I'm going to give a simple, precise definition of anarchy. Despite historical misunderstanding of the term, anarchy is a form of social organization in which there is no sovereign state.

It does not connote social chaos or general lawlessness. It does not imply ownership in common. The crucial, defining characteristic of anarchy is the abolition of one particular institution -- an allegedly "sovereign" government that claims a legal right to impose its will upon private citizens.

In the United States, we have two layers of sovereign government: the Federal Union and the fifty states of which it is composed. By a narrowly-ratified compact authored 200 years ago, the Feds claim to possess the legal right to make war, regulate commerce, coin money, suppress rebellion, impose taxes, make treaties, promote the general welfare, and do anything else that may be necessary to keep themselves in supreme power, anywhere on the planet. The individual State governments claim to possess the legal right to regulate private behaviour, charter municipal and private corporations, grant marriages and divorces, impose taxes, compel attendance in public schools, and whatever else the Feds have not yet preempted. At both levels of this system, private citizens are legally granted a relatively narrow set of "liberties", which are not abrogated unless it is convenient to do so in order to serve the public good.

Here we should pause to explain that no one has ever attempted to define who "the public" are. The courts are just as confused as everybody else on this question. The public is everyone. People v Ruthven, 288 N.Y.S. 631. The public is not everyone. Terminal Taxicab v Kutz, 241 U.S. 252. It does not mean all the people, or most of the people, but so many as contradistinguishes them from a few. Mary Pickford v Bayly, 86 P.2d 102. The public is the government. Oahu R. Co. v Brown, 8 Hawaii 163. (The government?!)

There is no clear doctrine on what the general welfare is either. In 1937 the U.S. Supreme Court more or less stifled further discussion by saying: "The issue is a closed one. It was fought out long ago. When money is spent to promote the general welfare, the concept of welfare or the opposite is shaped by Congress." Helvering v Davis, 301 U.S. 619.

This brings us to the ultimate justification for the alleged "sovereignty" of American governments: the ballot box. In 1787, a handful of men proposed a form of national government that was intended to solve some jurisdictional and political problems among the 13 original colonies, which had become independent states. After a lengthy, hotly-debated struggle for ratification, it was approved by slim majorities in nine states. New York and Virginia were among the last to ratify because their citizenry were vehemently opposed to the plan. North Carolina and Rhode Island refused to ratify until 1790, when it became obvious that their economic and political interests would suffer if they remained outside the Federal republic.

To put things in perspective, please consider that among the 3,317,000 people in the newly-organized United States of America, less than 20% could vote. Slightly more than half of these voters had consented to the new form of government. A total of 142 electors were chosen to represent "the people" during the first presidential election. George Washington was selected by 69 of them.

One of the great mysteries about democracy is the persistent assertion that, somehow, a miniscule percentage of votes entitles the sovereign to impose regulations over vast numbers of people who did not consent to be ruled. But far more puzzling is the belief that 69 votes, cast two hundred years ago, somehow obligates 240 million Americans today. Indeed, the claim is often repeated, that our Founding Fathers did this, or said that, and thus created a precedent by which we are all bound.

Baloney. If three people are engaged in a project, and one of them refuses to cut his throat for the benefit of the other two, by what conceivable right can the "majority" claim that they are entitled to murder the dissenter?

Here, then, is the theoretical starting point for anarchy. If anyone or anything is "sovereign", it is each individual man, woman, and child, who is presumed to be endowed by nature with an equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Significantly, these principles, although prominently featured in the Declaration of Independence, somehow never found their way into the U.S. Constitution. Human rights were all well and good when there was an external tyrant, but when the Founding Fathers turned their attention to establishing their own brand of sovereignty, it was no longer expedient to speak in terms of natural justice.

