“The government is the only power structure that’s even partially accountable to the population, so naturally the business sectors want to make that the enemy–not the corporate system, which is totally unaccountable. After decades of intensive business propaganda, people feel that the government is some kind of enemy and that they have to defend themselves from it.

It’s not that that doesn’t have its justifications. The government is authoritarian and commonly hostile to much of the population. But it’s partially influenceable–and potentially very influenceable–by the general population.

At the deepest level, the media contribute to the sense that the government is the enemy, and they suppress the sources of real power in the society, which lie in the totalitarian institutions–the corporations, now international in scale–that control the economy and much of our social life. In fact, the corporations set the conditions within which the government operates, and control it to a large extent.”

The above quote comes from Noam Chomsky, a famous anarcho-syndicalist. If anyone knows anything about anarchists they should know that anarchists have a very strong sensitivity to power hierarchies; it’s kind of what they’re all about. So, that’s why I appreciate and value Chomsky’s words here, because I can’t say how much it bugs me when conservatives make their favorite “fear the powerful government” counter arguments against gun-control. These arguments generally come from a red-warrior and/or blue-traditionalist stage of psycho-social development, where feudal and authoritarian governments were the norm, and they simply do not recognize that our form of government in the U.S. is mostly a result of an orange-modern stage of consciousness (multi-party democracy). As Chomsky points out, we’re fortunate that the government we have is a unique power structure in that it is partly accountable to the population; and I believe that we can grow, mature and evolve together to make it even more so.

Tags:anarchismconservatismgun controlintegral theorylibertarianismnoam chomskyspiral dynamics