#rationalanarchism
First: my personal politics is #Autarchism, defined "rule of Self by Self", and is formed of similar logic, yet is outside this scope. Also I'm not personally "anti-statist" to any practical degree: most 1st world nation-states are at least tolerable, fairly humane, and also pretty good at wealth distribution and services like food availability, advanced economics, suppressing crime and war.
"Rational anarchism" is a political theory that derives its rationality from a few provable truths.
1: "Government is force" - mis-attributed to Washington. All states attempt to create a "legitimate force monopoly" towards both external (army) and internal (police) perceived threats.
2: "Reason ends where a gun begins" - me. The threat of violence - whether implied or overt - is an admission of the failure of rational persuasion in favor of the expediency of pain, incapacitation, and maximally termination, or the fear thereof.
3: "The seat of volition resides wholly in the individual" - me. Whether via persuasion or threat of force the decision to obey or disobey is made by the individual exclusively. "Free will".
4: "All kings are not" - me. It is entirely primatology, humans exhibit learned pattern behavior and problem solving, one solution is statism and "rules" and thus "rulers" - but they are still merely humans controlling only themselves until others consent to obey - they are not special, not "divine", and not "true": merely a name we give to some humans to facilitate the fiction.
Anarchism means "no kings" more properly than no leaders, rules, nation states, or acquired wisdoms. It does not mean "chaos".
Rational means it is reality-based and can be proven using science.
In short: the "divine right of kings" is an evolved memetic response to social disorder. Memes, however, are not temes, and however effective they may be at solving some real problem, they cannot be said to be scientific or true.
Another short observation: that "anarchy" is nigh synonymous with "chaos" is an constructed memetic defense by kings against the truth, it is "spin" at best, slanderous, and ultimately a grift. To keep the crown the kings lie to threaten you with "chaos" if you have "anarchistic" thoughts. "If you do not place me on a throne society cannot function". Would that work for a car advertisement? If you do not buy our brand of ketchup chaos will ensue? "Rulers" get off on the power, unlike leaders, and they are willing to lie to keep the grift of wealth and honors and the rest.
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1: A legitimate force monopoly is created by using written words to declare a single lawful administrator of violence both internally and external to a polity. It is predicated on the presumptions of irrational actors and the utility of punishment, incapacitation, and murder as solutions. It does not presume the consent of the governed, human rights, economics, or rational actors. It requires only violent people with actual guns who want to be protected from retaliation by the veneer of words. It does not in fact require irrational actors or enemies of the People, it only requires the polity believe in them more than they dislike their soldiers and cops.
A state is created in this way: it's merely a tribe or a village until the monopoly exists and the words justify it.
And this is how nation-states and kings came to exist. Apparently semi-nomadic tribes settled around consistent resources and acquired enough luxury to have time to reason proto-rational solutions to experiential negatives. Food storage, specialization of labor and thus technologies like housing and clothing, language and new words for these new ideas, and thus wisdom borne of age and experience came to be valuable.
As per predators both human and otherwise, the stronger and wiser man became likely to triumph over the merely strong man or lion, and one of these wisdoms is the self-realization of strength and wisdom, that there is truth in learning truths, in surviving and thriving, in listening to wisdom and observing and replicating successful behaviors. Thus "military leaders" were created: whether in hunt or in defense from marauders the more knowledgeable and organized tribe tended to win violent confrontations including when outnumbered.
While always present it became moral to impose violence on one's own tribe where expedient, and the mechanism was already in place: the hunters had become soldiers and could effectively police "problematic anti-social" tribe members with violence. As this was usually a practical net social benefit the proverbial marriage of words, violence, and "wise old men" took it's current form: break the Law and get punched, jailed, or killed... "legally".
Whether right or wrong the monopoly had become fact: it became possible to "enforce laws", and old "strong" men were the source of the alleged wisdoms and arbiters of any rules.
In some traditions the laws were attributed to G_d, in some they are distinctly of human origin, but either way now existed soldiers and cops, command structures for both, rank and office, national identity, codification of laws first orally then written, and proto-rational justifications to and acceptance of "rulers" by the polity.
Fast forward to George Washington and nothing has changed except the verbiage surrounding the justifications: it is still the same force monopoly, and the legitimacy of whatever laws are debatable to some limited degree, and the "wise old men" have grown very accustomed to their luxuries and honors... in fact so much so they have lied many times and misused the monopoly in many heinous ways to maintain "power".
Whereas few internally had a problem with the murder of foreigners, wars are not unpopular except with the soldiers and their families, yet frequently the worst punishments are reserved for "traitors", whether to "the people", state, or king. As Lady Ruby stated it is not pleasant when the leader of your country singles you out as an example of disloyalty.
