Stick a Cork in it 'Cuz BP's done

We are interrupting the regular series by Phasma Scriptor for this immediate breaking news on the "oil spill" in the Gulf of Mexico. Things are not as they seem. The Scribes and Pharisees (news media and lawyer politicians) of our day use the same methods of "legal" legerdemain to misdirect and keep your attention somewhere other than what is really going on. A rule to follow is that when anything is massively covered by the "news media" starting looking somewhere else for what you are being distracted from.


Stick a Cork in it 'Cuz BP's Done

By Phasma Scriptor

In previous communiques, I proposed a method for ending the engulfing-the-Gulf-in-globs-of-oil crisis by, as suggested here, sticking a cork in it, almost literally. Now, as of 3 weeks of 5000+ barrels/day of crude (a very appropriate and descriptive term for the extra thick goo that's bubbling up) into this environmental blightmare, the BP psychopaths of profit have proven nowhere near to up-to-the-task. The means for them to be UTTT has been available for over 60 years. That they have failed and refused to do so is just another hole in their corporate ship, sinking fast, so to speak, evidence of criminal guilt not mere negligence.

When, in 1992, the Chicago Dredge & Dock oops! cracked open the almost forgotten underground tunnel system that had been coiled 40 feet beneath the feet of Chicago Loop pedestrians for almost 100 years, I was in the LaSalle Street offices of an options brokerage, conferring with my ex-mob "phone specialist", Wally "the Wiretapper" Pritchett, on how the local CBOE traders could "front-run" the options trade, allegedly one area of interest for a DOJ investigation into CBOE and CBOT "irregularities" (you know, fraud). Wally detailed the possible methods of installing a shunt into the lines bringing orders into those exchanges; subsequently, Wally's personal line got cut and Wally went dead.

The Great Chicago Flood started at the North end of the tunnel system. When the breach was discovered, the Loop was ordered evacuated since, it was claimed, the consequences of 60+ miles of tunnels large enough to carry small freight trains getting wet were unknown. Actually, pouring a torrent of water through the foot thick inner concrete lining of the tunnels (with its series of pumps)was never going to endanger the surface structures.

Early in the "crisis", as I learned somewhat later than "Early", a local Navy Seal offered to plug the sizable hole using one of the large, very tough balloons which, according to the source, could be used to keep a Navy ship, like a submarine, from an extended stay with Davy Jones after having a potentially fatal hole installed in its hull. Because of the tendency of water to relentlessly fill in the spaces below a ship's water line (which keeps rising as the ship begins sinking), the balloon must be deployed and, then, inflated (with fluid) ASAP which would, because of its design (see US Patents 2446190 - 8/3/48, 4329132 - 5/11/82, 4385582 - 5/31/83, 5143012 - 9/1/92), fill even an oddly-shaped hole. Perfect solution; the citizens of Chicago would be saved from a fate worse than the sinners without an ark. And, also, a solution flat rejected by City Hall.

While everyone fled the Loop (they really wanted hang around and WORK!), I stuck around and went to the South end of the Loop, avoiding the cops who were supposed to be preventing anyone from falling into voracious sinkholes forming in the streets (yeah, yeah, OK, voracious sinkholes forming in Chicago streets ... as common as ghost-Streets-&-San workers fixing those voracious sinkholes and, yeah, yeah, ditto, avoiding Chicago cops assigned to garbage duty ... un-heroic). The tunnels tilt to the South and at that end is the Board of Trade building and in the basement of the BOT were the record archives, where proof of the crime of fraudulent front-running would have been kept.

That 1st day, the waters hadn't yet gotten that far (the BOT was my territory in another life and I knew how to get past what passed for security). Meanwhile, "da mair" (the mayor, for you non-Chicago natives) awards the contract for successfully concluding the Great Chicago Flood, which didn't include stanching the wound immediately, to Kenny Construction, a construction company with mairly clout.

Kenny's bright idea was to pour concrete and other stuff into a hole that was sucking the bejesus out of one corner of Lake Michigan. Of course, if the intention was NOT to make it stop, that really was a brilliant idea. After many hours of purposeful futility, the tunnels did what they were designed to do - carry the freight around the underground - all the way to the basement of the BOT. A 2nd quick inspection confirmed the inevitable. Maybe those records weren't destroyed completely, but the plausible deniability that they were gave plausible reliability to the theory that the DOJ investigation got washed out because of the unseen effects of the Great Chicago Flood.

Click on NEXT until we get to April 20, 2010. BP's leased oil rig blows up, falls over, workers die, the pipe jammed into the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico loses the apparatus that siphons off the crude in an orderly fashion at a rate of 5000+ barrels/day. In other words, there's a large underwater hole that needs to be plugged. Hmm. Same joke, different punchline.

Shortly after the reports of the Great Gulf Oil Spill of 2010 hit the media outlets, I began to suggest the same solution, to various media types and save-the-environment lobbyists, some helpful Navy Seal offered to implement in 1992 in Chicago. No rejection, just crickets.

Meanwhile, BP announces its bright idea to fabricate a dome that will collect the bubbling crude (OMG! I just had the urge to sing a chorus of the Beverly Hillbillies theme song. Somebody, please stop me!). Of course, that's the bright idea that will allow the crude to continue to flow into BP's profit stream and flip an oil-soaked bird at the damnable ecological disaster that grows in dimension every minute that the leak isn't contained by a more stop-the-leak-and-damn-the-pursuit-of-profits approach.

Click NEXT to 5/10. CNBC reports that, the dome having flopped, BP was going to Plan, uh, well, not exactly B, actually, more like Y or Z, since all other plans didn't take into account that last-ditch option of having potential losses that could have the same effect on BP that the caramel-consistency goo had on some hapless turtles, subbing for the canaries in the coal mine. The smart-ass BP CEO should probably think worst case when some judge (even in Big Oil IS God country), realizing he could become a certifiable public enemy if he lets this highly-paid Limey get off easy, makes him do clean up duty for the next century.

