I’d like to begin this invitation of advice or experiences by stating that what I want in life is a partner who feels like home, will always give me their genuine effort, & will love me through all of the highs, mediums, & lows of life.
I specifically want to know about any advice or things I should consider when it comes to the age gap I have with the man I’m seriously considering making a staple & serious part of my life. I (29f) met Chance (40m) 3 years ago & we have been seeing each other for a little over a year. We met at the middle school in which we both work- he’s the social worker, I’m the art teacher. When I first saw him, he looked like a meat head (he’s pretty muscular, bald, beard, wears hoodies) & I’ve always been into nerds so it never occurred to me that I’d end up attracted to him. The first year we knew each other, it was very surface level, & then, during the second year of my time at the school, I got to know him better, as I did a few coworkers I now consider close friends. This second year of friendship was also a tough period for me as I was going through a divorce from a 5 year relationship with a man who wasn’t on the same life path as me & kind of made me dislike myself just for being me (wanting kids, needing to be intrinsically motivated in my career rather than financially motivated)- basically he was type A & I am B. Anyhow, as I was processing my divorce & creating friendships, I got to know Chance better both at work & at hang outs with friends outside of work. I watched how the kids at school just flocked to him & how kind he was with everybody. He coached the basketball team, did an after school program with the SRO to help at risk kids, & often stepped in to help others with tasks that weren’t related to his job as social worker. & he always did it with a positive attitude & good sense of humor. People just LIKE him, you know? It became obvious that he was just a really good person. One day, we had a discussion about kids & how we both wanted them. He told me I’d be a great mother because of how I treat the students & I told him he’d also be a wonderful parent. & he cast his spell on me & I slowly started falling for him. I couldn’t quite figure it out. Here I was, recently divorced from a relationship that had a tremendous affect on me mentally/emotionally, & I was gaining feelings for a man who was very different from my ex, & 11 years older than me. Was I just looking for a distraction? Was I using him to boost my confidence up after it had spent so much time at all time low? Or was I simply recognizing that this man had all of the features that I’d been missing in my past relationship & maybe I should pay attention to that? I was worried that my judgement post- divorce couldn’t possibly be clear, so I expressed that I had feelings for him but had to take things very slow. I was a bit of a mess as I tried to take the initial steps to get closer to him. I’d get emotional & have somewhat of a panic attack, or I’d go through some wishy washy phases when it came to wanting to see him in general. No matter what it was, he said that he understood, he wasn’t going anywhere, & that he just wanted me to be ok. He’d always ask what he could do to help & what I needed from him to feel better. If we were kissing & he felt that I wasn’t comfortable, he’d stop. One time he could tell that I wasn’t feeling great & he cried because he thought he’d made me feel bad. Needless to say, he was always there for me & ACTUALLY cared about how I felt. As we got closer, he was always respectful, would leave me flowers on random or special occasions (like when I was in an art show that he attended, or the first day of a new semester at work), wanted to make things like holidays memorable for me (one time I specifically thought was sweet was when he decorated my place with a Christmas tree & lights because “it’s your first Christmas in your new apartment, it should be festive!”). I consistently got solid evidence that he was emotionally mature, ready for a relationship, & wanted the same things as me.
So, I thought, “why is this sweet, courteous, kind, responsible, funny man single?” I’d heard some woman at work “pick” at him about this & say “I just don’t get how you’re single!” & I honestly wondered myself. You always heard that it’s a ref flag if a man dates a woman over 10 years younger & that it’s because “women his age didn’t want him”. Well, there are a few rational explanations I could think of: 1. He’d been sexually abused by his stepsister for years as a child. He’d told me that he’d had a few relationships during his 20s & 30s, but they didn’t last long & he’d had some issues with women not dealing with his anxiety around sex well. With me, this was not an issue, really. We’d taken the physical really slow, & when one of us felt anxiety as things heated up, the other stopped & supported. After a few months, it became a non-issue & we were able to have great sex with no fear that one of us would get anxious. 2. When he was younger (childhood-20s) he was overweight. He began balding in his 20s & so he shaved his head. Maybe there weren’t a lot of women who wanted to be with the overweight, bald guy? Women can be just as shallow as men.
So, I began to try to look for any signs that maybe this man is “grooming” me or something. I looked for issues as well as green lights. How’s his family? His brother is happily married with children & Chance is close with his family, seeing them weekly. What are his friends like? I enjoy his friends. They’re nice, fun people & his best friends are in happy marriages. Does he manipulate you? No, he treats me like a princess (I’m not used to it) & tries to establish healthy relationship patterns (he always insists on a weekly date night, suggests activities together, such as me weight lifting with him & him running with me). He also hypes me up like no other- If I’m wearing a risky outfit that I love but know my mom would insult, BAM Chance is the first one to see it & his jaw drops to the floor. Always telling me how strong, sweet, & cool I am. Made me take his gloves when we went on a snowy hike & I’d forgotten mine. Just basically an endless stream of courtesy.
I have gotten a lot of evidence that this is a solid person with whom I could build a beautiful relationship & family with. Everything he’s shown me has been positive as far as communication, morals, empathy, kindness & life plans is concerned.
So… is the 11 year age gap a concern? Should I be more paranoid about why he is still single, or are my theories valid? Although he goes to the gym daily & is like a kid at heart, should I worry about his age when it comes to us potentially raising kids? He’d likely be 43-45 by the time I was ready for that.
If you have any thoughts, please let me know. Truthfully, I do have other potential options if I pursued them & I’m not afraid of being alone, but I’m feeling that I’d like to commit to a relationship.

https://mises.org/mises-daily/society-without-state
In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” — that is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the state back into society in another form, and that therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not “really” anarchism. This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state. On the other hand, I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of an individual. Anarchists oppose the state because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.
Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two characteristics have been possessed by what is generally acknowledged to be states throughout recorded history. The state, by its use of physical coercion, has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly of defense services over its territorial jurisdiction. But it is certainly conceptually possible for such services to be supplied by private, non-state institutions, and indeed such services have historically been supplied by other organizations than the state. To be opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts, arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways. Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.
The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the state is the only institution or organization in society which regularly and systematically acquires its income through the use of physical coercion. All other individuals or organizations acquire their income voluntarily, either (1) through the voluntary sale of goods and services to consumers on the market, or (2) through voluntary gifts or donations by members or other donors. If I cease or refrain from purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers do not come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force me to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical Association, the association may not force me to join or prevent me from giving up my membership. Only the state can do so; only the state can confiscate my property or put me in jail if I do not pay its tax tribute. Therefore, only the state regularly exists and has its very being by means of coercive depredations on private property.
Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by claiming that in some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or membership in the APA is in some way “coercive.” Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term “coercion” can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute for it “physical violence or the threat thereof,” with the only loss being in literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion.
It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its coercive source of income by adding a host of other aggressions upon society, ranging from economic controls to the prohibition of pornography to the compelling of religious observance to the mass murder of civilians in organized warfare. In short, the state, in the words of Albert Jay Nock, “claims and exercises a monopoly of crime” over its territorial area.
The second criticism I would like to defuse before beginning the main body of the paper is the common charge that anarchists “assume that all people are good” and that without the state no crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism assumes that with the abolition of the state a New Anarchist Man will emerge, cooperative, humane, and benevolent, so that no problem of crime will then plague the society. I confess that I do not understand the basis for this charge. Whatever other schools of anarchism profess — and I do not believe that they are open to the charge — I certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime — theft, oppression, mass murder — on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.
A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual members of society. The only further point that need be made is that by eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values in the minds of the public.
We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in favor of anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and economic. Nor can we take up the various goods and services now provided by the state and show how private individuals and groups will be able to supply them far more efficiently on the free market. Here we can only deal with perhaps the most difficult area, the area where it is almost universally assumed that the state must exist and act, even if it is only a “necessary evil” instead of a positive good: the vital realm of defense or protection of person and property against aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be enforced. My contention is that all of these admittedly necessary services of protection can be satisfactorily and efficiently supplied by private persons and institutions on the free market.
One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper: new proposals such as anarchism are almost always gauged against the implicit assumption that the present, or statist system works to perfection. Any lacunae or difficulties with the picture of the anarchist society are considered net liabilities, and enough to dismiss anarchism out of hand. It is, in short, implicitly assumed that the state is doing its self-assumed job of protecting person and property to perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why the state is bound to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in such a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented record of the state through history: no combination of private marauders can possibly begin to match the state’s unremitting record of theft, confiscation, oppression, and mass murder. No collection of Mafia or private bank robbers can begin to compare with all the Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and their analogues through the history of mankind.
This point can be made more philosophically: it is illegitimate to compare the merits of anarchism and statism by starting with the present system as the implicit given and then critically examining only the anarchist alternative. What we must do is to begin at the zero point and then critically examine both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose then that someone suggested: “We are all bound to suffer from those of us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to protect each of us from each other.” I submit that this proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of the Jones family, the question of “who will guard the guardians?” becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to its existence.
A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to forecast the shape of the future anarchist society. For it is impossible for observers to predict voluntary social arrangements, including the provision of goods and services, on the free market. Suppose, for example, that this were the year 1874 and that someone predicted that eventually there would be a radio-manufacturing industry. To be able to make such a forecast successfully, does he have to be challenged to state immediately how many radio manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they would be, where they would be located, what technology and marketing techniques they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a challenge would make no sense, and in a profound sense the same is true of those who demand a precise portrayal of the pattern of protection activities on the market. Anarchism advocates the dissolution of the state into social and market arrangements, and these arrangements are far more flexible and less predictable than political institutions. The most that we can do, then, is to offer broad guidelines and perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist society.
One important point to make here is that the advance of modern technology makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly feasible. Take, for example, the case of lighthouses, where it is often charged that it is unfeasible for private lighthouse operators to row out to each ship to charge it for use of the light. Apart from the fact that this argument ignores the successful existence of private lighthouses in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century, another vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship would have to have paid for an electronically controlled beam which could then be automatically turned on for those ships which had paid for the service.
Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes — in particular disputes over alleged violations of person and property — would be resolved in an anarchist society. First, it should be noted that all disputes involve two parties: the plaintiff, the alleged victim of the crime or tort and the defendant, the alleged aggressor. In many cases of broken contract, of course, each of the two parties alleging that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff and a defendant.
An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be accepted by the great majority of the public.
In the first place, a dispute may be resolved voluntarily between the two parties themselves, either unaided or with the help of a third mediator. This poses no problem, and will automatically be accepted by society at large. It is so accepted even now, much less in a society imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful cooperation and agreement. Secondly and similarly, the two parties, unable to reach agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to the decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a dispute has arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract. Again, there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining legitimacy. Even in the present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and coercive and cumbersome procedures of the politically run government courts has led increasing numbers of citizens to turn to voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy and harmonious settling of disputes.
Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that

Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the speed of arbitration procedures vis-à-vis the courts, the arbitrators can proceed as experts in disregard of the official government law; in a profound sense, then, they serve to create a voluntary body of private law. “In other words,” states Wooldridge, “the system of extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed hand in hand with a body of private law; the rules of the state are circumvented by the same process that circumvents the forums established for the settlement of disputes over those rules…. In short, a private agreement between two people, a bilateral “law,” has supplanted the official law. The writ of the sovereign has cease to run, and for it is substituted a rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties. Wooldridge concludes that “if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal damage rule or the statute of limitations applicable to the claim before him (and it is generally conceded that he has that power), arbitration can be viewed as a practically revolutionary instrument for self-liberation from the law….”2
It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary arbitration from being successful and expanding in the United States and in England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant. None of those courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have added the private courts of shippers which developed the body of admiralty law in a similar way.
How then did these private, “anarchistic,” and voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the offending merchant. This method of voluntary “enforcement,” indeed proved highly successful. Wooldridge writes that “the merchants’ courts were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could not be sent to jail…. Nevertheless, it is apparent that … [their] decisions were generally respected even by the losers; otherwise people would never have used them in the first place…. Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows … proved if anything more effective than physical coercion.”3 Nor did this voluntary method fail to work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely in the years before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be enforced in the courts,

It should also be pointed out that modern technology makes even more feasible the collection and dissemination of information about people’s credit ratings and records of keeping or violating their contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an anarchist society would see the expansion of this sort of dissemination of data and thereby facilitate the ostracism or boycotting of contract and arbitration violators.
How would arbitrators be selected in an anarchist society? In the same way as they are chosen now, and as they were chosen in the days of strictly voluntary arbitration: the arbitrators with the best reputation for efficiency and probity would be chosen by the various parties on the market. As in other processes of the market, the arbitrators with the best record in settling disputes will come to gain an increasing amount of business, and those with poor records will no longer enjoy clients and will have to shift to another line of endeavor. Here it must be emphasized that parties in dispute will seek out those arbitrators with the best reputation for both expertise and impartiality and that inefficient or biased arbitrators will rapidly have to find another occupation.
Thus, the Tannehills emphasize:

If desired, furthermore, the contracting parties could provide in advance for a series of arbitrators:

Arbitration, then, poses little difficulty for a portrayal of the free society. But what of torts or crimes of aggression where there has been no contract? Or suppose that the breaker of a contract defies the arbitration award? Is ostracism enough? In short, how can courts develop in the free-market anarchist society which will have the power to enforce judgments against criminals or contract breakers?
In the wide sense, defense service consists of guards or police who use force in defending person and property against attack, and judges or courts whose role is to use socially accepted procedures to determine who the criminals or tortfeasors are, as well as to enforce judicial awards, such as damages or the keeping of contracts. On the free market, many scenarios are possible on the relationship between the private courts and the police; they may be “vertically integrated,” for example, or their services may be supplied by separate firms. Furthermore, it seems likely that police service will be supplied by insurance companies who will provide crime insurance to their clients. In that case, insurance companies will pay off the victims of crime or the breaking of contracts or arbitration awards and then pursue the aggressors in court to recoup their losses. There is a natural market connection between insurance companies and defense service, since they need pay out less benefits in proportion as they are able to keep down the rate of crime.
Courts might either charge fees for their services, with the losers of cases obliged to pay court costs, or else they may subsist on monthly or yearly premiums by their clients, who may be either individuals or the police or insurance agencies. Suppose, for example, that Smith is an aggrieved party, either because he has been assaulted or robbed, or because an arbitration award in his favor has not been honored. Smith believes that Jones is the party guilty of the crime. Smith then goes to a court, Court A, of which he is a client, and brings charges against Jones as a defendant. In my view, the hallmark of an anarchist society is one where no man may legally compel someone who is not a convicted criminal to do anything, since that would be aggression against an innocent man’s person or property. Therefore, Court A can only invite rather than subpoena Jones to attend his trial. Of course, if Jones refused to appear or send a representative, his side of the case will not be heard. The trial of Jones proceeds. Suppose that Court A finds Jones innocent. In my view, part of the generally accepted law code of the anarchist society (on which see further below) is that this must end the matter unless Smith can prove charges of gross incompetence or bias on the part of the court.
Suppose, next, that Court A finds Jones guilty. Jones might accept the verdict, because he too is a client of the same court, because he knows he is guilty, or for some other reason. In that case, Court A proceeds to exercise judgment against Jones. Neither of these instances poses very difficult problems for our picture of the anarchist society. But suppose, instead, that Jones contests the decision; he then goes to his court, Court B, and the case is retried there. Suppose that Court B, too, finds Jones guilty. Again, it seems to me that the accepted law code of the anarchist society will assert that this ends the matter; both parties have had their say in courts which each has selected, and the decision for guilt is unanimous.
Suppose, however, the most difficult case: that Court B finds Jones innocent. The two courts, each subscribed to by one of the two parties, have split their verdicts. In that case, the two courts will submit the case to an appeals court, or arbitrator, which the two courts agree upon. There seems to be no real difficulty about the concept of an appeals court. As in the case of arbitration contracts, it seems very likely that the various private courts in the society will have prior agreements to submit their disputes to a particular appeals court. How will the appeals judges be chosen? Again, as in the case of arbitrators or of the first judges on the free market, they will be chosen for their expertise and their reputation for efficiency, honesty, and integrity. Obviously, appeals judges who are inefficient or biased will scarcely be chosen by courts who will have a dispute. The point here is that there is no need for a legally established or institutionalized single, monopoly appeals court system, as states now provide. There is no reason why there cannot arise a multitude of efficient and honest appeals judges who will be selected by the disputant courts, just as there are numerous private arbitrators on the market today. The appeals court renders its decision, and the courts proceed to enforce it if, in our example, Jones is considered guilty — unless, of course, Jones can prove bias in some other court proceedings.
No society can have unlimited judicial appeals, for in that case there would be no point to having judges or courts at all. Therefore, every society, whether statist or anarchist, will have to have some socially accepted cutoff point for trials and appeals. My suggestion is the rule that the agreement of any two courts, be decisive. “Two” is not an arbitrary figure, for it reflects the fact that there are two parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, to any alleged crime or contract dispute.
If the courts are to be empowered to enforce decision against guilty parties, does this not bring back the state in another form and thereby negate anarchism? No, for at the beginning of this paper I explicitly defined anarchism in such a way as not to rule out the use of defensive force — force in defense of person and property — by privately supported agencies. In the same way, it is not bringing back the state to allow persons to use force to defend themselves against aggression, or to hire guards or police agencies to defend them.
It should be noted, however, that in the anarchist society there will be no “district attorney” to press charges on behalf of “society.” Only the victims will press charges as the plaintiffs. If, then, these victims should happen to be absolute pacifists who are opposed even to defensive force, then they will simply not press charges in the courts or otherwise retaliate against those who have aggressed against them. In a free society that would be their right. If the victim should suffer from murder, then his heir would have the right to press the charges.
What of the Hatfield-and-McCoy problem? Suppose that a Hatfield kills a McCoy, and that McCoy’s heir does not belong to a private insurance, police agency, or court, and decides to retaliate himself? Since under anarchism there can be no coercion of the noncriminal, McCoy would have the perfect right to do so. No one may be compelled to bring his case to a court. Indeed, since the right to hire police or courts flows from the right of self-defense against aggression, it would be inconsistent and in contradiction to the very basis of the free society to institute such compulsion.
Suppose, then, that the surviving McCoy finds what he believes to be the guilty Hatfield and kills him in turn? What then? This is fine, except that McCoy may have to worry about charges being brought against him by a surviving Hatfield. Here it must be emphasized that in the law of the anarchist society based on defense against aggression, the courts would not be able to proceed against McCoy if in fact he killed the right Hatfield. His problem would arise if the courts should find that he made a grievous mistake and killed the wrong man; in that case, he in turn would be found guilty of murder. Surely, in most instances, individuals will wish to obviate such problems by taking their case to a court and thereby gain social acceptability for their defensive retaliation — not for the act of retaliation but for the correctness of deciding who the criminal in any given case might be. The purpose of the judicial process, indeed, is to find a way of general agreement on who might be the criminal or contract breaker in any given case. The judicial process is not a good in itself; thus, in the case of an assassination, such as Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on public television, there is no need for a complex judicial process, since the name of the murderer is evident to all.
Will not the possibility exist of a private court that may turn venal and dishonest, or of a private police force that turns criminal and extorts money by coercion? Of course such an event may occur, given the propensities of human nature. Anarchism is not a moral cure-all. But the important point is that market forces exist to place severe checks on such possibilities, especially in contrast to a society where a state exists. For, in the first place, judges, like arbitrators, will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for efficiency and impartiality. Secondly, on the free market important checks and balances exist against venal courts or criminal police forces. Namely, that there are competing courts and police agencies to whom victims may turn for redress. If the “Prudential Police Agency” should turn outlaw and extract revenue from victims by coercion, the latter would have the option of turning to the “Mutual” or “Equitable” Police Agency for defense and for pressing charges against Prudential. These are the genuine “checks and balances” of the free market, genuine in contrast to the phony check and balances of a state system, where all the alleged “balancing” agencies are in the hands of one monopoly government. Indeed, given the monopoly “protection service” of a state, what is there to prevent a state from using its monopoly channels of coercion to extort money from the public? What are the checks and limits of the state? None, except for the extremely difficult course of revolution against a power with all of the guns in its hands. In fact, the state provides an easy, legitimated channel for crime and aggression, since it has its very being in the crime of tax theft, and the coerced monopoly of “protection.” It is the state, indeed, that functions as a mighty “protection racket” on a giant and massive scale. It is the state that says: “Pay us for your ‘protection’ or else.” In the light of the massive and inherent activities of the state, the danger of a “protection racket” emerging from one or more private police agencies is relatively small indeed.
Moreover, it must be emphasized that a crucial element in the power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the public, the fact that after centuries of propaganda, the depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent services. Taxation is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor conscription as slavery. Should a private police agency turn outlaw, should “Prudential” become a protection racket, it would then lack the social legitimacy which the state has managed to accrue to itself over the centuries. “Prudential” would be seen by all as bandits, rather than as legitimate or divinely appointed “sovereigns” bent on promoting the “common good” or the “general welfare.” And lacking such legitimacy, “Prudential” would have to face the wrath of the public and the defense and retaliation of the other private defense agencies, the police and courts, on the free market. Given these inherent checks and limits, a successful transformation from a free society to bandit rule becomes most unlikely. Indeed, historically, it has been very difficult for a state to arise to supplant a stateless society; usually, it has come about through external conquest rather than by evolution from within a society.
Within the anarchist camp, there has been much dispute on whether the private courts would have to be bound by a basic, common law code. Ingenious attempts have been made to work out a system where the laws or standards of decision-making by the courts would differ completely from one to another.7 But in my view all would have to abide by the basic law code, in particular, prohibition of aggression against person and property, in order to fulfill our definition of anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression. Suppose, for example, that one group of people in society holds that all redheads are demons who deserve to be shot on sight. Suppose that Jones, one of this group, shoots Smith, a redhead. Suppose that Smith or his heir presses charges in a court, but that Jones’s court, in philosophic agreement with Jones, finds him innocent therefore. It seems to me that in order to be considered legitimate, any court would have to follow the basic libertarian law code of the inviolate right of person and property. For otherwise, courts might legally subscribe to a code which sanctions such aggression in various cases, and which to that extent would violate the definition of anarchism and introduce, if not the state, then a strong element of statishness or legalized aggression into the society.
But again I see no insuperable difficulties here. For in that case, anarchists, in agitating for their creed, will simply include in their agitation the idea of a general libertarian law code as part and parcel of the anarchist creed of abolition of legalized aggression against person or property in the society.
In contrast to the general law code, other aspects of court decisions could legitimately vary in accordance with the market or the wishes of the clients; for example, the language the cases will be conducted in, the number of judges to be involved, and so on.
There are other problems of the basic law code which there is no time to go into here: for example, the definition of just property titles or the question of legitimate punishment of convicted offenders — though the latter problem of course exists in statist legal systems as well.8 The basic point, however, is that the state is not needed to arrive at legal principles or their elaboration: indeed, much of the common law, the law merchant, admiralty law, and private law in general, grew up apart from the state, by judges not making the law but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason.9 The idea that the state is needed to make law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply postal or police services.
Enough has been said here, I believe, to indicate that an anarchist system for settling disputes would be both viable and self-subsistent: that once adopted, it could work and continue indefinitely. How to arrive at that system is of course a very different problem, but certainly at the very least it will not likely come about unless people are convinced of its workability, are convinced, in short, that the state is not a necessary evil.

