The Root of Despotism.

The purpose of Liberty, boiled down to its ultimate essence, is the abolition of authority. But, until the reader has come into accord with our philosophy, he must not misunderstand what we mean by the abolition of authority. The reason of the writer of this article is (to him) authority; otherwise it would be foolishness for him to write.

But the writer of this article is an individual. He can set up whatever god he chooses (for himself) as authority. Yes, he may offer whatever these gods dictate to him for the consideration of his fellow-men. If he makes a god of his reason, he may worship that god to his heart's content, and submit to the letter to the authority of that god. And he may give that god a tongue through the press, the pulpit, and the rostrum. He may set him up on every corner, and call him holy, infallible, and all-wise.

Thus far he has violated no man's liberty. He begins to be a despot and a public enemy only when he imposes that god upon others by force. See how it is under our advanced democratic institutions. A man starts on campaigning for his god. He convinces some, bribes others, and swindles enough more till he secures what he calls a majority. But, when he gets so far, he recollects that a certain fiction possesses the masses, via, "the majority must rule." He there upon drops the method of peace and persuasion, and proceeds to saddle his god upon the majority by force.

Now, what Liberty proposes to abolish is all these gratuitous fictions by which any and all gods, theological, political, and social, are saddled by force upon unwilling soldiers. That toppling theological colossus who has straddled humanity for centuries had first to be "boycotted" and unseated from those who are tired of his weight. Now that he feels the pillars giving way and begins to quake, a swarm of ecclesiastical parasites and priestly dead-beats, from pope down, are beginning to dress their wings and look for a new roost. Not that Liberty has anything against the Christian God per se. It simply asks that the Jewish usurper stands on his own merits, pay his own bills, and stop sitting down on people who do not want his company.

The dangerous fiction, crowned God, which makes an authority out of the Jewish usurper theologically, has its exact counterpart in that fiction which sets up the State as an authority politically. God is the supreme being for the plundering purposes of the ecclesiastics. The State is the supreme being for the plundering purposes of the politician. The saving grace which perpetuates the whole swindle lies in the ability to keep the masses drugged with superstitious reverence for that fiction of authority which keeps the double-headed monster alive.

Liberty denies the authority of anybody's god to bind those who do not accept it through persuation and natural selection. Liberty denies the authority of anybody's State to bind those who do not lend voluntary allegiance to it. Liberty denies the authority of anybody's "public opinion," "social custom," "consensus of the competent," and every other fashionable and scholarly despot, to step between the individual and his free option in all thing. In short, it sets up the standard of uncompromising rebellion against authority, meaning by authority any coercive force not developed spontaneously and naturally out of the constitution of the individual himself or herself.

We of course believe in forces. Nature is made up of forces. But we want native, healthy, spontaneous forces in social life, not arbitrary, extraneous, usurping forces. And we believe in authority too, when authority is made to mean that which is sifted through reason and made welcome by choice. The thing that we have gone into defensive warfare with is that usurping aggressor which proposes to saddle its forms and fictions upon us without our consent, and makes us its slaves under the many cunning guises which have made history a bloody record of brutality practiced by the few upon the ignorance and helplessness of the many.