Plan Y? As of 5/10, BP is considering "junk shots", meaning, "plugging (the) leak with debris ... (by) injecting debris including shredded rubber into the well as a stopper ... followed by cement to seal the leak." That's called incrementally creeping to what? Plan Z. A balloon, utilizing the best of the designs already sitting in the US Patent Office, inserted into the gushing hole in the floor of the Gulf; the cement they propose to deploy in the aptly named "junk shot" would instead be slathered on the balloon. Otherwise, they're just doing the Kenny Kaper - pour any old s**t down the hole with no chance of stanching the flow while they figure out how to implement one of those more corporate-profit-friendly plans B through X.

Open Letter to Wen Jiabo and the Chinese Government

Thanks to Bill St. Clair at End the War on Freedom!!

From http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/bennett.htm

Open Letter to Wen Jiabo and the Chinese Government

By Kyle Bennett

"You've expressed concern with the safety of the hundreds of billions of dollars of US Treasury instruments that you possess. Your concern is well founded.

They will not be paid in full.

First, while I have your attention, let me state that since you are communist thugs who brutalize your people and have no right to run a country, or even to breath the air of this planet, I have no sympathy for your predicament. Its a shame that some in this country are burdened with the belief that they are in debt to the likes of you, but that is their problem. It is not, generally, a problem the American people are saddled with. We never agreed to be in your debt.

Understand one thing, and though I'm sure you already know it, I will spell it out clearly so there is no misunderstanding. That paper you hold is backed by only one thing: the presumed ability now and in the future of our government to rob or extort from the American people the money that will be used to repay you.

I refer to the paper you "hold", rather than own, because you own nothing. What you were promised was not the property of the people you made your deals with. It was not theirs to offer, and it is not now yours. Your deal was with a relatively small handful of United States officials, George Bush, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson, Barak Obama, Tim Geithner, and others. It was not with us. It was with them, and it is with them or their assigns that you will have to deal in the future.

That they have promised you our cooperation, willing or otherwise, should be of little comfort to you. They have no authority to make such promises on our behalf, nor on generations yet unborn. Their promises were based on the assumption that the force of law, or the naked force of arms, will remain at their service to be placed in your service. That is a risky assumption."

MORE HERE: http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/bennett.htm

The Pause That Rephrases

A new series on the financial system and more is starting from our friend and compatriot Phasma Scriptor. He has written extensively on a wide range of subjects including, law, science, religion and finance. You have probably read some of his material. However, you may not have known because he has written as a "ghost writer" for a number of "patriot" authors, litigants and more. His insights are discerned from a lifetime of the pursuit of truth, liberty and justice. He has not battled without injury, scars or loss but he battles on none-the-less. We have collaborated on a number of endeavors and do not agree on some things. Furthermore, we both hold that what we agree on is more important than what we disagree about and that reason and wisdom are contributed to by the willingness to agree to disagree on some things. Finally, since I firmly believe that no one person can contain all truth, wisdom and knowledge it behooves us to weigh alternative counsel and consider all our options before we leap into the blind faith belief that we know what we don't know and conduct ourselves accordingly.

The Pause That Rephrases
By Phasma Scriptor

Now that Goldman Sachs & its allies have scooped up gazillions (yes, Virginia, there is a literal gazillion when an accurate accounting can't be made), the cover-up will go from 5th to, oh, maybe, 9th gear (yeah, Virgy, the cover-up started well before this latest in a continuing series of crimes perpetrated by the same old mega-bucks gang).

The pathetic, lame, limp and, ouch, impotent put-up job the US Senate is so pleased to call financial regulatory reform is one of the more embarrassing exhibits in the said cover-up. As I've explained elsewhere, GS arranged the financing packages for the Euro PIGS - Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain. Then, promptly bet against them. Let's see, does that sound familiar?

On April 27, GS Chair/CEO Lloyd Blankfein, flanked by his slick band of thieves in $5000 suits, was sitting in the Senate chamber pretending to be the cooperative witness re the GS trading scandal involving the GS thief who called himself "Fabulous" (aka Fabrice Tourre), a scandal in which "Fabulous" put together several mortgage-backed securities (mbs) for swindler and GS client John Paulson (it's apparently a requirement that your resume must include "unabashed bunco artist" whether a GS account executive like "Fab" or a GS client w/access to, uh, "special client services"); GS then promptly bet against ... Same song, gazillionth verse.

That very same day those suits are in the Senate, the supposedly independent rating agency, Standard & Poor's, downgraded Portugal's paper 2 notches, Spain's 1 notch and, most beneficial (for GS), Greece's to junk status; remember, this is the perforated stuff GS helped the Portuguese, the Spanish and the Greeks unroll out to the suckers who paid-up at the GS all-purpose $ lavatory. To propose that Blankfein, et al., were thumbing their noses at our duly-elected Senate stooges, self-importantly posturing as guardians of the public trough, is off the mark; blowing their noses at them is closer to the bull, but you could probably pick a bodily orifice amidships that's more appropriate and hits the bull at its, its ... well, anyway, not its eye.

Of course, GS went short all the GS-underwritten TP (as well as the Brit # & the Euro, too) which is propping up the PIGS (as well as the Brit # & the Euro, too) and every denomination of US Tsy TP (what else do you call it when your short-term Tsy Bills get ZERO % interest and the effective rate of longer term issues is NEGATORY) and every other vulnerable sovereign debt on Earth (OK, that IS all sovereign debt on Earth). Sooo, when the S&P downgrades didn't have the desired "trapdoor" effect on the world's financial markets, causing air pocket downdrafts, GS agents tipped the markets a little bit more, on, what shall we call it, Black Thursday? No, the Mother of all "Black" days for the stock market, the day the Great Stock Market Crash began, covers the field. Spike Thursday, for the crazy shape of the price chart, the craziest ever? Maybe, since, though crazier days are ahead with more precipitous spikes, there's an 80% chance they won't be on Thursday; besides, we could always go to Spike II, Spike III, etc. (when this was being written Spike Friday/Monday, when the markets opened, that's OPENED 400 points higher on the DJIA hadn't yet gotten on record yet).

Follow-the-money works here; who benefitted the most from Spike Thursday? GS being short the Earth and the entire Earth having swooned very rapidly, there is 1 and really only 1 suspect in the financial crime of the Century, at least, so far. (Spike Fri/Mon came after the Euro finance ministers decided to jack up the Grecian formula bailout to $1 trillion; hmm, GS designs the PIGS TP and they didn't know this was coming? You don't need to go figure; figuring's all done, system gamed again before the smoky trades are cleared from Spike Thu).

