By Caroline Hamilton
"Anti-government sentiment in the United States has risen and fallen in different eras. During the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson, U.S. government programs were expanded; Social Security and Medicare came into being, artists and the arts received federal support, the plight of poor American children was addressed on several fronts, and the Southern system of racial apartheid was gradually but dramatically dismantled. It was this last intervention that roused anti-government feeling in many white Americans. They were particularly outraged when Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy called out the National Guard to enforce racial integration of public educational institutions.
Because of President Obama, racial animosity still fuels anti-government fervor, but it is ultimately subservient to another agenda entirely. American libertarians are far less concerned with human rights and liberties than are classical anarchists or liberals. A few libertarians advocate the legalization of marijuana, but the majority would happily impose overt displays of Christian belief on government officials, ban birth control and abortion, and perpetrate 4th-Amendment-violating searches and seizures upon anyone any official deemed suspicious. Thus, although contemporary anti-government rhetoric may indeed owe something to individualist anarchism, from Max Stirner and his Eigentum via Ayn RandÂ’s selfishness, that intellectual inheritance has a convoluted lineage."
Tea Party Anarchists?
"Anti-government sentiment in the United States has risen and fallen in different eras. During the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson, U.S. government programs were expanded; Social Security and Medicare came into being, artists and the arts received federal support, the plight of poor American children was addressed on several fronts, and the Southern system of racial apartheid was gradually but dramatically dismantled. It was this last intervention that roused anti-government feeling in many white Americans. They were particularly outraged when Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy called out the National Guard to enforce racial integration of public educational institutions.
Because of President Obama, racial animosity still fuels anti-government fervor, but it is ultimately subservient to another agenda entirely. American libertarians are far less concerned with human rights and liberties than are classical anarchists or liberals. A few libertarians advocate the legalization of marijuana, but the majority would happily impose overt displays of Christian belief on government officials, ban birth control and abortion, and perpetrate 4th-Amendment-violating searches and seizures upon anyone any official deemed suspicious. Thus, although contemporary anti-government rhetoric may indeed owe something to individualist anarchism, from Max Stirner and his Eigentum via Ayn RandÂ’s selfishness, that intellectual inheritance has a convoluted lineage."
Tea Party Anarchists?
