I know how it is to have your sacred cows slaughtered.
It hasn't been easy for me to let go of the mindwarp put on me as a kid.
Mine was a Germanic father and a Lutheran upbringing.
So, my every instinct says get in the box, do what you are told, don't stick out from the crowd.
Go along to get along.
Sadly, that was not to be for me.
FreeBorn is what you are before your parents tell you that you are catholic, muslim, jewish, Satanist, or democrat.
(Strange that my auto correct capitalized Satanist, but not the others,...)
In order to qualify as FreeBorn you have to go back and re-evaluate all your sacred cows.
I like to assess any rules presented to me as, 'Well everybody knows,...'.
Who made that rule, why was it made, does it only apply in certain situations?
Most of us just accept as a given that the law applies to us.
Well, it doesn't.
The laws only apply to you if you don't stand up and make them prove the laws apply to you.
They cannot present proof, or they would.
Given a pass on it's burden the state is plenty happy to treat your ignorance as a free pass to screw you.
Just ask any lawyer.
@marcstevens http://marcstevens.net
But I digress.
In order to return to what you were when you came out you have to seek out knowledge from outside the box you have been put into as a child.
All those, 'Common sense' rules may be there just to keep you working in the factories enriching the crapitalusts.
So, if you want to continue to call yourself an anarchist, you may want to re-evaluate that stance in light of these facts put forth by someone that thought anarchism was the under man's revolt against civilization.
This book was published in 1921, so please, recognize that any bastardizations (Rothbard, Chomsky, Molyneux, et al) that have appeared since, are just that, corruptions of the original urge of all anarchists to live free of forced compliance.
Those folks would not have gotten coverage in the statist press without serving the purposes of the state.
If any of you have come across this book in your advanced college educations, please let me know.
Otherwise I will take it's absence from the curriculum to be a sure sign that it does not serve the purposes of the statists, if only by telling the truth.
So, the reality is that if you are claiming anarchist as your self-identity you should learn where that name comes from, how, and why, we anarchists use it.
We are not looking for half-measures.
We are not looking to set ourselves up as the new overlords of crapitalism.
We simply want to live free of coercive authority, and we will damn well smash any glass, or bomb any buildings that stand in our way.
We, anarchists, have a long tradition of this.
So, anarchist, make your attentat, but be sure not to damage any living things,....
If you are not prepared to live up to what it takes to be an anarchist, stop bastardizing our word, huh?
Have a perfectly peaceful day.
Keep working, stop paying. No war, but the class war!!
How to win in court for far less!!
Very well written post :)
I like the "freeborn" term.... but i totally agree, when you start challenging your own or your cultures sacred cows... only then can you truely grow and understand yourself/surroundings
Thank you.
Dead on with the 'common sense' quote.
It IS a way to put people into place (like factories, etc).
I'm in my opting out zone. I'm debt free, cash flow positive, and leave the US as much as possible.
Good for you, perhaps some anarchist successes can let you live free in the land of the free,....
Maybe we shouldn't kill people that aren't attacking us, nor paying others to do their attacking for them?
Rule by force is the disease, who and how are just symptoms.
I agree, judges should stop sending their thugs to rough us up.
To be fair, anything that didn't meet with Lothrop's worldview was going to be seen as tainted.
He is a victim of the box his education put him into, as well.
It is just one more purview to be purveyed.
Perhaps somebody may learn something from it having been resurrected from the memory hole.