In the immediate aftermath of a terrible shocking crime, the cover-up boost button gets pressed; for instance, after the 1st WTC bombing in 1993, the initial report from an on-scene journalist, looking inside the sizeable hole, said that the "structural steel beams were bent and melted" (I know, I had the car radio on and heard it live). That report was repeated several times over the ensuing 1/2 hour, but, then, that first eyewitness version got canned since it didn't comport with the phony fertilizer bomb story already in the ready. Similarly, instead of having a firing squad of finger-pointing at the hyper-speed traders (like the front-running GS) the very next day, as CNBC bond specialist Rick Santelli vigorously exclaimed should happen (doing so within the polite pause that rephrases the news into politically correct narrative), we, ever the public toilet to the editorial plunger, are getting, first, complete bulls**t (see, see, I can hit the bull where the sun don't shine).

Without bothering to do some easy fact-check, we're supposed to buy into the Bull-oney that some "fat-fingered" order entry clerk keyed a SL order as "16 billion" not "16 million"; the smart liars are backing away from that one since that's just not the way it's done; having started my working career as an order entry clerk at an infamous brokerage, that's an easy dump. Plus, fat-fingered order entry personnel are not to be f**ked with.

What's up next in fables meant to swivel our heads like Linda Blair in the Exorcist? Anything but a serious shout-out to Santelli (there's talk of putting the brakes on high-speed trading, but front-running? Hold your nose, not your breath). In case you haven't seen him or her for awhile, you might want to reconnect with your chiropractor.


Next: The poli-sci-fi factor

To Reduce Them Under Absolute Despotism

Neil lays it out so well! I and others have said it sooo many times before, that the system of "government " we have is the facade of a capitalist representative republic (in "Constitutional" theory) that is actually a fascistic legislative democracy (in practice.)

The enemies of liberty are our neighbors, friends, countrymen and government who practice their duplicitous hypocrisy while propagandizing the collective that they are the "freest people" and the "world leader of liberty."

Just in case you don't recognize the title, it is from the Declaration of Independence paragraph two, sentence five.

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."

To Reduce Them Under Absolute Despotism

by L. Neil Smith
lneil@netzero.com

FROM The Libertarian Enterprise

The smirky caller asked, "You really believe Barack Obama is a socialist?" He went on to assert that the President is pro-business, a capitalist.

The show's host—amazingly, one of talk radio's Big Three—stuttered and stammered inarticulately, never really answering the caller's question, until he was finally rescued by the next commercial break. The fact is, even if he'd known exactly what socialism is, and how to spot it in the people all around you, he wouldn't have dared to say so, because Republicans, conservatives, have a dirty little secret.

Just like Barack Obama, they are socialists, too.

I don't know whether anybody tries, these days, to teach school kids about such things. I was in grade school at the beginning of the Cold War, and I was the son of an officer in Strategic Air Command. Herbert Philbrick (look him up) was very big back then, as was a little book called What We Must Know About Communism, by Harry A. Overstreet and Bonaro Wilkins Overstreet. You can still find it at Amazon.com.

Despite several years spent reading extensively about communism, for school and on my own, and studying the lives and works of self- described socialists like H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, I remained as ignorant as that radio talk show host, and for a very good reason: not one of the "experts" I was reading had any clearer an idea what socialism is than I had. Most of them still don't, to this very day.

Once you get past all the mystical gobbledegook of the Hegelian Dialectic—inserted as a smokescreen, to elevate common thievery, rape, and murder to a level of nobility—what you saw then, what you still see even now, is a boring and inaccurate economic definition, of socialism, all about who gets to own and control "the means of production".

Economics is, at best, a secondary or tertiary concern to folks who think about such matters. It is necessarily a product, in the proper order of things, of a whole lot of thinking that has to come before it. You must begin with metaphysics—which tries to answer the question, "What is the nature of reality?"—or better yet, you can start with epistemology, which asks us, "How do I know what I know?"

Between epistemology and economics, there's ethics, which asks the question, "What is the good?" or, more pertinently, "What should I do?" The order in which you approach this is critical. If you try to base your ethics on your economics, you'll end up organizing Death Panels.

It is the ethical definition of socialism that's critical here—and dangerous to conservatives. Socialists believe that the needs and wants of society are more important than the rights of the individual. (Individualists will argue that there is no such thing as "society" in an ethical sense, since it consists of nothing more than individuals.)

"Society" can also be defined as "the group" or "the collective", manifesting itself in various different ways, as your community, your race, your school, your fraternity, your military unit or the military in general, your corporation, your union, your party, your government, your nation, your family, your lodge, or your church, each claiming to be, in some sense, larger than the individual and for that reason more important.

To socialists, who are inclined to perceive other people as bees or ants, eternally and unquestioningly loyal to hive or hill, size matters. And yet when you examine all of these august entities closely, and observe that they are comprised of nothing more than the individuals who make them up, such a point of view becomes absurd and pathetic.

A word about family. Of all the groups that sometimes claim to own your life, family is the hardest to defend your individual sovereignty from. For the most part, we love our families. Although there are occasional exceptions, not everyone experienced a terrible childhood or suffered nightmarish parents, the way it's often portrayed on television.

Our first job in life is to grow up, achieve autonomy, make our own decisions without regard to whether our parents may approve or not. If we have the right parents, they'll want us to do exactly that. At the other end, as parents, we owe it to our kids to help them along the same path to independence, even if it's sometimes difficult or painful.

As a husband and father, what I do with my life remains my choice. While I would willingly give my life to protect my wife and daughter, this doesn't mean that they own me or that they have more rights—as a group—than I do. It simply reflects their inexpressibly high value to me. Among billions of husbands and fathers, I am obviously far from alone in this outlook. And in the natural world, where the operating system is evolution by natural selection, it makes good sense.

Individual family members share with one another freely, without regard to the ability of any one of them to pull his own weight. (For a surprisingly long period after she was born, my daughter was unable to deliver newspapers.) That's just the way it is, and the way it has to be. I believe it was Ludwig von Mises who pointed out that socialism is a misguided attempt to apply what happens in the family to society at large, an attempt that usually ends in privation and violence.

