fin-tastic

The National Debt Will Destroy America As We Know It

2012-02-02T18:59:00.000-08:00

Some people argue that the national debt is not a big deal. Here are my responses to three such arguments:

1) Argument: The national debt can be reduced by a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts.

Response: No, it cannot. The debt is simply too big. When you factor in the projected shortfalls in Medicare and Social Security, the true size of the national debt is around $200 trillion. Spending cuts can’t solve the problem. Interest payments on the national debt will become the largest expenditure in the federal budget by 2020, to say nothing of paying down the actual principal. Spending on Medicare and Social Security will consume all remaining federal revenue by 2040. In other words, the government would have to eliminate all discretionary spending (military, education, agriculture, transportation, energy, etc.) just to meet existing obligations to creditors and the elderly. Tax hikes won’t help, either. Even if the government confiscated all the assets of the rich and the profits of every Fortune 500 company, the loot could only fund existing federal operations for ONE YEAR. In fact, it is now mathematically impossible for the U.S. government to pay off the national debt since the US government now owes more dollars than actually exist. Even if the U.S. government stole every penny from every American AND confiscated all physical assets in the United States and sold them off to foreigners—it STILL would not have enough money to pay off the national debt.

2) Argument: Since the U.S. government controls the amount of dollars in circulation, it can keep inflation under control.

Response: The U.S government does not issue currency. The Federal Reserve does. The Federal Reserve is a private bank owned and operated for profit. When the U.S. government needs to borrow more money, it asks for dollars from the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve gives the government dollars in exchange for U.S. Treasury bonds (debt owed—with interest—to the Federal Reserve). In other words, for more dollars to enter circulation, the U.S. government has to go deeper into debt. The criminals who designed this system never intended for the national debt to be paid off. It was designed to enslave the American taxpayers to a powerful group of elite international bankers. It is corrupt and rotten to its core. The apocalypse will come when the US can’t make interest payments on its accumulated national debt. Sovereign default will trigger a chain reaction of bank failures that will end in a hyperinflationary depression. It could all go down in a matter of months because most banks are inter-dependent through fractional reserve banking, bullshit derivatives, toxic assets, and worthless government I.O.U.’s.

3) Argument: Since the U.S. government pays interest on its foreign debts in dollars, all the money will eventually come back to the U.S.

Response: This is true as long as the dollars remain in circulation. However, most new U.S. government debt is purchased by the Federal Reserve, not foreign governments. When debt is repaid to the Federal Reserve, dollars are actually removed from the system.

Conclusion

The national debt is a huge problem. It’s common sense. If you make $40,000 a year and have $100,000 in credit card debt, you would be in serious trouble. With the real U.S. government debt surpassing real U.S. GDP by many magnitudes, common sense dictates that America is in serious economic peril. Surprisingly, most economists don’t see it that way. In their eyes, common sense does not apply to their field of expertise. What’s true on the individual level is not true on the macro-level for all kinds of fancy-schmancy reasons that only academics are smart enough to understand.

The only way to end America’s debt slavery is to repudiate the national debt, abolish the Federal Reserve, and legalize competing currencies. That won’t happen because our government is owned by an evil banking cartel. The good news is that the current system cannot last forever. No government can go deeper and deeper into debt without collapsing eventually. The bad news is that economic collapse will be followed by a period of civil unrest, martial law, and possibly revolution. The mess in Europe is a preview of what’s coming to America. I would like to believe that people will behave in civilized and cooperative ways when facing mass unemployment, depleted savings, food shortages, and skyrocketing prices. Judging by how they act when Air Jordans go on sale, I have my doubts. I would also prefer that the sociopaths who control the Washington-Wall Street Axis of Evil will find honest work as burger-flippers when their cherished institutions finally go kaput. Judging from the bankster bailouts, the police state, Constitution-shredding legislation, and the martial law preparations underway in Europe and America, it seems the elite are prepared to do whatever is necessary to hold onto their power and privileges. We must be prepared to do whatever is necessary to stop them.

Nature Sucks

2011-02-10T08:03:00.000-08:00

Nobody should be fooled by sappy pictures of baby pandas. Nature is a violent, cruel, and unforgiving harbinger of death and destruction. Think about it: Ice ages, droughts, disease, quicksand, tsunamis, predators. The law of the jungle is kill or be killed: lions eating gazelles; mother bears eating their young; a housecat playfully batting around an injured, suffering mouse just for kicks; hyenas and buzzards fighting over the scraps of a rotting carcus, ivy strangling the life out of an ancient tree, a grasshopper caught in a spider web waiting to be devoured…

Was anyone really surprised when the “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray barb? The guy based his entire career on taunting wild animals. Or when the magician Sigfried was mauled on stage by one of his tigers? Or when that guy who lived with wild grizzlies was killed by wild grizzlies? The recipient of the first-ever face transplant needed the operation because she overdosed on sleeping pills and her pet labrador chewed half her face off. Some people love nature, but nature doesn’t love people. Humans almost went extinct 70,000 years ago. Filmmaker Werner Herzog put it best when describing the obscenity of the jungle:

Of course we are challenging nature itself and it hits back…We have to accept that it’s must stronger than we are. Kinski always says it’s full of erotic elements. I don’t see it so much erotic. I see it more full of obscenity…Nature here is violent, base...I see fornication, asphyxiation, choking, and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away. Of course there is a lot of misery…The trees here are in misery and the birds are in misery. I don’t think they sing, they just screech in pain…It’s a land that God, if he exists, has created in anger…Taking a closer look around us there is some sort of harmony—the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder…Even the stars in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted with the idea that there is no real harmony as we have conceived it. But when I say this I say this full of admiration for the jungle. It’s not that I hate it. I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment.

Nature-lovers who lack Herzog’s judgment can pay with their lives. Christopher McCandless starved to death while stupidly trying to survive in the Alaskan wilderness with hardly any supplies or preparation. While it’s tempting to romanticize his death, his written words leave no question that he wanted to be rescued: “In the name of God, please remain to save me.” As Sherry Simpson wrote in the Anchorage Press, he died from an “unwillingness to see Alaska for what it really is.”

Timothy Treadwell lived with wild grizzly bears for 13 summers before he and his girlfriend were eaten alive in 2003. Treadwell despised civilization and believed he had found purity in bonding with nature. “Animals rule!” he screamed during one expletive-laced tirade against humanity. He wanted to become a bear and honestly believed that these vicious predators were his friends. In the documentary Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog comments on footage of the bear that likely killed Treadwell:

And what haunts me, is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature. To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears. And this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored interest in food. But for Timothy Treadwell, this bear was a friend, a savior.

Daniel Suelo is a modern-day caveman in Utah. He sleeps near a nest of scorpions with mice scurrying over his body and kissing bugs sucking the blood from under his fingernails. He once nearly died after eating a misidentified cactus and falling into a delirium. Bear Grylls has to survive on Man vs. Wild by doing things like drinking his own urine. Tom Marshall disappeared in the 1970s while living in the woods of Oregon. Before his disappearance, a friend asked him about the beauty of outdoor living. “It’s not that great,” he said.

Human beings cannot live in harmony with nature because there is no harmony in nature. Born naked into a harsh world, people must transform nature in ways that make their lives better. Toward that end, the only thing humans have going for them is their brains. A human is not faster than a tiger or stronger than a bear. People survive only by using the power of reason to manipulate the world around them: building tools and weapons, growing and storing food, domesticating animals, and teaching kids not to eat yellow snow. The litmus test for any nature-lover is a rat infestation. Do they live in harmony with their new housemates or call the exterminator? Exactly.

Environmentalists often worry about human activity upsetting the “balance” of nature. But there is no balance in nature. Things are always in flux. The planet’s climate, geology, and ecology undergo violent transformations from earthquakes, volcanoes, meteor collisions, solar flares, changes in ocean currents and cloud formations, and other cataclysmic events whose impact vastly exceed anything that could be done by humans short of nuclear war. It's somewhat arrogant to think that puny humans can greatly impact something as powerful, complex, and dynamic as global climate patterns. Nature kicks its own ass on a regular basis. Even before the appearance of Man, 99 percent of all species that lived on Earth went extinct. There have been several mass extinctions where more than 50 percent of species disappeared in a short time. The “Permo-Triassic” extinction nearly wiped out all life on Earth. The wider universe is even more violent, filled with supernovas, asteroids, gas clouds, vast stretches of empty space, desolate planets, large galaxies strangulating smaller galaxies, and roaming black holes that devour everything in their paths. Intelligent life seems to have evolved as a cosmic accident in a relatively quiet corner of the galaxy. It is mathematically possible that Earth contains the only complex life in the universe, and even it will be destroyed when the Sun begins expanding in 4 billion years. Any extraterrestrial life will end when the universe collapses into a featureless, infinite void trillions of years from now.

Furthermore, people have the right to transform nature because we are better than nature. Only humans can consciously substitute cooperation for conflict. Only humans are capable of love, friendship, joy, humor, morality, charity, art, science, religion, and philosophy. Only humans can appreciate beauty or contemplate their own existence. We naturally feel sorry for a boy whose dog is his best friend or a woman who treats her cats like her children. Pets are incapable of experiencing the sublime depths of human relationships. You don’t see cows in the pasture writing philosophical treatises or making hilarious YouTube videos. They just stand there like idiots waiting to die. They don’t even know they are cows. We eat them because we know instinctively that they have nothing to live for. “Animal rights” activists who seek to give all creatures equal moral standing are suffering from absurd delusions about the reality of nature. The human race is much too hard on itself. We’re actually pretty awesome. Human awesomeness may be the only thing making this violent, doomed universe worthwhile.

So the next time you hear some neo-pagan, Earth-worshipping, eco-fascist tree hugger say that human beings are the “worst” animal for upsetting the “balance” of nature, throw them in a lion pit to see how they like it. Fuck nature. Humans rule. Animals drool.

THE Video is Up!

2009-06-04T11:52:00.001-07:00

My new video uses movie clips and text commentary to explain the right of rebellion—its role in history and its relevance today. The right of the rebellion is the People’s right to resist a tyrannical government by any means necessary.