[Murray Rothbard delivered this talk 32 years ago today at the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP), Washington, DC: December 28, 1974. It was first published in The Libertarian Forum, volume 7.1, January 1975, available in PDF and ePub.]

https://mises.org/mises-daily/society-without-state
In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” — that is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the state back into society in another form, and that therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not “really” anarchism. This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state. On the other hand, I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of an individual. Anarchists oppose the state because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.
Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two characteristics have been possessed by what is generally acknowledged to be states throughout recorded history. The state, by its use of physical coercion, has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly of defense services over its territorial jurisdiction. But it is certainly conceptually possible for such services to be supplied by private, non-state institutions, and indeed such services have historically been supplied by other organizations than the state. To be opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts, arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways. Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.
The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the state is the only institution or organization in society which regularly and systematically acquires its income through the use of physical coercion. All other individuals or organizations acquire their income voluntarily, either (1) through the voluntary sale of goods and services to consumers on the market, or (2) through voluntary gifts or donations by members or other donors. If I cease or refrain from purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers do not come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force me to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical Association, the association may not force me to join or prevent me from giving up my membership. Only the state can do so; only the state can confiscate my property or put me in jail if I do not pay its tax tribute. Therefore, only the state regularly exists and has its very being by means of coercive depredations on private property.
Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by claiming that in some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or membership in the APA is in some way “coercive.” Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term “coercion” can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute for it “physical violence or the threat thereof,” with the only loss being in literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion.
It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its coercive source of income by adding a host of other aggressions upon society, ranging from economic controls to the prohibition of pornography to the compelling of religious observance to the mass murder of civilians in organized warfare. In short, the state, in the words of Albert Jay Nock, “claims and exercises a monopoly of crime” over its territorial area.
The second criticism I would like to defuse before beginning the main body of the paper is the common charge that anarchists “assume that all people are good” and that without the state no crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism assumes that with the abolition of the state a New Anarchist Man will emerge, cooperative, humane, and benevolent, so that no problem of crime will then plague the society. I confess that I do not understand the basis for this charge. Whatever other schools of anarchism profess — and I do not believe that they are open to the charge — I certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime — theft, oppression, mass murder — on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.
A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual members of society. The only further point that need be made is that by eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values in the minds of the public.
We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in favor of anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and economic. Nor can we take up the various goods and services now provided by the state and show how private individuals and groups will be able to supply them far more efficiently on the free market. Here we can only deal with perhaps the most difficult area, the area where it is almost universally assumed that the state must exist and act, even if it is only a “necessary evil” instead of a positive good: the vital realm of defense or protection of person and property against aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be enforced. My contention is that all of these admittedly necessary services of protection can be satisfactorily and efficiently supplied by private persons and institutions on the free market.
One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper: new proposals such as anarchism are almost always gauged against the implicit assumption that the present, or statist system works to perfection. Any lacunae or difficulties with the picture of the anarchist society are considered net liabilities, and enough to dismiss anarchism out of hand. It is, in short, implicitly assumed that the state is doing its self-assumed job of protecting person and property to perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why the state is bound to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in such a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented record of the state through history: no combination of private marauders can possibly begin to match the state’s unremitting record of theft, confiscation, oppression, and mass murder. No collection of Mafia or private bank robbers can begin to compare with all the Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and their analogues through the history of mankind.
This point can be made more philosophically: it is illegitimate to compare the merits of anarchism and statism by starting with the present system as the implicit given and then critically examining only the anarchist alternative. What we must do is to begin at the zero point and then critically examine both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose then that someone suggested: “We are all bound to suffer from those of us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to protect each of us from each other.” I submit that this proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of the Jones family, the question of “who will guard the guardians?” becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to its existence.
A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to forecast the shape of the future anarchist society. For it is impossible for observers to predict voluntary social arrangements, including the provision of goods and services, on the free market. Suppose, for example, that this were the year 1874 and that someone predicted that eventually there would be a radio-manufacturing industry. To be able to make such a forecast successfully, does he have to be challenged to state immediately how many radio manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they would be, where they would be located, what technology and marketing techniques they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a challenge would make no sense, and in a profound sense the same is true of those who demand a precise portrayal of the pattern of protection activities on the market. Anarchism advocates the dissolution of the state into social and market arrangements, and these arrangements are far more flexible and less predictable than political institutions. The most that we can do, then, is to offer broad guidelines and perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist society.
One important point to make here is that the advance of modern technology makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly feasible. Take, for example, the case of lighthouses, where it is often charged that it is unfeasible for private lighthouse operators to row out to each ship to charge it for use of the light. Apart from the fact that this argument ignores the successful existence of private lighthouses in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century, another vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship would have to have paid for an electronically controlled beam which could then be automatically turned on for those ships which had paid for the service.
Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes — in particular disputes over alleged violations of person and property — would be resolved in an anarchist society. First, it should be noted that all disputes involve two parties: the plaintiff, the alleged victim of the crime or tort and the defendant, the alleged aggressor. In many cases of broken contract, of course, each of the two parties alleging that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff and a defendant.
An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be accepted by the great majority of the public.
In the first place, a dispute may be resolved voluntarily between the two parties themselves, either unaided or with the help of a third mediator. This poses no problem, and will automatically be accepted by society at large. It is so accepted even now, much less in a society imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful cooperation and agreement. Secondly and similarly, the two parties, unable to reach agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to the decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a dispute has arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract. Again, there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining legitimacy. Even in the present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and coercive and cumbersome procedures of the politically run government courts has led increasing numbers of citizens to turn to voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy and harmonious settling of disputes.
Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that

Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the speed of arbitration procedures vis-à-vis the courts, the arbitrators can proceed as experts in disregard of the official government law; in a profound sense, then, they serve to create a voluntary body of private law. “In other words,” states Wooldridge, “the system of extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed hand in hand with a body of private law; the rules of the state are circumvented by the same process that circumvents the forums established for the settlement of disputes over those rules…. In short, a private agreement between two people, a bilateral “law,” has supplanted the official law. The writ of the sovereign has cease to run, and for it is substituted a rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties. Wooldridge concludes that “if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal damage rule or the statute of limitations applicable to the claim before him (and it is generally conceded that he has that power), arbitration can be viewed as a practically revolutionary instrument for self-liberation from the law….”2
It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary arbitration from being successful and expanding in the United States and in England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant. None of those courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have added the private courts of shippers which developed the body of admiralty law in a similar way.
How then did these private, “anarchistic,” and voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the offending merchant. This method of voluntary “enforcement,” indeed proved highly successful. Wooldridge writes that “the merchants’ courts were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could not be sent to jail…. Nevertheless, it is apparent that … [their] decisions were generally respected even by the losers; otherwise people would never have used them in the first place…. Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows … proved if anything more effective than physical coercion.”3 Nor did this voluntary method fail to work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely in the years before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be enforced in the courts,

It should also be pointed out that modern technology makes even more feasible the collection and dissemination of information about people’s credit ratings and records of keeping or violating their contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an anarchist society would see the expansion of this sort of dissemination of data and thereby facilitate the ostracism or boycotting of contract and arbitration violators.
How would arbitrators be selected in an anarchist society? In the same way as they are chosen now, and as they were chosen in the days of strictly voluntary arbitration: the arbitrators with the best reputation for efficiency and probity would be chosen by the various parties on the market. As in other processes of the market, the arbitrators with the best record in settling disputes will come to gain an increasing amount of business, and those with poor records will no longer enjoy clients and will have to shift to another line of endeavor. Here it must be emphasized that parties in dispute will seek out those arbitrators with the best reputation for both expertise and impartiality and that inefficient or biased arbitrators will rapidly have to find another occupation.
Thus, the Tannehills emphasize:

If desired, furthermore, the contracting parties could provide in advance for a series of arbitrators:

Arbitration, then, poses little difficulty for a portrayal of the free society. But what of torts or crimes of aggression where there has been no contract? Or suppose that the breaker of a contract defies the arbitration award? Is ostracism enough? In short, how can courts develop in the free-market anarchist society which will have the power to enforce judgments against criminals or contract breakers?
In the wide sense, defense service consists of guards or police who use force in defending person and property against attack, and judges or courts whose role is to use socially accepted procedures to determine who the criminals or tortfeasors are, as well as to enforce judicial awards, such as damages or the keeping of contracts. On the free market, many scenarios are possible on the relationship between the private courts and the police; they may be “vertically integrated,” for example, or their services may be supplied by separate firms. Furthermore, it seems likely that police service will be supplied by insurance companies who will provide crime insurance to their clients. In that case, insurance companies will pay off the victims of crime or the breaking of contracts or arbitration awards and then pursue the aggressors in court to recoup their losses. There is a natural market connection between insurance companies and defense service, since they need pay out less benefits in proportion as they are able to keep down the rate of crime.
Courts might either charge fees for their services, with the losers of cases obliged to pay court costs, or else they may subsist on monthly or yearly premiums by their clients, who may be either individuals or the police or insurance agencies. Suppose, for example, that Smith is an aggrieved party, either because he has been assaulted or robbed, or because an arbitration award in his favor has not been honored. Smith believes that Jones is the party guilty of the crime. Smith then goes to a court, Court A, of which he is a client, and brings charges against Jones as a defendant. In my view, the hallmark of an anarchist society is one where no man may legally compel someone who is not a convicted criminal to do anything, since that would be aggression against an innocent man’s person or property. Therefore, Court A can only invite rather than subpoena Jones to attend his trial. Of course, if Jones refused to appear or send a representative, his side of the case will not be heard. The trial of Jones proceeds. Suppose that Court A finds Jones innocent. In my view, part of the generally accepted law code of the anarchist society (on which see further below) is that this must end the matter unless Smith can prove charges of gross incompetence or bias on the part of the court.
Suppose, next, that Court A finds Jones guilty. Jones might accept the verdict, because he too is a client of the same court, because he knows he is guilty, or for some other reason. In that case, Court A proceeds to exercise judgment against Jones. Neither of these instances poses very difficult problems for our picture of the anarchist society. But suppose, instead, that Jones contests the decision; he then goes to his court, Court B, and the case is retried there. Suppose that Court B, too, finds Jones guilty. Again, it seems to me that the accepted law code of the anarchist society will assert that this ends the matter; both parties have had their say in courts which each has selected, and the decision for guilt is unanimous.
Suppose, however, the most difficult case: that Court B finds Jones innocent. The two courts, each subscribed to by one of the two parties, have split their verdicts. In that case, the two courts will submit the case to an appeals court, or arbitrator, which the two courts agree upon. There seems to be no real difficulty about the concept of an appeals court. As in the case of arbitration contracts, it seems very likely that the various private courts in the society will have prior agreements to submit their disputes to a particular appeals court. How will the appeals judges be chosen? Again, as in the case of arbitrators or of the first judges on the free market, they will be chosen for their expertise and their reputation for efficiency, honesty, and integrity. Obviously, appeals judges who are inefficient or biased will scarcely be chosen by courts who will have a dispute. The point here is that there is no need for a legally established or institutionalized single, monopoly appeals court system, as states now provide. There is no reason why there cannot arise a multitude of efficient and honest appeals judges who will be selected by the disputant courts, just as there are numerous private arbitrators on the market today. The appeals court renders its decision, and the courts proceed to enforce it if, in our example, Jones is considered guilty — unless, of course, Jones can prove bias in some other court proceedings.
No society can have unlimited judicial appeals, for in that case there would be no point to having judges or courts at all. Therefore, every society, whether statist or anarchist, will have to have some socially accepted cutoff point for trials and appeals. My suggestion is the rule that the agreement of any two courts, be decisive. “Two” is not an arbitrary figure, for it reflects the fact that there are two parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, to any alleged crime or contract dispute.
If the courts are to be empowered to enforce decision against guilty parties, does this not bring back the state in another form and thereby negate anarchism? No, for at the beginning of this paper I explicitly defined anarchism in such a way as not to rule out the use of defensive force — force in defense of person and property — by privately supported agencies. In the same way, it is not bringing back the state to allow persons to use force to defend themselves against aggression, or to hire guards or police agencies to defend them.
It should be noted, however, that in the anarchist society there will be no “district attorney” to press charges on behalf of “society.” Only the victims will press charges as the plaintiffs. If, then, these victims should happen to be absolute pacifists who are opposed even to defensive force, then they will simply not press charges in the courts or otherwise retaliate against those who have aggressed against them. In a free society that would be their right. If the victim should suffer from murder, then his heir would have the right to press the charges.
What of the Hatfield-and-McCoy problem? Suppose that a Hatfield kills a McCoy, and that McCoy’s heir does not belong to a private insurance, police agency, or court, and decides to retaliate himself? Since under anarchism there can be no coercion of the noncriminal, McCoy would have the perfect right to do so. No one may be compelled to bring his case to a court. Indeed, since the right to hire police or courts flows from the right of self-defense against aggression, it would be inconsistent and in contradiction to the very basis of the free society to institute such compulsion.
Suppose, then, that the surviving McCoy finds what he believes to be the guilty Hatfield and kills him in turn? What then? This is fine, except that McCoy may have to worry about charges being brought against him by a surviving Hatfield. Here it must be emphasized that in the law of the anarchist society based on defense against aggression, the courts would not be able to proceed against McCoy if in fact he killed the right Hatfield. His problem would arise if the courts should find that he made a grievous mistake and killed the wrong man; in that case, he in turn would be found guilty of murder. Surely, in most instances, individuals will wish to obviate such problems by taking their case to a court and thereby gain social acceptability for their defensive retaliation — not for the act of retaliation but for the correctness of deciding who the criminal in any given case might be. The purpose of the judicial process, indeed, is to find a way of general agreement on who might be the criminal or contract breaker in any given case. The judicial process is not a good in itself; thus, in the case of an assassination, such as Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on public television, there is no need for a complex judicial process, since the name of the murderer is evident to all.
Will not the possibility exist of a private court that may turn venal and dishonest, or of a private police force that turns criminal and extorts money by coercion? Of course such an event may occur, given the propensities of human nature. Anarchism is not a moral cure-all. But the important point is that market forces exist to place severe checks on such possibilities, especially in contrast to a society where a state exists. For, in the first place, judges, like arbitrators, will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for efficiency and impartiality. Secondly, on the free market important checks and balances exist against venal courts or criminal police forces. Namely, that there are competing courts and police agencies to whom victims may turn for redress. If the “Prudential Police Agency” should turn outlaw and extract revenue from victims by coercion, the latter would have the option of turning to the “Mutual” or “Equitable” Police Agency for defense and for pressing charges against Prudential. These are the genuine “checks and balances” of the free market, genuine in contrast to the phony check and balances of a state system, where all the alleged “balancing” agencies are in the hands of one monopoly government. Indeed, given the monopoly “protection service” of a state, what is there to prevent a state from using its monopoly channels of coercion to extort money from the public? What are the checks and limits of the state? None, except for the extremely difficult course of revolution against a power with all of the guns in its hands. In fact, the state provides an easy, legitimated channel for crime and aggression, since it has its very being in the crime of tax theft, and the coerced monopoly of “protection.” It is the state, indeed, that functions as a mighty “protection racket” on a giant and massive scale. It is the state that says: “Pay us for your ‘protection’ or else.” In the light of the massive and inherent activities of the state, the danger of a “protection racket” emerging from one or more private police agencies is relatively small indeed.
Moreover, it must be emphasized that a crucial element in the power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the public, the fact that after centuries of propaganda, the depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent services. Taxation is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor conscription as slavery. Should a private police agency turn outlaw, should “Prudential” become a protection racket, it would then lack the social legitimacy which the state has managed to accrue to itself over the centuries. “Prudential” would be seen by all as bandits, rather than as legitimate or divinely appointed “sovereigns” bent on promoting the “common good” or the “general welfare.” And lacking such legitimacy, “Prudential” would have to face the wrath of the public and the defense and retaliation of the other private defense agencies, the police and courts, on the free market. Given these inherent checks and limits, a successful transformation from a free society to bandit rule becomes most unlikely. Indeed, historically, it has been very difficult for a state to arise to supplant a stateless society; usually, it has come about through external conquest rather than by evolution from within a society.
Within the anarchist camp, there has been much dispute on whether the private courts would have to be bound by a basic, common law code. Ingenious attempts have been made to work out a system where the laws or standards of decision-making by the courts would differ completely from one to another.7 But in my view all would have to abide by the basic law code, in particular, prohibition of aggression against person and property, in order to fulfill our definition of anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression. Suppose, for example, that one group of people in society holds that all redheads are demons who deserve to be shot on sight. Suppose that Jones, one of this group, shoots Smith, a redhead. Suppose that Smith or his heir presses charges in a court, but that Jones’s court, in philosophic agreement with Jones, finds him innocent therefore. It seems to me that in order to be considered legitimate, any court would have to follow the basic libertarian law code of the inviolate right of person and property. For otherwise, courts might legally subscribe to a code which sanctions such aggression in various cases, and which to that extent would violate the definition of anarchism and introduce, if not the state, then a strong element of statishness or legalized aggression into the society.
But again I see no insuperable difficulties here. For in that case, anarchists, in agitating for their creed, will simply include in their agitation the idea of a general libertarian law code as part and parcel of the anarchist creed of abolition of legalized aggression against person or property in the society.
In contrast to the general law code, other aspects of court decisions could legitimately vary in accordance with the market or the wishes of the clients; for example, the language the cases will be conducted in, the number of judges to be involved, and so on.
There are other problems of the basic law code which there is no time to go into here: for example, the definition of just property titles or the question of legitimate punishment of convicted offenders — though the latter problem of course exists in statist legal systems as well.8 The basic point, however, is that the state is not needed to arrive at legal principles or their elaboration: indeed, much of the common law, the law merchant, admiralty law, and private law in general, grew up apart from the state, by judges not making the law but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason.9 The idea that the state is needed to make law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply postal or police services.
Enough has been said here, I believe, to indicate that an anarchist system for settling disputes would be both viable and self-subsistent: that once adopted, it could work and continue indefinitely. How to arrive at that system is of course a very different problem, but certainly at the very least it will not likely come about unless people are convinced of its workability, are convinced, in short, that the state is not a necessary evil.