But I have digressed.

Go back and look over that list of things that you're expected to give your loyalty to and even sacrifice your life for. Over the centuries, they've learned to make it all sound wonderful and noble. However when you begin to see these institutions as nothing more than bunches of individuals, each with no more rights in the natural world than you have (and no extra, or bonus rights miraculously obtained by claiming to be something other than what they are, nothing more than a bunch of individuals), they start to look like tribes of cannibals or vampires, eagerly anticipating the tasty sacrifice of another deluded victim.

And when you suddenly notice that, of all these institutions—community, race, school, fraternity, military, corporation, union, party, government, nation, family, lodge, church—more than half are treasured by conservatives, their dirty little secret is exposed by the hot, bright light of the truth: your rights, provided they exist at all, come in a distant second to the needs and wants of these aggregations.

Conservatives—Republicans—are socialists.

True, they may desire to hold you down atop the stone altar and cut your still-beating heart out with an obsidian knife for a set of entirely different reasons—national security, Judaeo-Christian traditions, "common" decency—than the liberals or "progressives" or Democrats do, but to you, the important part is cutting your heart out with an obsidian knife, not whatever excuse they may offer for doing it.

This is why, no matter which political party happens to be in power, ordinary people—whose thinking and hard work maintain this civilization each and every day—never seem to get an even break with regard to their individual liberty or holding onto the fruits of their labor. It's why the late philosopher Robert LeFevre referred to Democrats and Republicans as "Socialist Party A" and "Socialist Party B".

Never forget that it was a Republican, Abraham Lincoln, who freed not a single, solitary slave, but merely nationalized slavery in the form of income taxation and conscription, who presided over the violent deaths of 620,000 Americans to preserve a political abstract, to retain his political and military power, to enrich his mercantilist friends, and to suppress the basic human right of an entire region of the country to associate—or disassociate—with whomever they wished.

Never forget that it was a Republican, Richard Nixon, who imposed wage/price controls on what had been a relatively free economy, kept an enemies list, and quit when his minions were caught in a criminal act.

Never forget that it was a Republican, George W. Bush, who created the massively unconstitutional Department of Homeland Security, the no-fly lists, pushed through and signed the Constitution-shredding USA Patriot Act, plunged the country into two unnecessary wars, and created trillion-dollar deficits surpassed only by those of Barack H. Obama.

When we are forced to obtain and carry national identification, it will be Republicans who did it, in the name of eliminating illegal immigration.

Vote for the socialist of your choice.

As with any other socialist culture, "some animals are more equal than others" in Sovietized America. Its elected nomenklatura in the House and Senate are paid between $165,200 and $212,100 every year, can look forward to pensions considerably larger than most of their constituents' salaries, and enjoy endless additional privileges and benefits.

Socialists, every one of them.

Let's talk about fascism. When it became obvious as early as the 1920s that socialism doesn't work—the instant it's adopted, the economy heads for the toilet, people begin starving, and leaders, self-convinced that their failures are caused by stiff-necked, selfish bastards who refuse to become New Soviet Man, start putting people up against a wall and shooting them—a modified system was devised under which, instead of owning the means of production, government allows the productive class to believe they own them, while it controls them through regulations and siphons off the profits as taxes.

Other common names for fascism are "crony capitalism", "state capitalism", "corporate socialism" and "mercantilism". Sometimes members of the mercantile class become partners with the state and, in certain circumstances, even end up controlling it. The whole thing looks like a different system than ordinary socialism until you apply the ethical definition. What's more important in a fascist society, the needs and wants of the group, or the rights of the individual? As Mr. Spock once famously observed (in the original James Blish novel Spock Must Die), "a difference that makes no difference is no difference."

Or was it the other way around?

Fascism, then, is a variety of socialism, nothing more, nothing less. The genuine opposite of fascism is a completely voluntary society.

Completely.

Voluntary.

That means no coercion of any kind is tolerable. No censorship. No zoning. No conscription. No taxation. Government deserves no more money than it can raise with bake sales. Anything else involves setting the value of the individual's rights at something less than the needs or wants of the group. Or as Robert LeFevre put it, "To any extent that you have a 'public sector', to that extent, you have socialism."

Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith has been called one of the world's foremost authorities on the ethics of self-defense. He is the author of more than 25 books, including The American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas, The Probability Broach, Hope (with Aaron Zelman), and his collected articles and speeches, Lever Action, all of which may be purchased through his website "The Webley Page" at lneilsmith.org.

Ceres, an exciting sequel to Neil's 1993 Ngu family novel Pallas is currently running as a free weekly serial at www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/?page_id=53

Neil is presently at work on Ares, the middle volume of the epic Ngu Family Cycle, and on Where We Stand: Libertarian Policy in a Time of Crisis with his daughter, Rylla.

See stunning full-color graphic-novelizations of The Probability Broach and Roswell, Texas which feature the art of Scott Bieser at www.BigHeadPress.com Dead-tree versions may be had through the publisher, or at www.Amazon.com where you will also find Phoenix Pick editions of some of Neil's earlier novels. Links to Neil's books at Amazon.com are on his website

Is Statism Inevitable?

Thanks again to Bill St Clair at http://billstclair.com/blog/ for the heads up on this.

Thomas L. Knapp at Center for a Stateless Society - a comparison of public and private organized crime, the government vs. the mafia. Conclusion: they're pretty much the same thing, except government's crimes are much larger, and the mafia doesn't try to convince you that their criminal activities are for your own good.

"Drag a businessman out of his establishment and board the place up because he didn’t fork over for the proper “business permits,” you’re a “public servant.” Drag a businessman out of his establishment and set the place on fire because he didn’t cough up “protection money,” you’re a goon.

Play the government lottery, you’re an upstanding citizen. Put $50 on your neighborhood numbers game — or worse, help set up that game — you’re a crook.

Give a pimp or madam a hundred bucks for an hour with one of his escorts, you’re a john. Pay the county clerk $50 for a “marriage license” and keep up with the attendant annual tax penalties, have all the sex you want for life — it’s “legit.”

Buy or sell an oxycodone tablet on the street, you’re a “drug dealer” or a “substance abuser.” Get a license from the DEA to sell, or a prescription from a doctor to buy, that same pill and you’re a “pharmacist” or a “patient.”