Part 1

Link:

Part Deux

Link:

Here is a brief summary of the video and my purpose in making it.
The four stages of revolution:

1. Oppression: A government becomes tyrannical and ceases to be legitimate in the eyes of the People.

2. Submission: The People submit to tyranny of out self-interest, cynicism, squeamishness, and the desire for compromise.

3. The Casus Belli (a justification for war): An act of heinous tyranny awakens the People from their slumber.

4. Resistance: The People kick it old school.

The right of rebellion is the linchpin of a free society, for three reasons:

1. Because all governments become more tyrannical over time, the occasional revolution is essential for the preservation or rebirth of liberty.

2. The mere threat of rebellion makes government fear the People.

3. Even a failed revolution could inspire a successful revolution down the road.

To show that revolution doesn’t only happen in movies, the video then goes into a montage of historical revolutions. To emphasize the universal struggle of liberty vs. power, I included rebellions from a variety of places and time periods. People might quibble certain examples. I admit that many revolutionaries were hypocrites (Thomas Jefferson), others had selfish motives (Marcus Brutus), and sometimes what follows a revolution is worse than what preceded it (the French Revolution). Nevertheless, these points do not negate the crucial importance of revolution itself. While there has never been a “perfect” revolution, there has never been a perfect government, either. In fact, there has been NOTHING but EVIL governments.

Part 2 answers questions that will probably arise about Part 1 (assuming that people actually watch this video!); questions about the “dirty” tactics of many revolutionaries, violent vs. non-violent revolutions, and the prospect for revolution in modern-day America.

The purpose of this video is to help foment a modern-day American Revolution. I don’t mean in the metaphorical sense. We must bring the federal government to its knees through direct confrontation. Revolution is entirely possible, is probably inevitable, and is already underway. The video does not go into great detail about why the U.S. government should be seen as tyrannical. That is the subject for another video. I’ll just say this: If you do not believe that Americans today slave under a tyrannical government, you are ignorant, foolish, or benefiting from the tyranny by advertent or inadvertent collaboration (or some combination of the three).

I want this video to inspire radical populist action against government power. Toward that end, the clips from Stage 2 hold special importance. Too many libertarians are more interested in bitching about government than doing something about it. I am as guilty as anyone. I want libertarians to see reflections of their own thinking in these clips. What’s holding us back from revolution? Self-interest? Cynicism? Squeamishness? The desire for compromise is especially prevalent. I loved the Ron Paul Revolution as much as the next libertarian, but let’s face it: Presidential politics represents the futile strategy of “going through the system.” It’s the idea that political activists can elect libertarians to national office, take back Washington from special interests, bring home the troops, balance the budget, pay off the national debt, eliminate the Federal Reserve, and restore the Constitution. This is sheer fantasy. There is no way, politically, that Congress can make the kind of spending cuts that would be required to prevent federal bankruptcy and hyperinflation. The federal government is going DOWN, baby! The Constitution is a dead letter and can’t be resurrected. Instead of trying to “save” the government, we should be working to hasten its collapse and laying the groundwork for a rebirth of liberty. The most practical strategies are civil disobedience, nullification, secession, educating our fellow Americans, and relentless harassment of the power elites.

This last subject is touchy, so let me be clear: I am not advocating violence. For now, non-violence is the way to go. However, the final goal of this video is to break the taboo that surrounds this topic. Many anti-Establishment types from across the political spectrum have hinted at the possibility of violent resistance if current trends continue. Anyone who supports the Second Amendment on philosophical grounds is implicitly acknowledging that violence could one day be necessary. I’m saying that it should be openly discussed—not kept in the closet as a kind of embarrassment. When would violence be justifiable? How should it be carried out? Totalitarian government in America is a real possibility. Most Americans would agree with the following statement from V for Vendetta: “People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” However, governments will never fear the People if violent resistance is forever taboo. Indeed, this taboo is already being broken—and such a discussion could have a wider audience than one might initially assume. Guns are flying off store shelves. Fascist corporations and judges have been besieged by death threats. These are positive signs! Americans are rediscovering the spirit of resistance that made this country great. Constitution Party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin wrote recently:

As humbly and meekly as I know how to say it: as for me and my house, gun confiscation is the one act of tyranny that crosses the line; debate, discourse, discussion, and peaceful dissent, cease and desist at that point. I say again, it is getting very serious now.

That’s what I’m talking about!

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Lincoln Had It Coming!

2009-06-03T20:38:00.000-07:00

In Four Stages, I say that Abraham Lincoln “got what was coming" because he was a "tyrant, war criminal, racist, and madman." Here's why.

Disclaimer: Most of these arguments come from Thomas DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln (except the assassination stuff—that’s all me!)

First, it is preposterous to argue that the North invaded the South out of concern for the welfare of blacks. Very few Americans at the time were abolitionists. Most Northerners opposed abolition because they didn’t want ex-slaves moving north. The overwhelming majority of Northerners discriminated against free blacks, who were treated with contempt, ridicule, and sometimes violence. Alexis de Tocqueville observed in 1831 that Northerners were more racist than Southerners. The Union Army “confiscated” slaves and forced them into manual labor. Union General Ulysses S. Grant—who owned slaves before, during, and after the war—said that if he thought the war was about freeing the slaves, he would resign and fight for the other side. Many Northerners apparently shared his view; the Emancipation Proclamation caused a desertion crisis in the U.S. Army and race riots in New York City. In short, Northerners were not fighting for blacks. They were fighting because Lincoln turned “saving the Union” into a nationalistic crusade: “America—f*ck yeah!”

It is equally preposterous to argue that Southerners were suffering and dying to keep blacks in bondage. Less than one-fourth of Southern adults owned slaves. The average Southerner was a yeoman farmer or merchant with no special interest in slavery. In many cases, wealthy plantation owners were the most reluctant secessionists. General Robert E. Lee called slavery a “moral and political evil.” Stonewall Jackson was a champion of black literacy. Most educated Southerners assumed that slavery would end at some point. Jefferson Davis requested, and some Confederate officers demanded, that blacks be promised their freedom in return for military service. In 1864, President Jefferson Davis approved a plan for emancipation in return for the official recognition of the Confederacy by Britain and France. If the South was fighting mainly for “slavery,” why were they willing to free the slaves in order to win the war?

Everyone, including Lincoln, agreed that the federal government was powerless to end slavery. As a presidential candidate, Lincoln defended the rights of slave-owners and he promised to strengthen the Fugitive Slave Act, which obligated the federal government to return runaway slaves to their owners. When Lincoln decided to invade the South, the Union still had eight slave states, more than had left. He promised not to disturb slavery in those states and even supported a constitutional amendment that would prevent the federal government from ever interfering with slavery. Slavery was certainly one of the main reasons why the seven states of the Deep South were the first to secede, but that doesn’t mean they saw Lincoln as a direct threat to slavery. As DiLorenzo argues, the Deep South was more concerned that any anti-slavery agitation within the federal government might lead to bloody slave insurrections.

Although the Deep South might have initially left the Union because of “slavery,” the upper South—Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia—did not. They remained loyal to the Union until Lincoln decided to wage an invasion of their neighbors to keep them from peaceably seceding. Because Lincoln was ordering all states to help in crushing the Southern Confederacy, the upper South was forced to pick sides. Lincoln’s ultimatum was like a husband telling his wife, “Honey, I love you and I hope we stay together forever. But if you ever try to leave me, I’ll f*cking kill you.” Southerners were fighting mainly because they wanted no part in a Union that was held together at gunpoint. Stonewall Jackson from Gods and Generals:

Like many of you, indeed most of you, I’ve always been a Union man. It is not with joy or a light heart that many of us have welcomed secession. Had our neighbors to the North practiced a less bellicose form of persuasion perhaps this day might not have come. BUT! That day has been thrust upon us, like it was thrust upon our ancestors!

Lincoln himself was no friend of the black man. He had not a single black acquanintance until the final year of his life. He told n*gger jokes. He told a group of black delegates at the White House that the two races could never live together in peace. His lifelong dream was to ship all the blacks back to Africa. As a lawyer, he tried to help one of his clients recover runaway slaves. As a member of the Illinois legislature, he urged his colleagues to appropriate money to remove all the free blacks from the state. Lincoln barely mentioned slavery before 1854, and he denounced abolitionists as “zealots.” Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison said that Lincoln “had not a drop of anti-slavery blood in his veins.” His statements against slavery were just political posturing; he wanted the abolitionist vote but had no serious intention of abolishing slavery. In the summer of 1861, he had several opportunities to liberate thousands of slaves, but he refused to do so. The Emancipation Proclamation was not a genuine attempt at emancipation. Widely ridiculed at the time, the Proclamation did not free a single slave because it applied only to rebel territory. It was really a desperate war measure; Lincoln was trying to destabilize the South by encouraging slave insurrections against the women and children who were running the plantations (which, curiously, never happened). He failed to use his legendary political skills to end slavery through peaceful, compensated emancipation. The federal government could have purchased the freedom of every slave (and given each 40 acres of land and a mule) for much less money than it spent on the war itself. Finally, Lincoln stated over and over that he opposed racial equality. He wanted to deny blacks citizenship, the right to vote and to become jurors, and so on.

Like most Northerners, Lincoln opposed the extension of slavery into the territories, but this opposition was not based on moral grounds. Northerners were more concerned about slave labor competing with white labor, and Republicans in particular were concerned that extension of slavery would increase the power of Democrats in Congress. Even the “free” territories did everything they could to keep blacks out. As Lincoln confidant and Secretary of State William Seward explained, “The motive of those who protested against the extension of slavery had always really been concern for the welfare of the white man, and not an unnatural sympathy for the Negro.”