Historically, anarchy is the newest kid on the political block. Democracy, monarchy, theocracy, and communism have ancient roots which extend back to ancient civilizations. Anarchy, like laissez-faire capitalism, is a child of the Industrial Revolution -- and, indeed, they have a great deal in common. Laissez-faire capitalism means "hands-off" in terms of economic life. Anarchy means "hands-off" in legal and political life.

It is therefore especially embarassing to note that 19th century anarchists hated the institution of private property and aligned themselves with French and Russian communists, in an effort to abolish private property rights. Classical anarchists rather stupidly believed that property was created and maintained by the state. Karl Marx theorized that the state would "wither away" under communist rule, so it is not surprising to that a rather confused sect of early anarchists were prepared to accept a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat as a way-station on the road to absolute freedom. After all, "absolute freedom" is a confused idea -- about which I will have more to say later on.

The endorsement of bloodshed and temporary tyranny was a miscalculation of enormous dimensions, for the communists and anarchists alike. One does not promote liberty by abolishing it. To suggest that anarchy can be achieved by coercion, is akin to saying that nutrition can be derived from poisons.

Perhaps it is well to emphasize that anarchy, in the way I have defined it, is a form of social organization sans government. Modern critics, as well as some 19th-century anarchists, solemnly decree that we cannot have one without the other -- that any hope of law and order (including property rights) depends upon the existence of a sovereign state. Ayn Rand, a proponent of laissez-faire capitalism, for example, insisted that government was a natural and necessary arbiter among otherwise free men. Robert Nozick, in Anarchy, State & Utopia, argued that territorial sovereignty is essential to public order. Between them lies the substance of so-called "libertarian" thought in contemporary America, which rejects anarchy in favor of a Jeffersonian ideal: The best government is that which governs least.

The brief reply to such criticisms is to suppose a Robinson Crusoe island on which Friday has been granted a bed in which to sleep. It is in Crusoe's interest to concede this particular division of property, and Friday is content with the arrangement. No need of arbitration, or weighted ballots, or written constitutions. Just two men who are competent to assess their social interests.

Whether the political laboratory is inhabited by 2 men or 240 million, the central feature of their social intercourse remains singularly distinct, and I have come to think of it as custom that will someday become formal jurisprudence on the subject -- i.e., de facto anarchy. To the extent that the state does not or cannot impose its will, you have de facto anarchy, whether you like it or not.

Take democracy, for example. If the sovereign cannot dictate how people will vote (or think, or speak), it is highly artificial to say that government is truly sovereign. Who knows? -- they might be booted out come November. In a monarchy, the reigning prince must be careful not to do anything that will undermine the confidence and loyalty of his subjects, as Machiavelli shrewdly observed. The United States Supreme Court has seldom attempted to rule against public opinion -- and, during their brief period of stubborn opposition to Roosevelt's New Deal, they were doomed to recant. It is a maxim of the common law that "we imbibe it at every pore", and judges wisely limit themselves to an accomodation of whatever the local sentiments happen to be.

Majority rule is a similarly hollow pretense. We drank during Prohibition. Kids are still buying narcotics after 50 years of fierce interdiction. And, although the vast majority of Americans are dead-set against slavery, murder, and racial discrimination, no law can prevent these three evils from sprouting like stubborn, perennial weeds in our midst.

Slavery? -- of course. Women are de facto domestic servants to autocratic husbands. Children scream in helpless anguish, as they are marched off to churches, schools, woodsheds and family gatherings, against their will. Employees are enslaved by their hometown employers or by a majority of their unionized co-workers. The list is endless -- and it is vain to say that government should have (or could have) abolished the practice by law. Ask any lawyer about the legal status of children, or what happens when a citizen defies the will of his neighbours. Every prisoner is a slave; every draft-dodger; every licensed business owner.

