The Myth of National Defense
Butler Shaffer at LewRockwell.com - anarchists are well-versed in the fact that we don't need the state for roads, schools, or hospitals. Many have not given up the false impression that we need it for "national defense". Mr. Shaffer blows that misconception out of the water. [lew]
My initial response to such hesitancy is to point out that a strong, national government makes us more vulnerable to attack and invasion. The state serves not as a shield that protects us, but a jugular vein that provides others with a central target to be subdued. If men and women have been foolish enough to identify themselves with a nation-state, such attachments make it easy for their governments to transfer their compliant herds to another power. Consider how easily Hitler and Stalin were able -- in some cases within a matter of days -- to subdue neighboring lands, acquiring in the processes of surrender people already well-trained in the duties of obedience.
Imagine, by contrast, the difficulties that would be faced by any political system intent on invading and subduing men and women already accustomed to liberty. If the Chinese government was intent on conquering a stateless America, how would it go about doing so? If shiploads of trained soldiers arrived in Los Angeles, for example, where would they go to bring about a surrender of the population? There would be no mayor, governor, or president to surrender a collective horde to such external forces. Knowing that whatever defenses they had to such an attack rested upon themselves, millions of individuals would doubtless devise their own methods of protection. The invading soldiers would have to go door-to-door in an effort to subdue Angelenos. Local people do not take kindly to being invaded and occupied, and will vigorously resist same, a truth that is being rediscovered in places like Iraq, whose state army was long ago disbanded. The inability of governments to effectively resist invasions and attacks has been well-demonstrated in the continuing immigration of Central Americans into America -- people who come for peaceful purposes -- as well as the attacks of 9/11. That otherwise intelligent beings can continue to sanction the looting of trillions of dollars in furtherance of the illusion that the state is protecting them in some way, is a testament to how well their minds have been conditioned by their masters!