If it wasn’t freeing the slaves, what was Lincoln’s real agenda? Throughout his entire political career, Lincoln had an almost single-minded dedication to his “American System”: an economic agenda of a national bank, protectionist tariffs, and government subsidies for “internal improvements. A system that goes by many names—mercantilism, corporatism, corporate welfare, and crony capitalism—it’s basically where government and corporations work together to subvert free enterprise and plunder consumers and taxpayers. It works like this: The State grants special favors and monopolistic privileges to well-connected special interests groups, who in turn provide support for the politicians dispensing the favors. It benefits the special interests and politicians, but it harms everyone else. Consumers pay higher prices because of reduced competition, and they also have fewer choices. Potential competitors are kept out of the job market, which means a loss of jobs. A nationalized bank allows the government to simply print paper money to finance special interest projects. That way, consumers pay for the subsidies through inflation rather than direct tax increases. All of these policies tend to generate corruption and a centralization of government power. In its extreme form, mercantilism becomes fascism—where corporations and government become one.

In other words, Lincoln was trying to establish a political patronage system that would allow Republican cronies to increase their wealth and power indefinitely. Two things stood in his way: the South and the Constitution. Because the South’s economy was mostly agrarian, high tariffs meant that Southerners would have to pay more for manufactured goods whether they came from Europe or the North. In other words, a high tariff benefited Northern industries while burdening Southerners with the lion’s share of the cost of government. This is patently unconstitutional, since the Constitution requires that all taxes be uniform. Neither internal improvements nor any other form of special-interest legislation is authorized by the Constitution. Southern resistance forced the federal government to back down from the Tariff of Abominations in 1833, and The Bank of the United States and numerous “internal improvement” bills had been defeated on constitutional grounds—mostly by Southerners.

Abraham Lincoln argued that secession was “treason” because the federal government created the states. This is complete nonsense. The states preceded the federal government and retained their sovereignty after ratifying the Constitution. Each state declared its independence from Great Britain on its own. The Constitution was proposed by a convention that was called by the states, it was ratified by the states, and it can only be amended by the states. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison affirmed the supremacy of the states with the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, whereby states could nullify acts of the federal government which they believed to be unconstitutional. No state agreed to enter a “perpetual” Union. They delegated certain powers to the federal government while reserving the right to withdraw from that compact. Three states had secession clauses in their ordinances of ratification. Even Union supporters like Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy Adams, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, and Daniel Webster supported the right of secession. Jefferson Davis was never tried for treason because the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Salmon P. Chase, said that there was nothing in the Constitution that prohibited the secession of states.

Secession was not just a “Southern thing.” Most Americans—Northern and Southern—took for granted a state’s right to secede until 1861. New England Federalists orchestrated three serious secession attempts in the 1800s, and no one questioned their right to do so. Northern abolitionists had been arguing since the 1830s that the Northern states should secede from the Union and not be associated with slave-owning states. Prior to Fort Sumter, there was widespread sentiment in the North of allowing the Southern states to secede peacefully. A large majority of Northern newspapers were opposed to the use of force against any state that might secede. Even the “middle states” of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland considered seceding. The Mayor of New York wanted the city to secede from the Union and the state and become a free-trade zone. As late as 1865, Washington, D.C. was overrun with Confederate spies and sympathizers. Global opinion—from British commentators to Pope Pius IX—was also sympathetic toward the secessionists.

The real ground for secession is not legal but philosophical. In the eyes of the American Founding Fathers, the most fundamental principle of political philosophy is the right of secession. It is the Jeffersonian dictum that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed and that whenever a government becomes destructive of the rights of life, liberty, and property, citizens have a right to secede from that government and form a new one. Secession was the principle of the Declaration of Independence, by which the American colonies seceded from the British Empire. Although Lincoln “saved the Union” in a political sense, he destroyed the idea of the Union as a voluntary association of states. The conquest of the South was a repudiation of the central ideal of the American Revolution, which held that the People are sovereign—they have a right to determine in all cases how they will be governed. Northern victory meant that the federal government was now sovereign—rather than the People through their state legislatures.

In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln said that Union soldiers were fighting for “government by consent.” The complete opposite is true, because Southerners no longer consented to remaining in the Union. H.L. Mencken wrote about Lincoln’s most famous speech: “It is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense…The Union soldiers fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.”

From the very beginning, the right of secession was viewed by Americans as the last check on the potential abuse of power by the central government. The mere threat of secession was important because it countered the federal government’s inclination to overstep its constitutional bounds. After Lincoln destroyed the threat of secession, the long-term consolidation of power in Washington became inevitable—which was Lincoln’s goal all along. Robert E. Lee predicted that the federal government would become “more aggressive abroad and more despotic at home.” That’s exactly what happened. After conquering the South, the federal government went on to eradicate the plains Indians and make war with the Spanish Empire. For twelve years after the war the Southern states were plundered by military dictatorships appointed by the Republican Party. Reconstruction was a time of unprecedented oppression, crime, chaos, and corruption. General Benjamin Butler issued an order that any woman in New Orleans who did not display proper respect for occupying Federal soldiers would be considered a prostitute and treated accordingly. Things got so bad that Robert E. later regretted surrendering at Appomattox.

There is no question that Lincoln was a dictator. He suspended constitutional liberty in the North for the entire duration of his administration. His crimes include: launching a military invasion of the South without the consent of Congress; suspending habeas corpus; declaring martial law; blockading Southern ports; imposing without trial thousands of Northern citizens; shutting down opposition newspapers; censoring all telegraph communication; nationalizing the railroads; creating several new states without the consent of the people of those states; ordering federal troops to interfere with democratic elections; deporting a member of Congress for criticizing his income tax proposal; issuing a warrant for the arrest of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; confiscating private property; confiscating firearms; effectively gutting the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution; and ordering the mass execution of the Sioux Indians, the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

Lincoln imprisoned virtually anyone who disagreed with his views. The Union military and secret police arrested and imprisoned thousands of citizens, sometimes on mere rumors of being “disloyal.” The majority of Maryland’s political leaders favored peaceful secession of the Southern Confederacy in 1861, and all were arrested under orders by President Lincoln. When Delaware leaders showed interest in the formation of a Central Confederacy, Lincoln ordered the federal army to occupy the state and prevent the legislature from discussing the issue. An Episcopal minister in Alexandria, Virginia, was arrested for omitting a prayer for the President of the United States in his church services as required by the Lincoln Administration. A New Orleans man was executed for merely taking down a U.S. flag. More than 13,000 political prisoners were held in Lincoln’s inhumane military prisons. DiLorenzo writes, “As the fatalities from the war multiplied, the peace movement in the North grew stronger and stronger, and the repression of it by the federal government became more and more severe.” Newspapers that advocated for a peaceful resolution to the war were ransacked by mobs of Union soldiers. Lincoln’s tyranny far exceeded King George’s “train of abuses” cited by the colonists as justification for the American Revolution.

There is also no question that Lincoln was a war criminal. His greatest crime was abandoning international law and U.S. military codes by waging war on civilians. Federal armies pillaged and plundered their way through the South for the duration of the war. They killed thousands of civilians by bombarding and burning Southern cities and towns. General Sherman announced that to secessionists—be they men, women or children—“death is mercy.”

In this writer’s opinion, Lincoln’s declaration of “total war” renders all legal, philosophical, and practical arguments about secession irrelevant. Southerners had every right to defend themselves against the Union mongols by any means necessary—and that includes taking out Lincoln himself. In a way, the South’s sense of chivalry got the best of them. They probably could have won their independence by fighting a dirty, guerrilla-style war against the Union invaders (more like the colonists used against the British). My favorite quote from Gods and Generals is the following by Stonewall Jackson:

Colonel Stuart, if I had my way we would show no quarter to the enemy…The black flag, sir…We should meet the federal invader on the outer verge of just and right defense and raise at once the black flag. No quarter to the violators of our homes and firesides!...Only the black flag will bring the North quickly to its senses and rapidly end the war.

Total war might explain why many blacks fought for the South. Although they probably despised slavery (at least, the ones who didn’t own slaves themselves—as some blacks did), they were willing to fight against the conquest and indiscriminate destruction of their homeland at the hands of genocidal maniacs. One example was John Noland, a free black who joined Bushwhackers in Missouri after Unionists abused his family. When Union forces tried to bribe him to switch sides, he said, “I ain’t fighting with those bastards!” It’s also worth noting that black Confederates fought in mixed regiments and free blacks received equal pay. Neither was the case in the Union Army.

It’s common for Americans to say, “The Civil War was good because it ended slavery.” This cartoon version of U.S. history is captured by The Simpsons episode where Apu takes his citizenship test:

Proctor: All right, here’s your last question. What was the cause of the Civil War?
Apu: Actually, there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists, there were economic factors, both domestic and inter--
Proctor: Wait, wait... just say slavery.
Apu: Slavery it is, sir!

The demise of slavery was a wonderful but unintended consequence of Lincoln’s war of aggression. His real goal was to establish a consolidated federal government that destroyed state sovereignty. A war was not necessary to end slavery. After existing virtually without criticism for some three thousand years all around the world, slavery ended within the course of a century for religious, philosophical, and economic reasons. Christians realized that slavery was not exactly the most “Christian” of institutions. Enlightenment ideals were spreading. Capital-intensive agriculture and industry were rendering labor-intensive production, including slave labor, uncompetitive. For all of these reasons, slavery was on its way out in the South and likely would have ended, state by state, well before 1900. The abolition movement was growing in the South before the war. The Underground Railroad was thriving. Slavery was in sharp decline in the upper South generally, and there was growing political support in the border states for gradual, peaceful emancipation. Southern secession would have accelerated the demise of slavery because the practice was artificially propped up by federal laws like the Fugitive Slave Act. If Northern citizens would no longer have been compelled to assist in returning runaway slaves, many more thousands of slaves would have escaped through the Underground Railroad. Even many Southerners admitted that slavery was more secure inside the Union than outside it. The pace of industrialization would also have increased in an independent South, since the Confederate Constitution prohibited growth-killing measures like protective tariffs and subsidies for internal improvements.

Yet, it still strikes people as “naive” to think that slavery could have been ended peacefully. But again—that's what happened in virtually every other country in the world through either manumission—the willingness of slave-owners to allow their slaves to purchase their freedom—or some form of compensated emancipation. Only in the United States was emancipation associated with warfare. The American public certainly would have preferred compensated emancipation to the bloodiest, most destructive war in U.S. history. Moreover, blacks would probably have been better off over the long term if slavery had died a peaceful death. The Republican Party used blacks as political pawns during Reconstruction, which led to the establishment of Jim Crow laws that made blacks second-class citizens for the next century. The gradual, peaceful end of slavery would have helped ex-slaves integrate into Southern society more quickly—first economically, then socially. Nobody is saying that blacks and whites in the Confederacy would have been holding hands singing Kumbaya, but it’s far from clear whether the Civil War helped or hindered blacks’ uphill struggle for legal equality in America.

