Anarchism says, Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will
be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be
free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not
mean abuse, nor liberty license"; and they will define and define
freedom out of existence. Let the guarantee of free speech be in every
man's determination to use it, and we shall have no need of paper
declarations. On the other hand, so long as the people do not care to
exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for
tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of
any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon
sleeping men.
The problem then becomes, Is it possible to stir men from their
indifference? We have said that the spirit of liberty was nurtured by
colonial life; that the elements of colonial life were the desire for
sectarian independence, and the jealous watchfulness incident thereto;
the isolation of pioneer communities which threw each individual
strongly on his own resources, and thus developed all-around men, yet at
the same time made very strong such social bonds as did exist; and,
lastly, the comparative simplicity of small communities.
All this has mostly disappeared. As to sectarianism, it is only by dint
of an occasional idiotic persecution that a sect becomes interesting; in
the absence of this, outlandish sects play the fool's role, are anything
but heroic, and have little to do with either the name or the substance
of liberty. The old colonial religious parties have gradually become the
"pillars of society," their animosities have died out, their offensive
peculiarities have been effaced, they are as like one another as beans
in a pod, they build churches and--sleep in them.
As to our communities, they are hopelessly and helplessly
interdependent, as we ourselves are, save that continuously diminishing
proportion engaged in all around farming; and even these are slaves to
mortgages. For our cities, probably there is not one that is provisioned
to last a week, and certainly there is none which would not be bankrupt
with despair at the proposition that it produce its own food. In
response to this condition and its correlative political tyranny,
Anarchism affirms the economy of self-sustenance, the disintegration of
the great communities, the use of the earth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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