Pressure a jury to acquit your associate, you’re a “mobster” engaged in “jury tampering.” Pressure a jury to convict your opponent, you’re a “prosecutor” making good use of “voir dire.”

Seventy-five years ago Albert Jay Nock in his masterpiece Our Enemy the State quoted Ortega y Gasset saying, "Statism is the higher form taken by violence and direct action, when these are set up as standards," he defends Gasset's position by citing the evidence from the historical record as it existed in 1935. "The historical method enables us to perceive at once that his definition is precisely that which one would make a priori."

He goes on to make certain predictions that we in our time see as coming true.

The historical method, moreover, establishes the important fact that, as in the case of tabetic or parasitic diseases, the depletion of social power by the State can not be checked after a certain point of progress is passed. History does not show an instance where, once beyond this point, this depletion has not ended in a complete and permanent collapse. In some cases, disintegration is slow and painful. Death set its mark on Rome at the end of the second century, but she dragged out a pitiable existence for some time after the Antonines. Athens, on the other hand, collapsed quickly... Of two things, however, we may be certain; the first is, that the rate of America's approach to that point is being prodigiously accelerated; and the second is, that there is no evidence of any disposition to retard it, or any intelligent apprehension of the danger which that acceleration betokens...

What we and our more nearly immediate descendants shall see is a steady progress in collectivism running off into a military despotism of a severe type.
Closer centralization;
a steadily growing bureaucracy;
State power and faith in State power increasing, social power and faith in social power diminishing;
the State absorbing a continually larger proportion of the national income;
production languishing, the State in consequence taking over one "essential industry" after another, managing them with ever-increasing corruption, inefficiency and prodigality, and finally resorting to a system of forced labour.
Then at some point in this progress, a collision of State interests, at least as general as that which occurred in 1914, will result in an industrial and financial dislocation too severe for the asthenic social structure to bear; and from this the State will be left to "the rusty death of machinery," and the casual anonymous forces of dissolution will be supreme."

The inevitability of the corruption of The State is Natural Law. The inevitability of the demise of The State is Natural Law as well. What is NOT Natural Law is WHEN these happen. It is a certainty that America's political existence will fade. However, the question for every generation is "Will it happen in my lifetime?" Will America languish in years of internal tyranny or will it be an abrupt end? The answer is with what course each generation en-mass does. That course is determined by what influences are dominant and successful in directing the generational course.

Therefore, I ask these questions for reflection and if required, action.

What are the forces influencing American society today?
Are these forces absolute in their influence?
If one had a better idea of how American social power should be directed, how would you influence the American public effectively to go that way?
What method of influence has historically been more successful?
What if your ideas were directly in opposition to the State's direction?
If the State is corrupt and no different than "organized crime" how do you "work within the system to fix the system?"
To who or what do you appeal to for justice and remedy?
By what non-violent methods were the colonists successful in obtaining their liberty from Britain?
By what violent methods were the colonists successful in obtaining their liberty from Britain?
Is there a way to influence society en-mass without resorting to violence?
Has it actually been done by those in opposition to the State?
Why not?

Within the previous is the dilemma of the American "Liberty Movement." Solve or reduce the problem of factionalism and then the influence over the social power of the public can be addressed and accomplished. The battle is always over the hearts and minds of John Q. Public and his family. Who or what they believe and support has always been where the real battle is. The People have always outnumbered their "leaders." It is what they do or don't do that determines the course for their generation. Statism is NOT inevitable in any generation unless that generation accepts it. Whether they accept it or not is up to the capable influence of the liberty visionaries within that generation to to speak to them on their level and not from some erudite ivory tower of rhetorical theory constructed to maintain a "not-for-profit" status.

Anarchy Is the Solution to the Evil Idiocy of the State, Part II

As promised here is Anarchy part two! Thanks again to our pal Rommellaw for the heads up!




Whiskey & Gunpowder
By Doug Casey and Louis James
April 19, 2010
Cafayate, Argentina

Anarchy Is the Solution to the Evil Idiocy of the State, Part II

L: The state’s requirements for self-preservation are why people so often say that the state is a “necessary evil.” It must violate some rights to exist, but people think that the state’s protection and support of civil society, which is a great value, is worth the violation.

Doug: I find the concept of a necessary evil rather repugnant. It’s largely sophistry, usually trotted out to justify some type of criminality. Can anything that’s evil really be necessary? And can anything that’s necessary really be evil?

Entirely apart from that, people say the state is necessary because that’s all they’ve ever known. But it’s not, in fact, part of the cosmic firmament. There have been times and places in history when central authority was so distant, or negligent, that the people did function — and prosper — in what was essentially a functioning anarchy.

David Friedman draws attention to medieval Iceland as one example of this. I recommend his book The Machinery of Freedom for lots of great discussion on how society would work without the dead hand of the state suppressing it.

L: And the reality is that there are all sorts of private institutions that provide regulatory and governance systems, from private cities like Disneyworld, to Underwriter’s Laboratories that puts “UL” seals on electronics they deem safe, to churches, some of which govern their members’ most intimate life functions — all through voluntary subscription.

The Mormon Church, for example, exerts a very significant amount of regulation of the private behavior of its members. I’m not a Mormon, of course, but I’ve lived in predominantly Mormon communities, and I have to say they tended to be cleaner, nicer, safer, etc. I’d say the Mormon religion exerts more control over its adherents than any state’s laws have ever exerted over citizens — but those regulated like it. They believe they benefit from it, and most important of all, they are physically free to leave any time they want.

Not so for the state. This is why I’ve said in the past that the state is not a necessary evil but merely necessarily evil.

Doug: Good example. The Amish and Mennonites provide other examples, although religious communities are entirely too uptight to suit my taste. And UL is a good one too, because people worry that businesses would all turn rapacious if the state weren’t there to regulate them. But electronics producers are not required to get UL seals on their products. They go to the extra expense of meeting UL standards because they know they’ll make more money if their products have the UL seal of approval on them.

L: Best Western hotels are the same way. Best Western doesn’t own the hotels; it’s largely a private regulatory agency that inspects hotels and gives those that make the grade the right to put a Best Western sign out front, which is worth a lot to a small mom-and-pop joint.