Even the immediate end of slavery has to be weighed against the total costs of the Civil War: 620,000 battlefield deaths (standardized for today’s population, that would be 5 million deaths); thousands more maimed for life; thousands of civilians killed or executed; the destruction of 40 percent of the nation’s economy; the poisoning of race relations in the South; and the permanent destruction of the Constitution, federalism, and state sovereignty. The long-term impact of Lincoln’s “policy of repression” was to lay the groundwork for such unprecedented coercive measures as military conscription and federal income taxation. Even today, any trampling of civil liberties can be justified with the phrase, “It’s okay because Lincoln did it!” The Civil War transformed the nature of American government from the highly decentralized, voluntary Union of states that was established by the founding fathers into a consolidated Union held together at gunpoint. The purpose of government changed from the protection of individual rights into the quest for Empire. More than any other figure in U.S. history, Lincoln is responsible for creating the welfare–warfare–corporatist–police state that Americans slave under today. The U.S. government confiscates more than half of national income, invades and occupies foreign nations, imprisons a higher percentage of its population than any other government on Earth, spies on American citizens, politicizes every aspect of social and economic life, whores its lawmakers to corporate lobbyists, and treats states as mere subsidiaries of the federal Leviathan.

The Lincoln myth persists mainly because of public education. The real purpose of state-run schools is to foster allegiance to the State, which means perpetuating historical myths that make the current regime appear legitimate and inevitable. George Orwell described this phenomenon as the “memory hole,” into which any facts that contradict the “official” version of history are discarded and forgotten. A more sinister reason for Americans’ historical ignorance is the Cult of Lincoln—the conspiracy of intellectuals to elevate Lincoln to god-like status and smear anyone who disagrees. Although it’s easy for Lincoln-lovers to play the race card, the real reason why intellectuals love Lincoln is that they love government (and hate freedom). Most ntellectuals are fans of Big Government, for three reasons. First, most intellectuals want to mold society to fit their personal preferences, which requires the coercive machinery of a strong central government. (Historian Gary Wills and Columbia University law professor George Fletcher openly praise Lincoln for subverting the Constitution because it opened the door to their cherished pursuit of “egalitarianism.”) Second, most intellectuals make a living directly or indirectly from the State. Social scientists spend their entire careers debating government policies in tax-subsidized universities, think tanks, and corporate media outlets. Without the endless “policy debates” generated by an all-powerful government, most of them would have to get real jobs. Third, anyone who holds the “revisionist” view of the Civil War would have to conclude that the federal government has been illegitimate since 1861. Therefore, even “small government” conservatives have to join the Lincoln Cult to give themselves moral cover for collaborating with tyranny. The Lincoln Cult is the refuge of state-worshipping journalists (Peggy Noonan and Tim Russert), Christian nationalists (Alan Keyes), economically illiterate protectionists (Pat Buchanan), neocon imperialists (National Review), fascists (Adolf Hitler), court intellectuals (public school teachers and college professors), socialists (Barack Obama), authoritarians (Dick Cheney), conservative collaborators (the Claremont Institute), sell-out libertarians (the Cato Institute), and politically correct Republicans (“Lincoln freed the slaves! See? We like black people, too!”).

History is written by the victors. As the narrator says in the beginning of Braveheart, “History is written by men who hang heroes.” The only reason Americans revere Lincoln is that he won. If the South had won, slavery would have ended peacefully, the states probably would have reunited at some point, black and white Americans would be more free today, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee would be honored as the greatest heroes in U.S. history, and Abraham Lincoln would be remembered as a blood-soaked tyrant who brought America to the brink of despotism.
Of course, Lincoln did bring America to despotism—and Americans love him for it! It just makes me sick. It makes me want to go down to the Lincoln Memorial and spray-paint “Sic Semper Tyrannis” on his big stupid face.

Most Lincoln critics stop short of celebrating his assassination—probably because they want to protect their academic reputations. I have no reputation, so I’m telling it like it is: LINCOLN HAD IT COMING! Responsibility for all the horror and destruction of the Civil War rests squarely on Lincoln’s shoulders. The South did not want a war. After the Deep South reluctantly seceded, Jefferson Davis appointed a peace commission to travel to Washington and offer to pay for federal property on Southern soil and the South’s portion of the national debt. Lincoln refused to acknowledge their existence. He also rebuffed an offer by Napoleon III to mediate the dispute. Lincoln carefully maneuvered the South into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter. He crushed the peace movement in the North with brute force, and he ignored several proposals for peace conferences made by the Confederacy during the war.

The Civil War wasn’t actually a “civil war,” which is where two factions fight over control of the central government. The South had no intention of governing the North or capturing and controlling Washington, D.C. They simply wanted to withdraw from a political union that no longer served their best interests. For that “crime,” they suffered near-annihilation (one of four white male Southerners between the ages of 20 and 40 perished during the war). The “Civil War” was a war of secession for the South and a war of conquest for the North. Its proper name should be The War to Prevent Southern Independence.

Lincoln sugar-coated his mass-murdering as “saving the Union,” but this is nationalism in its most evil form. Nobody should be killed over an abstraction like “Union.” If the South had been allowed to secede, Americans would have still been united by heritage, commerce, kinship, faith, and their shared views on representative government and (sadly) white supremacy. If the federal government behaved itself, the Southern states would have likely returned to the Union at some point—although with a strictly limited federal government more in line with the founders’ intentions.

Americans’ squeamishness over assassination is created by the ideological stranglehold that is put around their necks by the State’s intellectual bodyguards. Intellectuals perpetuate the idea that the State should be held to different moral standard than everyone else. Normal people can’t kill or steal, but government can kill and steal as much as it wants. State violence can always be rationalized, excused, explained away, or given the benefit of the doubt. But no matter how much needless death and suffering that government inflicts on citizens and foreigners, politicians are untouchable. As Mark Rudd says in the documentary The Weather Underground, “Americans are taught from a very young age that any violence not sanctioned by the government is either criminal or mentally ill.” And the kicker here is that Lincoln was mentally ill!

People should not feel sorry for politicians when what goes around, comes around. Sympathy for Lincoln is especially misplaced considering that he probably ordered the assassination of the Confederate cabinet. Although it can be argued that John Wilkes Booth did more harm than good by turning Lincoln into a martyr, Lincoln’s assassination was justice, plain and simple. Americans should be weeping at Booth’s grave and dancing on Lincoln’s grave! Like Achilles says in the movie Troy, “Imagine a king who fights his own battles. Wouldn’t that be a site?”

Some people might say that Civil War revisionism is pointless and that Southerners should just get over it. To those people, I say this:

THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN!

..And so will New Hampshire, and Vermont, and Montana, and Idaho, and California, and any other state where citizens want to reclaim their sovereignty and freedom by breaking away from the federal Leviathan. But if anyone tries to stop us this time (I’m looking at you, President Obama), we’ll fight dirty.

“The black flag, sir.”

Sic Semper Tyrannis

update: Lincoln-lovers often accuse secessionists of being "neo-Confederates" who want to bring back slavery or Jim Crow laws. Actually, a 2008 poll showed that black Americans support the concept of secession in higher percentages than whites. (See? I like black people, too!)

Calling All Traitors

2009-06-03T20:30:00.000-07:00

I like to flatter myself by thinking that Four Stages will go viral and attract the attention of law enforcement. If any of you are reading, welcome to my blog! Consider this a formal invitation to turn in your badges and join the Resistance.

Every revolution is helped along by people inside the government who turn against it. The most effective members of any Resistance are the men and women in law enforcement and the military. Because every act of government is backed up by the threat or use of violence, it doesn’t work when cops and soldiers refuse to arrest and kill people at the State’s bidding. It can collapse completely when cops and soldiers turn their violence away from the State’s enemies and toward the real enemy: the State itself.

Of course, this doesn’t happen very often. Most cops and soldiers are just like everyone else: slavish dolts who accept the State’s claim to legitimacy at face value. “I’m just doing my job…I’m just following orders.” And like most other people, they are driven by self-interest. They chose their professions for reasons like job security, health benefits, steady pay, college tuition, and the desire to blow shit up and beat people up. And let’s face it: The average cop or soldier is not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. How many federal agents have thought about the constitutionality of the Federal Reserve? Not many, I suspect.

But some cops and soldiers actually have a brain and a conscience. You are the ones I want to reach. Maybe idealism motivated your career choice; you honestly believed that you could serve the People by serving the State. But now you feel that there is something deeply wrong with this country’s legal system, foreign policy, or government in general. I want to inspire you by pointing out the many examples where people in your position turned against their governments—sometimes at great risk to their reputations, careers, and lives.

Cassius Chaerea (1st century AD). Cassius Chaerea was the Praetorian Guard who assassinated the mad Roman Emperor Caligula. The assassination was a broad conspiracy involving Senators, Equestrians, and other Praetorian Guards (the very men who swore to protect the Emperor). Cassius wanted to restore power to the Senate, but his fellow Praetorians declared a new emperor instead. Cassius was one of the few conspirators to be sentenced to death. He requested to be executed with his own murder weapon, and this was granted.

Saint Florian (304 AD). As commander of the imperial army in the Roman province of Noricum, Florian was sent by the Roman regime to persecute Christians in its effort to eradicate Christianity. After Florian refused to offer sacrifice to the Roman Gods, he cheerfully accepted torture at the hands of his fellow soldiers. He was executed by drowning in the Enns River with a stone tied around his neck.

Tower of London Guards (1381). When a group of rebels stormed the Tower of London during the Peasants’ Revolt and killed the government officials who were hiding there, they were probably let in by tower guards who sympathized with the rebels.

Daniel Shays (1786–1787). Daniel Shays was a distinguished officer during the American Revolution before leading Shays’ Rebellion, a tax revolt against the Massachusetts legislature.