Murders, of course, are impossible to prohibit or to deter -- not even by threats of ghastly retribution. If we suppose that a miniscule 1/10th of one percent of the general populace might commit homicide, how many policemen, psychologists, prison guards and judges would it take to eradicate this gruesome anarchy? 1/10th of one percent of the U.S. population is still 240,000 potential murderers. What shall we do? -- kill them before they can kill someone else? Lock them up in preventive detention for the rest of their lives? Eradicate every conceivable weapon in America (knives, bludgeons, screwdrivers)? What about prospective abortions? What about potential suicides? Drunk drivers? Daredevil youths?

Far worse, as a fiction of sovereignty and a very hurtful social ill, is the matter of racial discrimination. Why can't Jesse Jackson (or any other black man) be elected president? Why is it so hard to get a job in Hollywood if you're not Jewish? How many law-enforcers will it take to prevent businessmen from hiring and promoting members of their own families, or members of their church, social group, college class, political party, ethnic background, sex -- you name it.

The "sovereign state" is an illusion.

Have we eradicated poverty? -- No. We doubled the number of people who are malnourished.

Has our legal system settled disputes? -- No. We became the most litigious society on earth.

Did we achieve the central goal of the Founding Fathers? -- No. The Constitution's famous compromise plunged us into the Civil War, at a cost of nearly a million lives and five times the G.N.P. in 1860. Instead of reducing the need for a standing peacetime army, the United States spawned a vast military-industrial complex unmatched by any other nation in history.

How ridiculous! -- after exerting every talon and claw, the Federal Government is reduced to pitifully begging that we should "Just say No" to drugs. Yes, it might work, if enough individual men, women and children decide to agree with that suggestion -- but let's not kid ourselves about who's ruling who.

Individual conscience (and cowardice) create the bulk of tax dollars -- not the coercive machinery of our Internal Revenue Service. What could they possibly do if more than a few obscure tax-resisters decided not to file? What if 10% refused to file? 20%? 50%?

You know, we learned a wonderful lesson in Vietnam. You can't conquer people with napalm and bribery -- you have to win their hearts and minds. All the U.S. support that was poured into Iran, the Phillipines and Lebanon went for naught, because coercion only works on the willing. The moment any "sovereign" state attempts to physically force someone to change his mind, another anarchist is born. Call him what you will -- tax cheat, rebel, freedom fighter -- it's a vote for liberty.

This stubborn, voluntary aspect of the human mind is a subject well worth exploring. Ayn Rand covered it so well that we need not continue beyond the conclusion she reached. Any man can be free if he chooses to be.

Based on rather cruel personal experience, I know this to be true. As an inmate of a maximum-security Federal penitentiary for a short time, and being rather small in stature, believe me, there were many occasions on which my freedom, dignity, and consent were put at risk of extinction. But there is a sage expression one hears in jail: "Everybody has to sleep sometime" -- which means that no tyrant, no rapist, no gang leader is immune from reprisal.

Tyrants live short, frantic lives. Their evil is not likely to be tolerated, even by the weakest and mildest of pacifists. When Ghandi conquered the British, he taught the world that passive opposition works just as well as active warfare in certain situations. When Martin Luther King adopted his strategy, America was shamed -- not coerced -- into reform. And when Federal officials ordered forced bussing to achieve racial integration of public schools, those who refused simply moved to an all-white district.

This is what I mean by de facto anarchy. No matter how many votes are on one side or another, you might as well forget about enforcing a majority opinion, unless the majority is so overwhelming as to utterly crush a few stray nay-sayers. But be sure that those dissenters are crushed, or you might find someone slipping a bomb under the Fuhrer's conference table.

It is so tempting to point to the world's dictatorships as evidence of the potential evil in any coercive state, that I shall not do so. Instead, I will say that Hitler was incapable of ruling a majority of Germans without their consent. The Nazis seized power at a time of social malaise; they scapegoated a small but visible minority; every effort was made to spy upon and control individual liberty. "We are now at the end of the Age of Reason," Hitler gleefully confided to Rauschning. "At a mass meeting, thought is eliminated. And because this is the state of mind I require, because it secures to me the best sounding board for my speeches, I order everyone to attend the meetings, where they become part of the mass whether they like it or not!" In the cafes and streets of Berlin a new type of behaviour swept the populace, known as der Deutsche Blick ("the German Look"), which consisted of surreptitiously glancing around to see who was within earshot, before uttering even the most innocent and trivial remarks, because they might be misunderstood and reported to the authorities as evidence of treason. If you are thinking that this could not happen in America, you have not studied the history of the 1st Amendment, the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, or the McCarthy witch-hunts of the 1950s.