[Murray Rothbard delivered this talk 32 years ago today at the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP), Washington, DC: December 28, 1974. It was first published in The Libertarian Forum, volume 7.1, January 1975, available in PDF and ePub.]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9240103/

Patterns of Gender-Based Violence in Conflict-Affected Ukraine: A Descriptive Analysis of Internally Displaced and Local Women Receiving Psychosocial Services

Arbitrary Displacement Is a Structural Rot that Hegemonizes Economic Abuse and with it Economic Collapse
Checkpoints for the displaced showed the most violence, literally predating on women when they were the most vulnerable by armed men.
Almost 8% of violent incidents against displaced women occurred at checkpoints or at reception centers for internally displaced persons (IDP) and 20% were perpetrated by armed men.
Majority of Ukrainian female respondents described their household economic situation as bad or very bad (59%)
A survey of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Ukraine found that a majority of respondents described their household economic situation as bad or very bad (59%), and only 22% held regular employment (Roberts et al., 2017).
Women fleeing violence are most likely to be exposed to sexually violent men exactly at the moments they were most expecting protection. This suggests a pattern of men who watch for the female victims of their enemies, and then violate them when they come to them, simply out of nationalist/ethnicist hate crime, with no care about their status as a victim.
Meta-analytic findings estimate a 21% prevalence of sexual violence among female refugees and IDPs (Vu et al., 2014).
A 2014 national survey conducted shortly after the start of the conflict found that 19% of 15–49 year old women had experienced violence since the age of 15 compared to 17% in 2007 (Martsenyuk et al., 2014).
Displaced women were more likely to experience sexual violence
Furthermore, we hypothesized that among GBV survivors: 1) proportionally more violent acts against displaced women would be non-domestic and associated with combat operations (i.e., demobilized and active governmental and non-governmental soldiers); 2) displaced women would be more likely to experience sexual violence than local women; and 3) patterns of reporting and referrals would differ depending on a woman’s residency status.
UN Women’s Framework for emergency response and preparedness (UN Women, 2013) was used
The adaptation process followed the recommendations of the GBV-IMS Rollout Guidelines (UNFPA, n.d.) and the UN Women’s Framework for emergency response and preparedness (UN Women, 2013), and entailed piloting the tool with several mobile teams and incorporating the feedback from the field.
Definition of internally displaced person
Ukrainian law defines an internally displaced person as “a citizen of Ukraine, a foreigner or a stateless person who is in the territory of Ukraine legally and has the right to reside permanently in Ukraine, and who was forced to leave his place of residence due to armed conflict, temporary occupation, widespread violence, human rights violations or emergencies of natural or man-made nature” (On Ensuring the Rights and Freedoms of Internally Displaced Persons, 2014).
Forced marriage with economic abuse followed with rape and sexual assault
Determination of GBV type was made by mobile team members using the GBV-IMS classification tool (UNFPA et al., 2011). The form instructs providers to select only one GBV type per case based on a series of questions asked in a specific order, as follows: 1) rape (if any type of penetration occurred); 2) sexual assault (if there was unwanted sexual contact); 3) physical assault (if there was physical battery); 4) forced marriage; 5) economic violence (in cases of denial of resources, opportunities, or services); 6) psychological or emotional abuse (if the incident involved insults, name-calling, and humiliation); and 7) no GBV (if none of the above). If, for example, a woman reported experiencing unwanted sexual contact, the provider would classify the case as “sexual assault” and continue to the following section.
One in five women who experienced violence were unemployed, showing these violent perpetrators may keep their victims from employment or sabotage their employment purposefully to put them in harm’s way.
More than one in five (21.6%) women who experienced violence were unemployed, with no differences between the groups. Overall, slightly less than one-third (30.7%) of the women engaged in unpaid labor such as elder and childcare, with significantly higher proportions among local women. Proportionally more displaced women had a professional occupation (24.6% vs. 20.0%, p<0.001).
78.3% of women reported that a man raped them. Half of the women reported psychological abuse in addition, showing many rapists are psychologically abusive before and after as a tell-tale sign.
More than three-quarters (78.3%) of women reported that a man was the perpetrator. In nearly half of the cases, the perpetrator was an intimate partner (49.5%); and in roughly one in five (21.8%) a family member. Psychological abuse (48.4%) was reported by almost half of the women (See Table 2).
Compared to local women, proportionally more displaced women reported an incident of rape or sexual abuse (3.1% vs. 2.1%, p<0.001) or economic abuse (23.4% vs. 14.4%, p<0.001).
Gender based violence affects one million women annually in Ukraine
GBV is a grave human rights violation that affects an estimated one million women annually in Ukraine (Barrett et al., 2012). Social disruption and frail economic conditions in humanitarian settings further aggravate women’s vulnerability to violence, particularly for displaced women (Stark & Ager, 2011; Stark et al., 2017). This analysis supports our primary hypothesis that the experience of violence differs by survivors’ residency status. Specifically, we found differences in terms of relationship to the perpetrator, type of violence experienced and access to care between local and displaced women.
Checkpoints, or borderlines, nebulous zones of power shifts were huge points of violence to Ukrainian women, showing power shifts are often signaled by violence, especially to the most vulnerable.
Notably, 20.0% of displaced women in our sample experienced violence at the hands of armed men compared to 5.3% of local women. We also found that checkpoints between government-controlled and non-government–controlled areas and IDP reception centers posed a particular risk for displaced women in our study.
38% more displaced women reported experiencing sexual violence than local women, meaning people were actively preying on people who were displaced, not protecting them. This shows Ukrainian women are at huge risk of opportunistic rape by the very men pretending to be safe.
Whereas sexual violence was the least common type of reported violence, 38% more displaced women reported experiencing sexual violence than local women.
Ukrainian women come from a long history of corrupt police, so they did not report to the police because the police do not work for them and never have. That is not their fault; it is their country and area’s fault.
Studies in conflict-affected Ukraine found that a majority of survivors were unwilling to report GBV incidents to the police, particularly among internally displaced women (UCSR, 2018).
Because of this violence around the very people that were supposed to protect them, Ukrainian women are less likely to file a police report. Displaced women were even more unlikely. It is an intelligent decision to not have a faith that has been factually and with evidence violated repeatedly.
we found that displaced women were less than half as likely than local women to have filed a police report.
Younger women seek gender based violence services more than older women, showing Ukrainian women are often being targeted for their fertility and not receiving justice can help them remain to be seen as a fertility commodity instead of a human being, making European countries very wary of the nation seeing how their women are treated. Women's rights feature largely in European economic inclusion.
For example, among GBV survivors in Ukraine, younger women seek services for GBV more often than older women (41% of those aged 15–29 vs. 26% those aged 40–49) (Martsenyuk et al., 2014). Therefore, this analysis is not representative of all women experiencing violence.
Domestic violence within the ranks of the warring country increased during war for Ukrainian women, instead of coming together in solidarity and mutual support
Studies in complex emergency settings have found stigma among GBV survivors, normalization of domestic violence during times of conflict, unwillingness to report men living in the home for fear of forced military recruitment, and reluctance to involve law enforcement as major reporting barriers, especially among displaced women survivors of violence (Ager et al., 2018; Stark & Ager, 2011).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9240103/

Hi! Ok this is a random topic but I’ve run into this a bit and want to see if anyone else has experienced this recently- I’ve been single for about a year now and have done on more than a handful of dates. Over this year of dating, I’ve noticed most men I’ve encountered either: quit their job, want to quit their job and live in a van or have no career goals / drive whatsoever.
I’m not a gold digger. I’m not obsessing with the job of the man I’m dating. I’m just noticing pattern here - these are guys ages 27-37. Is this is a new thing with men? Has anyone else been experiencing this?

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I'll try to keep this brief but I have a lot to say and I tend to ramble. I (20F but 19 at the time) have been broken up with my ex (20F) for almost a year now. When we first ended things I felt SO MUCH RELIEF I was in almost a euphoric state for the first week or two. I knew she was extremely toxic but didn't care to question it because I was just so happy to never have to see or speak to her again but quickly that wore off and I realized just how terribly she treated me. In the past month or two it's starting to get to me again after a few conversations with close friends where I told the stories of things she did to me, hoping to have a laugh at the absurdity but underneath realizing just how much she put me through. I still can't accept that it was truly mental or emotional or verbal etc. abuse. I guess I just want somebody to tell me if I'm victimizing myself, or if my mental illness is making me delusional if I was the real abuser the whole time, or if we were both toxic (all her words). I just wanna list off some of the things she did, partially for myself to lay it all out and partially to ask everyone here if I'm the problem or if she was just toxic w/o being "abusive". I'm avoiding specific details because I don't want anyone I know to stumble upon this and know it's me so apologies if theres little context but here it is:

• biggest one on the top: when we first got together I had just gotten out of a relationship and was struggling metally. I had been in therapy for a while before we met and started mood stablizers soon after we were together. she constantly would use this against me to tell me i'm crazy, that my mental illness was ruining our relationship, that i was "a disease", that I was just like her crazy ex etc.
  
