A quote from Butler Shaffer’s “Boundaries of Order:”

“Political institutions thrive by encouraging the development of various group identities.  Insisting upon maintaining the clear distinctions of our collective boundary lines, they help to foment conflicts among such groups and then offer to mediate the very differences it has been in the state’s interests to foster!  It is a racket, which, if engaged in by private parties, would result in long prison sentences.”

Here’s another one:

“It is critical for us to re-examine the basic assumptions upon which our social systems are to be based.  What are the values and the practices we are to embrace?  We might begin with the inquiry offered by Franz Oppenheimer, who distinguished the two basic methods for acquiring wealth.  The first was the ‘economic means,’ which arose from the free exchange of property claims in the marketplace; the second was the ‘political means,’ which consisted of the use of violence to despoil property owners of their property interests.”

G. Keith Smith, M.D.