Independent News and Politics

I’ve mentioned that its getting hard to even talk about politics without stirring up a controversy and making someone angry, but a recent post at Infoshop is really making the rounds and sparking a verbal conflict across the web.  Its even a fairly muted post with some constructive suggestions, but its being treated by some on the right as an act of war.

Beyond reinforcing some of the typical left-right stereotypes, the idea of the post is that political anarchists should show up to the big tea party rally on April 15th and counter-protest or engage individuals in discussion & possibly draw them into other political activity that hasn’t necessarily been hijacked by undertones of racism and neo-conservative economic policy (Feed the poor… to the rich!)

Tea party bloggers jumped on the post immediately and interpreted this plan as some kind of organization for a violent confrontation.  Much misunderstanding and some vague threats later, and it looks like this rally on the 15th is going to end up being prepared around the paranoia of “infiltration.”  Everyone thinks everyone else is a government plant or agent provocateur, and we can be sure that any violence or vandalism that occurs at the event will be widely blamed on “the other team.”

Of course, the “teams” aren’t even that accurately defined, and some people sympathetic to philosophical anarchism are also upset about the post:

Not trying to totally derail this discussion, but what’s wrong with being a “gun freak?” Plenty of us left-leaning @ types have guns. Lots of democrats, for crying out loud, have guns.

And another:

I hear on the grapevine that real liberty activists are being attacked and driven out by the corporatist shills as they transform it into a conservative populist platform. Tea Party is probably lost now to the fascist/corporatist horde, but at one point it had a strong showing of an-caps, agorists, constitutionalists, minarchists and libertarians

You can’t please all of the people all of the time – and in times like these, we just can’t seem to please any one at all.

With so much talk about war and peace prizes, there hasn’t been much discussion of the recently awarded Nobel Prize in economics.  Elinor Ostrom was co-awarded the prize for her recent studies of public, or common property.

What may seem counter-intuitive and shocking to many isn’t likely to be a surprise for many libertarians and anarchists.

Land does not need to be owned or actively managed by a central bureau; in fact, the keys to upkeep in public spaces has more to do with local engagement, clear and simple rules, and peer to peer dispute resolution.  None of this particularly requires rulers or authority of any kind, except that of the arbitration of disputes between individuals.  Importantly though, this does not require the creation of a state and its own subjective interests, it just requires that all involved parties feel an objective consideration of the case has taken place.

Spontaneous order arises in the seemingly chaotic universe around us.  Complex social institutions and civilizations are no exception, and that which is built from the roots to the sky cannot be planned from the top down.