Our Government is Not Our Country

A country is people, places and things.  It is held together by relationships among the people.  A country may have governments, but those are always lower order things.

A person may live in an apartment, and he has a way he manages, governs, that apartment.  He may head out to the park to play a game of chess with someone he meets there.  The game of chess has a government.  The game of chess is played in a park that has a government, whether private or otherwise.  Afterwards he meets a friend for lunch at a restaurant, which has its own government.  

He may belong to a church, which has its own government.  He may belong to a mens club like the rotary, which too has its own government.  Time was most people belonged to some such group, and that is where they got their health care and any insurance they needed.  Libraries once were universally private, with their own governments.  Some of the finest libraries in the world are still on this model.

Corporations used to be governments of something like a bridge or a mill.  Water districts today are on this model.  70% of the fire fighters in USA are self-governing volunteers.  Every bit as qualified as paid city version, if not superior for their independence.

When we think of governments, we think of "the entity in a given territory with a monopoly on violence."  People act as if that has always been the case.  That definition comes from about 1910, and it was prospective even then.

Governments come and go, change, and why not, they are lower order things.  What we commonly call government we do not even need.  The USA of today is nothing like the USA of 1800.  We have some vestiges of that when we say with a straight face "federal taxes are voluntary" or "the right to vote" or "congress shall make no law..."   

Anarchy means "no + king" and applies to the state as well.  Anarchists are all for government, as long as it is voluntary, such as the examples above. Anarchists are not against government, they are only against fraud and violence which is the only reason the state exists, to concentrate fraud and violence in a few hands.

Our country is what it is and depends on persons places and things.  Ands some people believe it depends on God.  If you think that, then read 1 Samuel 8.

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