Am I an Anarchist?

[Rev. Rye]

I feel there should be an option for individuals and groups to withdraw from a social contract that we have all been born into and had no other alternative but to live with. This simply means withdrawing from the present social contract and forming new ones.
Furthermore, my political philosophy is based on the idea that human beings are fundamentally good and do not arbitrarily inflict violence on one another. Violence, however, is inherent to the state. A human individual will generally become violent if he finds himself in very desperate circumstances, and especially if he has no appreciation for individual liberty.
I am contemptuous of the state and its institutions, but feel that it is a design flaw, and the solution is to have a less omnipresent state with very limited functions. Though this ideal is conceivable in societies that fundamentally cherish individual freedom and possess the nerve to fight for it, even if that entails considerable inconvenience.

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It depends where you are. Throughout most of this planet religious liberty is severely curtailed. Just look at the largest nation in the world (communist China). They are literally forcing millions of Uighurs in “re-education camps”, where they are forced to sing praises to the Communist Party, forbidden from speaking their mother tongue, coerced to denounce their religion, force fed pork, and so on. Now admittedly this is an extreme example. In China, the Buddhist monks of Tibet and the Christian community are likewise severely repressed. Churches and religious groups require permission from the government to operate and are under close surveillance. But even in supposedly secular and liberal Europe you have restrictions on religious liberty, such as religious articles of clothing. The rise of far right populism is extremely alarming for religious minorities around the world.

Humans don't willingly inflict harm on each other Thomas Hobbes would like a word with you

Yeah, the funny thing about politics is there's really two aspects to political theory: theory and practice. It's not hard to see the appeal in anarchism; its critique of the oppressive power structures is often dead on (then again, I think the same of Hobbes' "war of all against all"); I suppose, if it just boiled down to that, I'd consider myself an anarchist, too. However, the thing is, the assumptions that most forms of anarchism hinge on (especially for their planned solutions, and particularly the claim that it's reasonable to expect that, in the absence of power structures, humans can just sit down and sing Kumbaya) simply cannot be applied to planet Earth (in the interest of fairness, Hobbes' defense of absolutist government falls apart just as quickly; after all, said monarch is still one of the same men who are wolves to men, and, at best, they can just redirect the brutality to particular targets).

Also, Massive text sizes are to be used sparingly. They just make whatever you have to say look like an eyesore. Just use the default text size.