Archive for February 21st, 2008
Every year in mid-February, tens of millions of Americans take the Monday off in celebration of the presidency. And while the average civics teacher will tell you that we do not appreciate our national political heritage nearly enough, the typical American is not only too respectful of the presidency on this day; he is far too enamored of the institution all year round.
The president of the United States has far more power than any office in the history of humanity. It is trite even to make the comparison. The current president claims the right to detain, torture and kill anyone on earth and to start wars and occupations in any nation of his choice. He claims the right to levy taxes on anything, prohibit anything, mandate anything, spy on anyone, and demand that all jurisdictions on the planet bend to his will. While the laws of economics limit his actual power to alter reality, the pure destructive potential of the modern presidency is beyond unspeakable. Nuclear holocaust, prospectively amounting to the greatest atrocity ever, is generally within his reach.
No matter who is president, it ends up costing many people their lives. Practically all US presidents go to war and kill foreigners. Even the best modern presidents, like Warren G. Harding, violated the Bill of Rights and acted at times like a despot. Even the great Grover Cleveland gave America an income tax, the Interstate Commerce Commission, and some questionable precedents in foreign diplomacy and federal police powers. He was arguably the best. Another fairly decent one was Martin Van Buren, but his conduct on the Trail of Tears is unforgivable. The revered Jefferson administration was in many ways a big mess.
This is the best it gets. The worst presidents, for their part, rank among the greatest political criminals in world history. (And these tend to be the ones we’re supposed to admire most.)
Most Americans want to keep the modern presidency, even as they argue passionately over which would-be tyrant should fill the spot. The differences between candidates are seldom significant and every year the major choices become worse.
Sure, someone with Ron Paul’s rare principle and dedication could do great things as president, but only so long as public opinion supported retrenchment of the state. Only to that extent can a politician facilitate big steps toward liberty. Ron has of course contributed greatly to that public opinion, but he is the first to acknowledge that it is a classical liberal culture, and not great men standing alone, that makes a free society.
In other words, even the president himself ironically has not the power to bring down the modern presidency, whose demonic power is much greater than any single holder of the office and is a reflection of a national political climate worshipful of presidential supremacy. Even after seven years of Bush, that overall climate is still dismal. Consider McCain, Hillary and Obama. All of them promise change, and yet all three want to keep the basic infrastructure of the imperial presidency. They all want to greatly expand the presidency in one way or another. McCain promises ever more war. Hillary wants to nationalize medicine.
Obama promises lots more spending but he is an interesting case. He actually terrifies me precisely because I find him rather likeable. When a radical libertarian finds something to like in a statist of this caliber, you know we are dealing with a dangerous politician.
His appeal is somewhat understandable. Of course, much of Obama’s program is anathema, but on crucial issues like war and civil liberties, he sounds much less crazed than Bush, McCain or Hillary. Listen to the conciliatory way he puts things. He sounds much less offensive to many basic old liberal principles than the others.
Then it hits me. He’s not saying anything at all, really, except what everyone wants to hear. He is a masterful politician and represents what most Americans want out of their president – someone they can be proud of and feel good about, someone to shape their warm and fuzzy view of what it means to be American. This view varies somewhat, depending on the group, from the center left/progressive coalition that backs Obama to the neocon/theocon/Wall Street Bush coalition. But it is clear that most all Americans want a president they can respect.
I don’t. I don’t want Americans to get their faith back in the presidency. It is a horrible institution and the more the people give it blind trust based on the personality they see, the more awesome its power and abuses. In the 1970s, the presidency was gloriously disrespected and thus relatively impotent. Reagan brought faith back into the presidency, at least for the right and center. Clinton later did the same for the left and center. Their administrations were quite detrimental for American liberty.
Modern politicians get votes not mostly on their policies but rather on how they make people feel about America. When Americans favor the president more, they also tend to think more highly of the presidency. They want more from their government, and are less bothered when it commits great wrongs. It has been populist solidarity with the state that has created the democratic leviathan of the 20th century, with all its power to bomb, usurp and torture. Vast American pride in the presidency is what has allowed it to become the nation’s master and such a menace to the world.
Americans shouldn’t look to the president for their self-respect, patriotism and cultural identity. The presidency in its current form is entirely too powerful and thus an inherently corrupting and inhumanely destructive thing. The presidency as it supposedly should be, under the Constitution, is a relatively humble office overseeing the executive branch, one of three composing a radically restrained government with very limited enumerated powers. Today, the presidency overshadows the other branches, the states, and all Constitutional and statutory limits on its power. In any event, why should 300 million people, and to a great extent the rest of the world, have to live under one all-powerful law enforcement official? The whole idea seems like some kind of insanity. How did this become the American way? If we are to restore our freedom, we need our compatriots to snap out of this trance. The silver lining in the Bush administration has been the disgust he has elicited so universally, especially among the left and center. This has constrained his actions somewhat. I am not looking forward to the many Americans turned off by the obvious horrors of the Bush administration once again respecting and trusting the president.
Short of a mass campaign against the omnipotent presidency itself, which Ron Paul’s has come closest to representing in modern electoral history, no presidential bid is going to excite me much. I prefer the president kill far fewer people and loot the country less. I prefer fewer peaceful prisoners to more. But we will all lose out on peace, freedom and wealth so long as Americans love and celebrate the presidency, looking to it as savior, moral guardian for the nation, stabilizer of the economy, provider of goods and necessities, protector against evil and liberator of the world. Indeed, given the choice between an Obama, Hillary or McCain who might breathe new life into the presidency and restore the respect and awe it once elicited; or, on the other hand, the stale, despised and pathetic George W. Bush, I am more than tempted to say: Four More Years!
by William Buppert
President Bush has embarked on the final phase of Pax Americana and is ushering in an advanced imperial stage that will endanger every living American. The coming election will assure us that every American will have his Second Amendment rights infringed or predated upon in some fashion no matter which party succeeds (is there a difference except the spelling?). Perennial readers of this site are better versed than most in the predatory nature of the state and its ability to target and vilify those it wishes to eliminate eventually whether through political neutralization such as Trent Lott or lethal means such as Waco or Ruby Ridge. I’d like to focus this essay on the practical application of what Boston T. Party refers to as “liberty’s teeth” or small arms. There are plenty of organizations like Jews For the Preservation of Firearms Ownership and Gun Owners of America which will provide you with all the intellectual ammunition you need to know why you should be armed; I want to tell you how. I want to offer a bare-bones primer on how to get started in amassing your personal armory (contrary to what the government says, an arsenal is where weapons are manufactured) and using the weapons you obtain. I have a military background that spans two decades, shoot competitively and currently instruct tactical firearms so I have left the armchair a few times.
There are plenty of sites from which you can obtain this information but I wanted to provide a fairly painless gateway to get started if you are beginning from ground zero. The black helicopter crowds are chockfull of hunker-down survivalist information which for the most part suffers from their barely hidden desire for the apocalypse to occur coupled with their propensity to be armchair enthusiasts unfettered by real world application of firepower. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the nation’s largest gun prohibition organization, the National Rifle Association, selling plenty of safety-oriented gun practices (while winking lustfully at the Beltway media and other hoplophobes) and ignoring any martial aspects of weapons or gun handling the Founders wrote the Second Amendment for in the first place.
1. Establish a mindset much like the Flinters in F. Paul Wilson’s novels. Fully embrace the initiated non-aggression principle. This is not a call for armed revolt or insurrection. This is summed up as leave me alone or else. Whether you own weapons now or not, you should be fully decided that when, not if, the government comes around to seize them you will relinquish them one round at a time. Or you have had the foresight to properly cache spares and you can hand over that Lee Harvey Oswald Carcano to the nice young men in black ninja suits who are from the government and just want to help you. If you have any doubt about that, stop reading this and take any weapons you now own and donate them to a paleoconservative or libertarian who cares. You may continue reading if liberty means more than lip service. The right to self-defense should be beyond question to this audience.
2. If you bought one book on the subject, buy Boston T. Party’s book, Boston’s Gun Bible (revised April 2002). Hey, we’re on LRC, you always want a book on the subject. As a matter of fact, this logical and sound compendium of gun stuff is worth a whole shelf of gun tomes. Read it two or three times and always have a highlighter in hand. He’s done all the work for you. You just have to read and heed. It has had a perennial place on my nightstand since I bought it. While those new to the gun community will be amazed at the pedantic disagreements that enliven every corner of the gun culture from ballistics to weapons choice, enquiring minds will really be energized by the level of intellectual ferment once you get the gun habit. If one only read the New York Times or the LA Times, you’d think all gun owners were backward hillbillies who only Jim Goad could love. Like so many American subcultures, there is a niche for every need or desire. For instance, I disagree with his number-one choice for a battle rifle (M1A v. FN-FAL) but that is the nature of the enterprise.
3. Write this on your whiteboard one hundred times: I will never, ever buy a weapon from a Federal Firearms Dealer (FFL). I will only make private party purchases through gun shows, the classifieds or through friends and neighbors. The Feral (no misspelling) government has developed a devilishly clever system using the BATF as their stalking horse to enable a de facto and de jure gun registration system established at the central government level every time a weapon is purchased at a brick and mortar gun shop. Check your risk tolerance and local and state laws to determine the regulations regarding private sales but the litmus test is easy. If you see guns for sale in your local newspaper classifieds, it is under the government radar (for now). Recent events such as the spate of college campus shootings and the attempts by local and state governments to regulate and suppress every manner of arms employment and provisioning should convince you that time is short. The same applies to ammunition; buy it at a gun show for cash as there is no requirement for a permit (yet) in most states. I hope you are fortunate enough to live in a state unlike Illinois or some of the Borg states in the northeastern part of these united States. When buying these weapons through private sales, always be prepared to walk away if it smells funny. Never buy any weapon that even appears to be fully automatic or is hinted to be. The Class III licensing system in the US regulates these firearms in a very draconian fashion under the auspices of the 1934 National Firearms Act. The government has a history of entrapment and provocation. Ask Randy Weaver if a half-inch on a ruler is hazardous to your health or that of your family.
4. I could write a book on what to buy but that is beyond the scope of this essay. Armed conflict is a discipline of distance. Different firearms have envelopes of lethality as distance is increased which is also a factor in accuracy. To paraphrase Boston, a pistol is what you fight your way to your rifle with. Spare no expense since your life depends on these tools. At minimum you need a rifle and pistol for every member of your family. The Glock pistol is the hands-down winner for accuracy and reliability. As to rifles, if you are poorer than dirt, scrape up $100 and buy a Lee-Enfield .303 rifle. These bolt actions are highly serviceable for social work. If you have more money, invest the hundreds and thousands it will take to get a proper battle rifle such as an FN-FAL, M1A or HK91 and all the equipment and ammunition to accompany each rifle for its care and feeding. Be sure to have a minimum of 25 magazines per rifle and ten per pistol. From this point, once you have started to empty your wallet, more equipment will start to appeal to you such as load-bearing gear, body armor and all manner of shooting accoutrement. The sky is the limit (and your income).
5. Pay for the very best firearms training you can afford; a single digit percentage of the gun culture pays for professional training and this is the greatest shortcoming you can have. No matter how American the concept of having the most elaborate toys, if you can’t employ them, then their value is moot. Go to Google or Metacrawler, type in firearms training in your state and see who offers it locally or go to the nationally renowned training centers like Gunsite, Thunder Ranch or Firearms Academy of Seattle (my personal favorite for value and quality). Take your spouse, too. She is your primary team-member.
6. Teach your children well. The gun culture has roots as far back as the first settlers in North America. This continuity is a result of parents passing on their knowledge and weapons to their progeny to continue down the line. Exposure to guns early enough can make liberty contagious.
Remember, guns don’t kill people, governments and the criminals they create do.
February 18, 2008
William Buppert [send him mail] and his homeschooled family live in the high desert in the American Southwest.
Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com
Glenn Greenwald
Sunday February 17, 2008 10:08 EST
In response to my post on Friday pointing out that nobody outside of the handful of Muslim-obsessed faux-warriors is moved any longer by the Government’s endless exploitation of Terrorism to secure more and more unchecked power, National Review’s Mark Steyn said:
He may have a point: It’s psychologically exhausting being on permanent Orange Alert, especially as the reason for it recedes further and further in the rear-view mirror. A lot of Americans are “over” 9/11, and, while the event had a lingering emotional power, the strategic challenge it exposed has not been accepted by much of the electorate.
The truth is exactly the opposite. There is nothing more psychologically invigorating than the belief that you are staring down the Greatest and Most Evil Enemy Ever in History, courageously waging glorious war for all that is Good and Just in the world. Nothing produces more pulsating feelings of excitement and nobility like convincing yourself that you are a Warrior defending Western Civilization from the greatest threat it has ever faced, following in — even surpassing — the mighty footsteps of the Greatest Generation and the Warrior-Crusaders who came before them.For those who crave and glorify (though in their lives completely lack) acts of warrior courage, play-acting the role of the intrepid Warrior is uniquely satisfying. That’s why nothing can fill the bottomless spare time of bored, aimless adolescents like sitting in front of a computer commanding vast armies and destructive military weapons, deployed against cunning, scary and evil enemies. That’s why the Mark Steyns of every generation create such Enemies, because they are purposeless and aimless without them.
Steyn deeply flatters himself into believing that only he and his tragically small (and shrinking) band of warrior-comrades can bear the “psychologically exhausting” burden of defending The West and its freedoms. Sadly, most Americans — he says — are too weak, too brittle, just not up to the task of bearing the heavy burden of prosecuting the war against the omnipotent jihadi super-villains.
But not Steyn and friends. They are society’s freedom fighters, the Progeny of Churchill, Patton and Napoleon, bravely and tenaciously manning the barricades of Civilization itself. They’ll find a powerful and protective Warrior who leads them; advocate all sorts of fascinating technologies and complex spying schemes to wage the War; spend hour upon hour chatting about battles and tactics and strategies; and endlessly depict themselves as besieged though tenacious. Far from being “psychologically exhausting,” convincing yourself that you are all that — as Steyn and comrades explicitly do — is to bathe oneself in self-affirming and self-glorifying virtue. Nothing could ever compete with such glory when it comes to psychological fulfillment.
Adam Smith, all the way back in 1776, in An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations, described the fun, entertainment and deep psychological fulfillment which Wars against Supremely Evil Enemies provide to many who don’t have to fight them:
In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies . . . .
They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war.
One finds vivid illustrations of the twisted syndrome Smith identified in most of Steyn’s war cheerleading comrades, especially its leaders. From Jeffrey Goldberg’s New Yorker profile of Joe Lieberman:
Lieberman likes expressions of American power. A few years ago, I was in a movie theatre in Washington when I noticed Lieberman and his wife, Hadassah, a few seats down. The film was “Behind Enemy Lines,” in which Owen Wilson plays a U.S. pilot shot down in Bosnia. Whenever the American military scored an onscreen hit, Lieberman pumped his fist and said, “Yeah!” and “All right!”
Far from being “psychologically exhausting,” the Wars against the Most-Evil-Enemies-Ever that take place inside the head of the Mark Steyns and Joe Liebermans are exhilarating and fun, and they provide the weak, purposeless and powerless with their only opportunity to feel strong, purposeful and powerful. Here, for instance, was the response from Steyn’s warrior-comrade, Andy McCarthy, to my post on Friday and to what Steyn wrote:
Glenn Greenwald? Yawn.
Wake me up when he’s interviewed some of the people trying to kill us and spent a few weeks with people maimed in terrorist attacks (I’d have spoken with the dead, but they were unavailable).
Look at how personally vital — how indispensable — the War of Civilizations is to McCarthy, to his identity and sense of purpose. He doesn’t even need to go anywhere near combat, or fight in the Wars he cheers on. He still gets to be on the front line — a gruff, hard-nosed, no-nonsense veteran-warrior who has been in the trenches, who has stared down the ugly realities of the Civilization Wars and — despite it all — still soldiers on. Think of the emptiness and loss of purpose if the Threat from the Enemy were exaggerated and all of that faded away.
This is why our nation’s faux-warriors can never be reasoned with. It’s why their greatest fear is having the Threats from Our Enemies be put into rational perspective, alongside all the other garden-variety manageable threats we face. To argue that they are exaggerating and melodramatizing the Enemy and the threat is to take away from them that which is most personally important to them.
Just consider the grandiose, baroque rhetoric they employ. What they are defending — today’s U.S. — is not merely good. It’s not even great. It’s not even the greatest thing there is on the Earth right now. No — it’s much more grand than that: it’s the Greatest Country ever to exist on the Earth in all of human history. That’s what they’re defending; that’s the magnitude of the burden they bear, the incomparable importance of the crusade they lead.
Conversely, the Enemy they are facing down (from a safe distance) is not merely threatening or evil or scary or formidable. No, it’s much, much more than that. This is the greatest Enemy that exists on the planet, the most cunning and nefarious and evil force the world has ever seen — not just now, but for all of human history. There is nothing remotely like the depravity and power of this particular Enemy — and there never has been. Ever. Everything these faux-warriors face and defend is superlative; there has never, ever been a war like the one they are waging. None of the old rules apply. This is all unique, unknown, the first and most important of its kind.
What’s most confounding about all of this is that they completely evade the most basic instruments of self-evaluation. All they have to do is look back and realize that every generation, in every country, has been plagued by factions suffering from the same self-glorifying delusions — that they alone are the Brave Warriors willing to engage in the Most Important Battle for Civilization Ever. None of it’s new. Back in 1964, Richard Hofstadter described exactly this psychological affliction in his famous Harper’s essay, The Paranoid Style in American Politics:
The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms — he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point.
Shouldn’t basic self-awareness compel the faux-warriors who read that to at least entertain the thought: “Maybe my belief that I’m waging an apocalyptic War of Civilization against The Uniquely Evil Enemy is grounded in a psychological need, one that is extremely common if I look to the past, rather than an objective assessment or any sort of political belief or ideological conviction. Maybe I’m exaggerating the threat posed in order to inflate my own importance and give myself a sense of purpose and power as I convince myself that I’m waging all-important (though risk-free) war.”
Over the past couple decades, prior to the Bush Era, the people who needed the sort of psychological fulfillment that comes from prancing around as Hofstadterian faux-warriors waging Civilization Wars obtained their fulfillment from playing board and video games or, at worst, dressing up on the weekend in camouflage costumes and — rather than playing golf or going fishing — marched around in militia formations, primed to defend the nation from Janet Reno and her squadrons of hovering U.N. black helicopters. It was equally pathetic, but at least the damage was minimal.
But the 9/11 attacks and ensuing events catapulted their paranoia and powerlessness syndromes from clownish sideshow to dominant political faction. And their fevered, self-serving fantasies have empowered the Federal Government beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, created a completely out-of-control domestic surveillance state, subordinated even the rule of law to the lawless dictates of Security State officials, and dismantled long-standing constitutional protections and political values so basic that they were previously beyond debate. In Civilization Wars, all is fair and justified — torture, lawbreaking, domestic spying, limitless government power, because the imperative of their crusade outweighs all.
All of that is bad enough. But listening to the authors of these events martyr themselves by claiming that their crusades are “psychologically exhausting” is really too much to bear. The reason they pursue those crusades endlessly, and will continue to pursue them until stopped, is precisely because the only thing they find “psychologically exhausting” is the prospect of having to live without their Supreme War of Civilization, whereby they defend the greatest things ever, under siege from the most Evil villains ever, with them — and only them — courageous and tough enough to “do what needs to be done” to triumph.
— Glenn Greenwald
by Butler Shaffer
Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.
~ Arthur Miller
The 200l attack on the World Trade Center was a watershed event for the soul of Americans. Prior to that time, there would have been a significant questioning of the state employing its collective powers to injure or kill persons who had caused no harm to others. This is not to say that most Americans had a pacific spirit, or were unwilling to engage in warfare against others. The United States has long been a war-loving nation, particularly from the period of the Civil War when Americans reveled in a four-year-long holiday for butchers.
But Americans have long insisted that their government’s participation in the amassing of tens of millions of corpses be grounded in some so-called “rational” purpose; that there be some moral “justification” for the well-orchestrated carnage for which the United States would become the primary supplier of weaponry. If the state had to concoct events that provided the offense for which armed retaliation was then demanded, that became acceptable, as long as the details of the scheme could be kept suppressed, such as by labeling truth-tellers “paranoid conspiracy theorists.” As long as they could cling to their state-induced delusions that collective violence served some pragmatic or moral ends, most Americans have been content to allow the state a free reign.
In such ways have most of us sanctioned wars as necessary for protection against those forces who want to “take over the world” and subjugate and despoil us. During my lifetime, Adolf Hitler, “international communism,” and now some amorphous entity known as “terrorism,” have served the purpose of empowering “our” state to do the very things these outside specters are supposed to have in mind (i.e., subjugation and despoliation). Though we have long been taken in by such chicanery, we have insisted that the deception satisfy our beliefs that the state is protecting us from some genuine threat.
Likewise, most Americans rationalize capital punishment as a means of “deterring” criminal acts, thus safeguarding us from those who would victimize others. Without the illusion of deterrence, most of us would see the government’s formalized killing of “criminals” as little more than blood-thirsty revenge, and we would be less willing to accept the practice.
But September 11, 2001, changed all of that. Most Americans – cheerled by politicians, members of the media, and other sociopaths – succeeded in turning most of the country into a multi-million-member lynch mob. For more than six years now, most of our neighbors have been content to play out their roles as participants in a worldwide performance of The Ox-Bow Incident. Such erstwhile values as individual liberty, due process of law, evidence, public trials, habeas corpus, and the like, have been denigrated, their defenders accused of pro-terrorist dispositions.
What has become of the heretofore-insistence that state violence be justified by rational, pragmatic, and moral standards? That, too, has become totally irrelevant to most Americans. Why? What has triggered this nation’s free-fall into collective indecency?
The events of 9/11 were far more traumatic to most Americans than simply the loss of some three thousand lives and the defining edifices of the New York City skyline. That day shattered a number of popular illusions about the “security” people had been conditioned to expect from the nation-state. We had been taxed well into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and regulated to many of the finer details of our lives, for which we had developed the expectation that our lives – and way of life – would be protected from acts of foreign aggression. Of course, most of us didn’t care to question how – and for what purposes – these billions of dollars were being spent, just as most ordinary Germans, in the 1930s, had little interest in knowing why so many of their neighbors were disappearing. We had far more important matters upon which to focus our attentions: the lifestyles of Hollywood celebrities, whether the Chicago Cubs would ever win a pennant, and just what went on in the Oval Office during the Clinton years.
When nineteen men, armed only with box-cutter knives, were able to commandeer airliners and attack the World Trade Center, the solidity of “protection” we had been conditioned to expect from the state turned to warm jelly. The personal privacy and tax dollars we had surrendered to the state in the name of “intelligence gathering,” proved as worthless to us in foretelling the events of that day as they had in anticipating the collapse of the Soviet Union. Unconscious voices began to whisper to us that we had been duped; that we had spent much of our life savings in the purchase of a lemon; that, like country bumpkins in the big city with the egg money, we had been fleeced by slickers.
But such inner voices had to be silenced. We had invested our entire sense of being – our very identities – with the nation-state. If our nation had failed to meet our expectations, this would reflect badly on our personal sense of who we are. Furthermore, if the attacks of that terrible day were – as more perceptive minds are aware – the unintended consequences (or “blowback”) of terrible wrongs committed by the government with which we have identified ourselves, we must personally bear some of the responsibility.
Each of us has a “dark-side” to our personality, qualities that our conscious mind prefers not to acknowledge. Whether we act in response to such “dark-side” forces or not, each of us has the capacity for dishonesty, violence, laziness, lying, irresponsibility, racism, and a whole host of other undesired attributes. Mature people acknowledge this fact and, in so doing, reduce the likelihood of acting upon them. Others, however, prefer to “project” such characteristics onto others (“scapegoats”) and then take retributive action against them in the delusion that they are doing something about such behavior. Politics mobilizes these “dark-side” energies into the kind of mass-minded behavior that America has become since 9/11.
Like a lynch mob, reason, moral principles, and factual analysis, find little expression in political mobocracy. When there has been a failure of expectations regarding our attachments to external entities, our “dark-side” forces seek out others upon which to inflict blame. Our economy is in great difficulty; our schools have failed our children; our tax burdens are some thirty times greater than they were in the Kennedy administration; our “defense” system does not protect, but embroils us in wars with more and more people throughout the world; our lives are increasingly policed, spied upon, surveilled, and regulated to ends that serve the interests of others; even our homes can be taken from us and given to corporate interests that desire them. The totality of such phenomena make us aware that the system we have regarded as indispensable to our well-being has failed us; that our world simply does not work well for us.
Is it surprising, then, that most Americans seem willing to scuttle the best characteristics of a civilized society in favor of taking their collective rage out on whoever gets in their way? The evidence is quite clear: neither the Iraqi government nor the Iraqi people had anything whatsoever to do with the events of 9/11, and yet this fact hasn’t diminished the insistence, by most Americans, that the U.S. military remain in that country to kill more innocent Iraqis. Lurking behind the phrase “support the troops” is the real sentiment: “support the slaughter.”
Anyone who has done serious study of the use of torture knows that it is a most unreliable way of getting meaningful information. That such methods also violate basic standards of human decency makes torture both morally and pragmatically unacceptable to sane people. There was a time when Americans would have become incensed were it known that their government was engaged in the systematic torture of people. Today, however, most Americans – along with most of their elected representatives in Washington – refuse to repudiate the practice, demanding only that such atrocities be renamed to make them sound less offensive.
Likewise, capital punishment fails to satisfy the purposes of deterrence that have long been the stated rationale of this practice. Nonetheless, the grisly exercise of this ultimate assertion of state power over life continues to be defended by most Americans.
When America continues to war against a nation that has done us no harm – a war that has cost upwards of a million dead already – and embraces the torture of human beings, and insists upon capital punishment, the question must be asked: why? What purposes are served by such irrational, immoral, and fundamentally indecent acts? What forces have transformed heretofore civilized people into a herd of barbarians?
The answer lies deep within our psyches, wherein reside the “dark-side” forces that can be so easily mobilized to the most destructive of purposes. Americans continue to suffer from a failure of expectations regarding their collective identities. Nineteen men were able to circumvent the system Americans had naïvely believed would protect them, and carried out a horrific crime. The perpetrators, however, were killed in the attack and cannot be punished. The anger that comes from the state’s failure to perform as promised does not subside, and must be directed at someone. Like a man who has just lost his job, gets drunk, and then goes home to beat up his family, most Americans seem willing to express their rage at any convenient target.
The idea that “we” might be the victims of an attack – instead of the expectation that “we” be the perpetrators of attacks – has struck at the very heart of who and what most Americans believe themselves to be. Faced with the discomfort of such a traumatic awakening, most have been content to make the reptilian response of “see – act” and endorse any kind of violence against anyone who gets in their way and can be made to absorb their projected anger. Ron Paul – the only presidential candidate willing to end this immoral and irrational butchery – receives around 10% of the votes in the primaries. His principal opponent, John McCain, appears to be running away with the party’s nomination, on a platform endorsing the continuation of this war for “one hundred” or even “ten thousand years.” What clearer measure of the extent to which most Americans demand the indiscriminate killing of others! It is the continuation of this mindset that, more than any other single factor, will hasten the total collapse of this civilization.
February 18, 2008
Butler Shaffer [send him e-mail] teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law. He is the author of Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival.
Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com
by Chuck Baldwin
February 19, 2008
“In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.” Daniel 5:5 (KJV)
“And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES; Thy kingdom is divided.” Daniel 5:26-28 (KJV)
Secularists will not admit it, but nations rise and fall at the pleasure of Almighty God. America’s founders certainly understood this fact. Even Benjamin Franklin, who was one of the least spiritual of America’s Founding Fathers, told the delegates at the constitutional convention, “We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that ‘Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel.”
Our first and greatest President, George Washington, agreed with Franklin. He said, “No People can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States.”
Thomas Jefferson, too, believed that nations rose and fell before God. He said, “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?”
The sentiments expressed by Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson were expressed almost universally by America’s founders. From the founding of these United States and throughout most of our history, people (even our leaders) understood that “God governs in the affairs of men” (Franklin). We understood that it was not so much our military might, industrial strength, or financial stability, but divine blessing that secured our liberty. We believed that scriptural injunction, “The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the LORD.” Proverbs 21:31 (KJV) However, it appears obvious that most Americans (including Christians), and especially most of our political leaders, have forgotten this principle.
As a result, many of us are asking the question, Is the handwriting on the wall for America? Have our days been numbered by God? Is our republic finished? Will God divide and conquer our country? Many are suggesting that the signs indicate the answer is yes.
For one thing, we have a federal government that is totally out of control. The checks and balances that were built into our Constitution have been all but eviscerated. For the most part, the people have no real input into their governance anymore. Between Big Media, Big Business, and vote fraud, even honest and fair elections may be a thing of the past.
The American people cannot trust their government spokesmen–or the media that is entrusted with the task of keeping them honest–to tell them the truth. The dishonesty and duplicity of our political and business leaders have produced an almost universal distrust among the American people. We have been lied to so often that it is hard to remember when we were last told the truth by almost anyone in Washington, D.C., especially at the Executive level.
We have been lied to about the Kennedy assassination, the USS Liberty, Waco, 9/11, the war in Iraq, the Oklahoma City bombing, and virtually every other major American tragedy. It is to the point that we cannot believe ANYTHING that this government–and its toadies in the media–tells us. Even our Christian leaders have bought into this deception.
Either wittingly or unwittingly, our Christian leaders are party to deceiving the American people. For example, not only do they refuse to do any serious investigation into the shenanigans of the Bush administration, they refuse to even listen to the factual investigations that have been done. Willful ignorance has destroyed the Church in America today.
Just look how our illustrious Christian leaders are beginning to coalesce around the corrupt candidacy of John McCain (as if a McCain Presidency would be any better than a Democratic one).
Remember, it was Senator John McCain who single-handedly shut down the investigation and effort to bring home American POWs from Vietnam and surrounding countries. Why would a former POW do such a thing, unless, as reported by other Vietnam Vets who are in the know, it was to keep those POWs from coming home and testifying to McCain’s collaboration with his communist captors?
Remember, it is Senator John McCain who is committed to granting amnesty to tens of millions of illegal aliens. It is John McCain who has an F- grade from the Gun Owners of America for his miserable anti-Second Amendment voting record in the U.S. Senate. It is John McCain who was the ringleader of the infamous (not to mention unethical) Keating Five, who cost America taxpayers more than $160 billion.
As a longstanding member of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), John McCain will most definitely support the march toward a North American Union, the NAFTA superhighway, and the creation of a North American currency, called the AMERO. He will also pursue George W. Bush’s neocon policy of empire building and preemptive war. As Pat Buchanan said, “John McCain will make Dick Cheney look like Gandhi.”
(I encourage readers to take a look at my previous expose’ on John McCain at: http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2008/cbarchive_20080208.html )
Add to the above the collaboration between Big Business and Big Government in a continual, covert conspiracy to spy on the American people. See how our government is selling America’s financial interests–not to mention our security interests–to foreign powers. Good grief! Our government is even selling our own infrastructure to foreign powers.
Notice, too, how those who refuse to go along with this New World Order are treated by the political and media establishments. See how they virtually ignored Duncan Hunter, Alan Keyes, and Tom Tancredo. Even the liberal Democrat, Dennis Kucinich, was ignored and lampooned, because he dared to question the globalist agenda of the elites in Washington, D.C., and New York City. See, especially, how they demonized Congressman Ron Paul. As Dr. Paul’s campaign grew, so did the attacks against him from the media and political elites. Even Christian leaders opposed him.
I was one of only a handful of Christian ministers with any kind of a national following who publicly endorsed Ron Paul. Where was John Hagee? Where was Pat Robertson? Where was James Dobson? Where was Tony Perkins? They were all supporting establishment neocons Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, or even Rudy Giuliani.
I continue to support Ron Paul, although I believe the only way he can effectively bring his revolution to the forefront of America is to seek the Presidency via a third party ticket. I, therefore, strongly urge Dr. Paul to continue his Presidential campaign by obtaining the nomination of the Constitution Party. (It is his for the taking, should he pursue it.) The Republican Party is too corrupt, too sympathetic to New World Order ideologues to allow principled patriots such as Ron Paul to obtain the nomination. In fact, a John McCain administration will finish whatever semblance of conservatism yet remains in the GOP. McCain’s nomination makes it all the more imperative that we break the two-party death grip that is choking the life out of America. If Ron Paul would take the bull by the horns right now and run as a third party candidate, he just might be the man who could do it. Otherwise, it is just another sign that the handwriting is already on the wall.
Of course, America’s pastors and churches are in the unique position of being able to lead our people to a revival of honesty and integrity. Yes, they have the power to restore Biblical principles and constitutional government to America’s public life. However, it would first require that they step away from their own infatuation and preoccupation with money and power long enough to see the handwriting themselves. That they refuse to do so is another sign that the handwriting is already on the wall.
One does not have to possess the gift of prophecy to read the signs. The handwriting is there as plain as day in letters large enough that even a blind man can read them.
Christians should not bury their heads in their theology books, however. Instead of wringing their hands and simply waiting for Jesus to return, we need to get in the fight to restore our constitutional republic. The foundation is still there; and millions of people–churched and unchurched–are ready and willing to fight with us. Plus, who can tell what God will do with a serious effort to restore liberty and independence in this land?
As Patrick Henry said during our initial struggle for independence, “[W]e shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of Nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone. It is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.”
Is the handwriting on the wall for America? Yes it is. But that does not mean there is nothing we can do. We can do everything we should do, knowing that there is a God in Heaven who “presides over the destinies of Nations.” The fact is, the friends of liberty Patrick Henry spoke of may be found in the most unlikely places and faces. So be it. We are not trying to build a Sunday School class; we are trying to preserve our constitutional republic.
In so doing, we need political leaders such as Ron Paul, spiritual leaders such as Pastors Tony Romo and James Riddle (for my list of “Black Regiment” pastors, go here: http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/blackregiment.php ), educators such as David Alan Black and Steven Yates, business leaders such as Frank Fluckiger and William H. Ball, Jr., attorneys such as Edwin Vieira, Jr., and Herb Titus, journalists and writers such as Jerome Corsi and John McManus, film makers such as Ron Maxwell, and everyday patriots such as you and me.
Besides, God may think it is time to divide the kingdom out of the hands of the globalist elitists and place it back where it belongs: with “We the people.” What say you?
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© Chuck Baldwin
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