. If Lincoln didn´t went to war, nobody would even had cared about dead black slaves! The american civil war was a struggle for federal centralized power, and the article shows the looser of that war - southern secessionistic democrats - where still figthing for enslavement and decentralization.
I think you should keep the topic of the thread in mind before blaming the state even for this and making it a "bad state thing" it obviously is not...

Draugnar, the point I was making was that Miro was wholly incorrect in saying that rights have been abridged historically because of a lack of state power. My example of lynching was simply to demonstrate that State power works in other ways than just directly.

Just because the Congressmen weren't out in the fields themselves killing the blacks doesn't mean that there was not systemic violence on a State (as in subdivisions of the US) level for reasons pertaining to the security of those in power. ``The State`` consists of all of the elementary parts, not just the White House and Congress.

At Diplomat:

Depending on your definition, no I do not live in an authoritarian state. I have a great deal of personal freedom. And that is a good thing. But it doesn`t mean that the end goal of a free society has yet been realized. My complaints that you so casually sweep aside are examples, or symptoms, if you will, of why State power is essentially unjust, even if it chooses to sometimes exercise it`s power in more mild ways.

``Campaign, get support, get the rules changed.``

Yes, it``s in the works, but an eighteen year old Canadian University student has a lot to do before he can stop the Government from killing more brown people and reducing civil liberties. :)

At Miro:

I am a genius? Thanks :)

About the whole thing being a struggle for power... yeah. Precisely. The State is built on power. The little people are killed or enslaved or bought off to ensure those in power remain in power. How is this NOT a ``bad state`` thing as you keep calling it?

Just because you like the Alabaman government telling you what to do instead of Washington doesn``t make you any less of a Statist categorically. Just one of a slightly smaller stature.

@sword
"How is this NOT a ``bad state`` thing as you keep calling it?"
Because the good ones are the "state people" in this story...

"Just because you like the Alabaman government telling you what to do instead of Washington doesn``t make you any less of a Statist categorically"
But the whole thing was about that. Should the southern states be allowed to do what they want or enforce federal law in every state and treat black people equally.

And no you are no genius, you are just being trollish.

"all those rights are completely there, protected by yourself. Nobody can make you worship. It's just your right to life that becomes forfeit if you refuse and practive your freedom of speech or religion/non-religion. But those freedoms and rights still exist and you have the right to chose to practice them, understanding the consequence may be your physical life or freedom."

Not sure how to respond to this. I don't think I've said anything in conflict with it. Are you agreeing, or am I missing something?

"And forbiding a practice (sacrifice whether it be nimal or human) because it infringes on the more basic freedoms of others if not forbidding your right to religion. It's just curtailing it so as not to infringe upon others rights: rights of a higher order than your freedoms. Rights come first, the freedoms. But this forum has had this discussion in the past."

Poor hypothetical on my part. My apologies.

"And I should calrify, you don't have a right to religion (or non), but a freedom. Rights are "life, liberty, pursuit of happines". Freedoms are "press, speech, religion, bear arms, etc." Right to life is first and foremost. It is the highest right. any other right or freedom is subjugate to that right or freedom costing another their right to life."

This sounds like a distinction without a difference, though again I could be missing something. I'm a bit confused as to whether or not you're agreeing with me or not. ;>_>

"If your ethical principle for a society is nobody is allowed to kill and there is nobody going after the "killers", you have no right to remain safe cause nobody enforces it.
Is that so hard to understand?"

Yes, because it doesn't logically follow at all. First of all, YOU can enforce it -- defend yourself. Secondly, an "unenforced" right to life is still a right to life. That right doesn't magically disappear because no one will defend it. Thirdly, and more importantly, I would certainly argue that despite the obvious right to life present in the US government, thousands of people have that right violated due to murder each year. State enforcement doesn't guarantee their right is protected, so I don't see how your statement follows in that sense either.

"The decentralisation? You are coming up with this without naming one example?
I doubt you know what decentralisation means...can you explain it?"

Frankly, sir, you've yet to give a definition of a "right" that satisfies the other conditions you've since set forth upon such a definition, and you intend to act as if you are qualified to call me out on knowledge of words. To entertain your pathetic deflection, "decentralization" is, in short, putting government closer to the hands of the governed. What I'm referencing should be incredibly obvious to anyone with an iota of historical knowledge... and I refuse to submit to the idea that you lack this iota, so I shall merely assume you are being obtuse. Look at any European nation over the past 600 years. As the medieval structure, which gave all power to the governors and none to the governed, began to collapse, various freedoms -- speech, assembly, press, religion, petition, all those good things -- began to see widespread acknowledgment. This is because the government started to decentralize; it went from being the perfect totalitarian state (the medieval state, in which every single aspect of the governed's lives were determined not by the governed) to the more classical view of a monarchical state (wherein the kings and queens still had most of the governing power but allowed the governed their own private lives) and eventually the democracy (where governmental policy was dictated by the people -- though more popularly in the republic form where people elected those who dictated governmental policy).

*I* am a troll? Really? :)

And to repeat; how is violence in order to stay in power in government not a clear example of a coercive State?

President Eden, I am going to respectfully disagree with your narrative of decentralisation. The end of the feudal era actually given rise to more centralized power as the regional authorities lost thier influence to the King and his court. France, Spain, Russia... you name it. All States became more powerful in the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth century``s etc.

It honestly wasn``t until relatively recently that some elements of State power began to defuse. But it has really decentralized in any major way with the clear exceptions of decolonization and the fall of the Soviet Union.

@Eden

"it went from being the perfect totalitarian state (the medieval state, in which every single aspect of the governed's lives were determined not by the governed"

Oh please step back, you want to rewrite history. I think every historian "facepalms" on that, you should really overthing it.

Miro Klose, I think we can guess, is from one of the Teutonic peoples. Given that, the suggestion that his past governments are not responsible for a little bit of murder is frankly laughable.

In a way a bit like all of his posts.

"President Eden, I am going to respectfully disagree with your narrative of decentralisation. The end of the feudal era actually given rise to more centralized power as the regional authorities lost thier influence to the King and his court. France, Spain, Russia... you name it. All States became more powerful in the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth century``s etc."

I was talking specifically in reference to individual freedoms. On the whole, yes, the federal state became more powerful at the expense of the local states, and states became more centralized around a federal government. However, I'm not distinguishing between federal and local states; I'm looking merely at the progression of individual freedom from the late medieval period on to the days of monarchies and then to more modern concepts of democracy and republicanism. If you would argue the notion that the governed, as a trend, saw their freedoms over their personal lives increase throughout that timeframe, then I'll argue it, but I think you're focusing on an admitted flaw in my overall presentation that isn't critical to my specific point.

"Oh please step back, you want to rewrite history. I think every historian "facepalms" on that, you should really overthing it."

I'd say that I'm done with you, but you strike me as the type that would see my unwillingness to put up with your petulant retorts and refusals to deal with my actual arguments as victory for you, and I won't grant you that satisfaction. Since you did not contend anything else, it is assumed you agree, at which point you have no argument left.

And your objection doesn't even attempt to contend with the thing you're citing. You're just riding the coattails of the person you just said needs to "grow up." Rather mature of you.

Don't have time to really weigh in on what seems like is a great disscussion.
I do however want to point out the meaning behind the anarchist symbol the circle A (A)
which is basically an A inside of an O, what it stands for is "Anarchism is Order".

@Sicarius: Cool, I never knew that. Now, I'm wondering, you're an anarcho-communist right? But are you part of the normal collectivist variety, or part of the rare individualist variety, like I am?

@eden

"I'd say that I'm done with you"
That´s not my problem, you wrote medieval "states" were perfect totalitarian system. That´s absoluly false. North Korea or the Sovjet Union are/were totalitarian states.
almost 1000years are between them and feudal monarchies.

In fact almost all over europe Centralization and personal freedoms evolved at the same time. From decentralized feudal monarchies to centralized absolutism and later on to nationalistic states. That is in fact the opposite of your view of history.

@FS
"My complaints that you so casually sweep aside are examples, or symptoms, if you will, of why State power is essentially unjust,"
Poppycock, they are examples of policies that you object to (I do not support them either). They say nothing about the essence or justice of state power.

"Yes, it``s in the works, but an eighteen year old Canadian University student has a lot to do before he can stop the Government from killing more brown people and reducing civil liberties. :)"
Good.

You have had the good fortune to be born a citizen of a country with a high level of personal freedom, education and health care, significant natural resources and easy access to a large foreign trading partner. Compared to many people in the world your glass is 3/4 full.

Your society has been built by many people through hard work, thought and compromise as a representative democracy. There is nothing wrong with trying to improve it further but as you do so, especially if that involves an alternative governance model, be careful that you do not make things worse.