Doug: There are lots of private regulatory services. Insurance companies also exert a lot of influence on the insured, who have to go by certain rules to stay insured. And, of course, there’s a huge private security industry used by those who want to protect their assets, rather than call 911 after they’ve been robbed, etc. All by subscription.

You don’t need government for anything; if something is needed and wanted, an entrepreneur will provide it for a profit. And do so far better and cheaper than anything a government could possibly hope to.

The economic arguments for a free-market anarchy are overwhelming. I’m of the opinion we’d already be living with the technology of Star Trek if it wasn’t for the state slowing things down. But that isn’t the reason I’m an anarchist. The real argument is moral and ethical.

L: You know, I keep sending “unsubscribe USA.gov” messages to Washington, but I never get a response.

Doug: Good luck. To them, you’re cattle. They care only so much as you and all the others don’t stampede. Other than that, you exist for their benefit and have as much say in the matter as a steer.

L: Maybe that’s true for most people, but I can still vote with my feet. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again. And so have you. Which is why I was looking at property in your neck of the woods in Argentina.

Doug: It makes a lot of sense to be in a place where they have to treat you as a guest, to be courted, rather than an asset to be exploited. Of course, all governments are dangerous, destructive, and annoying. But the ones that are incompetent and disrespected are easiest to deal with…

Anyway, love to have you as a neighbor.

This brings up another problem with the nation-state — it forces obligations upon you. I’m a big believer in being neighborly, but when the state tries to force you into a relationship with other people, it only breeds resentment. I like communities that are self-selecting, where you can assume neighbors share some basic premises about the way the world works.

L: I loved the Estancia. Those mountains would probably convince me if you and your friends didn’t. But anyway, there are a million directions we could take this conversation, a million objections I could raise for you to answer, but I’d like to move from theory to practice. Even to those who agree with you, at least in spirit, this all sounds very theoretical — of no practical consequence since the whole planet, as you’ve observed, is covered with nation-states.

I’ve been your friend for the better part of 20 years, and I’ve worked with you closely for most of the last six of those. I know this is not all theory for you. You live your philosophy. I’ve seen you get up in front of a large lecture hall with hundreds of people and tell them that the whole of the law should be: “Do what thou wilt — but be prepared to accept the consequences.” They laugh or roll their eyes, depending on their beliefs, but I doubt many realize that you are not only completely serious, but that that is exactly how you live your life.

You’re not shy, but you’re not a braggart either, so I’ll go ahead and say that I have watched you match deeds to words. You routinely go in “Out” doors, you light up under “No Smoking” signs, you walk through metal detectors with your belt on, you get back on polo ponies regardless of what your doctors tell you, you leave your electronics on when all the other sheep on the airplane turn theirs off… I could go on and on.

The beauty of it is that most of the time, nothing happens. You did exactly as you pleased, hurt no one, and enjoyed life on your own terms. On the occasions when some busybody does confront you, you usually respond calmly and say, “Oh. Well, what should we do about it?” The worst that happens when you are confronted is usually that you end up where all the submissive people put themselves to start with. Sometimes you even fight back. I’ve watched you make fools of airport security guards or take your business to another hotel.

The important thing is that you start out doing what you want, not what the busybodies want. You may end up penned in with the sheep sometimes, but not as often as most people would think. And you start out doing things your own way. I admire the heck out of that.

Doug: Well… You’re Don Lobo, a well-known anarchist in your own right — well known for not cooperating with the state. But, like you, I’m very easy going, and always try to observe others’ rights to the fullest.

While it’s true the most basic law is “Do as thou wilt — but be prepared to accept the consequences,” you can extrapolate that out, as a practical matter, to two others. One, do all you say you’re going to do. And two, don’t aggress against other people or their property. Everybody understands those laws, and you don’t need a corrupt, and corrupting, government to elaborate on them any further, as far as I’m concerned.

The people I like to hang out with, like you, observe those things. Besides that, I find you’re quite good at keeping your cool while questioning minions of the state… maybe you do it just to see if there’s actually a real human in that uniform they wear.

L: Okay, okay, but I don’t want to comment in print on all the things I’ve done. The point here is not to flatter you, or myself, but to point out to people that submission is a choice, not a foregone conclusion. Freedom is something you never get by waiting for permission but by exercising it as vigorously as your creativity and energy allow. By pushing back against the barriers — like when you told the Inn at Aspen where to shove the city’s “No smoking in the bar” rule, and that you’d accept the responsibility if the mayor walked in.

In the most general terms, I think it’s a mistake to think of freedom as a noun, rather than as a verb. And your actions show the world the consequences of doing freedom, rather than waiting to be given freedom.

Doug: Well, that’s true. And, not to pat myself on the back, it’s worth noting that there have been times when I’ve had my setbacks and even a substantial negative net worth — but it was my problem and nobody else’s. So not having any money is no excuse for not taking charge of your own life and living it the way you want to. I wasn’t given freedom by my parents or the government.

L: Hear, hear! So… Investment implications?

Doug: Attitude is everything, and that matters. If you let yourself be treated like cattle or herded like sheep, you won’t invest so as to maximize your freedom. There’s a lot we could say about this, but we’ve gone on long enough. The place to start is with diversifying your assets across political jurisdictions, making it harder for each would-be Big Brother to corral you. This is a rule almost everyone forgets — but it’s the most important single thing in today’s world.

I would like to recommend a book here. Along with Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness, I’d say it’s the most important I’ve ever read, and had the most practical effect on my thinking: The Market for Liberty by Tannehill. It describes, clearly and precisely, how a society without government would likely work. Best of all, it’s now a free download from the Mises Institute’s web site. If you understand the basics, you’ll feel much less obligated to support the destructive institution of government — because you’ll know it’s unnecessary.

L: As we covered in our conversations on currency controls and living abroad - and Argentina, of course. What else?

Doug: Don’t feel guilty about finding the lowest-tax jurisdictions for reporting your income, owning property, etc. Shopping with your feet is not only your human right, it’s a positive good for the whole world; the more everyone shops for the least onerous governments, the more governments will have to compete for being less onerous, and the better off we’ll all be.

L: And the easier it will be for people to exercise their freedom as you do. What about trends?

Doug: Just the ones we’ve already covered — but now the need to take action is getting more urgent. I see that the new employment bill Obama just signed has new currency controls buried in its guts. It doesn’t necessarily prohibit anything new. But it has new reporting requirements and penalties. It’s an overture to what’s coming. As Mencken said, nobody’s life or property is safe while Congress is in session.

L: I figured you were right about this being in the cards, but I have to admit it’s started sooner than I thought it would.

Doug: Sometimes I hate it when I’m right. And I still think things will get worse than even I think they will. Remember my mantra: Liquidate, Consolidate, Create, Speculate.

L: No specific investments?

Doug: Nothing looks particularly good to me right now, except gold. If you don’t have a serious position in gold, you should build one post-haste — with as much as possible outside of the U.S.

Editor’s Note: Anarchy, Part Two is featured at Whiskey & Gunpowder.

Kick-Ass KICKS ASS!!!

I have the comics and KNEW that this was special. Go SEE IT!
The question still stands. Why hasn't anyone done this before? Because it hurts? Nah!!! It may be because they have listened to what the "liberty" poobahs (on radio and in print) have been saying.

"OMG vigilantism..boo...hiss that's against our passive aggressive pacifist imperative we try to guilt complex impose on the rest of the "freedom movement" rendering them impotent. Let's have another public protest where we can bleat and ululate our frustrations for the FedGov moles in ours midsts to record us for future processing, and call up our local or internet "patriot" radio show and vent our steam there to the "choir" who will "Amen" us their support! Remember, to hit back is the same as initiating force."

What is actually needed are some young people with a clear moral understanding of who actually initiates coercive force and the right to protect the injured. Young people who have quietly observed their elders petition for redress of grievances from a government who responds with repeated injury. Young people who are not in the FedGov matrix as "patriots" or "protesters" or "Tea-Partiers" or "anarchists" or "Ron Paulites," who will employ the natural right of retributive justice on their own or someone else's behalf. The first rule is: Injure only the injurers. Second rule is: No innocent "collateral damage!" Third rule is: No claims to fame, notoriety or any form of credit except enigmatic or cryptic reference to the "We Are Everywhere" campaign of the Sipsey Street Irregulars or The Iron Web!

Just in case that you missed it, here is Paul Craig Roberts' last column. Bummer! His candor will be missed.

Truth Has Fallen and Has Taken Liberty With It

Good-bye

By Paul Craig Roberts

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. George Orwell

There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.

Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.

Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded "anti-American," "anti-Semite" or "conspiracy theorist."

Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.

Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.

Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.

Today many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it. "Free market economists" are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by "the New Economy," a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore. All Americans need in order to participate in this "new economy" are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.

Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of "the New Economy."

And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted "studies" that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the "studies."

The Council of Europe is investigating big pharma’s role in hyping a false swine flu pandemic in order to gain billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine.

The media helped the US military hype its recent Marja offensive in Afghanistan, describing Marja as a city of 80,000 under Taliban control. It turns out that Marja is not urban but a collection of village farms.

And there is the global warming scandal, in which climate scientists, financed by Wall Street and corporations anxious to get their mitts on "cap and trade" and by a U.N. agency anxious to redistribute income from rich to poor countries, concocted a doomsday scenario in order to create profit in pollution.

Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.

Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.

I remember when, following CIA director William Colby’s testimony before the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan issued executive orders preventing the CIA and U.S. black-op groups from assassinating foreign leaders. In 2010 the US Congress was told by Dennis Blair, head of national intelligence, that the US now assassinates its own citizens in addition to foreign leaders.

When Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that US citizens no longer needed to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of a capital crime, just murdered on suspicion alone of being a "threat," he wasn’t impeached. No investigation pursued. Nothing happened. There was no Church Committee. In the mid-1970s the CIA got into trouble for plots to kill Castro. Today it is American citizens who are on the hit list. Whatever objections there might be don’t carry any weight. No one in government is in any trouble over the assassination of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.

As an economist, I am astonished that the American economics profession has no awareness whatsoever that the U.S. economy has been destroyed by the offshoring of U.S. GDP to overseas countries. U.S. corporations, in pursuit of absolute advantage or lowest labor costs and maximum CEO "performance bonuses," have moved the production of goods and services marketed to Americans to China, India, and elsewhere abroad. When I read economists describe offshoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession.

Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money. The transnational or global U.S. corporations pay multi-million dollar compensation packages to top managers, who achieve these "performance awards" by replacing U.S. labor with foreign labor. While Washington worries about "the Muslim threat," Wall Street, U.S. corporations and "free market" shills destroy the U.S. economy and the prospects of tens of millions of Americans.

Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state.

Americans have bought into the government’s claim that security requires the suspension of civil liberties and accountable government. Astonishingly, Americans, or most of them, believe that civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process, protect "terrorists," and not themselves. Many also believe that the Constitution is a tired old document that prevents government from exercising the kind of police state powers necessary to keep Americans safe and free.

Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.

I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week’s first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American "mainstream media."

For the last six years I have been banned from the "mainstream media." My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004, coauthored with Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer representing New York. We addressed the offshoring of U.S. jobs. Our op-ed article produced a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and live coverage by C-Span. A debate was launched. No such thing could happen today.

For years I was a mainstay at the Washington Times, producing credibility for the Moony newspaper as a Business Week columnist, former Wall Street Journal editor, and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. But when I began criticizing Bush’s wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.

The American media does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.

America’s fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government’s account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for investigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise upon which they are based.

These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington’s deficits and threaten the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure that the budget deficits put on the dollar’s value have put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also after them. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called "entitlements" as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payroll taxes all their working lives.

With over 21 percent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war being Washington’s greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with civil liberty sacrificed to the "war on terror," the liberty and prosperity of the American people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.

The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off.

Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct. His latest book, How The Economy Was Lost, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press.

FEDGov, just another word for...

How We Lost Our Souls

Once again Prof. Shaffer examines the complex and emotional paradigm of why good people let bad things happen.


From:


How We Lost Our Souls

by Butler Shaffer

"Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached." ~ Simone Weil

Anyone who has not seen the videotape of the July 12, 2007, helicopter attack by American soldiers that resulted in the deaths of unarmed Iraqi civilians and two Reuters news employees, can view it on YouTube. After months of requests, by Reuters, for this video – followed by refusals from the military – WikiLeaks received a copy from an unknown source. The revelation of this atrocity quickly raised criticisms not just of the practice, but of the mindsets of soldiers who could so eagerly and gleefully carry out this slaughter of innocents. Even the shooting of children at the scene produced no apparent sense of wrongdoing on the part of the soldiers. One of the best analyses of this evil act was offered by Karen Kwiatkowski.

How does such moral depravity not just occur, but become so pervasive in our world? The occasional recordings of such behavior touch only the surface of institutionalized viciousness. Was Rodney King the first person to be brutalized by police officers? Were civilians shielded from execution-style murder prior to the My Lai massacre? Did the revelations at Abu Ghraib constitute the first acts of torture practiced by American soldiers upon captive civilians? In each of these occurrences – a precedent no doubt to be followed in the current criminal machine-gunning of Iraqis – one or more scapegoats were selected for punishment, so as to distance the brutality of their actions from the more pervasive inhumanity that inheres in the institutions for whom they acted.

The central theme of my writing has been to demonstrate that allowing institutional purposes to pre-empt our own has been destructive of life, liberty, peace and, ultimately, of civilizations. We have long walked a line between our need for social organization – as a way of satisfying various mutual needs – and becoming so attracted to the systems that serve our interests that we want to make them permanent. We move imperceptibly from associations that we control in pursuit of our ends, to organizations that become ends in themselves, and that control us in order to foster their interests. When this occurs, the informal organization has metamorphosed into an institution. I have developed this process more fully in my book, Calculated Chaos.

An institution is no longer a convenient tool for our mutual benefit, but an end in itself; its own raison d’être. It has taken on a life of its own, one that differs from, and usurps, our purposes. Because they can only function and survive through using people, institutions require humans to identify their sense of being with them. To this end, government schools have been established, whose primary purpose has always been to condition young minds in the necessity and desirability of the institutional scheme of things. In the words of Ivan Illich, "[s]chool is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is." Schools also help us learn to seek meaningful and well-paying careers within institutional hierarchies.

When we identify ourselves with, and attach ourselves to these institutional entities, we absorb their values; their purposes; their modus operandi. Such practices of attachment can be analogized to a cancer that metastasizes our inner sense of being. In the process, we become dehumanized, for institutions have no souls; no emotions; no spiritual, moral, or intuitive sense. They neither cry, bleed, love, or experience elation. They are machines and, like other machines, operate solely on the basis of mechanics, linear processes, and material ends. When we become institutionalized, we become little more than robots – servo-mechanisms – functioning in response to how we have been programmed to perform.

The emotional and spiritual dimensions that make us human are of no value to institutions which, in times of political wrong-doing, urge us to suppress such sentiments. Anything that is nonmaterial is immaterial to members of the institutional order. In place of deeply-held philosophic principles, institutions have policies; their sense of "meaning" consists only of perpetuating themselves by maximizing their power and material wealth. To such entities, human beings have value only as fungible resources to exploit on behalf of institutional ends.

It would be easy to condemn the soldiers who engaged in this slaughter as "evil" or "depraved" or "insane" beings. Such is the manner in which we have long accustomed ourselves to blanking out any awareness of the "dark side" of our own unconscious. In such ways have we isolated ourselves from the Hitlers, Stalins, Mao Tse-Tungs, Pol Pots, and other tyrants, leaving us with the comforting feeling that we shared nothing in common with them. But history informs us – if we will only look – that, once we have identified ourselves with any purpose beyond ourselves, we can become capable of the most vicious forms of wrongdoing. How do otherwise decent men participate in a lynch-mob?

The state – an institution that is defined in terms of enjoying a monopoly on the use of violence – is particularly attractive to men and women whose "dark sides" are closer to the surface than those of more tolerant and peaceful persons. When the state energizes this "dark side" – which it does particularly in wartime, the quality that led Randolph Bourne to identify war as "the health of the state" – otherwise decent men and women can turn themselves into agents of savage brutality. When their murderous acts are conducted on behalf of the state – with which most people identify themselves – their actions acquire an aura of legitimacy that would not have obtained under other circumstances; a distinction that would prevent them from becoming serial killers upon their return home.

Identifying ourselves with the state, in other words, has a way of turning us into sociopaths. It is not that the state does this to us, but that our willingness to attach ourselves to external entities – and the values upon which they are grounded – separates us from our focused inner sense of being. This applies not just to the pilots of helicopter gun-ships over Baghdad, but to more visible political figures such as Madeleine Albright – who defended her Clinton-era policies that led to the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children – and Janet Reno, who defended her massacre of Branch Davidian men, women, and children at Waco. More recent application of these dynamics are found in George W. Bush’s fascination with starting pre-emptive wars against the rest of the world, and Barack Obama’s apparent willingness to use nuclear weapons in future pre-emptive attacks, as well as to assassinate Americans.

People who are willing to embrace – or even to tolerate – such sociopathic conduct, have lost all touch with what it means to be human; have lost their souls. No federal bailouts; no increase in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or decrease in unemployment levels, will overcome this loss. Nor can any "stimulus package" be enacted – with or without bipartisan support – to restore the personal integrity long since lost.

There was a time, not so many decades ago, when brute force – particularly when engaged in by police and military agents of the state – was at least frowned upon, if not condemned, by decent men and women. The threshold level for such practices continues to get progressively lower. A major contribution to Barry Goldwater’s defeat in the 1964 presidential campaign, was the unfounded fear that he might be willing to use nuclear weapons in the war in Vietnam. Modernly, Bush’s and Obama’s willingness to initiate a nuclear war have raised no major outcries from most Americans, who seem to prefer "hope" (i.e., wishful thinking) over intelligent "understanding" as a way of making the world free, peaceful, and productive.

When the 2008 GOP presidential candidate, John McCain, can garner nearly 60,000,000 votes with his sociopathic dance of "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," should we be shocked by the butcherous conduct of some American helicopter pilots?

April 14, 2010

Butler Shaffer [send him e-mail] teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law. He is the author of the newly-released In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918–1938 and of Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival. His latest book is Boundaries of Order.