The Nazis executed thousands upon millions -- Jews, communists, Poles, Dutch, French, German dissidents, hospital patients, scientists, parents and grandparents who had let slip a word of criticism that was overheard by a member of the Hitler Youth. Here, if anywhere in the world, at any time in history, was a society gone mad with "sovereignty". Millions could do nothing but obey, obey, obey -- or face the firing squad.

Yet the Nazis could neither decree nor deter a single friendship, romance, or hatred. Parents still loved their infant children. Lovers did not cease to pine for their sweethearts. Ideas could not be physically ripped from the minds of thinkers and ordinary laborers. De facto anarchy ebbed to its lowest possible level, but it did not cease to function.

Nor shall it ever -- not even in the midst of labor camps and hopelessly dark inner-city ghettos. Every time an infant is born into this world, society must reckon that there is 50/50 chance that this new citizen is an anarchist at heart. Every effort will be made to inculcate the newcomer with an imprint of social and civic duty, a constant stream of religious and moral imperatives, a steady bombardment of information and experience -- all of it aimed at baffling, bribing, and silencing the child's latent tendancy to think or speak the magic word of independence: "No!"

When the prototype 19th-century anarchists spoke of "absolute freedom" and mankind's fitness to live in perfect harmony, they totally missed the boat -- for one word is the key to human freedom: "No!" When John Stuart Mill justified free speech by declaring that it served social utility, he was deaf to the very principle he was trying to defend -- the right to defy society, to reject the greatest good of the greatest number, to pronounce the word of social treason and of individual liberty: "No!"

What is it that the Catholic Church fears most? -- the word "No!" What is it that the Communist Party drives underground, in desparate revulsion of anything or anyone that would upset their precious bureaucracy? -- the word "No!"

In a free society, the essence of freedom is to disagree with your neighbour. To the extent that you can say "no" and remain free of legal compulsion, the society in which you live permits a degree of de jure anarchy. And if a majority of your neighbours are legally permitted to vote away that liberty, their intention is to extinguish the one and only "absolute freedom" with which you were born -- the freedom to think for yourself and to act in accordance with the product of self-propelled ingenuity, knowledge and values.

In any society, at any moment in history, free men swim against the tide of custom and circumstance. To devise a social system based on this freedom is the proper goal of anarchist theory.

On January 9, 1975, a Federal trial judge scratched his head and searched his mind for a theory that would explain what he was about to do. Before him stood a mild-mannered, reasonable young man named Perry Paegelow, who had to be sent to prison, even though it was highly doubtful that he had willingly broken the law -- or, if he had, whether anyone suffered on account of it. Perry Paegelow had driven me to the spot where Federal agents arrested me for possessing a paper bag full of marijuana. Here's what the judge said to Perry when he sentenced him:

THE COURT: I don't know that marijuana is good or bad for people. All I know is that the authorities, Congress, our society, rightly or wrongly, has decided it is bad for people. They can be wrong.

THE DEFENDANT: I believe they are, sir.

THE COURT: But no one seems to know the answer to these things, and so we are in the position of trying to enforce these drug laws, I mean society. Now whether that is just or not depends on your point of view. I respect your view, but I don't think it is the law of the land, and as long as you take the position that you are going to continue to traffic in these drugs, you don't give me any choice except to send you to jail.

THE DEFENDANT: I didn't say I was continuing.

