Just in case you missed the vimeo title, as I did, this is an excerpt from a speech Howard Zinn gave in 1970 as part of a debate on civil disobedience.

Fast-forward to the now and you're on the same list Zinn was if you say ANYTHING online about, nouveau gestapo or the place that continues to use force to control you.
..and your mommies and daddies told you Santa was making a list and checking it twice

Lists can't stop us, only people can. And peoples attitudes can be changed.

Yes, I found this as a secondary post, so I didn't see the original title until after I posted it. However Matt does breath new life into the statements made. and if that helps the message get out there, then so be it.

I recommend that Mr. Damon study up. He can start with Lysander Spooner, Henry David Thoreau, Josiah Warren, and H.L. Mencken. After that, he can graduate to Frank Chodorov, Murray Rothbard, Robert Higgs, and few other advocates of free market anarchism, but suffice it to say that, should he wish to have a better understanding of history, he'd better first know of which he speaks. (And no, it's not enough to have been neighbors with Howard Zinn.)

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Matt Damon, Obey, Rule of Law' to 'Matt Damon, Obey, Rule of Law, Civil, Obedience' - edited by Trancecoach

Economic disobedience in the form of collective boycotts would be the fastest way to show the masses how much power they actually wield in this illusion created for us, a system that serves a handful of gangsters.

Try it on a huge corp like Mc Donalds or Exxon for 3 months and watch how fast the quarterly numbers force their compliance with the new, not-a-robot demands.

Free Market Anarchism...what an oxymoron. You cannot have a free market, without laws to prevent (or authorize) the use of force. Without laws, too many of the big guys would just take what they want, and screw everyone else. At least with a government overseeing things, they have to take the extra step and effort of corrupting/co-opting the mechanisms of government.

Then we can have a bloody revolution, execute the perps, and start a new organization, that can, if we're lucky, last a few decades before the next crop takes over. It's beginning to look like that cycle is about the best we can hope for.

Fuck this guys political viewpoint. He was shilling for Obama before the obamabots finally discovered he's just another piece of shit politician. He thought the government was just fine 6 months ago. He was on the Tavis Smiley show saying we need to stop asking so many questions an give a little more of ourselves to the glorious Republic. Now the guy thinks we need to tear down government structures. If you thought USA was fanFUCKINGtastic before Snowden then you have no standing to talk about the future of American Government. I have drawn more inspiration from a hangover induced diarrhea shit. He should just start wearing a rainbow afro wig and some big red shoes so that no one will be confused that this guy is a fucking joke of a human being.

Also, stop your god damned celebrity worship its a disgusting trait that should only be reserved for 12 year old girls.

Read some more Chompsky, drink your 12 pack, and go back to sleep.

Yo dude, yer on the front page with y'all's CIVAL spelled wrong-Civil, baby-

You simply can't SEE a scenario without force, because you've drunk the Kool Aid, Stormsinger, we all have.

Anarcho-Capitalism sounds good in ether, eliminate the state's influence on yer shit. Hire private security firms to dole-out justice, and fuck the police. Sounds REAL good. Privatizing currency structures, anything goes. Sounds righteous and fair-Keeps out gangsters who will eventually become masters.

Eliminate compulsory taxation. Good thing. Ombudsman-like dispute resolution rather than laws and a punishment to follow. Sounds fucking SANE to me. Problem is , with all the robots programmed by the state for the past 100 years, it's kinna hard to convince idiots that something like this could work....to free them from the inevitability of the failure of the current paradigm. About the only problems I can see with a switch would be how to maintain environmental impact standards, but these problems' solutions would become evident when people become responsible for themselves, for another's well-being within the social structure, and their own destinies.

Democracy (the meaning, 'rule of the people') has been lost to the rule of a very few, and historically it never works for very long before assholes find a way around it.


You're in a pot of water being slowly heated, Stormsinger-Warm 'n cozy now, melting skin from your screaming carcass later.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Matt Damon, Obey, Rule of Law, Civil, Obedience' to 'Matt Damon, Obey, Rule of Law, Civil, Obedience, Howard Zinn' - edited by xxovercastxx

Can you edit title to "Civil" from Cival?

LOL---and perhaps to Obedience as well... (I have my spelling challenged moments too)

<snipped>

You're way off, and you clearly haven't read or understood any of the authors named in my comment. Had you developed an informed opinion before spouting off on the basis of the Kool-Aid you've drank, you'd understand that, without government, there'd be no "big guys" to exploit the subsidies and cronyism that are implicit in the original monopoly that is "government."
If you think that some how government (i.e., kleptocrats) are "overseeing things," then you've got some learning to do. The corruption and co-optation of the market is not a "problem" to be "fixed" by the government. It is a direct effect of government. To think otherwise is a fatal conceit, one whose costs get higher by the day.