Robert E. Lee (1861–1865). Lee initially ridiculed the secessionist states. But when President Abraham Lincoln decided to invade the Southern Confederacy, Lee turned down an offer to become a major general in U.S. Army. He resigned and became commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. He was one of thousands of soldiers who broke their oaths to the U.S. military and fought for their native states against a brutal, unconstitutional, and unnecessary invasion by the federal government.

Smedley Butler (1930s). At the time of his death, Major General Smedley Butler was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. Every Marine learns in boot camp that Smedley Butler won the Medal of Honor twice. What they don’t learn is that he later became a crusader against U.S. imperialism. One of the first to make the connection between war and corporate profits, he warned that U.S. war games in the Pacific would provoke the Japanese, and he wrote the following in War is a Racket:

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes…To hell with war!

Butler began a long tradition of veterans joining the antiwar movement: Vietnam Veterans Against the War; Iraq Veterans Against the War; etc.

Eamon Broy (1919–1921). Eamon Broy was a double agent within the Dublin Metropolitan Police during the Irish War of Independence. While working as a clerk in the intelligence branch, he passed sensitive information to IRA leader Michael Collins and helped him identify the informants who were later assassinated by Collins’ death squads. Played by Stephen Rea in the movie Michael Collins, Broy says to Collins, “I’ve been making notes of your speeches. You can be very persuasive. What was it you said? Our only weapon is our refusal.”

German Army Officers (1934–1944). The most effective members of the German Resistance were officers in the German Army, who retained a surprising level of independence after the Nazis took control. The reasons for their resistance included democratic ideals, disgust with the SS and the Holocaust, Hitler’s instigation of a war that Germany couldn’t possibly win, and the view that Hitler was “the incarnation of evil.” As early as 1934, senior officers were discussing the possibility of deposing or even assassinating Hitler. In 1938, General Ludwig Beck tried to sabotage Hitler’s plan to invade Czechoslovakia, and Colonel Hans Oster was conspiring to overthrow the Nazi regime. Colonel Henning von Tresckow tried to blow up Hitler’s plane as part of a coup attempt in 1943. Two officers—Colonel Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff and Axel von dem Bussche—volunteered to carry out suicide missions against Hitler. On July 20, 1944, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb that nearly killed Hitler. Remarkably, some of these plots were elaborate conspiracies involving dozens of participants—and all of them were protected by a code of silent solidarity among senior Army officers. Even those who disapproved of the plots refused to report them to the Gestapo or inform Hitler when his life was in danger. Two hundred people were executed after the July 20 Plot, and very few of the plotters denied their involvement or tried to escape. They went to their deaths knowing their honor had been satisfied.

General George S. Patton (1944–1945). General Patton was growing increasing critical of Allied leadership at the end of World War II, specifically: U.S. collusion with the Russians that cost American lives; General Eisenhower’s strategic blunders; allowing the Soviets to seize Berlin and Prague; and a punitive occupation policy that starved and enslaved German civilians. When he threatened to return home and go public with his criticisms, he was assassinated with the connivance of U.S. leaders.

Hungarian Soldiers (1956). The first shots of the Hungarian Revolution were fired by Soviet secret police on a large crowd gathered at the Radio Budapest building. Hungarian soldiers sent to relieve the secret police initially hesitated and then, tearing the red stars from their caps, sided with the crowd. Even some Soviet troops showed open sympathy for the demonstrators before crushing the rebellion.

Kim Jaegyu (1980). South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee was assassinated by his former close friend, Kim Jaegyu, who was Director of the Korean Intelligence Agency. Jaegyu was executed by hanging on May 24, 1980.

Berlin Wall Guards (1989). On November 9, 1989, the East German government accidentally made an announcement that anyone would be able to cross the “Bornholmer Strasse” checkpoint into West Berlin. Hundreds of people showed up. The police tried stop the euphoria, but the crowd refused to back down. “Don’t be stupid!” they yelled. “Open the gate!” The border guard called his superior but was refused permission to let them through. Faced with overwhemling pressure, the guards decided on their own to open the gates and then watched communism collapse before their eyes. The narrator says in the above video, “The most heavily guarded border in the world broke apart because a handful of guardians could not and would not protect it from its citizens.”

Waco Truth-Tellers (1993). The truth about the Waco Siege came to light after many government officials exposed the tyrannical actions of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) and the FBI. Robert Sanders, a retired ATF Deputy Director, said that the raid was meant for publicity purposes. Robert Rodriguez, an undercover ATF agent, testified that the ATF knew they had lost the element of surprise before the initial raid and then lied about it later. Edward Allard, a former manager of the Defense Department’s Night Vision Laboratory, proved that the FBI fired on the compound during the standoff and as it was burning to the ground. Farris Rookstool (FBI photographer), Nizam Peerwani (county Medical Examiner), Rick Sherrow (retired ATF Arson Specialist), and David Byrnes (captain with the Texas Rangers) all agreed that the FBI confiscated or destroyed evidence at the crime scene after the fire. Sherrow even said, “I’ve seen this happen before.” Rookstool was left with the “haunting opinion” that the Branch Davidians were “homicide victims” of the government. Maurice Cook, a senior captain with the Texas Rangers, testified that federal agents lied to him during his investigation. ATF Associate Director Hartnett said that the Treasury Department engaged in a cover-up. Jack Zimmerman, the heroic defense attorney for the surviving Branch Davidians, was a Vietnam vet, a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserves, and a practicing military judge. Ramsey Clark, a former U.S. Attorney General, called the Danforth Report a “whitewash” and said that Waco remains “greatest domestic law enforcement tragedy in the history of the United States.”

Conscientious Objectors. Since U.S. law requires that conscientious objectors be opposed to war in any form, most soldiers who refuse to fight in specific wars for constitutional or moral reasons are sentenced to prison and dishonorably discharged. Moreover, they have historically been subject to mistreatment and abuse. Nevertheless, many soldiers have refused to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan. André Shepherd explains his motives for seeking asylum in Germany:

Well, it’s very simple: In the war of aggression against the Iraqi people, the United States violated not only domestic law, but international law as well. The U.S. government has deceived not only the American public, but also the international community, the Iraqi community, as well as the military community. And the atrocities that have been committed there these past six years are great breaches of the Geneva Conventions. My applying for asylum is based on the grounds that international law has been broken and that I do not want to be forced to fight in an illegal war.

Michael Scheuer (2004–present). As part of his 22-year career in the CIA, Michael Scheuer led the Osama bin Laden tracking unit from 1996 to 1999. In 2004, he anonymously published Imperial Hubris, a devastating critique of the idea that terrorists “hate us because we’re free.” He argued that terrorist attacks against Americans are the inevitable consequence of America’s interventionist foreign policy. He also pulled no punches against the Intelligence Community: “Indeed, I resigned from an Agency I love in order to publicly damn the feckless 9/11 Commission, which failed to find any personal failure or negligence among Intelligence Community leaders even though dozens of serving officers provided the commissioners with clear documentary evidence of that failure.” Scheuer was fired by the Jamestown Foundation in 2009 for his outspoken views on U.S.–Israel relations.

Drug War Traitors. Many cops and judges have become outspoken critics of the War on Drugs. Michael Levine, a former agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency, says, “The drug war has succeeded in militarizing police against their own people.” Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is an organization of 10,000 people—including current and former police, judges, prosecutors, prison wardens, FBI and DEA agents—that lobby for reform in America’s drug laws.

Thomas M. Tamm (2005). Tamm was the Justice Department official who exposed the NSA’s illegal domestic surveillance program. After failing to get the attention of his superiors and members of Congress, he leaked details about the program to The New York Times. In 2007, his home was raided by heavily armed FBI agents. He refused to plead guilty to revealing classified information, saying he had done nothing wrong. Joe Conason writes in Salon, “The consequences of Tamm’s act have included the abrupt end of his career at Justice, many thousands of dollars in legal expenses, bouts of depression, and a difficult struggle to find work in his profession. Perhaps most difficult of all has been the uncertainty of waiting for the government to bring an indictment against him.”

Anonymous Marine (2009). A U.S. Marine released this YouTube video in support of the American Resistance. “You are under the watchful eye of an ever-increasing tyrannical government. But within that government lies patriots just like you…Let me assure you patriots that we will die fighting our brothers in arms if we must.” (Even the government is worried about disillusioned vets becoming “right-wing extremists.”)

Darth Vader (fictional). Darth Vader served as Emperor Palpatine’s right-hand man before assassinating him at the end of Return of the Jedi.

Inspector Finch (fictional). While tracking down the freedom fighter V in V for Vendetta, Inspector Finch (also played by Stephen Rea!) uncovers evidence of an unspeakable government crime. In the final scene, he allows Evey to proceed with blowing up Parliament. His best line: “If our own government was responsible for the deaths of almost 100,000 people, would you really want to know?”

Conclusion

Nobody can serve the People by serving the State. The sole purpose of the State is to plunder and oppress the People for the benefit of ruling elites. This government long ago ceased to be legitimate. The United States is an empire that attacks and meddles in foreign countries to benefit the military–industrial complex. Lawmaking and lawmakers are so thoroughly corrupt that anyone who enforces the law to the letter is nothing but an armed goon for the State.

I know it’s hard to accept. I’ve been there. (I joined the Marine Reserves in 1999 and was deployed to Iraq in 2003.) It’s basic human nature. Nobody likes to admit being wrong—much less to collaborating with Evil—especially if it requires personal sacrifice. Every institution works in its own self-interest. The camaraderie among by cops and soldiers naturally creates a “protect our own” mentality. The concept of “duty” implies that any form of dissent is “treason” or “betrayal.”

