Behold the State incarnate I came across a pretty good non-hysterical description of anarchy today; it avoids the pitfall of many anarchist articles of being asolutely convinced that socialist or capitalist anarchy is the 'true anarchy', and instead talks about anarchy as simply the absence of a ruler. Kauffman cements this detente by bookending anarchy as socialist and capitalist voluntarism with quotes from Peter Kropotkin and Karl Hess, and then going on to describe America as having more of an anarchist flavor than philosophy.

But mostly this entry is an excuse for me to quote a poem by Ernest Crosby that Kauffman dredged up:

They talked much of the State—the State.
I had never seen the State, and I asked them to picture it to me, as my gross mind could not follow their subtle language when they spake of it.
Then they told me to think of it as of a beautiful goddess, enthroned and sceptred, benignly caring for her children.
But for some reason I was not satisfied.
And once upon a time, as I was lying awake at night and thinking, I had as it were a vision,
And I seemed to see a barren ridge of sand beneath a lurid sky;
And lo, against the sky stood out in bold relief a black scaffold and gallows-tree, and from the end of its gaunt arm hung, limp and motionless, a shadowy, empty noose.
And a Voice whispered in my ear, “Behold the State incarnate!”  ¶ 12:40 PM