The state represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. Gandhi [W]hen a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce [the people] under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security ... Declaration of Independence When the people shall grow weary of their constitutional right to amend the government, they shall exert their revolutionary right to dismember and overthrow that government. Abraham Lincoln, 1st inaugural Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. John F. Kennedy, March 13, 1962 Contemplate the mangled bodies of your country- men, and then say, What should be the reward of such sacrifices? Bid us and our posterity bow the knee ... ? .... We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen! Samuel Adams, August 1, 1776 Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775

Government has been tried ... and it does not work! On March 19, 2003, those among you who have spent recent months peaceably assembling to petition the U. S. government for redress of griev- ances -- to ask the U. S. government to refrain from murdering in your name -- received your answer in the form of the first cruise missile launches and air attacks on the innocent people of Baghdad. Did you expect a different answer? Why would you? This is what the state does. This is what the state is. There are those among you who have held out hope that the state -- that entity which feeds and thrives on the death and enslavement of those whom it rules -- would somehow stop being what it is, simply because you asked nicely. Or that if you put the hands of the “right people” on the crank of the sausage grinder, it would somehow magically start producing something besides bloody meat when turned. Are you convinced yet? Are you ready to get serious? The time for petitioning is past. The time for refusal, resistance, obstruction and revolution is here. That revolution need not be violent. That question will be answered by your actions and the state’s reactions. But the path from where you are to where you want to be has no detours around the necessity of dismantling the state. The anarchists among you are the vanguard of the coming society. We are going there. Your options are to lead, to follow, or to get the hell out of the way. Make your choice.

Nearly 170 million people probably have been murdered by governments in the 20th Century, 1900- 1987; over four- times those killed in combat in all international and domestic wars during the same years. R. J. Rummel, University of Hawaii War is the health of the state. Randolph Bourne I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least;" and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe -- "that govern- ment governs best which governs not at all" ... Henry David Thoreau Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Thomas Paine, Common Sense