There is hope for cops and soldiers, but let’s be real. For every German officer who tried to kill Hitler, there were a dozen more who refused to help, lost their nerve, or failed to act until it was too late. For every guard who stepped aside at the Berlin Wall, there were 50 more that waited every day to gun down their countrymen. For every Ludwig Beck (the general who tried to sabotage Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia), there is a Colin Powell (the general who whored himself to the neocons by advocating a war he never believed in). For every whistleblower, there are a thousand bureaucrats who look the other way. Most cops and soldiers will never think about what they do, even fewer will develop reservations, even fewer will act on them, and even fewer will become radical revolutionaries. The heroic examples cited above are just a footnote to the daily reports of cops and soldiers mindlessly and gleefully humiliating, beating, assaulting, tasing, bullying, burning, choking, jailing, shooting, killing, bombing, torturing, raiding, raping, and sodomizing harmless citizens and foreigners—not to mention confiscating firearms, killing puppies, planting evidence, taking bribes, selling drugs, committing perjury, and covering up scandals. And despite their trillions of tax dollars and ever-expanding surveillance powers, they still fail to stop crime, catch terrorists, or make Americans any safer.

The next American Revolution will have to be a citizens’ revolution—not a military-style coup. So, for all you cops and soldiers, consider this an invitation and a warning. The revolution is coming. You should either get on board, or get the f*ck out of the way.

Sic Semper Tyrannis.

Jon Stewart is a Collaborator

2009-06-03T20:25:00.000-07:00

Jon Stewart has been lionized as the “the most trusted man in America.” You’ve probably heard it before: While “professional” journalists are a bunch of partisan hacks and lapdogs for government and corporations, the “comedian” Jon Stewart is the real muckraker: the man who courageously speaks truth to power; calls out politicians and journalists for their incompetence and dishonesty; and reports more “real” news than mainstream media that are obsessed with celebrity scandals and puff pieces. There is an element of truth to this characterization, but make no mistake: Jon Stewart is a collaborator—meaning that he “collaborates” with a tyrannical government.

First, the element of truth: John Stewart does ask tough questions. The Daily Show brilliantly uses video montages to show politicians constantly and flatly contradicting themselves. Stewart asks his guests fundamental questions about government policy that real journalists would never touch. Alan Greenspan famously stumbled and bumbled after Stewart asked him why the Federal Reserve is necessary in a country that supposedly values a free market.

Jon Stewart gets it—“it” being the reality that politicians are a bunch of lying, self-serving frauds who will say anything to get elected; that Washington is run by special interests; and that most political discourse in this country is superficial and pointless. Stewart’s finest moment was when he bitch-slapped Chris Matthews for saying that people should emulate politicians in their everyday lives in order to get ahead. Moreover, unlike his partisan audience, Stewarts gets the fact that both parties basically suck. I remember one show in 2004 when Stewart chided his audience for not laughing at one of John Kerry’s gaffes. Stewart said, “Oh? When it’s your guy it’s not so funny, is it?”

Jon Stewart gets what politicians are all about, but he still collaborates with them by inviting them on his show, shaking their hands, chatting with them amicably, giving them a platform for their lies and propaganda, and applauding as they exit his stage. You might say that Stewart is “just doing his job.” But notice that his collaboration his personal as well as professional. Despite being a fierce critic of the Iraq War, Jon Stewart is a close personal friend of John McCain, a man who voted for the Iraq War and promised to expand it if he were elected president. McCain has the blood of a million Iraqis on his hands! After sparring with McCain over Iraq in 2007, he still shook McCain’s blood-soaked hand and promised him “shits and giggles” the next time he came on the show.

Wars and other government atrocities don’t just “happen.” Individuals make decisions that cause them to happen. As Charley Reese wrote, “One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices—545 human beings out of the 300 million—are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.”

The first step toward holding politicians accountable is to stop respecting them! As Hans-Hermann Hoppe says, “…instead of admiring them or seeking their association, politicians (and the more so the higher their rank) should be treated with contempt and as the butt of all jokes, as emperors without clothes.” That’s the problem with Jon Stewart: He gives every politician the “emperor” treatment. By doing so, he perpetuates the myth that any government is legitimate as long as it has democratic elections. No matter how corrupt or criminal our government might be, all politicians deserve basic respect because “we” elected them.

It’s because of people like Jon Stewart that politicians and their cronies sleep soundly at night. They know that even their harshest critics still have to be nice to them. Freedom isn’t won by being “nice.” The American colonists did it by gleefully tarring and feathering tax collectors, vandalizing symbols of Royal authority, burning effigies of King George, rioting against British troops, ransacking the homes of loyalist politicians, and finally by declaring their independence and killing anyone who tried to stop them.

Jon Stewart is also a coward. Even though millions of fans see him as “the most trusted man in America,” he refuses to take that responsibility seriously. He says repeatedly that neither his show nor his channel purports to be anything other than satire and comedy. Again, you might say that Stewart is “just doing his job” as a comedian, but there is a darker side to Stewart, a despair that is particular to progressive intellectuals.

All progressives see government as the engine of social and economic progress. They believe that government can end poverty, care for the elderly, provide health care, educate children, cure cancer, create jobs, and control the weather. They believe government can do all of these things as long as it is run by smart, caring people. Faced with a government that never lives up to expectations, partisan progressives typically attribute government failures to those stupid, mean Republicans. But the smarter, more honest progressives—like Stewart—recognize that the problem goes deeper. Stewart says, “The absurdity of what you imagine to be the dark heart of conspiracy theorists’ wet dreams far too frequently turns out to be true.” He describes Daily Show meetings as “a gathering of curmudgeons expressing frustration and upset, and the rest of the day is spent trying to mask or repress that through whatever creative devices we can find.”

Another example of progressive despair is David Simon, whose HBO series The Wire portrayed Baltimore city government as hopelessly corrupt, self-serving, and dysfunctional. Mark Bowden described Simon as “The Angriest Man in Television,” driven by a deep sense of cynicism and a “knowledge of his own futility.” While Stewart takes refuge from his despair in “fake news” and humor, Simon takes refuge in drama and rage.

Kierkegaard once said that resignation is the highest virtue. But resignation to what? These people, who see the darkness and absurdity that exists in the highest realms of power, and do nothing but “express frustration,” shrug, and use it as creative fuel, adopt a fatal quietism that is ushering in the end of liberty. Why don’t progressives snap out of their despair and join the Resistance? I know why. Because it would mean that they would have to abandon their ideology. It comes down to pride. Leo Tolstoy said it best:

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life.

The “conclusion” shared by all progressives is that government is good and capitalism is bad. (Although David Simon is a fierce critic of the drug war, he attributes most of Baltimore’s problems to “capitalism.”) A strong central government is the non-negotiable cornerstone of the progressive worldview. That is why even “anti-Establishment” progressives like Jon Stewart can comfortably befriend power-hungry politicians like John McCain. They would rather collaborate with tyranny than admit the falsity of their State-centric ideology. In today’s world we value skepticism and cynicism above all. To take the idea of resistance seriously is to cease to be taken seriously. It is this cynicism we call “enlightenment.” And if there is one thing Jon Stewart would not be able to handle, it would the awful earnestness that comes with accepting responsibility: to be earnest is to place yourself in a position where you are more likely to become the laughed at instead of the laugher.

Jon Stewart is smart, insightful, and entertaining. But he is still a collaborator. He is an ally of the State and an enemy of freedom. As the Revolution approaches, we must never forget who is with us and who is against us.

Sic Semper Tyrannis.

Worst. Election. Ever

2008-11-04T14:33:00.001-08:00

This has been, without a doubt, the worst election ever. I'm just glad it's about to be over so that everyone can finally shut up about it. Literally billions of dollars, speeches, blogs, videos, articles, and conversations have been wasted on a spectacle with zero substance or purpose.

I can summarize the entire election with two sentences:

McCain is a "maverick" who has experience.

Obama is a nice guy who wants "change."

That's it. That's all there is. Since most people don't have well-formed political views, they will vote based on the simplest of perceptions. They have no idea what government does, what government should do, or how it should be done. They can't really be blamed for their ignorance, because presidential races are entirely superficial: Reporters focus on the latest gaffes and poll numbers, and there are no fundamental differences between the candidates themselves. It's all perception, soundbytes, vague promises of change, reform, "fixing Washington," etc. It's bullshit.
The common man recognizes the worthlessness of modern elections. That's why most people don't bother voting or following politics. The pseudo-intellectuals are a different matter. Although they claim to be "informed" voters, they are just as clueless as everyone else. They like to think their interest in politics is driven by civic duty--as if the future of humanity rests on who wins today's election--but the truth is that political junkies are just a bunch of dorks. They like politics in the same way that other people like fixing cars or collecting stamps.

The day after the 2004 election, I attended the "Wednesday meeting" of conservative activists in Washington, DC, sponsored by Grover Norquist. It was the weirdest shit I've ever seen. It was a cultish circle jerk. People were laughing and smiling; there was a palpable sense of euphoria in the air. You could cut the gayness with a knife. Nevermind that most of these people would consider the Bush presidency a failure from a conservative perspective. He's still our guy. And our guy beat their guy. We won! Our lives have meaning!

Tomorrow morning, liberal dorks throughout the country will exude the same sense of euphoria if Obama wins--as if all their wildest dreams will finally come true. Here's a message to all you pseudo-intellectuals on both sides of the political spectrum:

The leaders of both parties are a bunch of lying, thieving killers who would enslave us all if they could. They don't deserve to be cheered or congratulated. They deserve an ass-kicking. And so do you.

Reflections on the Anti-Establishment Left

2008-10-23T20:44:00.000-07:00

The abuses of the Bush Administration—and the capitulation of Democrats—has given rise to anti-Establishment liberals like Glenn Greenwald, Jon Stewart, Mike Gravel, Ralph Nader, Lou Dobbs, Cindy Sheehan, Michael Moore, Phil Donahue, and the folks at Counterpunch and Orion Magazine. Here’s my question: Will these people reconcile with the Establishment after Democrats gain power?

Anti-Establishment sentiment has never been more justified. Both parties support everything that constitutes the status quo: Empire, the Federal Reserve, the income tax, wealth redistribution, crony capitalism, managed trade, the police state, surveillance, the war on drugs, public education, open immigration, the two-party duopoly, incumbency protection, federal supremacy over the states, presidential dictatorship, “national greatness,” globalism, the religion of democracy, and—most importantly—opposition to all forms of radicalism that could threaten Establishment power (civil disobedience, jury nullification, secession, and self-defense against government thugs). Partisan politics is a divide-and-conquer strategy—a sham that distracts voters while the Establishment loots and controls them. The false dichotomy between Democrats and Republicans is perpetuated by useful idiots who make money by inflaming partisan passions.

