The SDMB seems to have a very high percentage of atheists, agnostics, and liberal Christians (and very few conservative, evangelical, fundamentalist Christians) compared to the U.S. population at large.
But I don’t notice a similar trend for political positions. Most posters seem to fall to the left of the ideological spectrum, but still within a standard deviation or two of “normal.”
Any reason for this? Are there a bunch of lurkers hiding in the woodwork who harbor nontraditional political views? (I mention anarchism in particular because it seems to be rather popular on the Internet, and has some correlation/ commonality with atheism).
If you meant libertarianism instead, your point would be more plausible since such philosophy is very common (see the Slashdot crowd). However, libertarianism is to anarchism as liberalism is to Marxism, roughly speaking. I can’t give you any citations, but in my recent lurking around I recall a good number of somewhat libertarian viewpoints.
For the record, I’m a moderately liberal atheist with libertarian sympathies.
There are a lot of libertarians on this board, and classically, a libertarian was the same thing as an anarchist. And to me, if you’re not an anarchist, you’re not a libertarian. However, I’m sure I’ll be shouted down.
I am a libertarian and I don’t think that is true at all. Libertarians have a model for a stable government with a very specific set of functions and those functions already exist. Libertarians don’t believe in things like redistribution of wealth or excessive restrictions on either individual freedoms. Property rights are strong under the libertarian model and a lot more things are pay-as-you-go rather than the government collecting taxes as a general fund and then spending it wherever it sees fit. The U.S. Constitution itself could easily be the foundation of a libertarian society if things grew in that direction.
I don’t know a ton about anarchism but I do know that many of the perceived similarities between it and libertarianism are superficial (relaxed drug and immigration laws for instance). I have read that equating the two is a very large, common mistake. The come out of completely separate political view on opposite ends of the spectrum. Libertarians don’t typically give anarchism any more thought than any other extremist view we don’t hold and I am sure the reverse is true.
I don’t know what you consider to be an anarchist, but I am against government of any kind. I don’t know how it would work practically. I’m not an atheist though.
I’m an anarchist. You’re right, we’re rare in here. And every single debate that includes any serious mention of anarchy as a possibility quickly devolves into “It ain’t possible and it will never happen” / “Joe Slopebrow is immediately gonna turn your stupid little utopia into a Joeocracy with the aid of his 10 pound club” dismissals. Can’t get anyone to seriously discuss non-archist structure and strategy.
If there is any correlation between atheism and anarchism, I’d imagine it’d be a negative correlation. Atheists tend to be more liberal than religious people, and liberals tend to advocate stronger government.
Most anarchists dismiss the linear continuum of liberal <----> conservative.
Police states seem to exist at the extremes of conventional right and left and yet we’re sure as hell not in what Morgan once referred to as the “vapid middle”!
I think there’s a stronger strand within conservatism for an end to governmental authority, but it’s often oblivious to the notion that any organized authority of people over other people is specifically archistic.
Seconded. E.g., once at a discussion panel at an SF convention an apparent Libertarian mentioned the fairly obvious fact that “The corporation is a creature of the state.” True. That doesn’t mean getting rid of the state will get rid of the corporation; quite the reverse.
Well, what do you expect the Anarchists to do? Organize? (hint: what do we call people organized to establish a set of common rules for living? Oh right… a government)
That’s ridiculous. While no anarchist, I did hang out with some in college. Anarchists are opposed to government, not organization. The two are not the same. In fact, if there would be no government there would need to be a variety of strong private organizations devoted to protecting life, liberty, and property. Anarchists believe that no one should be coerced into belonging to such an organization (as government does today) but should be free to choose one that bests fits him/her.
And those . . . would be governments. Or local warlords, although the only “life, liberty, and property” they would care about would be theirs and their cronies’.
And most governments also let you choose. If I decided to move to Australia or France or Costa Rica, sinister men in dark sunglasses aren’t going to spirit me away. Yes, it’s true that governments control all the good places to live, but that’s because without governments, they wouldn’t be good places to live; they’d be wilderness or bloody hellholes. People who live in large groups need government.
Violence. Lots and lots of violence. Without the rule of law, you have the sort of culture where the primary cause of death is murder, and where a woman’s “husband” is merely her most recent rapist.
I don’t think true anarchy can exist for very long no matter how much some people might want it. Humans seem to naturally form hierarchical groups, like nearly all primates do. Ultimately, this leads to the formation of some form of government in large groups. It’s not uncommon for large such groups to further divide into distinct coalitions, often violently–the same is as true in chimpanzee culture as human. The aggressive and strong push their way to the top and others merely follow, with a whole broad spectrum of variations among them. It’s our way.