But, you can believe whatever you want to believe.


"The politicians are real, the soldiers and police who enforce the politicians’ will are real, the buildings they inhabit are real, the weapons they wield are very real, but their supposed “authority” is not. And without that “authority,” without the right to do what they do, they are nothing but a gang of thugs. The term “government” implies legitimacy– it means the exercise of “authority” over a certain people or place. The way people speak of those in power, calling their commands “laws,” referring to disobedience to them as a “crime,” and so on, implies the right of” government” to rule, and a corresponding obligation on the part of its subjects to obey. Without the right to rule (”authority”), there is no reason to call the entity “government,” and all of the politicians and their mercenaries become utterly indistinguishable from a giant organized crime syndicate, their “laws” no more valid than the threats of muggers and carjackers. And that, in reality, is what every “government” is: an illegitimate gang of thugs, thieves and murderers, masquerading as a rightful ruling body." -Larken Rose

Maaaaaaaaatt Daaaaaaaaaamon!

Nonsense. Without government, the 'big guys' are just whichever warlord / king / gang / tribe / corporation can monopolise resources by force.

Source: the entire history of mankind.

Spelling error in title. "Obidience" instead of "Obedience".

Whatever you need to tell yourself to get to sleep at night.

While I agree with your general opinion, your avatar should never be used with an angry post. Only happy posts and happy little trees.

You're ignoring the entire record of human history... No gov. means a void that people will try to fill. How many warlords are there in Somalia?

From chaos and disorder, the wielder of the biggest club will eventually float to the top. Whether that club is literal (feudal/tribal) or a democratic faction, or a totalitarian regime/police state is immaterial.

But hey, the internet is the panacea for the furious crowd. Now people can soapbox day and night as they order in pizza and consume litres of sugar filled beverages before ordering something else pointless on the internet. Slacktivism at it's finest.

Apathy is the new outrage and it's all the rage.

Actually, 99% of human behavior is entirely anarchic. I make millions of large and small transactions with other humans on a daily basis which have absolutely zero government involvement, whatsoever. Billions of other people on the planet do the exact same thing. Daily. Government is a fiction by which some people live at the expense of everyone else.

Even Somalia, as you may have seen, grew and improved on almost all counts after the government collapsed, built more roads and infrastructure during its 20 years without government than it did with the government.

What we have now, with a centralized government, is (because people, let alone government, is far from omniscient) more of a "planned chaos," by which little to nothing is fully known as to the long term of effects of anything that the government imposes. At least, without government, we work within natural laws and an emergent order. Instead, what we have now is "positive laws" (imposed by governments) which regulate some people at the expense of the many, while benefiting a very few.

And I think you should learn your history before you suggest that "might-makes-right" argument has shaped the arc of civilization. One cannot make the honest case that government is not behind the worst, most egregious crimes against humanity known to man, with its ability to generate unlimited money to spend on mobilizing huge military empires so "the people's" proxy can drone foreigners to death, or lock them up in Guantanamo or anywhere else, or spy on all their communications, or make them all poor though inflation, or regulate their existence to the most minute detail, or provide them with bad healthcare or any number of other things that government can do.

Not me. I'm joining the billions of people throughout history (from the Puritans, to the American Revolutionaries, to the millions of emigrants via Ellis Island, to millions of refugees, to all those air lifted from Saigon, to all those Americans whose relatives fled from China, Korea, Vietnam, Iran, or anyplace where there's war, or famine, or economic devastation) who decided to opt out of government, and to voluntarily exit the charade.


"But, hey, if you like your government, you can keep it."

Holy cow, whoop's, Asleep at the wheel here. Thanks for the heads Up.
Let's just say, it was civil disobedience, I was going for in my spelling. I will not be held down by the man's spelling rules. NO? Okay then, no excuses. Just not paying close attention.

What is this thing called obedience?

Sweet Jesus, you and your ilk are out of your fucking minds. You really act as though government is the root of all evil. As though if the mean ole' government will just get out of the way the world will be a happy fun-time place.

FUCK THAT.

