"Well I sometimes call myself a libertarian but that's only because most people don't know what anarchist means. Most people hear you're an anarchist and they think you're getting ready to throw a bomb at a building. They don't understand **the concept of voluntary association, the whole concept of replacing force with voluntary cooperation or contractual arrangements and so on**. So libertarian is a clearer word that doesn't arouse any immediate anxiety upon the listener. And then again, libertarians, if they were totally consistent with their principles would be anarchists. They take the position which they call minarchy, which is the smallest possible government... The reason I don't believe in the smallest possible government is because we started out with that and it only took us 200 years to arrive at the tsarist occupation of government (TSOG) that we have now. **I think any government is dangerous no matter how small you make it.** **Instead of governments we should have contractual associations that you can opt out of if you don't like the way the association is going. Religions fought for hundreds of years over which one should dominate Europe and then they finally gave up and made a truce, and they all agreed to tolerate each other — at least in this part of the world... But I think government should be treated like religion, everyone should be able to pick the kind they like. Only it should be contractual not obligatory.** I wouldn't mind paying tax money to a local association to maintain a police force, as long as we need one. But I hate like hell paying taxes to help the US government build more nuclear missiles to blow up more people I don't even know and don't think I'd hate them if I did know them."

–Robert Anton Wilson

*TSOG: The Thing That Ate The Constitution* (2002)

Just like there eventually was a separation of Church and State we also need a separation of government and State...

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Actually, we don't need the State.

We can have governance, without Government.

One is voluntary, the other is not.

One relies on cooperation and persuasion, the other on compulsion and violence.

If this sounds utopian, the idea of limited government is utopian, and yet we gave it a go in America for nearly two and a half centuries. Why don't we try to go even farther in our experiments in liberty? One might argue that we shouldn't, for fear of ending up with something worse. After all, that's arguably what happened in America after the Revolution. I'd like to think that we have the benefit of some experience and history now with "representative" government that the Founders didn't have. Is it possible that we have learned anything and can make some advancements in the pursuit of liberty?