"the immiserating orderings of society have never been voted away, but that electoralism—for all the plaintive promises that we can both rabble-rouse and ballot-box—has regularly served as a mechanism of capture for potentially transformative social movements."

Some history on the anarchist tradition of abstention candidates

"As to the anarchist position that universal suffrage did not legitimize authority, it is worth taking seriously. ... Even if we disagree that authority is never legitimate and Dewey’s self-aware public has been achieved, not all uses of authority — especially when it comes to state violence — can be justified by the vote. To do so would be to treat suffrage as a mythical unquestioned good rather than a reasonable choice."

The only consistent market anarchist position: dynamic price signals coupled with looting.

And really, the only way markets could ever even approximate their claims of efficient distribution in societies with poverty is if some people get things for free.

The 1A radio program on NPR gave anarchism a fair spot.

On the whole I thought several of the questions and answers were good, and it was nice that they got actual anarchist writers to go on. Though I think I disagree with William C.'s first answer. He implies that revulsion to anarchism is based on a misconception that mistakes the anarchist terrorists from a hundred years ago as the entirety of anarchism. But I don't think there is any level of peacefulness that would make anarchism palatable to those who can't see beyond their present society. If the Galleanists had never set off any bombs, Trump would still be seeking to demonize anarchism, because it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a someone who is rich to enter an anarchist society.

The New Testament includes several passages that warn against false teachers and express frustration that the earliest Christian communities are so easily taken in by lies. That this has been an ongoing problem since the beginning, for almost 2,000 years, makes me almost suspect that the people who are attracted to Christianity tend to be people who are attracted to any old nonsense that makes them feel like they have been given privileged knowledge.

This is an audio documentary series. I've listened to the first two episodes. It is well produced, and I understand Trump a tiny bit better now.

Many inspiring quotations in this article (1907):

"it is the very ones who declaim so unceasingly about “law and order” who are themselves the corrupters of the nation’s morals, the buyers of its legislatures, the polluters of its courts, the defilers of its elec-torate, the stealers of its public domain, and the heartless vampires that suck the lifeblood of the people."

"Treason to despotism is devotion to freedom. “Law and order” is a phrase mouthed by hypocrites to command the obedience of cowards."

"The capitalist class buys law, as it does labor, using the one to fleece the other, and what it means by “law and order” is cringing submission to slavery."

"'Law and order' is the wand of the imposter, the mask of the robber. Beware of him who ceaselessly gabbles about the sanctity of the law."

"John Brown, were he living today and saw the slaves in the pits and mills and their babes in the sweatshops, would again don the panoply of battle and swear death to wage-slavery. Were he living today he would be hated and persecuted as fiercely as he was by the chattel slave aristocracy half a century ago. But he is dead. And the ruling class against which he rebelled, the ruling class which put him to death and which he cannot now resist, seizes him as one of its own heroes and insults his memory by en-rolling his name in its calendar of saints."

"the idle owners, by the mere fact of ownership, get most of what the miners produce. The workers have submitted to this exploitation long and patiently, but the limit has about been reached. Why should they have to deliver up to others the wealth they produce? Why not themselves enjoy the fruit of their own labor?"

"Chattel slavery has disappeared. Wage-slavery has yet to be conquered. The struggle has already begun. There can be no compromise and no retreat"

"The wage system has only slavery for the working class and oft-times even that is denied them. It has served its time and purpose and must soon be abolished. The workers do not need masters; they can and must be their own."

"We are the 70. The Kingdom of God is the closest thing to an anti-state that the world will ever know. It exists not to serve itself, but to serve others; it does not conquer through violence or coercion, but multiplies by the force of love’s invitation. We reap what we sow. Jesus sowed a revolution not in others’ blood, but in his own, and for our sake."

Takes a bit of a wild turn at the end.

The genesis of the Gadsden flag comes from a May 1751 editorial cartoon from Ben Franklin’s newspaper. It ran alongside a story calling for colonial governments to unify, act as one.

Today, it means almost the opposite.

This American Life did an episode about Brandon Darby

Maybe too focused on Preston specifically, but I think this 2011 article is a good reminder for libertarians that not all decentralism is liberating.

Preston's (2-part) response is here: https://attackthesystem.com/2011/06/28/a-reply-to-matthew-lyons-part-two-the-subjectivity-of-authoritarianism-and-special-pleading-as-ideology/

This friendly criticism of "insurrectionary anarchism" from a 2010 issue of Rolling Thunder is good and I think can almost act as an introduction to anarchism in general. So far my favorite CrimethInc thing I've read.

Good article in the Austin Chronicle from 2009 on Brandon Darby

The religion founded by John the Baptist?

Local protests began in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area of Minnesota before quickly spreading nationwide and in over 2,000 cities and towns in over 60 countries in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Protests continued throughout June, July, and August, with polls at the time estimating that between 15 million and 26 million people had participated at some point in the demonstrations in the United States, making the protests the largest in United States history.

On what it means to be grill pilled. "Basically, just a few people treating each other decently is about all we can hope for."

I recently discovered Daniel Walden's book reviews on Current Affairs.

"the world at which we aim, the kingdom whose coming Christ proclaimed, will not settle our debts and contracts but abolish them completely; that even those who didn’t join the struggle until the eleventh hour will be welcome at the feast; that the moment at which love appears utterly defeated, when it looks to the world like a victim crucified by state violence, will in the end be revealed as love’s final, all-embracing triumph."

Pete Davis talks to Josh Davis of the newly-founded Institute for Christian Socialism. Together, they talk about the intertwined history of left movements and Christianity.

Charles Monroe Sheldon (February 26, 1857, Wellsville, New York – February 24, 1946, Topeka, Kansas) was an American Congregationalist minister and leader of the Social Gospel movement. His novel, In His Steps, introduced the principle of "What Would Jesus Do?" which articulated an approach to Christian theology that became popular at the turn of the 20th century and had a revival almost one hundred years later.

capitalism is exhausting:

"Industry documents from this time show that just a couple of years earlier, starting in 1989, oil and plastics executives began a quiet campaign to lobby almost 40 states to mandate that the symbol appear on all plastic — even if there was no way to economically recycle it."