An excellent essay by Bill Kauffman on what one might call benign anarchy.

I’ve been thinking lately about how much wisdom there is compressed into James Madison’s The Federalist Paper #51. In particular the two sentences “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” I have little interest in discussing today’s politics, since one person’s Barack the Hope is another’s Barack the Spendthrift. Politics seems to attract people whose ambitions exceed their wisdom.

Madison’s words make me think that the essence of realistic, workable government is something as close to the Hippocratic Oath as possible: first do no harm. Anything that attempts to do good is something that should be examined with the highest degree of skepticism. Yeah, I know that this leaves out public funding of roads, and schools, etc. The real world requires more than two sentences – even by someone as brilliant as James Madison.

So I’m changing my Facebook political affiliation to Benign Anarchy, from libertarian.