Hence (allegedly) Washington's warning: "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."
Whether or not he actually wrote or said this: it is true. No matter how eloquently reasoned, ultimately the state is a tautology, the self justification of the cabal's "right" to use force to preserve itself first, and maybe you too, taxpayer.
I mention taxes as that's the mechanism: the cabal is paid for by everyone not in it, including foreigners via theft, but internally via "eloquent reasoning" mostly, and also via guns and jails. If you do not pay your taxes you go to a jail built with your money and ostensibly for your benefit by the cabal that then pays themselves to run it, and the courts, and the senates, etcetera. And these wise old men frequently evade taxes, and pay to have laws written to codify their advantages. Whether this has social utility is a different question - you can use a rock to pound nails - but is it optimal? Rational? Temetic?
It is a grift: a way to eat with other people's money, using fancy language and a lot of guns, and of questionable utility in reality.
2: The application of force onto any rational sentience is an explicit admission of one's failure to persuade same. If you kill a cow for food or a tiger for sport you are admitting you could not talk them into giving you their flesh or their skin. Spanking a child, whether moral, is a common way of training proto-rational sentiences to behave where persuasion is not yet possible.
Cuffs and jails restrain and isolate individuals, ostensibly to protect us from irrational actors, e.g.: those who cannot be persuaded to obey the "laws" of any polity. Yet consider the history and ask: is this always the case, is it even the majority of cases?
A rational anarchist can accept the proposition and reality of irrational actors committing "crimes" to the detriment of others, and thus concede the practical utility of a state, while also observing the behavior of the state in terms of its honesty, errors, and proper economic utility.
That #blacklivesmatter is such a popular meme is because it is also true: it is the truth manifesting itself in protest of the lie that "old white men" are the same as the "old wise men" that the state is - not presumed - but promised to be. The observable history of the american state includes vast racisms as well as oligarchy and plutocracy, that is: the cabal abused the Law for their self preservation, and misapplied laws to serve their interests, including legally codifying racial (and otherwise) underclasses over which to rule, to abuse and exploit.
Whether the confederacy, lynchings, or January 6th the violence started where the persuasion ended: the uppity negroes of old and Biden's factual win are the truths that threatened the cabal du jour by exposing their illegitimacy, i.e.: their behavior not matching the words of the laws. Only a small percentage of americans believe the 2020 election was "stolen", and so the emperor had no clothes... and had to ad hoc an "army" and thus why Treason should be charged.
3: To state it the other way: "and how is your gun going to make me do that?"
Neither the gun, the badge, or a law is capable of choice; the incitement to riot is incapable of causing an individual to riot if they choose not to; the choice to drive over the speed limit is not made by the road sign, the radar gun, nor the officer. No amount of ignorance or misinformation changes this: it is the individual human mind that chooses action or inaction, and the guns and jails (and laws and judges) are overtly mechanical responses to prevent certain actors from "antisocial" choices.
Claims of spirits, spells, mind control, and psyops can seem persuasive but have little objective proof. Short of external electrodes on muscles it is apparently impossible to make a human move their arm without their active choice at some level. It is claimed G_d "gave us free will", yet this is also merely the observation of our factual free will and one explanation for it. The internal electrodes - the brain, electro-chemistry - make a booty shake is the what the science appears to show.
The "chooser" of your actions is you and you alone, via your body chemistry, as informed by your beliefs.
As an aside, this is why psyops exist: to misinform your beliefs.
But let us observe the Tiananmen Square "tank man". Not even a very large gun, not even hundreds of them in a row, could make that man's choice for him. Not the communist party, not the civilian residents, no-one: volition resides in the individual.
Or how about the man who runs from a cop? Did he shoot himself in the back? Did he raise the cop's gun and pull the trigger? Did he "force" the cop to shoot by running away from violence?
Volition resides in the individual.
This truth is important in several ways. First: you "own" your actions and their results, as a matter of survival as well as Law. Two: no appeal to groups or "culture" is valid - "they" cannot and did not "make" you do anything. Three: ignorance is no excuse - if you accidentally fall off a cliff it in no way obligates me who did not to jump off, or to build a railing, or pay for same. Four: our so-called cabal is a collection of individual volitions, "government" is just a name they and usually we call them, and even in "lawful hierarchies of command" the actions that result are attributable to one or several individual choices, and all subsequent individual actors choosing.