• another huge one! she insisted on extravagant expensive gifts then later expected unquestioned obedience because of it. when i caught on to this and began denying gifts it would cause arguments
  
  • i identified as bisexual at the time which she constantly used against me. if we were ever in the presence of men, even if i didnt interact with them, she would get mad and either give me the silent treatment or start an argument about it. when i expressed multiple times that I may not be attracted to men she would get angry because it proved to her how "easily impressionable" i am
  • constant lies. about things my friends or even my mom had said allegedly about me (they never did), about things that she had or hadn't done, she would even tell lies to my friends and mother about things that I had allegedly said about them (i never did) even right in front of me but she was so convincing to everyone around us that I seemed like the liar no matter how much i denied or explained
  • insults! mainly about me but also my friends and family
  • always wanting a reaction so that she could then point to me as an abuser. e.g: screaming at me and throwing things until i removed myself into a seperate room where she followed me and recorded me without my knowlege as she taunted me until I yelled at her to leave me alone, then played back the recording to show me how poorly i talk her
• she told me so many times that my majors were not as difficult or as important and I "couldn't possibly understand" how much more effort and intellect it took for what she studied (we're both in college and I'm literally a double major!! if that matters)
  
  • told me she was embarrassed of me because my interests and hobbies weren't "resume-worthy"
  • belittled my morals and values, the things i thought were important whether they were big things or small, and my plans for the future
  • controlling to an INTENSE degree. e.g: getting upset with me because i wouldn't let HER floss MY teeth or threatening to break up with me because I wouldn't hide my stuffed animals in the closet when she came over
  • laughed and called me things like pathetic unstable when i would try to tell her certain things she said and did were hurting me. was just all around very cruel and mericless with her words to the point where I seriously think she was nearly incapable of empathy
  • she told me things about myself as if they were fact. this one is hard to explain but for instance: "you just let your s/o's walk all over you" or "youre just not a hard worker". it was said so causally and matter of factly that it wasn't even an insult just an absolute truth she had observed
  • things she admitted to before we broke up: when i opened up to her about my ex and things i went through as a child she later admitted that she was happy that i was "weak" and would tolerate poor treatment. she admitted that she would poke and taunt and yell her own mother until she got the reaction she wanted so that she point out "how crazy she was acting". she admitted to reading my journal the first time she came over to see the excerpts of my ex and, again, figure out just how badly she could treat me.
  • I do want to say that she never actually hit me or physically assualted me but she would often imitate in the moment that she was about to (partially because she wanted to hit me, and partially because she knew it would trigger me because I was abused as a child, again she admitted this part)
  • in arguments: deflected, shifted blame, gaslit, yelled, threw things, hit nearby objects, etc. these arguments would go in circles for hours with the topics ending up miles away from what the intital point was. things typically went from "that didnt happen" to "it did happen but i didnt mean it" to "i meant it but you deserved it". even when I gave in that wasn't enough, she would just leave and ignore me for a day or two
  • she often wouln't take accountability and instead would try to psychoanalyze why what she did upset me, blaming it on my childhood or my ex but never on her actions
  • profuse apologies afterwards. she always promised to stop and to go to therapy but that never happened. somehow she was able to do this without ever actually acknowleging that what she did was wrong
  • i won't go into detail but when it came to bedroom activites there were a few rare times when consent was ... unclear. especially near the end when she was often insistent that I would drink more (she was sober)
  • when i caught on to these patterns by calling her out for fake apologies, gaslighting, lying, manipulation, not taking the bait by reacting, sticking to my boundaries, not letting her deflect in arguments etc. she would throw full temper tantrums. screaming crying throwing herself on the ground type of tantrums. I was so drained at that point that all i could do was just sit and watch and wait for her to stop
  • her poor mom had gotten it for 20 years before me. she told me multiple times to get out of the relationship but i never listened. I hope shes doing well but i'm afraid that checking up on her might invite my ex back into my life

i'm sure that when i post this i'll think of a million more things but this is what i could think of off the top of my head sorry its so long. Writing this all out its so clear that this wasnt normal but i still constantly question whether im just erasing my own hand in it, refusing to acknowlege all the harmful things i did or how i somehow forced her to be this way, if i truly am just so delusional that i made all of this up because i want to be a victim, if i was the one who abused her first, if its my fault because i stayed and let it happen. and if none of those things are true then what do i do from here? I'm moved on and so insanely happy to be single and never have to interact with her again but i'm realizing more and more how much it has affected me.
tldr: my ex gf fits a ton of the criteria for an abuser but i still question whether i am making it up and/or if im the actual abuser just manipulating the situation for my own gain. if i'm not the abuser then how do i accept it and not be affected by it anymore?

Huge shout out to & for helping with Brainstorming and Co-Writing this.
As always, all credits for the original Nature of Predators and it's content goes to Space Paladin15, thank him for allowing artist and writers to use his original work of art for their own uses.
Gaian Ref Sheet-Here, Done by the artist
As well as a *Huge* thank you for Julian Skys for filling in for the editor for this chapter. I'll post a comment as to why I haven't been posting too much, safe to say though, kept ya waiting huh?
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[Subject Memory Transcription: Rux Limpbut, Venlil News Anchor and TV Show Host]
Date [Standardized Galactic(?) Time]:August 1st, 2136
Now I'm regretting not taking that transfer last week. This just keeps getting better.
I was in my car outside of the Network’s station. I was at my wits end yesterday and was trying my damnedest *not* to freak out on air. Now? Now I had the pleasure of my network telling me they needed me to come in way early to report on some breaking news. Just as I was about to leave for Solgaliks sake!
I took a small sip of the “coffee”. Now this was a blessing, coffeehouses on Gaia were open paw around, no matter what. I was giving a small prayer to those “ancestors” for their love of anything strong. Well, anything strong that wasn't alcohol. They could stomach one drink or two but after that? They were out.
Slurrrrrp
I let out a relieved sigh as the warm liquid flowed down my maw, the reward of caffeine soon following after this. Hopefully in time for the recording. With that I opened the door, grabbing my briefcase as I greedily drank the rest of the coffee as I approached the wide doors of the Networks station.
They creaked a little as they always did as I appeared in the doorway, a sleepy, overworked ghost. I tossed the coffee cup into the trashcan by the door as I nodded over the after work plans that I had to either postpone, or completely not do.
No bar time, going to be too tired. Not going to have enough time to do more digging in what that Farsulian diplomat released, even after it's been nearly two months. Brahk. Still need to be ready for the shift tomorrow-
“Rux?” The front desk secretary pulled me up and out of my thoughts as I blinked a couple of times, my ears raising as one of my eyes focused on her, a bit frizzled from the overtime I was clocking at the moment.
“Hm? Oh. Hey Liakal, caught me off guard almost as bad as the padcall I got. What's up?” I rubbed my eye as I fully focused on her, making my way over to her.
“Well, whenever you're ready for them they'll give you all you need, apparently, when you get into the studio. What they told me is uh, it's not a pleasant amount of news.” She nervously played with her claws and her headset, her lips quivering a bit.
“That bad? Speh. What about that uh, guest? She gets off-”
“O-oh! Mrs Tarva. She got off the planet easily. I can't say anything else though Rux. They said whatever they have to tell is very, very pertinent not to be let loose until you broadcast it… sorry Rux.”
I patted the top of the semi circle desk that Liakal was sat into, before giving her a quick, albeit small smile with a finger gun before I quickly deflated. It was that bad. With a nod from me I departed into the hallway to the left of the front desk, approaching one of the elevators.
A button press, a chime and the feeling of gravity and anxiousness about to make me hurl later, I was on the floor with the studios. I retraced the steps I had taken only claws before to mine. The green sign saying “Predator Problems” told me I hadn't failed as usual. Something had to be done with our program and segment name, if for nothing else there was apparently much more juicy stuff to talk about.
Opening the door, I expected the hustling and scrambling of the cameramen, the lighting crew, audio specialists. But nothing except a small huddled group of uniformed men. Brahk, I was hoping this wasn't the case but I was never that lucky. I resigned myself to fate as the group finally paid attention to me, and the door clicking and shutting behind me.
“Mr. Rux. Please come over here and sit. You're all good, we just need to go over what we need you to announce in this upcoming impromptu broadcast.” Why the hell were the Gaians on Prime? Wait no. That's not the problem. Why are officers from their military here? Oh stars.
However I could feel my body coming towards the oval shaped table. Eventually knocking into a chair and pulling it out, resting my briefcase onto the ground and taking a seat, pulling up to the desk. I rested my paws on it as I gave a look to the group assembled around it.
All were wearing roughly the same uniform, their fur patterns one of the only differing things between them. Aside from the one at the end of the table. They wore a green beret atop their head, nestled in between the horns that adorned it. They cleared their throat and slid a small packet of papers towards me, startling me a tiny bit.
“While I wish to be polite and respectful, there's simply no way to say this without being blunt. Sole Speaker Jikem is dead. With the current atmosphere on Gaia we thought it'd be best to announce the formation of an emergency government and a leader to head it. All of which has been done in a roundabout manner so as to not alert any radicals or terrorists.”
I had only taken a cursory glance at the front of the small packet before that bombshell of an information was dropped onto me nonchalantly. My paw was halfway to the front page to turn it before my gaze looked up at the Gaian at the end of the oval table who had done so.
“What? Sorry can you-”
“Rux. Come on, you know what I said. Now, I know it isn't everypaw that you get to report on the death of a head of state, let alone be the first one to do so. I'll most certainly give you that. So, we'll give you some time alone…well mostly, to get acquainted with the packet and once you and your crew are roaring to go we'll release the news to the Commonwealth.”
I took a small lookover of the second page but had to pause for a short moment again as I took it in. Yes, yes I did have some questions. Half from the large info dropped on me and the other half that I was now reading with my very own eyes now.
Before they could fully get up I had worked up the courage to get a short clearing of the throat and read out of the lines in the packet out aloud after I had decided it would be better to ask now rather than after. “In conjunction with recent attacks the Armed forces has decided to-” I put down the packet in its entirety now.
“What in the stars could you possibly mean by “safeguarding” democracy? This just seems to be some type of justification for a military takeover. I mean, who's going to fall for this?”
The chairs of the small clique of officers seem to find themselves filled once more as they returned to their positions, most of them now gazing between me, some random crew member scurrying near me and the head honcho with the green beret.
The intensity of the stare of the Gaian at the opposite end of the table seemed to intensify, seemingly his gaze looking through me. “Mr. Rux, I can assure you any such speculation to that matter and that, frankly, justified if albeit imaginary fear is going to be the last thing people on Gaia are going to worry about. Alright?”
I anxiously nodded back, sighing. “L-look I'm just-”
The Bereted officer seemed to nod while holding up his paw, my line of reasoning and thought being stopped by the intrusion. “Worried, you ancestors are always worried. It's why we're here, yes? Anything too dangerous or otherwise unsafe we've always volunteered for so as to save our more cultured self from such. Think about this announcement like that. A warning and an update from our side of the Commonwealth about current affairs, nothing more, nothing less.”
With that it seemed settled for the time being, as the small clique once again rose, and this time was actually able to depart to the booth that overlooked the studio, keeping what I was sure to guess a keen pair of eyes to observe anything.
I settled into my seat more as I gave the small packet a read. It was general stuff as of this point when it came to announcements. Why it's happening, what happened in more details, what they planned to do in the upcoming future, all that juicy stuff. Overall a very plain, if very informative script to go by. Still, being the first to announce the death of a head of state via “Unnatural Causes” would make even some of the most resolved Gaians a bit jumpy, yes?
Once I finally gave the entirety of the packet a quick read over I sat it down giving a glance to my, by now, very familiar set that we used for “Predator Problems”, the entire reason for why I had started it had been to educate and warn people about what to do with predators and the like. Now I was going to have to educate them, apparently, about the fact that our “brothers” in species so to speak were having a bit of topsy-turvy time on their capital planet. Now I was kinda hoping I was one of the more conspiracy theorist nut jobs just so I didn't have to get contacted.
Resigning myself to fate, and the fact that apparently I of all Vens was the most level headed to announce this, I looked over the studio, eventually finding the small group of uniformed men again. I got up and out of the chair as I made my way over to them, flicking my tail into a questioning sign as I did so, my approaching presence quickly noticed.
“Seems like you've got some questions, you read the packet though yeah?” One of them said, I simply signaled a yes with my ears to respond.
“So, is this immediately being aired? Or is it being aired later on tomorrow-well, this paw? Should it be the first thing or the last thing or is it the only thing I'm doing for this one?” With these questions the small clique seemed to talk in-between themselves, small glances were made in my general direction, they seemed to come to some type of conclusion though as they turned back to me, the bereted one now taking center stage again once more.
“Yes. It's being immediately aired. You do realize you are a bit of a celebrity on Gaia, yes? A special breaking news from you would certainly draw the right eyes. Then it'll spread from there. We do have other stuff for you to read, but it'll appear on the prompter. Other than that though we'll take our leave once everything is said and done.”
I gave a small thanks to Solgalik, as that would mean I would be able to go back home and get at least a claw or two of rest. Speh, if I just slept here I could get an extra one easy. But I didn't have much time to dwell on that, instead I apparently had a job to do right now.
With that bit of information I decided to go around, talking to the crew, who as of this point has finally settled down and has stopped scattering from the Gaians. A small conversation with each helped us plan out the next few tantalizingly painful minutes that were about to unfold live on air.
With everything and everyone in place, I took my seat at the curved table in the middle of the cameras, getting my little tie ready. With a countdown from 3, I settled into my on screen persona as the red lights of the cameras went on.
“Good Paw to everyone tuning in! I'm your host as always, Rux Limpbut, and this is Predator problems. This time though, we do have some breaking news that we need to get to. So with that being said, I suppose it's time for me to get to it.”
I straightened my back, placing my paws firmly as I closed my eyes, breathing in and then opening my eyes again.
Alright. Just gotta break the news that the head of state of the other half of our Commonwealth is dead and their Army just decided to seize power for democracy's sake.
“I have some sad, and what some can and should be saying is unsettling, news. Sole Speaker Jikem of the Gaian Cooperative, has died earlier this paw. Details are scarce and hard to come by as of this point, but from preliminary reports and investigations, it seems as though he *may* have been assassinated while at a checkpoint. As many of you know he was elected on a lockstep ticket with the current governor of Venlil Prime, Veln. He oversaw the last closing years of the Dominion-Federation war, as well as the beginning of closer federation ties. Many people are bound to ask as of this point what is going to happen, and the easiest and most truthful answer is…we don't know.”
I shuffled some papers, discarding the packet to the side of the table before continuing on with the information I was to spout out.
“Already reports are coming in that the Armed Forces of Gaia have declared a state of emergency and already there are rumblings that they have formed… an emergency government?”
I gave a bit of a confused look before continuing, I could see the group of uniformed Gaians nodding as I did so, apparently that was good enough for them.
The rest of the news report was generally a bit unsettling, or at least info packed by many people's standards. Updates on the federation at large, some reports on the status of the Venian Commonwealth and what was the plan going forward and before I knew it the red blinking light on the cameras had vanished, and the lights overhead had dimmed.
“Alright, that's good for us. We'll have one of our guys stay over the paw to help your team edit it but other than that? You can head on home.” The bereted one informed me, before signalling to one of the clique, most likely the one to stay here and “help” us edit.
I rested back in my chair and closed my eyes, I think it was time for me to get some shuteye.
—----------
Smoke billows out from the mouth of the Uniformed figure, a lit cigar cradled in his claws. He takes a survey of the trio gathered in front of him.
“So.” The figure grunts out, leaning back into his chair.
“So, what?” One of the trio asks inquisitively, shifting in their seat.
“So now what? Not many paws you get to make a masterstroke of a situation like this. Sole speaker is dead, people are looking to any type of stability and we perfectly fill the slot.” The Uniformed figure takes the cigar up to his mouth, smoking it lightly.
“Well there are numerous concerns.” The most center of the trio speak.
“Like what to do with those brahking predators that apparently still exist.” To the right of the first speaker.
“I vote we integrate them posthaste!” And finally the one on the other end.
A thick billowing cloud of smoke escapes the lips of the Uniformed figure, fidgeting for a moment before rolling forward. His face now fully lit.
“Gentlemen. Calm down. We have plenty of problems with plenty of solutions. But that's why you put me in charge of this little emergency government anyhow right? Levelheaded, warhero, clean political record.”
The trio murmur for a moment before returning a nod, the middle one piping up as he did so.
“Yes, that is why we decided to throw our towel in with you Marshal.”
The Uniformed figure now places his elbows on the table, his paws bridging each other while the cigar is still in-between in his paws.
“That's Marshal-at-Arms Jyuvernik to you. Now where were we? Ah right. The Dark corner. I want you to send a diplomatic team to assess the cattle debacle.”

