Choosing Our Poison

MY FATHER, who fought in and lived through World War Two against Hitler, Mussolini, and imperial Japan, said that d benevolent dictatorship is the best form of government. Certainly the most efficient in getting things done than messy, sluggish democracy. If Jesus Christ were to return today, preferably with and olive branch and without a sword, and preferably not fo the purpose of rapturing the elect into heaven with himself and allowing the rest of us to dwell in chaos and misery, but rather to install his benevolent governance upon the world, count me in. I would have no objection, and neither would, I suspect, most other people. presumably, under a Christian dictatorship, wealth would be distributed equally, and utopian communism of sorts would adhere. Competition for resources would cease. Political power would also be equally distributed, since nobody would have any, Jesus having all of it. Democracy is in theory an excellent idea, but doesn't work well, and cannot exist without economic equality, as all capable social analysts understand. Plato and Aristotle knew this, as did Jefferson and Madison. Only socialistic democracy is possible, and even then corruption sets in, leading ultimately to authoritarianism. nearly all of us share a common assumption: that government of some form is a necessary evil, that without some form of government chaos would ensue, and the world would revert to savagery. Surprisingly, there are exceptions to this belief. There are people who espouse the elimination of all forms of authority, submission to authority, and obedience, including all forms of government. They are of course called "anarchists", and are generally regarded as being, by definition, extremely radical, unreasonable, even mentally unstable. Even more surprisingly, far from being mentally ill, many anarchists are among the most respected intellectuals in western culture, past and present. Among the most presently prominent is Noam Chomsky, perhaps the most respected American intellectual everywhere in the world, outside the United States. Chomsky envisions a classless, governmentless society, organized into local councils of workers, working by agreement. A quick google search of the key word 'anarchism" or "anarchists" yields a vast body of literature on the subject. The more apparent it becomes that Jesus has no intention of intervening with a benevolent global dictatorship, and the more apparent it becomes that no form of government devised by humanity is satisfactory, the more one might wish to consider an option almost universally but perhaps mistakenly considered irrational: a world without government.