Blazing Reader,

James Corbett's anthology, Reportage: Essays on the New World Order, digs down deep at the psychological root of the world's political problems:

"The real bugbear is not 'government,' after all, but our belief in the authority of whatever gang of criminals wears the mantle of 'government official.'

"The hypocrisy that this belief gives rise to is galling. We rightly call an unelected man delusional if he believes his own dictates to be law, yet we dutifully obey the dictates of our “legislators.” Why?

"We rightly castigate a common thief for stealing someone’s money, yet we laud the thieves who call themselves our 'government' and call their robbery 'taxation.' Why?

"We rightly lock up a murderer who takes another’s life, yet we raise a murderer dressed in a uniform as a hero for spilling the blood of our 'government’s' enemies. Why?

"Unravel the thread of this imaginary authority and you unravel the thread of statism — the belief that immoral actions can be made moral simply because they are committed in the name of the state.

"According to the statist’s twisted logic, people are inherently wicked and deceitful, so some of those wicked and deceitful people should become rulers so they can stop the others from being wicked and deceitful. By extension, since people tend to rob and kill others, some of those people should be authorized to rob and kill in order to stop the others from robbing and killing each other."

That was from the essay entitled "How to Really Defeat Globalism."

Such apolitical philosophy was what really won me over reading Reportage — for my own journey of understanding (over the last twenty or so years) has led me to the same conclusions about statism. I once thought only big, controlling governments were the problem, but I have come to see all forms of statism are inherently harmful.

As James says in the introduction: "...I’m a voluntaryist who believes that the way to improve our world is not by casting a vote for yet another would-be political ruler but by investing our time, energy, attention, and resources in building our own independent communities from the bottom up."

The voluntaryist undercurrent to all the essays may be why Jimmy Dore, of The Jimmy Dore Show, calls Reportage "a great and amazing book," confessing that, "I learned more in the first 80 pages than in 10 years of doing my own show."

For more on how to "unravel the thread of this imaginary authority," you can purchase a copy of Reportage: Essays on the New World Order by James Corbett (available in ebook, print or audiobook formats) at reportagebook.com.

John C.A. Manley

P.S. You can watch a recording of the 2025 book launch (in Osaka, Japan) of Reportage (and hear more excerpts) over on James Corbett's YouTube channel.

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.