Anarchy is the epitome of love, kindness, charity, empathy, and compassion. It is all these things because they are all done voluntarily. The best things in life are done voluntarily. Forced love is rape. Forced charity is a mugging. Forced compliance is slavery. When one is coerced into obedience by the threat of violent punishment all virtue dissipates and the transaction degenerates into that of a common thief and his victim. To live one’s life and interact with others based on force and coercion is to be empty and spiritually alone.

All things we value in our lives arise from voluntary associations and dissociations. These include who we choose to date, where we choose to live, what we choose to eat, what we choose to wear, what profession we choose to study, what we choose to learn, what time we choose wake in the morning and sleep at night. The extent that we are able to decide how to lead our lives is the extent to which true freedom and happiness exists in each of us.

Anarchy is to be celebrated in all its manifestations. Anarchy is the default state of humanity, not centrally planned regimes. This may be proven by witnessing the monumental technological achievements that have lifted humanity out of crippling poverty and near starvation. This is testament to the massive skill of man’s ingenuity, creativity, and imagination. All this was achieved without guns, violence, laws, regulations, and taxation. All this was achieved not because of “government” but in spite of it.

It is the measure of the state’s success that the word ‘anarchy’ frightens people and the word ‘state’ does not.

Joseph Sobran