On the Other Hand...
by Jim Davies
Sweeping Towards Destruction
The news this week (starting 12/8/2002) seems at first glance unremarkable - but I think it's among the most momentous since 9/11. Three items caught my attention:
These last two were serious announcements, reported by the major media; though naturally, the minor speaking gaffe by Trent Lott rated a heap more attention than the possibility that these steps heralded the end of the world. Let's correct the imbalance and show how you and I can make it last a little longer.
- On Sunday, CBS' "60 Minutes" let slip a gem of true insight! Rare indeed. It was that according to a recent survey, foreigners love our products, our jeans and our movies, but don't like our foreign policy. Oh, shock! Horror!
- On Thursday, the government announced that it will immunize its most heavily armed agents against smallpox, and by 2004 would make that vaccine available to anyone it exists to "protect".
- On Wednesday, it warned the Iraqi government that if WMDs were used against its employees while invading Iraq, it might use nuclear weapons in response.
Foreign Opinion
Just think! Something perfectly obvious to me and other libertarians for decades, has actually dawned on those distinguished TV molders of the public view!
It will be obvious to any who travel overseas and keep their ears open. Imports of American goods are evident everywhere; and yes, most foreigners love Hollywood. Those able to think admire the American ideals of freedom and small government, and the prosperity that results. Many would like to live here.
But there's a very widespread dislike of US foreign policy. CBS quoted some figures; even in the UK, where support for the government's bipartisan policy on Iraq is most fervent, 53% of those polled did not support it! In Egypt, which is supposed to be "our ally" in many respects, the figure is 90%. Right; only 10% of Egyptians favor US foreign policy!
Jeans and PCs and movies are made by profit-seeking companies, while foreign policy is made by government. This obvious divide was not, alas, pointed out by the "60 Minutes" team; that would have been much too close to their Statist bones. They had it that both derived from "us"; "our" products, "our" policy. They do NOT. The first come from the productive sector; the second comes from the parasite sector.
So, why should we tolerate an organization that, far from protecting us, actually generates ill-will towards us abroad, where in its absence there would only be goodwill and satisfaction with our products and way of life?
CBS never even got around to asking the question, and I have no answer to it. Do you?
Smallpox
Those foreign opinions are, in the majority, dead right. US foreign policy - from both the older parties, over many decades, stinks rotten. The lastest monstrosity is an aggression against Iraq, a country ruled by a tin god who has for sure ill-treated his people even more than the US one has ill-treated us; but absent Uncle Sam's world-cop posturing and especially his pro-Zionist stance over 60 years, even that tin god would pose no threat to Americans in America. No, not even if he, like France, Russia, Britain, India, Pakistan and probably others, acquired nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.
But because of the illusions of Empire that blind the political class in D.C., its military might is being thrown all over the Mid-East and making us enemies every day. My "9/11 Trilogy" showed what result that brought in 2001.
Our government says that Saddam has biological weapons and will use them if cornered by the US Army. They may be lying (Saddam says he has none) but they are all liars and he has lied most so let's assume this one is true. Unless (as could be the case, of course) the US assault is as devastating as the one delivered in the First Gulf War, the result will be a large number of Americans killed, perhaps by smallpox or nerve gas; which could be so very easily smuggled in to the US mainland and very likely has been already.
So here we are, rid for half a century of the scourge of smallpox, looking directly at the possibility of a mass epidemic with hundreds of thousands of painful deaths, all because Bush and his Demopublican supporters are strutting their thing in a part of the world where the Constitution they all swore to uphold doesn't allow them to even tread. Absolute madness!
One Nuclear Bomb
can quite ruin your day, so says the b-sticker; whose author evidently sees clearer than any of the blind guides running this country. Their other response to the defiance from Baghdad is that if weapons of mass destruction are used against invading US forces, the Feds "reserve the right" to use nuclear weapons in response. I wonder where they got that "right"; did you delegate it to them? If so, from where did you get it?
Repeat: this meddling in mid-East affairs is NOT a way to defend Americans from unprovoked attack. The whole policy, over at least six decades, is one of intrusion, of offense, of provocation. And now our demented leaders are saying that if the latest target hits back in defense of his own country with the most potent weapons he has, then by golly "we" will nuke a few million of his hapless subjects in revenge. Where world history will go in the minutes or hours or days after that, is anybody's guess.
Get this, Emperor Boy and your bipartisan courtiers; that "we" does not include me. You can count me right out. I don't want any tiny part in the madness of your warmongering.
Let's think about this quite carefully, though. I hope you agree that this threat to nuke a huge number of people whose only crime was to fail to overthrow a tyrant (something Americans haven't done either, for a couple of centuries) and who pose no unprovoked threat to Americans in America, is barbaric, lunatic, totally unacceptable. But given that government is allowed to exist, why should it surprise us?
The US government developed some 40,000 nuclear warheads during the Cold War; enough to wipe out the human race several times over. Yet most Americans went on rewarding that lunacy with votes. Protesters were marginalized.
The weapons exist, so why should they not be used? Conversely if they ought never to be used, why did voters so regularly and complacently go on re-electing those who built them? Blame the weapon-builders' lobby and, here, the oil lobby and the Zionist lobby if you will; but the bulk of the blame lies on the bulk of the voters. Scores of careless millions of them.
Once allow a government to exist, and as five thousand bloody years of history attest, it WILL wage war. And, given the state of scientific knowledge, it WILL eventually use WMDs to wipe out huge numbers of human beings in so doing. Poison gas was used in WW-I and two nukes were dropped in WW-II, but so far the massive government annihilation of humans has been done with weapons quite conventional: machine guns, shells, bombs, tanks, starvation. Oh, and yes, Zyklon-B.
But now given the matter-of-fact news releases from Washington in the past week, it's clear that the war you will have may, like as not, be nuclear and biological.
The lesson is abundantly obvious: government is a "luxury" we cannot afford.
The Vaccine
The human race has fooled with government long enough, and is on the brink of destroying itself right now, as a result. We all desperately need a vaccine - not so much against smallpox, but against government itself.
My article about the "G-Myth" said so in less urgent terms a few years ago. Now, there's much less time left.
The task is enormous, and the first step is to want it. Each person who has some remaining ability to think rationally must stop supposing that govenment is somehow benevolent and and say out loud and plain that it is a total fraud and always has been. Never mind if people call you an Anarchist; in its proper, good sense that word is a compliment and in its vulgar but incorrect sense it won't begin to describe the chaos and destruction that will follow a nuclear war launched by the "law & order" crowd.
That's the first step, and you can take it right now. Please do.
The second is to take action at once to withdraw support from this mad, monstrous organization in the short time still remaining. Use whatever method you prefer; but I recommend you take the low-risk, simple step of kicking your habit of sending it money. I refer to no longer paying it "income tax", which provides half its revenue; you can achieve that in a month if you set your mind to it, with a risk to your welbeing infinitely smaller than the alternatives of smallpox or nuclear radiation. You can see how here.
Ludwig von Mises wrote: "No one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us." That was prior to WW-II, from which humankind narrowly escaped; from the next, it may well not.
Government has always been an absurd idea. Now, its utterly mad, irrational wickedness cannot be hidden even from the dullest brain, provided it is placed in gear. Heed von Mises' words: join the battle. It's your future. I hope.