Anti-Establishment conservatism had a brief heyday in the early 90s. A popular bumper sticker read, “I love my country, but I fear my government.” Waco and Ruby Ridge became rallying cries about a slide toward tyranny. The NRA was calling the ATF “Jack-booted thugs.” It all culminated in the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress—a massive and unprecedented public repudiation of Big Government. Even Bill Clinton declared the end of big government.

Conservatives abandoned radicalism for three reasons: 1) They were intimidated into silence following the Oklahoma City bombing; 2) They lowered their guard after the election of a Republican president. (National Review stupidly proclaimed, “The adults are back in charge!”) 2) They believed it was treasonous to oppose the President during a time of war.

Conservatives learned the hard way. Under Republican rule, government has become more expensive, corrupt, intrusive, and dysfunctional than ever. The abuses of the Clinton Administration pale in comparison to the lies and thug tactics used to promote Republican boondoggles like No Child Left Behind, the Medicare prescription drug benefit, and the transformation of the Middle East.

Will liberals make the same mistake? Some signs point to “yes.” Just as conservatives focused too much on the “wackiness” of Bill Clinton, liberals focus too much on the “stupidity” of George Bush. With Democrats set to dominate the entire government, the temptation to embrace Establishment power will be hard to resist. Just as conservatives rationalized federal power grabs in the name of defeating terrorism, liberals will rationalize them in the name of universal health care.

The problem with Washington is not parties or personalities. The problem is that power corrupts. Any government this powerful will inevitably be hijacked by special interests. The people can’t control the government if it’s too big and complicated for the average voter to understand, and there is no democratic mechanism that will force the government to serve the people. The federal government is a morally and financially bankrupt institution controlled by greedy special interests and power-hungry sociopaths. The worst rise to the top. One President’s abuses are a floor for the next President’s abuses. Parties don’t matter! Washington won’t be “cleaned up” if enough people write their congressman or join a fucking Facebook group. DC is overrun with hundreds of thousands of politicians, lobbyists, lawyers, judges, bureaucrats, and enforcement agents who will feed on the host population until it dies. The federal government is like the Terminator:

Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

Even libertarians need to abandon the notion of “restoring” the Constitution. We can’t storm the Establishment though the chokepoints controlled by the Establishment itself. The colonists first tried to petition Parliament based on their rights as Englishmen. When it became obvious the Brits weren’t listening, the colonists told them to get the fuck out. It’s time Americans said the same thing to all the parasites in Washington, DC.

Overall, I am optimistic about the prospects for radicalism on the Left and Right. First of all, the Internet has made it more difficult for a few useful idiots to mislead an entire movement. On the Right, there is growing sentiment that Iraq was a mistake, that the terrorist threat is overblown, that the neocon plan for world domination is not “conservative,” and that the modern conservative movement has failed. (Of course, a rebirth of conservative radicalism could be aborted by another terrorist attack—possibly orchestrated by the Establishment itself.) On the Left, I am encouraged by articles like this, which calls for progressives to abandon the “presidentialism” of MoveOn.org in favor of true local democracy. Finally, some anti-Establishment liberals are flat-out studs! Glenn Greenwald has too much integrity to sell out.

The wildcard in these scenarios is the economic crisis. If the Establishment collapses, they will probably make a last stand by imposing some variant of totalitarianism. All Americans should stand ready to resist a coup d’état with all due prejudice.

Just in case anyone cares what I think, here is my advice to anti-Establishment types:

Liberals: Don’t make the same mistake conservatives did! Don’t lower your guard. Don’t be seduced by power. Obama will not bring about a “new politics,” a “new social contract,” or a “new New Deal.” Four years from now, politicians will be making the same bullshit promises about schools, health care, inner cities, and everything else that is near and dear to your hearts. Nothing will change.

Conservatives: Don’t make the same mistake twice! Republicans won’t be “good conservatives” the next time around.

Libertarians: Grow some balls. Talk some smack. I enjoyed the Ron Paul Revolution as much as the next libertarian, but there will never be a Congress full of Ron Pauls. Take your pocket Constitution and throw it in the garbage. The experiment is over. The government doesn’t respect the Constitution, why should you? All governments have an inherent tendency to break through the institutional restraints imposed on them. When that happens, the people have the right and duty to resist.

Anti-Establishment types must officially abandon conventional politics and the futile strategies of compromise, incrementalism, and voting for the lesser of two evils. The people are sovereign. This means not only electing our leaders but also determining the structure of government itself. Democracy in its current form has no future. The future of radicalism is decentralization—a world of smaller political units where people can “vote with their feet” and migrate to those jurisdictions that best fit their tastes and preferences. Whether you’re a liberal, conservative, libertarian, or just some dude who hates politicians, you should be openly resisting the Feds and restricting political activity to the state and local level.

Martial Law Update

2008-10-15T07:41:00.000-07:00

Even CNN douchebag Glenn Beck is considering the possibility of hyperinflation, martial law, and global governance.

Be ready to kick some ass.

"All I need in this life of sin
Is me and my girlfriend." - Tupac

(His girlfriend was his gun. Tupac was awesome.)

I Don't Like South Park

2008-10-11T15:50:00.000-07:00

There, I said it. I am finally committing this act of pop culture blasphemy. I’m not trying to be contrarian. I want to like popular shows. I’m a big follower in many ways. If everyone else jumped off a cliff, I’d be yelling “Geronimo!” faster than you can say, “I’m Rick James, bitch.”

I like Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Baseketball was classic. I just can't watch South Park longer than 15 minutes because it’s too slow and repetitive. Consider the latest episode about Indiana Jones being raped by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. I counted six scenes where a character denied the “incident,” then acknowledged it, then demanded payback. The premise is so outrageous it’s funny. But c’mon, six scenes of the exact same thing? Also, both South Park and Family Guy emphasize shock value at the expense of wit. Cartman’s zinger, “I’d rather be Chinese than a nation of unethical dick-shooters,” was the only line that stood out.

The Simpsons is rapid fire. About every fourth line is witty. Even a crappy scene will quickly transition to something else. You get the feeling that writers leave out a dozen lines/scenes per episode. With South Park, they think up one funny premise and try to stretch it out for 30 minutes.

Someone please explain to me what is so freakin’ great about South Park. This is a plea for help! I hate feeling left out. Like Patrick Bateman says in American Psycho, “Because I want to fit in.”

It Can Happen Here

2008-10-09T20:05:00.001-07:00

Administration cronies threatened martial law if Congress refused to pass the fascist Wall Street bailout. Think it can't happen? Martial law can be declared at the President's whim for practically any reason. Even now, America is a surveillance state, law enforcement is being federalized and militarized, and the military is policing the American people. Up to 8 million Americans are listed as subversives who can be detained under the slightest pretenses during a national emergency. (I would be insulted if my name were not included in this database already).

Historically, communism and fascism were embraced during economic crises. During the Great Depression, the Business Plot was a conspiracy by wealthy businessmen to establish a fascist dictatorship in the United States. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler publicly revealed in 1934 that he had been recruited to lead the military coup—a claim later supported by a congressional investigation...

"It can't happen here," you might say. "Our government would never do something like that."

They already have! In addition well-known atrocities like Waco and the Kent State shootings, the U.S. government has long treated citizens like lab rats. Between 1910 and 2000, more than 20,000 secret tests were carried out against the American people. Many “subjects” died or lived to endure excruciating health problems. In the infamous Tuskegee Experiment, 399 poor black men were denied treatments for syphilis so that government scientists could study how the disease spreads and kills. The Pentagon has carried out secret radiation tests on thousands of non-consenting patients, including institutionalized children and pregnant wives of GI’s. Military personnel were used as guinea pigs in hundreds of atomic and hydrogen bomb tests. In 1968, the Pentagon tested a deadly bioweapon in the New York subway system. Prisons inmates are forced to participate in medical experiments. At least two-thirds of foster children take a cocktail of psychosopic drugs. From 1951–1961, the U.S. Army paid Israel’s health ministry to conduct radiation testing on sephardic children.

Of course, nobody can predict where the crisis will lead. As Michael S. Rozeff writes, "There are too many variables and too many scenarios, and there is no theory that comprehends the totality of reality." I'm just saying that a slide from soft tyranny to hard tyranny is a real possibility.

One thing is for certain: It won't happen without a fight. There are too many Americans who cling to archaic notions like peace and liberty, including radicals on both the Right (gun nuts, constitutionalists, Texans, Ron Paul supporters), and the Left (the ACLU and antiwar activists).

If it becomes necessary to kick it old school, which side will you take?

"People should not fear their government. Their government should fear the people." -V for Vendetta

Hat tip to Alex Jones, LRC, and a bunch of other people.

Red People Like Nice Stuff

2008-10-07T19:10:00.000-07:00

One of the more hilarious insights of Stuff That White People Like is that progressives and socialists tend to be very snobby consumers (organic food, hipster clothes, hybrid cars, alternative medicines). Without the stunning variety of "niche" products that only capitalism can provide, how would they get their sense of cultural superiority over the tasteless masses—or even their will to live?

The Old Days Sucked, Hard

2008-10-06T20:35:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we long for a simpler time. Intellectuals, especially, have a tendency to glorify the past and denigrate the present. Jean-Jacques Rousseau exalted the “noble savage,” saying, “Man is born free, everywhere he is in chains.”

Let’s get one thing straight: The old days sucked, hard. Before the modern era, life expectancy ranged from 20 to 35 years. One in four women died in childbirth. People had to work 12 hours of hard labor just to survive. They lived in squalor and filth. Extended families and farm animals lived together in a single room. Pests and rodents were everywhere. Famine and pandemics wiped out entire societies. The Black Plague killed off half of Europe. The Potato Famine reduced Ireland’s population by 25 percent. Even the rich had it rough by today’s standards. The best chamber pot is no match for a warm, clean bathroom.

