Government is about rules. There are three things that a system of Government consists of:

1. A system for figuring out what the rules ought to be.
2. A system for figuring out whether or not someone has violated one of the rules.
3. A system for taking action to respond when one of the rules has been violated.

What REALLY makes a Government a Government is the third part - what kind of actions are taken to respond when a rule is broken. Certain kinds of actions, such as taking people's property, imprisoning them, or killing them, are only taken within the realm of Governments or those who aspire to be Governments. Those actions make a Government a Government.

Systems of Government should be evaluated on the fairness and reasonableness of these three processes.

When Anarchists take "Direct Action" to "Get the Goods," such as a situation where someone releases animals from a pharmaceutical testing lab, they are engaged in an act of Governance.

1. They have decided on a rule: "No Animal Testing."
2. They have decided that a particular pharmaceutical company has broken that rule.
3. They have taken action to respond which involves depriving people of their property.

When you ask "Anarchists" what kind of system of Government they want, they tell you they don't want a system of Government. Of course they don't, they're Anarchists.

1. They want no system for figuring out what the rules ought to be.
2. They want no system for figuring out whether or not someone has violated one of the rules.
3. They want no system for taking action to respond when one of the rules has been violated.

But wait, they do take action. In reality, they are not Anarchists. They do not want Anarchy. They want Action. They want a system of Government to take Action. That system of government works as follows:

1. They decide what the rules are.
2. They decide who has violated the rules.
3. They take action when the rules are violated.

In other words, they want a Totalitarian system, run by them. And in history, when Anarchists have become powerful, they have become totalitarian. Totalitarianism is power without a system of checks and balances. Today's Anarchists are no different from those 100 years ago.

A true Anarchist does not support a system of Government. Therefore, a true Anarchist does not believe in taking action to respond when one of the rules has been violated. A true Anarchist doesn't have rules. If you are not comfortable with that, if you have rules, if you want to take action, you are not a true Anarchist.

Most people who call themselves Anarchists are not Anarchists.

Often, people are angered by the fact that the rules that exist in our system aren't the right rules. There are many examples of rules in our system that aren't right rules. The length of copyright, for example. Often these rules are the rules because corrupt interests want them to be the rules - because the system doesn't work properly.

The challenge when faced with this situation is to ask yourself, what aspects of our system cause it to create and uphold the wrong rules? What kind of system would produce better rules? How could we change our system to make better rules?

These are challenging questions - too challenging for most people.

Many declare that there is no system that could produce the right rules, and become anarchists, but this is a cop out, and truly an embrace of totalitarianism. Some are so eager to find a solution that they latch on to any suggested alternative without giving it careful consideration. This is madness. We must not just strike at the root - we must strike at the root precisely, lest the changes we make cause more problems than they solve.