THE COURT: You think the law is nonsensical and you are not going to pay any attention to it, and so, therefore, certainly the impression I gather is that -- it is -- you don't see any reason to --

THE DEFENDANT: Perhaps nonsensical is the wrong word. I think it's is blatantly fascist.

Perry was sentenced to serve two years in prison, for driving a car. I served three years for carrying a paper bag. But the trial judge put his finger in the core-issue of social organization. If an offender doesn't plead contrition and remorse, how can you show any mercy?

Don't laugh. This is an important issue in our criminal justice system. If it weren't for the informant who fingered Perry and myself, it would have been impossible to bring us to "justice." Informants, stool pidgeons, snitiches and turncoats put more drug users behind bars than the undercover and uniformed policemen combined. And, if it weren't for plea bargains and sobbing confessions of regret, our prisons would be as commonplace as grocery stores, one or two in every neighborhood.

What can you do with people who refuse to recognize the supremacy of the state? Do we dare to teach our children the "right of revolution" contained in the Declaration of Independence?

No. We blind them and stuff their ears, with the logic of Mugler v Kansas, 123 U.S. 623:

But by whom, or by what authority, is it to be determined whether (something) will injuriously affect the public? Power to determine such questions, so as to bind all, must exist somewhere; else society will be at the mercy of a few, who, regarding their own appetites, may be willing to imperil the peace and security of the many.

It doesn't matter whether the subject-matter of our discussion is narcotics, or anti-trust law, or an obstreperous neighbour who might pollute your garden with crankcase oil. The central issue is the "power to determine such questions, so as to bind all." In Mugler, the Supreme Court surprised no one by deciding that the power to bind all was lodged in the legislative branch -- the elected representatives of the will of the people. Unfortunately, this is also the formula for unlimited folly and persecution. Socrates and John Locke come to mind, as dissenters who were hunted down as heretics. But worse, perhaps, is the routine business of thwarting large minorites. Abe Lincoln was put into power by 39% of the popular vote, for example. No wonder we had a Civil War, with 61% of the electorate denied their "will."

Coincidentally, I spent about a year in Allenwood F.P.C. with Gordon Liddy -- now there's a fellow who knows about "will," if anybody does. Unfortunately, our willfulness can't do much to alter the fact that the earth orbits the sun, instead of vice-versa. Nor is one's desire, self-interest, prejudice or imagination a good set of criteria for justice. I doubt that anyone would want to see Gordon elected to high office. He used to sing "Deutscheland Uber Alles" in the shower and loved the Nixon White House.

In a sense, this last observation perversely justifies the American democracy. By and large, we do a pretty good job of electing people who more or less exhibit the basic values on which there is a broad consensus. As a culture, American society is tolerant, sensitive to minority rights, quite wonderful when it comes to even-handed treatment of our neighbours. But it is not perfect.

The case for anarchy turns on whether no government is better than good government, right?

Not necessarily.

When Franklin Roosevelt abolished private possession of gold, his attempt to control economic supply and demand remained maddeningly elusive. Banks refused to make loans, commercial failures increased, the stock market took another nose-dive, and government policy-makers had no choice but to conclude that deficit spending and "pump-priming" might become a permanent feature of the American economy (which we have yet to wean ourselves from, some 50 years later). Clearly the best government on earth was incompetent to rule the markets. The Soviets, too, find it difficult to command the economic performance of their enslaved masses -- so that we are forced to surmise that oppressive regimes are no better equipped to "will" prosperity. Freer societies create more wealth, more opportunity, more competition and greater diversity. The 19th-century laissez-faire economy outperformed our 20th-century welfare state in every measurable respect (annual growth, consumer price trends, wage gains). But these are topics best left to Alan Greenspan. For our present purposes, we can quit the field of economics by recalling one of Dr. Greenspan's most memorable remarks, paraphrasing Gresham's Law -- that "Bad protection drives out good."

