What Carl and I agree on

OK, I've ranted (I admit it) a couple of times now in response to Carl's
ideas. I should also state in what ways he and I agree.

I'm a Christian and a lifelong Southerner. I've seen quite a few lovely,
orderly, godly small towns in the South and Midwest. I can name a dozen
that, if they somehow got permission to live without a government for a
year, depending only on the good will, the ethics and the arms of their
citizens for justice and order, and if they invited me to live among them
for that year, bringing not so much as a pocket knife to defend myself with,
I'd go. That small town American way of life, watched over by a thousand
John Waynes with their ethical heads on straight, can be idyllic, and is a
great way to raise up strong kids.

If Carl were proposing an O'Neill cynlinder filled with 2 million small town
Christian Southerners and no government whatsoever, I'd say go for it. It
would probably work. For that matter, so would an O'Neill cylinder full of
Buddhists, or hard working German farmers, or Carmelite nuns (although
obviously they would have to go outside their cylinder to replenish their
numbers). There are systems of thought, and societies both now and in the
past, that could make a paradise of liberty and justice without a
government. But there is still so much in human nature that needs repair
before we as a species can free ourselves from the necessary evil of central
government.

What barriers block us from achieving that anarchist paradise? Primarily
greed, mental illness and violence. As long as society can't prevent
physical abuse of children, some people will grow up believing that violence
against others is right and needy. As long as society lets people grow up
poor while bombarding them with images of glittering wealth, there will be
discontent. As long as mental illness goes untreated (and that's a bear,
because most mentally ill are poor and uninsured), there will be suicides,
murders and other tragedies. As long as children are allowed to grow up far
from God, there will be those who believe that the proper way to fill their
needs is to take from others.

I agree with Carl that in a carefully built small town society, small town
values and the posse comitatus could possibly control those who suffer from
the above ills.

But as a remedy for all of human society? Never work. People will build
cities. Cities allow anonymity. Anonymity hides the ill, the violent, the
godlessly greedy, until they've done their worst. What does Carl suggest to
that? Manditory Mayberry?

Even then, the greedy sociopath will lie to hide his values, band together
with others of like mind, inhabit giant corporations, and hijack the
machinery of the corporations both to carry out mass robbery and to cover it
up. Enron didn't invent it. And it can be done from any small town in
America. The greedy are too clever for local justice. Huge institutions
like these require sophisticated, full-time enforcement and investigation,
not Andy and Barney and the committee of concerned barbers and shopkeepers.

Carl, let us both agree to pray fervently for the fate of mankind, that God
and His justice will one day remove the need for government, on-planet and
off. But there is too much evidence that His day hasn't come yet to get me
to agree to abolishing government yet.

Brad Walsh