Paul McLaughlin

“Bertrand Russell, writing during World War I, castigates intellectuals for exactly this tendency: ‘In modern times, philosophers, professors, and intellectuals generally undertake willingly to provide their respective governments with those ingenious distortions and those subtle untruths by which it is made to appear that all good is on one side and all wickedness on the other.’ Thus ‘learned men’ seem ‘as incapable of justice as any cheap newspaper [and] as full of special pleading and garbled history’.9 Or, in other words, academia and CNN are on a par in times like these.”
― Paul McLaughlin, Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism

“The familiar claim – or ‘moral’ exhortation – that ‘if you don’t vote, you’ve no right to complain’ surely has it the wrong way around. Is it not true to say that if you do play the game, you’ve no right to complain about the rules or the result subsequently? Might it be that up to half the adult population (excluding those who vote with almost no faith whatsoever in the process7) is dissatisfied with the game itself? Might it be that this game does not satisfy their ‘desire for recognition’, that it is not ‘completely satisfying’? Might it be that the game is seen as nothing but an expensive sideshow put on by the few who can afford it and have a vested interest in it to pacify or placate the on-looking majority? And might it be that neither the tinkering of political scientists nor the ‘good intentions’ of liberal reformers can remedy the inherent ills of this game? Anarchists voice precisely such doubts about political democracy. Fundamentally, they are sceptical about the authority claimed by democratic politicians, authority which is now – in practice – recognized by fewer and fewer citizens of democratic states.”
― Paul McLaughlin, Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism