Wednesday, April 8, 2009

The Free And The Unashamed

With a hat tip to Wendy McElroy's blog, this:
= A Declaration of Separation =

==== To The Governments & People of Earth: ====
We claim the right to exist, and we will defend it. We do not seek to overthrow anything. We do not seek to control anything. We merely wish to be left alone. All we ever wanted was to live in peace with our friends and neighbors. For a long, long time we bore insults to our liberty; we took blows, we did what we could to avoid injury and we worked through the system to get the offenses to stop. That has now changed.We no longer see any benefit in working through the world’s systems. At some point, working within a system becomes cowardly and immoral; for us, that point has arrived. Regardless of the parties in power, their governments have continued to restrict, restrain and punish us. We hereby reject them all. We hereby withdraw from them all. We hold the ruling states of this world and all that appertains to them to be self-serving and opposed to humanity. We now withdraw our obedience and reclaim the right to strike back when struck. We will not initiate force, but we do reserve the right to answer it. We did not choose this – it was forced upon us.

It goes on at substantial length; I read it all, which in itself is unusual because there are many such things floating around the tubz and I almost always hit some philosophical roadblock or the writer just exceeds my boredom threshold. But I did read this one through, and then again more carefully, and can't honestly say I found anything much to quibble with...except.

Except, well, what's the point exactly? I don't do manifestos. I really don't know what they're for. If an established group were seceding from a larger group, then a statement ala the Declaration of Independence makes sense. But an anonymous declaration, in the name of an amorphous "we" - I'm not sure I get it.

Still, as I said, I found little in the actual content with which to quibble. You might want to give it a read. Some people I know to be good folks are commenting.

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