RE: End The Hyphenate War: A Clarification Of Rights & Reality
Deny that networks and the concepts necessary to access them exist all you like, they will not go away. At the end of the day, most people reject anarchy, even those who would respect individual rights in a way that would give anarchists 99% of what they claim to want. That anarchists can't see this, what Thoreau saw so clearly, emboldens and empowers the state. In effect, the existing state has bent all anarchists to its will by weeding out the few who had an intelligent approach, and leaving the idiots behind to seed the network with isolationism and non-participation "political relinquishment" memes.
I worked for the Libertarian Party until I realized they were VERY SUCCESSFULLY infiltrated by the FBI. In fact, the single person making every important decision in the LP is an FBI agent, or GOP agent, or central bank agent, or compromised. ...Whatever. It doesn't matter who he's working for: It matters what he does.
...And the things he does cannot result in individual freedom. In fact, they appear to be carefully calculated to make certain individual freedom does not accidentally arise from the party's ballot access activism structure.
This is also true of the anarchist armies on the internet who counsel a form of "technological relinquishment" known correctly as "political relinquishment" but which they claim is "principled non-voting." (...Very ironically, since many claim to be Agorists, and agorists themselves supposedly favor pursuing freedom directly by technological means. They don't realize that stupid, unphilosophical nodes in a network are governed by network laws, not the laws that govern "individualists." Moreover, they fail to recognize that electoral systems, civics classes, and knowledge of proper jury structure are all forms of cybernetic technology themselves.)
For more on these ideas, I strongly recommend Kevin Kelly's book "Out of Control" and Norbert Wiener's "The Human Use of Human Beings."
I think what you fail to realize is that freedom is irrespective of society. Even with the 'state' in full swing, freedom still exists because the 'state' is nothing more than a fog that serves to obscure the nature of reality, we're already free.
I don't need the 'state' to crumble in order to be an anarchist or have 'anarchy' in my life. It's really as simple as ceasing to acknowledge the 'state' as a real thing. The agents may be real, but, just as you would avoid and deny power to thugs and 'despots' in anarchy, you avoid and deny agents of the 'state' because they are, literally, thugs and 'despots' pretending power and authority.
And there's something I think you fail to consider that Thoreau could not anticipate, global interconnectivity and the ability to circumvent political control of information and communication. I don't doubt that we will never achieve a truly 'stateless' society and even if we did, in a generation or three, it would begin to give way to a new 'state'.
But the realization that you will likely not succeed, in part or full, to the extent you desire if at all, is no reason to give up on what you believe is right.
I also agree that division among anarchists is great, as it is in any group, and that this serves the 'state'. But there is a movement within that community to cast aside the divisions in favor of spreading the idea that people own themselves.
In regards to the LP, as with any other 'wing' of the poltical system, it is my personal belief(and it is shared with a great many others) that the LP and 'minarchy'(not to say the current LP is for anything of the sort) is little more than a promise of low hanging fruits: "here's a little liberty, but you still need to be ruled and owned."
There are many problems and many hurdles that must be overcome, within and without the anarchist communities, but at the end of the day, for the individuals, all it takes is the acceptance of the fact that we are already free and the courage to act like it.
I can't argue with most of what you've said. I like to think I am fairly practical and objective, even in contrast to my own desires and goals. But, again, I think you fail the exponential growth the movement for 'anarchy' has experienced over the last decade or so. I firmly believe this growth is directly tied to the last few attempts by the 'state' to take control of the internet because what I believe you are ignoring, that Thoreau could not anticipate, is the free-sharing of ideas and information on the internet.