What he meant was that any attempt to replace market chaos with government controls was doomed to fail in two respects: (1) The state's mechanism of control would be worse than "invisible-hand" outcomes; and (2) It would have a secondary and unintended consequence of driving other market mechanisms into disarray.

The reason I do not wish to pursue this classical defense of economic anarchy is simple -- it is a utilitarian justification, which free enterprise advocates have droned, shouted and whimpered to the American people for the better part of a century, without success. Ayn Rand correctly identified the locus of failure, namely, the tension between de facto capitalism and Christian ethics, which constantly crippled advocates of economic freedom. Her entire career was devoted to the job of propagating a morality of selfishness, to give capitalism a spiritual leg to stand on.

Apart from the questions of utility or effective public policy, it remains that anarchy is superior to the best possible sovereign in one respect: it is more logical.

I do not say that anarchy will better serve "the greatest good of the greatest number" -- in part because those claims are impossible to measure or test. I do not claim that any of our existing institutions (except the pretense of sovereignty) will be radically altered in an anarchistic society. People will probably form themselves into local, regional and national associations, I suppose.

Only one aspect of life must rotate, in order to achieve constitutional anarchy: our legal system.

If, instead of the United States of America, we were served by USA Inc. -- a private organization with the same constitutional officers, agencies and "stakeholders" -- it is possible that a squadron of ships could be dispatched to the Persian Gulf, a prosecution could be leveled against drug dealers, an offender might be tried and punished; but they could not pretend to represent the will of every man, woman and child in America. Without such a claim, their power would be revealed exactly for what it is -- de facto supremacy.

No "divine right" holds Microsoft in their dominant market positon. Yet, it is inconceivable that any other organization might dislodge them from their leadership in the computer business.

Surely, the great lesson of the American Revolution is that our forebears were loathe to snip the bond of allegiance which bound them to George III and Parliament, even though these guys were an ocean away and ill-prepared to compel obedience by the American colonies. Whether, as a matter of law and justice, the dominant civic institution is viewed as the "sovereign" or merely the strongest alliance of free citizens, the utility of its traditional role in society will keep it afloat longer than any screwy theory of democratic or divinely-ordained social compacts. Neither Hobbes nor Rousseau, Locke, Hegel, Kant, Oliver Wendell Holmes, or Jerry Falwell has produced a convincing explanation of how I can be obligated to a contract I did not sign. It is stupid and vain to say that one man's consent binds another -- or binds a generation yet to be born.

Since the courts are creatures of government, is it silly to propose that "sovereignty" be somehow wiped clean from our law books?

Not necessarily.

Without reciting the complete history of American legal philosophy, it is highly significant that logic has been "wiped clean" from legal reasoning:

We are bound to remark that logic as an instrument of legal reasoning has grown unpopular of late. Any attempt to rehabilitate it is therefore unlikely to be received with a great deal of sympathy. The chief objection to logic in the law is usually expressed in the form that logical thought processes are rigid and inflexible, whereas legal reasoning is empirical and discretionary. This general distrust of logic is supported by three specific arguments: that decisions cannot be arrived at simply by deduction from existing legal principles, that legal rules are too fluid and uncertain to support logical inferences which could be drawn from them, and that the whole conception of law as a single, unitary, logically consistent system is at least an impractical ideal, if not an illusionary fetish. (Oxford Essays on Jurisprudence)

Law students enter and leave law school without learning a lot about justice -- they learn the tricks of a highly dubious craft: casuistry peppered with theatrical displays of imagined grievance. If such a course existed, our next generation of lawyers would be shocked to learn the truth about what was lost in the stampede toward "positive law" (i.e., the will of the sovereign).

17th-century theory had taken two directions. On the one hand it conceived of rights as the outgrowth of a social contract. It held that there would be none without the social organization and that there would be no justice or law without the political organization, that is, the state...

