David McElroy

Why does anyone seem surprised that Barack Obama is trying to score political points by going to Afghanistan on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden death? Yes, it’s disgusting, but that’s what every president does.

This partisanship looks like “leadership” when he’s on your team. For instance, Chris Matthews of MSNBC — a long-time Democratic Party partisan before moving to TV news — said he’s very proud of Obama for going to Afghanistan. Jon Stewart asked whether Republicans criticizing Obama for the trip are on crack.

To Republicans, it was obviously a matter of Obama politicizing Bin Laden’s death. The howling has been long and loud. They’ve accused Obama of “spiking the ball” and gloating for political purposes.

So who’s right? The Republicans who say he’s politicizing national security with the trip? Or the Democrats such as Stewart who fire back that the GOP criticism is crazy? The truth is that they’re both right.

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The people in this picture are among the Occupy rioters in Seattle on May Day. They’re breaking windows and destroying private property. (Click the picture for a bigger view.) Based on the “anarchy” logo they were plastering on the property they were destroying, I’m sure they believe they’re anarchists. They’re not. They’re just vandals and criminals.

I wrote at length earlier about the fact that those who want a government to enforce their political views aren’t really anarchists, so I won’t repeat most of that here. I only want to say that if you’re the kind of vandal who dresses in black and destroys private property, that doesn’t make you some anarchist hero. It just makes you a punk and a vandal who’s destroying things that don’t belong to you.

The coercive state is the enemy. The people in the streets Tuesday agree that the current state is the enemy, but most of them want something far worse — a new coercive state that would be even more monstrous than what we already have. They’re not anarchists. They’re Bolsheviks intent on giving the Soviet Union another try.

Most people don’t have any idea what anarchists are — and that includes some of the people who use the word to describe themselves. If you listen to what some of these people believe, you realize they’re not anarchists. They’re just punks who like to dress in black and break other people’s property.

I’ve written before about the need for a more effective label to describe those of us who oppose the coercive state and believe there are better ways to organize society voluntarily. I sometimes tell people that I’m an anarchist who hangs out in the libertarian camp. Other times, I’ve used the anarcho-capitalist label. I’ve tried voluntaryist, but that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue well, either.

To be an anarchist, one must oppose the coercive state. Beyond that, there are different flavors of anarchism, many of which directly contradict one another. Since the very definition of anarchy is a negative — the absence of a coercive state — it doesn’t tell us what a person favors. It’s what you favor in place of the state that ultimately matters most.

The five men who were arrested in Ohio Tuesday for plotting to blow up a bridge call themselves anarchists, but it seems that their real complaints are with private companies rather than with the state. Based on the sketchy information I’ve been able to read about them so far, they sound like most everybody else on the progressive left. They’ve certainly been a part of the Occupy movement, which isn’t surprising since their leftist politics sounds a lot like what I hear from most of the Occupy supporters.

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