Political rhetoric that obfuscates this, or says the opposite ("the country/party/enemy/poor" as groups), is flat out wrong, period, end sentence. It is not scientific, it is not true, and while it may be a convenient shortcut it is still wrong, often poorly reasoned, and frequently a known willful lie.
Whether Bernie says "college students want", or MTG says "half of americans" it simply isn't a true statement. And, as your volition is solely yours, it is upon you how much untruth you will allow your wise old men to convenience into their explanations of their behaviors.
And on this truth rests another that is contextually central. Drop all the rhetoric and ask: is this policy wise? If not, you personally have a "political" problem: you are wiser than your wise men, yet you will be punished for your better solution, if you have a "ruler" versus "an executive".
The President of the United States of America is an employee, hopefully a superlative one, and thus our system is on-paper fundamentally a "progressive" enterprise, conserving very little except the ability for every citizen to make progress, and by economics internationally as well.
"I am your King" is a lie so egregious it requires a police force to uphold, whereas employees usually do not need to take up arms to get their payroll.
4: Anarchism, then, is essentially a refutation of the idea that old men know what they're doing better than anyone else. There's some truth in that idea, historically some of our wisest have been older educated men, and also women, but also younger and of different skin tone or sexual orientation to name a few.
Oscar Wilde is no less a genius for being rather notoriously gay. Ketanji Brown Jackson is no less brilliant for being a slightly darker skinned female homo sapiens sapiens - the aforementioned MTG is a whole lot whiter and vastly stupider - unfit for office even, but I digress.
Earlier I also mentioned Autarchism, and that is what most will think of Anarchism, that is: no external government, anti-statism, exclusively non-violent solutions for everything, and as a function of what is practical for any given "tribe" such as they exist locally. Though it's got a bad rap lately (via bad actors) this used to be called radical libertarianism, or better ancap/ansoc, i.e.: anarcho-capitalism and anarcho-socialism, e.g.: provide goods and services via voluntary economic profit versus via voluntary charity. Rule of Self as a function of the benefits of a rational society.
The above includes the ideas of volition being individual, that people can make good choices and be rational and peaceful, that old men can be wrong and frequently lie, and that people act irrationally and can endanger others, and adds only that what works BEST overall is persuasion, and using the force of government is a less rational solution by definition, and thus less moral, and unpleasant for all but the sadists... and that said sadists observably and problematically exist. Autarchism is for those who do not need laws to behave in socially acceptable ways 99% of the time, and can be persuaded for the remainder, or at least be persuaded to do it in private and not scare the horses.
And thus Anarchism is a refutation of the political theory of kings per se, of rulers, of authors of laws and enforcers being factually required for societies to exist in peace, of armies to protect from invaders. It does not prohibit democracies enforcing laws, it doesn't prefer or even imply chaos or lawlessness or disorder or crime. It merely says no-one is born special nor can be raised to be faultless, and thus pyramidic command structures are not intrinsically superior. Thus "rational anarchism" is temetic, it is true and provably the superior tool for the job.
And for a #5 to close, a rational anarchist is anti-authoritarian, but not anti-authority. As the word implies the "author" is some human, and the standard of the utility of whatever law is reality... not some fiat legalese from some inbred figurine of a genetic memory of a functioning alpha male. A law should and will be what is most efficacious towards the benefit of the polity, and people will leave the bad ones for the good ones, as they usually do if they can.
Can you think of an old man who recently, when confronted with the loss of the luxury of the power to use legitimate force, lied and used illegitimate force to attempt to hold on to power? I bet you can, and Putin is the same type of liar in a somewhat different circumstance, and the 2022 midterms were filled with open liars - most of whom lost. Some humans have evolved beyond needing "rulers", and humanity will eventually too, and though some semblance of the pomp and ceremony is likely to exist for millennia, in practical effect King Charles III is a figurehead who is responsible for little practical command.
This is the intrinsic flaw in the State: after achieving a force monopoly some humans are tempted to misuse it, and thus seek the chance. The first step is refuting the atemetic mythos of god-king rulers, the second is participating in the various attempts at democracy as works-in-progress, and the third step is learning how to behave acceptably in any society without needing a cop or soldier to scare you into compliance. Rational anarchism does not contain this flaw, it is tolerant of experiments in "state-like" structures, and only requires any such experiments to be - if not perfect or even an improvement on the human condition - at least internally consistent with their own legalese. The real problems have always been aggression, then "crime" per se, then the crimes of the cabal itself... in the context of "tribal" wealth redistribution and overall quality of life.
Rulers will eventually resort to violence if challenged, leaders have no need for power over others - insomuch as your society requires laws and cops employ the latter if you want optimal performance.