gov't shutdown - hardly an anarchist dream

[Michael Bailey]

http://wagingnonviolence.org/2013/10/government-shutdown-anarchist-dream/

    The piece states: "In his complaints against the wing of the
Republican Party that engineered the present government shutdown,
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid derided his opponents as 'Tea Party
anarchists.' It’s hard to decide who should be more annoyed -- the Tea
Party or the anarchists. In any case, Reid’s remark is revealing of
how the long tradition of anarchist philosophy has been thrown under
the bus of U.S. political discourse, then rolled over, then dragged
along in mangled form so as to be pointed at when doing so seems
expedient.

"....Rather than seeking an end to all forms of oppression, our
libertarians want to do away with only the government kind, leaving
the rest of us vulnerable to the forces of corporate greed, racial
discrimination, and environmental destruction. The legacy of one
firebrand Russian émigré, Emma Goldman, has been traded for that of
another, Ayn Rand. The result is that, in this country, what was once
the mainstream of libertarian thought -- socialist, democratic
anarchism -- has become so forgotten that the word 'anarchist' can be
mishandled for the sake of a congressional jab."
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l