Failed States

2021-08-06

Portland recently had a "letusworship" event, a Christian concert and group prayer thing. In order to pull it off, they had dozens of guys working security - in helmets, with armor and batons; as well as guys moving through the crowd ready to throw out bad guys.

Why would they need all this? Because any non-leftist gathering that takes place in portland is under threat of violence from BLM/antifa. And even at the end, scattered irate anarcho-communists tried to make trouble - and the security was in fact very necessary. It never escalated to the point of a brawl, but it’s precisely because the event had such good security (BLM tends to target single targets and stragglers, rarely do they try to victimize anyone unless it’s at least 5-on-1).

The inability of police to maintain a monopoly on violence, and the unwillingness of the city/state to protect its people and dispassionately enforce laws with a professional police force (anarcho-tyranny), to my mind is what defines a failed state. If the laws don’t matter and nobody will stop the bad guys from beating you and stealing your car, how else would you describe it?

This begs the question of me, as someone who wants to see a more free country, is this a bad thing?

How free

Some would argue that total anarchy (an absence of state) is the ultimate freedom. You can go anywhere, do anything! But I tend to find anarchy doesn’t work that way. In a vacuum of power, instead of staying classless and equal, the first thing people do is group up. We’re a tribal species, our strength lies not with individuals but with a collective. One man can be trivially killed in his sleep, but a tribe can watch for threats. Gangs are the first thing to rise from anarchy, and from them - governments.

This doesn’t sound like freedom to me; unaccountable gangs that can roam around and steal or harm on a whim. This sounds like totalitarianism by any other name. This is the fundamental paradox of freedom; absolute human freedom cannot exist, so we must have some form of government that maintains a monopoly on power, but which does not grow to be the very thing we sought to avoid (total authority).

In the case of Portland, BLM rolls around beating anyone it doesn’t like, threatening people in their homes, extorting people and doing everything it can to prevent its actions from being recorded. The state does not really hold a monopoly on mob violence - BLM does. If they don’t like that you’re praying in public, their morality police will come hurt you. That’s why the event mentioned above needed dozens of organized security to handle the threat.

Does this help freedom?

Ultimately, we have to chart a path from where we are to where we want to be. Some argue that the Portland model of anarcho-tyranny is actually a great start; people are free to do drugs, run around naked, pitch a tent where they want, yell and scream, and generally do all sorts of things the state would have never allowed. Is this not "more free?" Is this not a good starting place? Can we not tear it all down, and build something better from the ground?

I tend to disagree. Freedom is not threatened by local cops, freedom is threatened by unaccountable central authorities. In our case, feds and state governors. It’s not so different from the Revolution; our rulers were an ocean away, uninterested in our problems and increasingly just extracting as much money as they could from us. Is that really different from politicians in D.C. levying new taxes and bureaucrats making arbitrary new policies and restrictions, violating rights with impunity? People who are so accustomed to being in unquestioned power that the idea of an angry mob knocking down their door sends them into hysterics?

The federal government is the problem, not local cops. You could print out a list of federal agencies, tape it to the wall, throw a dart at it, and whichever one you hit will have committed a hundred egregious and unapologetic offences against people’s liberties. And generally, they segment and divide the country, such that any one group they screw over is a minority compared to the number of people who didn’t see it happen. They divide and conquer.

Local government is the answer to the problem of unaccountable government; you need a "single throat to choke", you need people from your neighborhood to be the ones that serve it as lawmakers. People who have to live in the locale they’re making laws for, people who don’t get kickbacks or backroom deals. People who you can vote out in a heartbeat if you and your neighbors don’t like what they’re doing. A government local enough that they can’t divide and conquer their people.

Portland and the feds

Supporters of anarcho-tyranny will point out that BLM spent months trying to burn down the federal building in Portland; they were certainly no fans of the fed. Does this not qualify as what I’m talking about? Is this not better?

I don’t know, that building is still there isn’t it?

BLM is no enemy of the feds. They’re not McVeigh going around bombing federal buildings and declaring a war against this supposed structure of oppression (that they say is slaughtering innocents by the thousands every day). They have every opportunity to do real damage to federal presence on their home turf and they do nothing - to say nothing of how much funding and manpower they had which could have resulted in serious damage to federal interests, but instead took the form of starting trash fires and throwing m80’s. They’re idiots with molotovs whose aspiration was limited to running the streets and punching neighbors they don’t like - it’s a gang.

But let’s rewind, violent action is probably not the right way to bring down federal power. BLM burning a federal building doesn’t meaningfully hurt the feds, it only causes them to seriously target BLM and imprison them for harming those in power (rather than keeping it limited to their neighbors). It wouldn’t have been a good idea for them to fight the feds, so is this not a smart strategy? Would supporters of BLM not argue that burning federal buildings isn’t the right way to do things?

These two points are mutually exclusive;

BLM spent months trying to burn the federal building, therefore they dont like the fed
Attacking the federal building is pointless, it doesnt reduce federal power

You have to either condemn BLM’s actions, or support them. You can’t argue both sides (as anarcho-tyrannists tend to do when talking about Portland).

This is not the way forward

The Portland model is a destruction of the best tool we have for accountable government - local government. In fact, it can be argued that this is exactly what an accountable government would do in the face of a growing anarchist population - dissolve itself. It worked!

But it does nothing to address federal power. It does nothing to protect people’s right to life. If you started a business, you’d still be subject to all the same taxes and regulations. If you tried to take your kid to school, they’re still be taught the federally-mandated curriculae. Your every move and communication is still tracked by the intelligence agencies. You still can’t buy things the feds interpret as a threat to their power. Your money is still floating at the whim of central banks, devalued every year by new bills. And by the way, they’ve been spending the last two years trying to get vaccine passports, fashion mandates, and a host of social control measures to be permanent. You’re still screwed.

Portland is a step in the wrong direction.