Anarchy

=**Anarchy ** =

Anarchy is a state where there is no government or laws. An example of an anarchical state in the 21st century is present day southern Somalia. Obviously the idea of citizenship according to our definition seems to disappear. Upon further examination however, one can take the elements of protection and rights into account and realize that those obligations remain. As a human and citizen of a government system, for lack of a better descriptor, that has no laws or true governmental framework to rely upon, all responsibilities of protection fall to one's self. The rights, as not defined by a government order or government's founding documents are a bit tricky to define.

It is reasonable to look at history and those rights established by other governments, or rather the rights governments were initially created in the hopes of protecting, as a source of the obligations a citizen of an anarchical state would have the responsibility of protecting. One of the first people to publish the idea of rights that existed in a state without government was John Locke. In his //Second Treatise of Government//, he presented the idea that all people, as cognitive creatures of the natural world, had the right to life, liberty, and property. These ideas would have resounding influence in later revolutions in France, America, and other countries utilizing different government structures. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote them nearly word for word into the Unites States Declaration of Independence as "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Jefferson also asserted that these rights, or truths as he put it, were actually self-evident, or so understood at a fundamental level that there was no need to provide further evidence in support of his claim.

It would stand to reason then that people living in such a state would have the rights to their life, their freedom, their property as well as the right to protect and defend these rights so as to obtain a state of contentment or happiness, although how each was protected and maintained would not be officially defined by any government organization or formal social contract.