Monday, May 16, 2011

This is why I don't call myself an anarchist.

Nobody seems to know what that means.
For some Greeks, like Nikos Galanos, a 20-year-old chain-smoking in an Exarchia cafe, the anarchist movement has become an outlet for anger. Last year, during a wave of government cutbacks, Galanos’s mother lost her job as a guard at the ancient Acropolis perched above Athens. His father, also a government worker, saw his salary slashed by 15 percent and must now labor more years before meeting the retirement age, boosted last year to an average age of 63.
Here's a hint, though: If you're angry at the government because it isn't giving you enough stuff...You're not an anarchist.

7 comments:

LJH said...

I'm angry at the @#$%ing government because it @#$%ing exists, do I qualify?

Brass said...

Ding, ding, ding! Give both of these posters a cigar.

Ken said...

Don't let the spoiled libertines steal and sully a perfectly useful term!

That said, I don't call myself an anarchist either...but in my case it's because I can't quite settle on whether I'm an anarchist or a Jeffersonian.

Anonymous said...

I'm just a leave me the hell alone and I'll do the same for you-ist.

Buck.

Anonymous said...

I have never thought of myself as an anarchist. Since reading Heinlein’s “Moon is a Harsh Mistress” a long time ago I like to think I am a “rational anarchist.” I, alone, am able to figure out what I can stand vis-à-vis the laws, rules, regulations etcetera, etcetera and what I can’t. I know that I am responsible for my actions and live my life that way.

What the good people in Europe and America have not figured out is that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. What will do us in is not “Planet X,” it will be the domino effect of nations falling under the weight of their debt.

Ken said...

Not for anyone here, but for passers-by: Anarchy doesn't mean "no rules," it means "no rulers" (no archon).

winston said...

Hence why I never use that word. True story, condensed for brevity:

Anarchist organizer: The government is suppressing freedom of thought!
Me: Yeah!
AO: And it's turning our free land into a police state!
Me: Lets get those bastards!
AO: And it isn't funding art and music in our schools!
Me: Ye...uh wait what?
AO: And their capitalist system is oppressing women and using animals as FOOOD!!!
Me: Excuse me, I'm just gonna slip out the back door now...