I can easily say that without government regulations our industrial complexes would have poisoned us all to death years ago. Take a polluted shithole like Beijing, multiply that by every city in the world, multiply that by how much worse it would be without someone to say "you can't do that"

All your nonsensical libertarian blathering relies on many assumptions:

1. People are rational
2. People aren't evil.
3. The appropriate information will be available to make rational decisions.
4. People that are on the short end of the economic stick won't kill you for food, steal your women for fun, and riot because they can.
5. Industries will compete with one another.
6. Etc.

I really have one question though. In your utopian fantasy. What EXACTLY prevents me from taking everything someone has, by force? Private security? If you can afford it? If you can't?

You know, there was a period of institutional anarchy following the collapse of the Roman Government. All of Europe was effectively ungoverned when Rome fell. You know what that time was called? The fucking DARK AGES.

"There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self."

-A. Huxley

We are all very impressed by all the authors you've read...

Then you pull a quote from Larken Rose? What a joke.

What you guys seem to miss is that someone is going to use "force" on you, no matter what. You have two choices, either you have no control over the people using force over you or you have some control over those people via some democratic means.

Ya'll are like the 60's hippies chanting "give peace a chance, man" without the excuse of being a drug-burnout.

You seem to be relying on quite a few assumptions yourself, and this doesn't really deserve a reply (and you probably don't want one anyway), but nonethless -- I've a few minutes to kill:

None of what you say explains how you justify the stupid assumption that we need a monopoly of law enforcement in order to enforce the law.

Another assumption is in thinking that people are "evil" but somehow the politicians and the bureaucrats are somehow "good" and are what maintain law and order. (Maybe you think of yourself as evil. But in any case that is irrelevant.)

The "60's hippies" comment sounds like a Faux Noise pundit!

"What EXACTLY prevents me from taking everything someone has, by force? Private security? If you can afford it? If you can't?"

Go ahead, try it. And I can afford it. If you can't, then you should maybe look into that and your own finances instead of ranting about libertarians. Seems like a better strategy.

Do you actually think police services now currently "free?" Even if you happen to be a nonproductive tax consumer, you are still paying for it in other ways.

Competing private security or insurance would be cheaper and more efficient than the police force, since it would not be the monopoly we have now. And there are also those willing and able to defend themselves on top of that.

"All of Europe was effectively ungoverned when Rome fell."

Learn your history; there was never a time where all of Europe was "effectively ungoverned" when Rome fell.

"3. The appropriate information will be available to make rational decisions."

Obviously you're making the erroneous assumption that individuals don't have the info needed to make their own decisions and yet government/central planners somehow do. This is, in fact, the opposite of what Hayek demonstrated (not to mention what common sense indicates). (Maybe you feel incompetent, but that's another issue.)

Bemoaning the end of the Roman empire is like bemoaning the end of the Nazi regime; with its constant wars, the destruction of the 2nd Jewish Temple (an earlier holocaust), its intolerances, etc. Any problems with the "dark ages" (a label that historians are increasingly abandoning as it is glaringly inaccurate) reveal what happens when a poorly run state collapses due to war and bad economics. A lesson on where we are heading, whatever you might think. Good luck to you.

Edit: "You really act as though government is the root of all evil."
Which of my actions do you mean? Posting my thoughts? Are you the thought police?

People so emotionally attached to the regime (as @st0nedeye seems to be) are often either regime propagandists being handsomely compensated or serfs who feel so vulnerable and afraid (and maybe even inept themselves) that they can't think of how they would survive without the "rulers" to protect them. (Of course, the jokes on them since that protection, safety, and security, is mostly an illusion.)

If they are regime propagandists, then unless you pay them more to take on whatever views you want them to stick to in the hopes of cashing in on the cronyism.

If they are true believers or fanatics (due to fear, insecurity, envy, etc.), then they will try to tear up anyone who tries to give them information, even if that information will ultimately help them out, improve their lot (help, to be sure, that was not solicited by them, and they have a right not to be given).

These are the attitudes that made Edward Bernays and others rather loathe "the people," allowing them to rationalize the various forms of manipulation imposed in the 20th century. This propaganda was ostensibly for "the people's" "safety," but was more accurately for personal profit. It's a fate though that I can't totally disagree is not deserved.

Still, despite the crazy analysis, I commend @st0nedeye for bringing up the interesting topic of the situation in Europe after the "fall" of Rome (which happened gradually and parallels that of most empires, including this current one). It's worth considering that the collapse of the Soviet Union also, a collapse that even to this day many in Russia bemoan -- just like st0nedeye bemoans the collapse of Rome. Life under the Roman bureaucracy and plutocracy was not as glamorous as many people would have you believe (maybe if you were a one of the beneficiary plutocrats).