We could ignore complaints about prisoners being required to stay in stress positions and strain they may endure if they are not co-operative. We could forgive horrific acts of forcing them to strip down to their birthday suits in name of getting information. We didn’t find anything wrong with puppet shows satirizing terrorists. We sloughed off complaints about desecration of Koran especially when it came to light that more prisoners abused so-called Holy Book than guards did. Heck and when claim was of women guards invading “personal space” of these terrorists we said nothing because I know people that would pay good money to have women invade their own “personal space”. And when it came to not letting these prisoners go to bathroom until they talked and making them go tinkle in their shorts we said “So what!” But I personally came close to calling for it all to end when it was revealed that guards, in an unmatched act of cruelty not seen since Holocaust, exposed prisoners to music of Christina Aguilera. I’m sorry, but that is just plain cruel! But I did manage put my outrage aside and looked other way because I knew there was a greater good being served.

But now I have come across new evidence of abuse that I can no longer overlook. And that is why today, I come before everyone to say that it is time to close Gitmo and try our men and women for war crimes. You ask what is it that has made me change my tune? What abuse could be so horrific?

The abuse I speak of is jetlag! Yes, you heard me correctly -- jetlag. We have taken these prisoners from across globe and flown them hours and hours to a remote facility and screwed up their internal clocks! OH THE HUMANITY!

Now, I know some of you are thinking “What? Come on!” No, not even because of this punishment, cruel as it is, should I have changed my position on our treatment of those that are waging a war against America!

Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963), British writer

I. Overview of Theories of Anarchism

Politics, in all its forms, has failed. The notion that we can safely and successfully hand over management of our daily lives and setting of priorities to a political class or elite is thoroughly discredited. Politicians cannot be trusted, regardless of system in which they operate. No set of constraints, checks, and balances, is proved to work and mitigate their unconscionable acts and pernicious effects these have on our welfare and longevity.

Ideologies - from benign to malign and from divine to pedestrian - have driven gullible human race to verge of annihilation and back. Participatory democracies have degenerated everywhere into venal plutocracies. Socialism and its poisoned fruits - Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism - have wrought misery on a scale unprecedented even by medieval standards. Only Fascism and Nazism compare with them unfavorably. The idea of nation-state culminated in Yugoslav succession wars.

It is time to seriously consider a much-derided and decried alternative: anarchism.

Anarchism is often mistaken for left-wing thinking or advocacy of anarchy. It is neither. If anything, libertarian strain in anarchism makes it closer to right. Anarchism is an umbrella term covering disparate social and political theories - among them classic or cooperative anarchism (postulated by William Godwin and, later, Pierre Joseph Proudhon), radical individualism (Max Stirner), religious anarchism (Leo Tolstoy), anarcho-communism (Kropotkin) and anarcho-syndicalism, educational anarchism (Paul Goodman), and communitarian anarchism (Daniel Guerin).

The narrow (and familiar) form of political anarchism springs from belief that human communities can survive and thrive through voluntary cooperation, without a coercive central government. Politics corrupt and subvert Man's good and noble nature. Governments are instruments of self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement, and reification and embodiment of said subversion.

The logical outcome is to call for overthrow of all political systems, as Michael Bakunin suggested. Governments should therefore be opposed by any and all means, including violent action. What should replace state? There is little agreement among anarchists: biblical authority (Tolstoy), self-regulating co-opertaives of craftsmen (Proudhon), a federation of voluntary associations (Bakunin), trade unions (anarcho-syndicalists), ideal communism (Kropotkin).

What is common to this smorgasbord is affirmation of freedom as most fundamental value. Justice, equality, and welfare cannot be sustained without it. The state and its oppressive mechanisms is incompatible with it. Figures of authority and ruling classes are bound to abuse their remit and use instruments of government to further and enforce their own interests. The state is conceived and laws are enacted for this explicit purpose of gross and unjust exploitation. The state perpetrates violence and is cause rather than cure of most social ills.

Anarchists believe that human beings are perfectly capable of rational self-government. In Utopia of anarchism, individuals choose to belong to society (or to exclude themselves from it). Rules are adopted by agreement of all members/citizens through direct participation in voting. Similar to participatory democracy, holders of offices can be recalled by constituents.

It is important to emphasize that:

" ... (A)narchism does not preclude social organization, social order or rules, appropriate delegation of authority, or even of certain forms of government, as long as this is distinguished from state and as long as it is administrative and not oppressive, coercive, or bureaucratic."

(Honderich, Ted, ed. - The Oxford Companion to Philosophy - Oxford University Press, New York, 1995 - p. 31)

Anarchists are not opposed to organization, law and order, or existence of authority. They are against usurpation of power by individuals or by classes (groups) of individuals for personal gain through subjugation and exploitation (however subtle and disguised) of other, less fortunate people. Every social arrangement and institution should be put to dual acid tests of personal autonomy and freedom and moral law. If it fails either of two it should be promptly abolished.

II. Contradictions in Anarchism