Serpent-headed when the glamour was lifted but appearing to man as men among men. Crept they into the Councils, taking forms that were like unto men. Slaying by their arts the chiefs of the kingdoms, taking their form and ruling o'er man. Only by magic could they be discovered. Only by sound could their faces be seen. Sought they from the Kingdom of shadows to destroy man and rule in his place. But, know ye, the Masters were mighty in magic, able to lift the Veil from the face of the serpent, able to send him back to his place -Thoth, the Great Wise
Remember Venom, the parasitic alien life form that is attached to spiderman & a massive church bell isused to get rid of em? Venom was basically an Archon that the gnostics & Thoth talk about. Symbiotes are symbiotic alien life forms which feed on the emotions of their hosts, particularly negative emotions. Bells
Its been reported for ages that the plague would skip over the areas in Russia where they had larger concentrations of church bells. Many Soviet researchers determined the amazing healing properties of bells and found that the oscillation of the ultrasonic range of church bells repels bacilli, viruses, and other infectious diseases that are transmitted through the air, and even cures many other diseases. Bells Healing Study
The Apkalu who introduced the Me, brought arts/crafts, agriculture, writing, magic & music. Enki was god of music. See the golden age ancient civilizations sound, frequency & harmonics was widely understood to be the greatest method for healing the body.
To be clear, the cathedrals that you see around the world were never meant to be churches, they were centers used for healing. Cathedrals Healing Centers Everything the church had was pirated.. In sixth century, Pope Gregory, in a letter to those who were to carry Catholicism to Britain, cautioned these missionaries NOT to destroy the ancient sites. Gregory wanted them to destroy their idols, but insisted they kept the architecture as it was thereby automatically linking alignment to the ley lines and maintaining the power source. Egyptian concept of Maat(Harmony) was of the utmost importance, the reason the discipline that the church created to study Egypt has more questions than answers is because they don't understand this.
In the campaign to disconnect us from our true selves, the most detrimental action theyd take involved musical theory principles, suppression of the tritone in music was a central theme for hundreds of years. Canon laws were passed to mandate rules for how to construct scales, how to handle voice leading, what was considered consonant and dissonant, how contrary motion should be handled, what tones should and should not be emphasized in rhythm, which rhythmic patterns were acceptable and specific instructions for how music should be written. Megalithic monuments were built using acoustic HARMONIC Resonance, one will never understand Pyramid, temples, etc disregarding Harmony with nature.
History repeats itself, this 1939 Nature article wouls lead to the change by International Standards Association (ISA) from 432hz to 440hz & still today they have no true understanding of sound & its many benefits. A=440Hz tuning disassociates the connection of consciousness to the body and creates anti-social conditions in humanity. Music -Double Blind study In preliminary research, analysis, and professional discussions by Walton, Koehler, Reid, et al., on the web, A=440Hz frequency music conflicts with human energy centers (i.e., chakras) from the heart to the base of the spine. Alternatively, chakras above the heart are stimulated. Theoretically, the vibration stimulates ego and left-brain function, suppressing the "heart-mind," intuition and creative inspiration. Interestingly, the difference between 440 and 741 Hz is known in musicology as the Devil's Interval.
For maximum suppression of human consciousness, the frequencies we naturally resonate with, and which are the most biologically and psycho-spiritually enhancing, must be maximally suppressed.Ancient Egyptian and Greek instruments have reportedly been found to be tuned to 432 Hz. 432Hz is consistent with the natural resonance of the UNI-VERSE and all of NATURE, that the pitch is more HARMONIOUS and that when our atoms and DNA resonate in harmony with nature's SPIRAL pattern, our sense of connection to nature is said to be AMPLIFIED. Previously I cited the recent discoveries showing DNA being repaired by use of sound frequencies. Priests of Horus meant that they maintained the knowledge of harmony.
The great pyramid Acoustic chambers matched the harmonic chambers of the human body, the King chambesarcophagus Resonance frequency created a resounding beat frequency matching the human heartbeat. Every site had a navel which resonate at 111hz which switched from left to right brain dominance assisting with holistic processing, leading to altered state of consciousness.
Hollywood comes from the Druid magicians whod make Wands outta wood from the Holly tree to cast spells on the unsuspecting. Sounds like Op Mockingbird to me. To disconnect as much as possible the functions of these two distinct parts of the brain so we can be manipulated through the right brain while only being conscious of the left.They plant thoughts, responses, and images through the right brain (the dream-state, the non-conscious, through symbolism and subliminal imagery) while imprisoning the human conscious level in the left brain - the world of can I touch it, smell it, taste it, see it, hear it, OK it must exist. This is why the "education" system, and "science" is designed to talk to the left brain.
No architectural element of antiquity (excluding bearing elements), was just a decoration. Everything had a function. Even the vases, and doorknobs. The doorknobs would be made of copper to kill bacteria & infections. So, at the correct frequency there were regenerating concert halls, where people recharged themselves with pleasant music while buildings collected the energy of the ether. They stigmatized the ether & removed it as well. If zero-point energy machines were developed on the biological model of the caduceus coil and central ion channel then our energy generation could actually enhance human evolution rather than harming ourselves and the planet as it does now. Similarly if we construct superconducting solar architecture with a monoatomic lattice in manmade stone, then the energy emanating from this energy generator will also enhance the consciousness of life around it