On the other hand, there was the Grotian idea of rights as qualities inhering in persons. This theory put rights above the state and justice above the state as permanent, absolute realities which the state was organized to protect. There was a state because there were rights and justice to protect and secure. In the 18th century the latter idea definitely prevailed...

18th century juristic thought, down to Kant, holds four propositions: (1) There are natural rights demonstrable by reason. These rights are eternal and absolute. They are valid for all men in all times and in all places. (2) Natural law is a body or rules, ascertainable by reason, which perfectly secures all of these natural rights. (3) The state exists only to secure men in these natural rights. (4) Positive law is the means by which the state performs this function, and it is obligatory only so far as it conforms to natural law. The appeal is to individual reason. Hence every individual is the judge of this conformity...

Pushed to its limits, this leads straight to anarchy. (Pound, 27 Harv. L. Rev., 616)

Pushed to its limits, it leads straight to the Declaration of Independence -- the fundamental charter of freedom which no longer speaks for the American people.

In a brief essay it is impossible to raise and analyse all the implications of an anarchist society. The questions, the paradigms, and the practical answers exist -- but the space does not. Fortunately, I can conclude this discussion by returning to a topic I promised to revisit when it was mentioned earlier -- the problem of war and peace.

It's clear that every one of us has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that -- whatever else the state has endeavoured to do on our behalf -- the purpose of national defense ranked first and foremost in the minds of the Founding Fathers.

Removing the concept of "sovereignty" will not impede the legal right of the United States, as an association of free citizens, to make war or conclude peace. It may or may not complicate the business of taxation -- with the likely result that our armed forces could not be deployed throughout the world, for the unearned benefit of other nations -- but I doubt that we would go wanting of strategic or tactical preparedness. Too many citizens and too many corporations have too much to lose by abandoning their agency of self-preservation.

But consider how much suffering and turmoil could have been avoided, had the United States not proclaimed itself the self-appointed arbiter of democracy.

No Civil War.

No grasping imperialism under Teddy Roosevelt.

No punitive Versailles Treaty to goad the Germans.

No global depression, prolonged by Federal manipulation of money and credit.

No hysterical division of the globe in the Cold War, forcing the Russians to arm themselves in parity with an adversary whom they had no hope of matching.

No "dollar diplomacy" aimed at pushing the Third World into copy-cat democracies they were ill-prepared to manage.

No Vietnam.

No half-hearted, wimpy indecision in Nicaragua, trading arms for hostages in Iran.

Our self-preservation is always a difficult factor to weigh. But history emphatically links social philosophy with foreign policy. It's about time we learned to practice the virtue of self-determination, both at home and abroad.

Stripping away the flag-waving illusion of "sovereign state" is an excellent way to begin. The U.S. Government is a power to be reckoned with, of course. But it is only a number of men, with no greater or lesser right to compel a social outcome than a single infant child of any race, color or creed.

If it is true, in a de facto sense, that "might makes right," it is equally true that civilization depends on the slow, steady growth of the rule of law. Blood-feuds and reprisals are too costly to persist. We need to settle our disputes by recourse to impartial tribunals.

And to be impartial, a court must have a basic principle upon which all men can agree. I say it is this: All men are created equal.

Our voluntary, consensual intercourse has never been a problem, and never will. Mankind's agony lies in bloody conflicts between people who cannot agree. You can pick up a club and threaten to bash my head in. You can join a gang, bent on taking my land and bread. You can issue an edict signed by 10,000 Hottentots or 10 million Jews. But nothing you can do or say will make it right to force someone to accede to a "social contract" which provides that his consent is unnecessary and irrelevant to an outcome that your gang intends to enforce.

Murder, by any other name, is still a crime.

Slavery is still slavery -- even when it is openly practiced by a "sovereign" in the name of the "public good."

Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens ... that the public good is disregarded in the conflict of rival parties; and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice, and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. (Madison, The Federalist)

Amen, brother, and pass me another round of intellectual ammunition. It's going to be a long war of attrition in the struggle for human rights.