Serpent-headed when the glamour was lifted but appearing to man as men among men. Crept they into the Councils, taking forms that were like unto men. Slaying by their arts the chiefs of the kingdoms, taking their form and ruling o'er man. Only by magic could they be discovered. Only by sound could their faces be seen. Sought they from the Kingdom of shadows to destroy man and rule in his place. But, know ye, the Masters were mighty in magic, able to lift the Veil from the face of the serpent, able to send him back to his place -Thoth, the Great Wise
Remember Venom, the parasitic alien life form that is attached to spiderman & a massive church bell isused to get rid of em? Venom was basically an Archon that the gnostics & Thoth talk about. Symbiotes are symbiotic alien life forms which feed on the emotions of their hosts, particularly negative emotions. Bells
Its been reported for ages that the plague would skip over the areas in Russia where they had larger concentrations of church bells. Many Soviet researchers determined the amazing healing properties of bells and found that the oscillation of the ultrasonic range of church bells repels bacilli, viruses, and other infectious diseases that are transmitted through the air, and even cures many other diseases. Bells Healing Study
The Apkalu who introduced the Me, brought arts/crafts, agriculture, writing, magic & music. Enki was god of music. See the golden age ancient civilizations sound, frequency & harmonics was widely understood to be the greatest method for healing the body.
To be clear, the cathedrals that you see around the world were never meant to be churches, they were centers used for healing. Cathedrals Healing Centers Everything the church had was pirated.. In sixth century, Pope Gregory, in a letter to those who were to carry Catholicism to Britain, cautioned these missionaries NOT to destroy the ancient sites. Gregory wanted them to destroy their idols, but insisted they kept the architecture as it was thereby automatically linking alignment to the ley lines and maintaining the power source. Egyptian concept of Maat(Harmony) was of the utmost importance, the reason the discipline that the church created to study Egypt has more questions than answers is because they don't understand this.
In the campaign to disconnect us from our true selves, the most detrimental action theyd take involved musical theory principles, suppression of the tritone in music was a central theme for hundreds of years. Canon laws were passed to mandate rules for how to construct scales, how to handle voice leading, what was considered consonant and dissonant, how contrary motion should be handled, what tones should and should not be emphasized in rhythm, which rhythmic patterns were acceptable and specific instructions for how music should be written. Megalithic monuments were built using acoustic HARMONIC Resonance, one will never understand Pyramid, temples, etc disregarding Harmony with nature.
History repeats itself, this 1939 Nature article wouls lead to the change by International Standards Association (ISA) from 432hz to 440hz & still today they have no true understanding of sound & its many benefits. A=440Hz tuning disassociates the connection of consciousness to the body and creates anti-social conditions in humanity. Music -Double Blind study In preliminary research, analysis, and professional discussions by Walton, Koehler, Reid, et al., on the web, A=440Hz frequency music conflicts with human energy centers (i.e., chakras) from the heart to the base of the spine. Alternatively, chakras above the heart are stimulated. Theoretically, the vibration stimulates ego and left-brain function, suppressing the "heart-mind," intuition and creative inspiration. Interestingly, the difference between 440 and 741 Hz is known in musicology as the Devil's Interval.
For maximum suppression of human consciousness, the frequencies we naturally resonate with, and which are the most biologically and psycho-spiritually enhancing, must be maximally suppressed.Ancient Egyptian and Greek instruments have reportedly been found to be tuned to 432 Hz. 432Hz is consistent with the natural resonance of the UNI-VERSE and all of NATURE, that the pitch is more HARMONIOUS and that when our atoms and DNA resonate in harmony with nature's SPIRAL pattern, our sense of connection to nature is said to be AMPLIFIED. Previously I cited the recent discoveries showing DNA being repaired by use of sound frequencies. Priests of Horus meant that they maintained the knowledge of harmony.
The great pyramid Acoustic chambers matched the harmonic chambers of the human body, the King chambesarcophagus Resonance frequency created a resounding beat frequency matching the human heartbeat. Every site had a navel which resonate at 111hz which switched from left to right brain dominance assisting with holistic processing, leading to altered state of consciousness.
Hollywood comes from the Druid magicians whod make Wands outta wood from the Holly tree to cast spells on the unsuspecting. Sounds like Op Mockingbird to me. To disconnect as much as possible the functions of these two distinct parts of the brain so we can be manipulated through the right brain while only being conscious of the left.They plant thoughts, responses, and images through the right brain (the dream-state, the non-conscious, through symbolism and subliminal imagery) while imprisoning the human conscious level in the left brain - the world of can I touch it, smell it, taste it, see it, hear it, OK it must exist. This is why the "education" system, and "science" is designed to talk to the left brain.
No architectural element of antiquity (excluding bearing elements), was just a decoration. Everything had a function. Even the vases, and doorknobs. The doorknobs would be made of copper to kill bacteria & infections. So, at the correct frequency there were regenerating concert halls, where people recharged themselves with pleasant music while buildings collected the energy of the ether. They stigmatized the ether & removed it as well. If zero-point energy machines were developed on the biological model of the caduceus coil and central ion channel then our energy generation could actually enhance human evolution rather than harming ourselves and the planet as it does now. Similarly if we construct superconducting solar architecture with a monoatomic lattice in manmade stone, then the energy emanating from this energy generator will also enhance the consciousness of life around it

Hi all,
Im looking for solid colour yarn to knit a cardigan for a baby. I don't want to use synthetic materials if possible, but would like it to be washable. I need it in Aran / worsted weight for the pattern.
Any recommendations please? My local yarn shops don't sell anything suitable.

From my own research, the general consensus is that most individuals who experience androgenic alopecia (AGA) experience hair loss in the frontal area first. This is best illustrated in the Hamilton-Norwood which discretizes this process. This pattern has not held for me. I first started to experience hair loss in my vertex a few years ago which has slowly but progressively gotten worse. This occurred WITHOUT any frontal hairline recession. How common is this pattern of hairloss? Is it indicative of some other form of alopecia? What causes different men to experience different AGA hair loss patterns?

(I will tag this as a TW if this seems to be too sensitive of a topic) I saw a tiktok video a couple of months ago from a trans woman who had been transitioning since the 70's; someone asked her if she knew of any trans men who transitioned along side with her and she stated that most(or all) of the trans men she knew had died very young.
I was wondering if anyone out there who is more trans history savy can explain why this seems to be the pattern? I know the AIDS epidemic, drug abuse, and hate crimes were prevelent for all queer people during the 70's-80's but is there any reason why it seems trans men had seemed to all 'die out'(for a lack of a better word). Was there just not many trans men around during this time? Was there any specific attitude against trans men that caused them harm during this time?
I know a little history background, like the life of Brandon Teena, but I haven't seen much about this specific phenomenon.

Hi. I want to make a database of all my patterns, but not just knitting. Sewing, quilting, all of it. Just so I stop buying the same patterns more than once. Has anyone ever done this? What did you use?

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The leader of the arrogant trio, Qin Bai, whose cruel eyes had menaced Ji Wuye before, now turned his sneering gaze upon Song Jia.
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With a contemptuous curl of his lips, he spoke in a tone dripping with disdain, "You have a bold tongue, speaking to your Seniors that way. Let's see if your skills match your audacious courage."
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Song Jia met his taunting glare with a defiant fire burning in her eyes. Her fists clenched tightly at her sides as she retorted, "Say what you want, but your empty words won't intimidate me. I accept your challenge willingly if you wish to spar." Her words rang out clearly, jaw set in resolve.
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The once-deserted Outer Disciple courtyard, which had been still as a graveyard moments before, suddenly came alive with hushed murmurs and the soft shuffling of feet as the first rays of dawn pierced the horizon.
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More and more disciples streamed in, alerted by the rising quarrel, as they gathered for the impending start of the morning's training exercises.
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All eyes turned towards the confrontation at the center.
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"Eh...Is that Martial Sister Song? Why is she shouting so early?" a bewildered voice wondered aloud.
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"Look, it seems she's being bullied!" another disciple exclaimed in disapproval, their brows furrowed with concern.
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The murmuring rose like a swelling tide as more onlookers arrived and finally decided to intervene.
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"Martial Brothers and Sisters, please stop," male disciples rushed forward, their hands gently but firmly restraining the agitated Qin Bai and his underlings.
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Meanwhile, the surrounding female disciples moved to calm the raging Song Jia, though her fiery glare remained locked on her antagonist, defiance etched onto her features.
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However, the would-be peacemakers were merely fellow Outer Disciples whose power paled in comparison.
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Under Qin Bai's withering glare, the men grudgingly released their grips, forced to back away.
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“Hmph!” With a disdainful sneer, Qin Bai's eyes raked over Song Jia from head to toe in a display of shameless appraisal.
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While Qin Bai lacked immense skill, having just broken into the 2nd realm, his newfound strength allowed him to easily brush off the feeble interference.
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The cowed disciples could do little more than grumble and shoot resentful glances his way.
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"Tsk...That Qin Bai...Just because he advanced a realm, he acts so arrogant now..."
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"But he's willing to risk the sect's ire over using it on the training tower as intended..."
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The disdainful whispers swirled all around, glares of reproach aimed at Qin Bai's turned back as the disciples reluctantly parted before him like a receding tide.
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All eyes then turned towards the gathered Outer Disciple Seniors observing the scene with folded arms and impassive expressions.
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"But why aren't the Seniors intervening?" Confusion tinged the words as they wondered why the more powerful disciples remained idle spectators.
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Emboldened by the lack of repercussion from the higher realm Outer Disciples Seniors, Qin Bai's sneer stretched into a cruel, satisfied grin.
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He deluded himself that these esteemed Seniors were actually extending him a perverse approval by allowing this confrontation to proceed unhindered.
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Yet he understood that egregious actions like ganging up against a single disciple would certainly attract disciplinary intervention, even from them.
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For this was the Kunlun Sect, a bastion of righteous and orthodox teachings where senseless killing between disciples was strictly prohibited.
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By the sect's tenets, they were all bound as Martial Sisters and Brothers, expected to respect and look upon each other as beloved family. However, when disputes did arise, they could be resolved through sanctioned duels or bouts of sparring.
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"Excellent," Qin Bai flashed a sadistic grin, calloused palms flexing in premature celebration. "We'll see how long that boldness of yours lasts once you're beaten into the dirt where you belong."
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A chorus of dismayed gasps and angry outcries erupted from the surrounding female disciples.
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"Sister Song, don't mind his vile words..."
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"That's right, treat his taunts like a passing wind!"
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They glared at Qin Bai and his cronies with a potent mixture of disapproval and concern, shuffling protectively closer to Song Jia's side.
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Unlike their male counterparts who had advanced higher but displayed a disinterested aloofness, the female disciples - even those of the 3rd realm - unanimously rallied behind their wronged Sister, creating an unspoken pressure that caused beads of nervous sweat to prickle on Qin Bai's brow.
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Sensing the rising tension, the surrounding Sisters looked imploringly at Song Jia, worry etched on their faces as they recognized the all-too-familiar flames of her fiery temper.
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Yet they knew any attempts to dissuade her would be as effective as dousing a wildfire with a cup of water.
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With gentle but firm motions, Song Jia waved off their concerns, patting their hands in reassurance. "It's alright, Sisters," she murmured, the barest hint of a smirk playing across her lips as her gaze met Qin Bai's unflinchingly.
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"We also need to teach a lesson to these arrogant men who think only with their lower bodily urges." Then, with a slight squaring of her shoulders, she purposefully strode forward until she stood mere inches before Qin Bai, eyes alight with conviction.
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"I'm not so easily defeated!" Song Jia shouted defiantly, her eyes blazing with challenge as she sneered back at Qin Bai.
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Thrusting her fist out mere inches from his face, she taunted, "Come at me then, if you dare. Or are you all just empty boasts like the spineless cowards you are?"
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Her words hung in the charged air, daring him to make the first move. The surrounding disciples watched with bated breath, the tension thick enough to choke on.
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Meanwhile, from a respectful distance away, Ji Wuye observed the escalating conflict with sharp eyes.
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It was then that he finally noticed the approach of his Senior Sister Lian Ruogang, her blue eyes - the piercing hue of the deepest oceans - scanning the unfolding scene with a slight crease marring her brow.
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"Sigh, I came to see you, Junior Brother, but..." Her gaze swept over the gathered crowd before her frown deepened at the conspicuous absence of Brother Wu Gao, who should have been overseeing the morning drills.
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"At this hour, where is Brother Wu..."
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Finding the supervisor mysteriously missing, Lian Ruogang could only shake her head in dismay before straightening her shoulders and striding forward with purpose.
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She would have to take charge and resolve this unruly situation herself.
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"Stop this at once," she called out in a tone that brooked no argument as she neared the confrontation. Both parties immediately turned towards the authoritative voice, eyes widening as they recognized the respected figure before them.
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"This junior greets Senior Sister Lian!" They chorused respectfully, bowing in deference.
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Though there were countless Official Disciples, Lian's frequent visits to check on Ji Wuye's progress made her a familiar presence. Even without the dark blue striped patterns denoting her rank adorning her robes, the Outer Disciples could identify her at a glance.
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"I must remind all disciples here that unrestrained combat between Brothers and Sisters is strictly forbidden by the sect's tenets," Lian declared, her ocean-blue eyes radiating reproach as they swept over the unruly gathering.
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"If you wish to settle your grievances, do so through the proper channels of a sanctioned sparring match."
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Though she held no formal disciplinary position, as an Official Disciple her authority could not be ignored lightly. At her stern admonition, a hush fell over the previously raucous crowd.
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"Ah, Senior Sister Lian! You've arrived at last!"
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"With an elite like her overseeing it now, let's see how Qin Bai responds in front of everyone!"
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Excited murmurs rippled through the throngs of onlookers, especially from the male disciples who had been at the brunt of Qin Bai's bullying before. They eagerly awaited how the arrogant youth would react under the disapproving scrutiny of an Official Disciple.
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…
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As this unfolded, Ji Wuye continued observing keenly from the outskirts, finally bearing witness as Qin Bai and Song Jia came to an agreement. With curt nods, they distanced themselves, clearing a space to serve as an impromptu sparring ring.
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"Let's see how the 'dark horse' among these so-called geniuses fares," Ji Wuye mused under his breath, sauntering forward to secure a better vantage point amidst the tightly-packed crowd.
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Once an adequate area had been outlined, both combatants bowed and cupped their hands formally to one another before being handed regulation wooden practice swords.
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As the blunted weapons exchanged hands, Ji Wuye's crimson eyes glinted as a translucent window flickered into view at the edge of his vision.
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[!] Your passive skill, Quick Adaptation(F), has been triggered! 

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Introduction to Chapter 8 ("Heralded by Columns of Smoke: Pee Dee River to Fayetteville, North Carolina"):
"Once across the Pee Dee River, General Sherman's army marched in the direction of Fayetteville.
"Resistance from Confederate cavalry under Generals Hampton, Butler and Wheeler was steady and continuous. Wheeler attacked at Rockingham on March 7, and Hampton surprised and captured Kilpatrick's camp on March 10. But Sherman's army marched steadily on.
"General Joseph E. Johnston, with headquarters at Fayetteville, was following General Lee's first instruction, 'Concentrate all available forces.' He moved his headquarters to Raleigh and directed the assembling of his army to Smithfield.
"Eighty-four years earlier, in January of 1781, North Carolina had suffered another march by an invading army. Lord Cornwallis and his army followed almost the same route on their way to Wilmington. This army had come three thousand miles to put down 'a rebellion'; and to pursue retreating 'rebels' through a wild and thinly scattered country. His army had passed through Cross Creek, which was now called Fayetteville.
"On March 11, General Sherman and his army entered this town. 'We have swept the country well,' he reported. 'The men and animals are in fine condition.'"
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"Miss Alice Campbell was President of the Fayetteville Knitting Society when Colonel A. H. Hickenlooper, of Sherman's army, chose her home for his five-day sojourn. Bummers also visited her."
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"'Sherman, with his hordes of depraved and lawless men, came upon us like swarms of bees, bringing sorrow and desolation in their pathway. For days we had been expecting them, and our loved boys in grey had been passing through in squads, looking ragged and hungry. We gave them food and clothing, especially shoes and socks, for many of them were bare-footed. The enemy seemed to be pouring in by every road that led to our doomed little town. Our Cavalry were contending every step, firing and falling back, covering the retreat of our gallant little band, Hardee's forces, with General Wade Hampton, Butler, and others -- the scene in our town baffled description, all was consternation and dismay. In less time than I can write this, Sherman's army was in possession of our once peaceful, quiet homes. Every yard and every house was teeming with the bummers, who went into our homes -- no place was sacred; they even went into our trunks and bureau draws, stealing everything they could find; our entire premises were ransacked and plundered, so there was nothing left for us to eat, but perhaps a little meal and peas. Chickens, and in fact all poultry was shot down and taken off with all else. We all knew our silver, jewelry and all valuables would fall into their hands, so many women hid them in such places as they thought would never be found ....
''They went into homes that were beautiful, rolled elegant pianos into the yard with valuable furniture, china, cut glass, and everything that was dear to the heart, even old family portraits, and chopped them up with axes -- rolled barrels of flour and molasses into the parlors, and poured out their contents on beautiful velvet carpets, in many cases set fire to lovely homes and burned them to the ground, and even took some of our old citizens and hanged them until life was nearly extinct, to force them to tell where their money was hidden; when alas! they had none to hide. They burned our factories, and we had a number of them, also many large warehouses, filled with homespun, and dwellings, banks, stores and other buildings, so that the nights were made hideous with dense smoke and firelight in every direction. The crowning point to this terrible nightmare of destruction was the burning and battering down of our beautiful and grandly magnificent Arsenal, which was our pride, and the showplace of our town.
''On our vacant lot behind our home .... were a number of Confederate prisoners who had been captured by Sherman's army, and placed there under guard. They numbered about one hundred, I think. They were hatless and shoeless and ragged ....'
"One of General Howard's young officers chose to stay in the home of Sally Hawthorne whose father and uncle owned two large cotton mills in Fayetteville. General Howard appropriated one of her uncle's houses and his men camped in the surrounding fields and grounds."For five days, Sally, her mother who 'refused to leave her room,' her father, and a houseful of young brothers and sisters and servants were under strict orders from the officers of invasion.
"'Never will I forget,' said the little girl, Sally, whose story follows."
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"'Those last days were busy ones for General Sherman and his staff. The beautiful arsenal was destroyed and, as it happened, several private residences also caught fire and burned down, no help being given to save them, and the helpless owners rescued little, thankful to escape with their lives. Also the office of the town paper was blown up, as the editor was an especially obnoxious person in the eyes of the invading army, having waged a bitter fight against the North, and as his office was in the centre of the business part of town, more buildings were burned. (2) Then came the last day of the occupation; the troops were gathering and horses and supplies were being moved. All horses found there were taken along and many in the surrounding country were rounded up. Then there were the warehouses of cotton and rosin. The cotton was brought out, the barrels of rosin piled on them, and all set afire in the street. If houses caught, they burned, and that was all; many did. So a pall of black smoke hung over everything and the people were in a sad state of excitement and nervous exhaustion. As many houses were without a man to help or advise, the men of the family having been killed or being still in the army, the women and children were alone with the servants. The servants, with very few exceptions, proved true to their trust; they had been left to take care of the mistress and children in the master's absence, and though much excited, and sometimes frightened, they looked after the household faithfully. Of course there were some foolish and giddy young men and women who followed the army as it moved on from place to place, but they were the exception, not the rule ....'
"'No spot seemed safe from Sherman's bummers, but homes in the country or suburbs usually suffered more keenly than those in a town or city. The experiences of an unidentified woman who lived near Fayetteville were shared by many neighbors who were visited by the men from Sherman's army."
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<< Fayetteville, N.C., March 22, 1865 >>
".... Sherman has gone and terrible has been the storm that has swept over us with his coming and going. They deliberately shot two of our citizens -- murdered them in cold blood -- one of them a Mr. Murphy, a wounded soldier, Confederate States Army. They hung up three others and one lady, merely letting them down just in time to save life, in order to make them tell where their valuables were concealed; and they whipped -- stripped and cowhided --several good and well known citizens for the same purpose.
"There was no place, no chamber, trunk, drawer, desk, garret, closet or cellar that was private to their unholy eyes. Their rude hands spared nothing but our lives, and those they would have taken but they knew that therein they would accomplish the death of a few helpless women and children -- they would not in the least degree break or bend the spirit of our people. Squad after squad unceasingly came and went and tramped through the halls and rooms of our house day and night during the entire stay of the army.'
"At our house they killed every chicken, goose, turkey, cow, calf and every living thing, even to our pet dog. They carried off our wagons, carriage and horses, and broke up our buggy, wheelbarrow, garden implements, axes, hatchets, hammers, saws, and burned the fences. Our smokehouse and pantry, that a few days ago were well stored with bacon, lard, flour, dried fruit, meal, pickles, preserves, etc., now contain nothing whatever except a few pounds of meal and flour and five pounds of bacon. They took from old men, women and children alike, every garment of wearing apparel save what we had on, not even sparing the napkins of infants! Blankets, sheets, quilts, &c., such as it did not suit them to take away they tore to pieces before our eyes. After destroying everything we had, and taking from us every morsel of food (save the pittance I have mentioned), one of these barbarians had to add insult to injury by asking me 'what you (I) would live upon now?' I replied, 'Upon patriotism; I will exist upon the love of my country as long as life will last, and then I will die as firm in that love as the everlasting hills.
''Oh,' says he, ' but we shall soon subjugate the rebellion, and you will then have no country to love.
''Never!' I interrupted, 'never! you and your blood-handed countrymen may make the whole of this beautiful land one vast graveyard but its people will never be subjugated. Every man, woman and child of us will sleep quietly in honourable graves, but we will never live dishonourable lives .....'"
"When Sherman Came: Southern Women and the 'Great March'" by Katharine M. Jones (1964). Chapter 8: "Heralded by Columns of Smoke: Pee Dee River to Fayetteville, North Carolina." New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. Pages 273-286.

This holiday marks 3 years since you walked out of our apartment and out of my life after the better part of a decade of us being all but married. When we first got together, you told me you were the kind of guy that couldn't sleep with a woman unless you had a strong emotional connection with her. It was true back then and it was one of the things I loved and respected most about you, as never once in those years did I have to worry about you being disloyal. You were a good man, a good boyfriend, a good brother, and a good son and, for as much as we argued, I was so proud to call you mine.
Over the years, you leaned away and into the manosphere, began parroting soundbites from "alpha" talking heads, grew a disdain for women and began to believe that women's place is beneath that of men's. I spent a long time wondering if it was because you and I argued so much and if I could've done more to prevent you from becoming what you are now.
It's only been a little over 3 months since we tried to date again. In that month of dating, you told me of how high a standard I set for the women that followed - all 11 of them, you made sure to tell me - and stressed how none of them could come close to me, and how you felt you were almost entirely responsible for things falling apart between us - all words that were a shock coming from you.
After hearing such a number of women in so short a timespan, I asked what happened to being connected before sex, and you said that's how you used to be, that now, you understand what it is to be a man and that men have no issue separating sex from emotion. I didn't believe you, and as the truth bled out over time, it became obvious that you'd gotten your feelings jumbled and left pieces of your heart with at least a few of these women.
For a brief time before that, I thought you'd missed me as much as I'd missed you since you said things that the man who walked out on me would've sooner died than ever admit. Because I could see that bit of growth in you, despite your haughty attitude, I wanted to believe you. You were begging me for marriage and a child, lamenting how you were tired of dating women who consistently disappointed and how you just wanted to settle down with a good woman and start a family. It was a pitiful plea, but I still loved you. So, I told you if you were serious, we could work towards rebuilding trust and see what happened from there.
That was my first mistake. My second was not listening when you initially told me that you'd become a worse person.
Since you were so dead-set on marriage and children as fast as possible, rushing to plan every detail of your timeline with a vigor you'd never once shown in the years we spent together, I wanted to make it work, wanted to believe that there was still good in you reaching out to the good in me. So, I indulged the fantasy, hoping this was your way of making up for lost time.
But a fantasy is all it was.
You initially told me you were single only to later admit, after I had to ask upon seeing her things in your bathroom, that you were juggling me with other women. You told me how you manipulated "pick-me"s to get what you want from them, got mad when I told you I had no intention of competing with them for you, and when called out on these awful actions and opinions, you just said, "I told you I don't think I'm a good person anymore," as if it were some sort of get-out-of-jail-free-card.
To your credit, you ended things with her when I threatened to remove myself from your fantasy future and you never tried for anything more than a goodbye hug with me during the entirety of this attempt at dating so your conscience, or maybe guilt, was present in some capacity, at least.
I asked you why you've chosen to knowingly become a worse person and all you could say was that you didn't feel respected back then, that you didn't know how to be a man, and that you do now and how being a good person as a man just gets you walked all over. I told you I knew this tough-guy alpha business was just a facade. You admitted it was a mask but said that you wear it so often that it's basically glued to your face, now.
What you couldn't answer was why you deserve a good woman like me if you, yourself, aren't a good man. Regardless, you're convinced that you're some magnanimous prize to be won, yet don't see the reality of how you've only reduced yourself to a fuckboy that dangles the carrot of family, marriage, and stability in front of unsuspecting women to your own selfish ends, hoping they'll fight and compete for a love you have no intention of giving, seeing as that's "pick-me" behavior to you.
I should've thrown you away a dozen times over but I didn't because, just like in the past, I could see the confused and hurt boy in you crying out when you lamented how your family no longer enjoys having you around and how thrilled you thought they'd be if we got back together - how you want to be close-knit with them again, like things were when I was still in the picture.
The funny thing is, when they found out we were seeing each other again, they weren't thrilled, instead they stressed for me to be cautious and take things slow because they know what you've become and how you treat women now.
Your family is full of good people that tell me how they love me far more than they like you. They find your opinions deplorable and dislike how quick you are to ruin special occasions to fight them over said opinions. In all honesty, my heart broke for you a little when I heard that you weren't included in the Mother's Day plans while I was.
You said you wanted to regain the gravitas that being established with me and being the dutiful son and brother gave you back then, but you forget how you only showed the worsening side of yourself to me at the time. I kept it from them, but it was you who showed the full truth of your beliefs to them after you left. It was you who lost your family's respect and threw away the close bonds you had with them.
Despite all this, I stubbornly stuck this attempt at reconciliation out after our second-to-last date where the mask slipped and you unintentionally showed me, without a doubt, that there was still a deep well of love and affection for me in you. I think it scared you to realize, too, that your gruff exterior was cracking and that you were softening to me.
For our next date, you came to my place for the first time and saw everything from the life you left behind. I know it rushed you with emotions you weren't prepared to handle, so I figured you'd need time to sort out your feelings, but didn't expect you to end things then and there.
In that final discussion, you repeated that I'm your ideal woman in every way, but that you can't continue with us because you were afraid of stepping back into our old life and becoming the person you were when we were together. That you didn't like that version of yourself - the version of you that at one point-in-time was a far better person, better son, better brother, better boyfriend, and better man.
So here, 3 years later, and 3 months later, I've come to accept that I will never not love you, no matter how awful you become. No matter how many times I move on, in every timeline, every universe, every reincarnation, I will always miss you, love you, and genuinely want the best for you.
These things will never change, but one thing has: the beaming pride I once felt for you has turned to solemn pity.