I like sappy pics of baby pandas as much as the next guy, but let’s not kid ourselves about the nature of nature. A tipi provides scant protection against a tornado. The Aztecs were willing to kill their own children to appease the nature gods. Isabelle Dinoire needed a face transplant because her pet Labrador chewed it off. In Castaway, the only way for Tom Hanks to end the maddening pain of a simple toothache is to bash it out with a rock. Was anyone really surprised when the “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray barb?—the dumb fucker based his whole career on taunting wild animals—or when Sigfried and Roy were attacked by one of their own tigers? Even the best-trained dog is going to snap at people occasionally. Replace “dog” with 600-pound carnivore—and throw in flashing lights, smoke, and a cheering crowd—and that “snap” becomes a public mauling.

Nature kicks its own ass on a regular basis. Even before the appearance of Man, 99 percent of all species went extinct. Tectonic plates shift. Asteroids smack into the planet. Ice sheets cover the Earth for thousands of years. Geological history includes several mass extinctions where more than 50 percent of species disappeared in a short time. The Permo-Triassic extinction nearly wiped out all life on Earth. Even humans had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago. The Earth itself is destined to burn up in 5 billion years.

Human beings have never, and will never, live in harmony with nature. It is a myth that Native Americans did so. They littered and had garbage dumps. Some tribes burned entire forests to increase their future yield. They hunted many birds into extinction and severely reduced populations of fish, elk, and other wildlife. According to University of Utah archaeologist Jack M. Broughton, wildlife returned to “fabulous abundances” in California only after European diseases decimated Indian hunting populations starting in the 1500s.

The litmus test is a rat infestation. With the critters squeaking and scurrying about, do you live in harmony with your new housemates or call the exterminator? Exactly. Life in the old days was a constant trial of pain, hunger, misery, ignorance, fear, and loss. It was “a brief and brutish life at bare subsistence, devoid of hope or promise.”

Primitive societies were not all spiritual and lovey-dovey. As Ludwig von Mises notes, “All history, evidence, and observation of the lives of primitive peoples is directly contrary to this view…The solitary peasant of remote valleys shows none of that noble harmonious development of body, mind, and feeling which the romantics ascribe to him.”

Ernest Becker sums it up nicely:

The peasant’s equanimity is usually immersed in a style of life that has elements of real madness…an undercurrent of constant hate and bitterness expressed in feuding, bullying, bickering, and family quarrels, the petty mentality, the self-deprecation, the superstition, the obsessive control of daily life by a strict authoritarianism, and so on. As the title of a recent essay by Joseph Lopreato has it: “How would you like to be a peasant?”

The civilized world is fucking great. In 2006, a group of 80 nomads wandered out of the rainforest in Colombia. The Nukak- Makú basically came out of the Stone Age. Juan Forerio described their adjustment in a camp set up by Colombians:

Are they sad? “No!” cried a Nukak named Pia-pe, to howls of laughter. In fact, the Nukak said they could not be happier. Used to long marches in search of food, they are amazed that strangers would bring them sustenance…One young Nukak mother…said she was happy just to stay still. “When you walk in the jungle,” she said, “your feet hurt a lot.”

Yeah, no shit! You should try this stuff called Chapstick. It’s awesome! Helmut Schoeck:

The myth of the golden age, when social harmony prevailed because each man had about as little as the next one, the warm and generous community spirit of simple societies, was indeed for the most part just a myth, and social scientists should have known better than to fashion out of it a set of utopian standards with which to criticize their own societies.

In Defense of Ignorance

2008-10-04T11:08:00.000-07:00

Intellectuals like to blame the world's problems on “ignorance," as if education is the key to peace and progress. First, being uneducated does not make one "ignorant." Like Snoop Dogg said, “A lot of people like to fool you and say that you’re not smart if you never went to college, but common sense rules over everything. That’s what I learned from selling crack." And second, history's most notorious killers were intellectuals who were cheered on by fanboy intellectuals the world over.

Mussolini had an astonishing number of intellectual followers. Hitler had some of his largest followings on college campuses. Teachers and professors participated in some of the more grusome excesses of the SS. Academic publications in Britain refused to publish George Orwell’s accounts of the communist purge in Spain. Western intellectuals continued to support the Soviet Union long after its brutality was made known. Bertrand Russel wanted the West to risk a descent into barbarism by following the Soviet example.

It’s not just the leftists. Conservative intellectuals support war and the draft because they supposedly promote the “virtues” of sacrifice and patriotism. Neocon scumbag Andrew Roberts defends virtually every atrocity committed by the British and American governments during the 20th century.

Writes Paul Johnson, “The association of intellectuals with violence occurs too often to be dismissed as an aberration.”

This association is explained by intellectuals' shared belief that human nature can be improved. Hitler, Lenin, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Mao, Trotsky--all were trying to create a New Man. Intellectuals have always felt called to mold society according to their personal preferences. Albert Nock called it “a monstous itch for changing people.” This goes all the way back to Plato’s Republic. Furthermore, Intellectuals are quick to resort to violence because they are moral relativists; they believe that might makes right, and that the end justifies the means.

It is the dark dream of intellectuals that Man can be purified through pain. Stalin said, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” Bertrand Russell wrote that Man’s salvation could only be built in the firm foundation of “unyielding despair.” In the Saw movies, the Jigsaw Killer puts his victims into deadly traps from which they must escape via self-mutilitation. He believes that those who pass his tests will have a new appreciation for life—and that those who fail deserve to die. This is the sick mind of the intellectual.

Intellectuals are cowards who refuse to admit the violent nature of their own ideologies. They love the State because it can do their dirty work. One of my college professors said that every young person should be required to “serve” the nation in some capacity. This concept is inherently totalitarian. It implies that the State owns the people and can dispense with them as it pleases. He said, “I just see nothing wrong with asking people to sacrifice.” I said, “You’re not asking them. You’re forcing them.”

What happens to people who break the law? They go to jail. What is the #1 reason people don’t want to go to jail? Ass-rape. So, by implication, Professor Jigsaw wants to threaten people with ass-rape to mold them into better citizens. I doubt he would personally threaten to rape someone, but he has no problem with the State doing it for him. He’s a scumbag coward pervert.

Why are intellectuals such assholes? What is their major malfunction?

Intellectuals suffer from a deep-seated inferiority complex. They feel entitled them to wealth and prestige, but most people don’t care what they have to say. In a free society, Steve Jobs and Lebron James get more respect than all intellectuals combined. It’s this gap—between their own sense of self-worth and society’s estimation of their worth—that makes them so dangerous.

Intellectuals get no respect for a reason: They don’t do anything. They publish abstract nonsense in obscure journals and preach wacked-out theories to hungover undergrads. They feel left out. They’re losers, and they know it. The call for an “alternative” social order is just a power grab. Intellectuals want a system where they can have the power. They promise it will be fair and equal, but as the pigs said in Animal Farm, "Some are more equal than others." Very few conservative intellectuals have served in the military. I doubt that Professor Jigsaw spent a year of his life cleaning up graffiti. Intellectuals always promise a utopia for the common man; history shows it's always precisely the opposite.

Most intellectuals are despicable human beings. Paul Johnson looked at the personal lives of Rousseau, Marx, Ernest Hemingway, Bertrand Russel, Noam Chomsky, and others, and found common threads of aggressiveness, cruelty, deceitfulness, egotism, hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and cowardice. The only proletarian Karl Marx ever knew in person was the poor maid who worked for him and was never paid, except in room and board, for her labors.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Bill Clinton’s commerce secretary, Jeffrey Garten, once said that Paul Krugman “behaves like someone with a massive chip on his shoulder.” Again, it’s not just the leftists. Consider Bill Buckley, the architect of the modern conservative movement. (How’d that turn out, by the way?) After his passing, Peter Brimelow wrote an honest obituary describing Buckley as a vain, vicious, vengeful, overly sensitive, deeply insecure, drugged-up, social-climbing plutocrat. (And if you think that defaming the dead is not classy, know that Buckley did the same thing to Murray Rothbard.)

Those who profess love for humanity treat everyone around them like crap. Those who see only ugliness in their fellow man are the ugliest of all. Intellectuals are pathetic, lonely, bitter, pathological, hateful, lying, envious bastards who want to enslave or destroy mankind. Maybe it’s not a lust for power. Maybe it’s just a nihilistic hatred for the world. What every intellectual shares is a deep-seated contempt for the common man—his values, his lifestyle, and his very existence. They hate plumbers who make more money than they do. They hate Wal-Mart, NASCAR, and US Weekly. They hate people who worship some zombie Jewish carptenter from Nazarath. Most of all, they hate being ignored.

For the common man, there’s only one rational response: Hate them back. Like Carl said in The Simpsons episode when Springfield revolts against the rule of the Mensa Society, “Let’s make litter of the literatti!”

Maybe the common man doesn't "believe" in evolution, but at least he believes in human nature, right and wrong, making an honest living, and minding his own business. That makes him morally, socially, and intellectually superior to most intellectuals. The common man does not need to be enlightened by intellectuals; he needs to destroy them. There’s a great bumper sticker that reads, “My kid beat up your honor student.” It’s time to beat up the honor students, old-school style.

On the Fence About Gossip Girl

2008-10-04T10:58:00.001-07:00

I can’t decide whether or not Gossip Girl is in a sophomore slump. The show is still awesome, but it’s quickly running out of storylines. GG has fallen into the trap that has destroyed many a teen drama: All the storylines are based on relationships. After every character hooks up with every other character, the show has nowhere else to go.

Already, Dan and Serena have broken up and reunited about 14 times. (I still don’t get why they broke up this last time). Writers today can’t think up decent storylines that don’t involve dating or hookups—the one exception being Friday Night Lights. Really, does anyone care about Jenny’s internship with the fashion designer? If they can’t think of a decent storyline for Jenny, they should just kill her off. I’m a busy a man. I don’t have time for teen dramas with shitty subplots.

The bro-mance between Chuck and Dan was well-executed. I liked how they set it up: Dan wanted to explore his wild side, and Chuck realized he had no real friends. But now this storyline is used up. They can’t go back to it.

Introducing new characters won’t work, because all the basic archetypes are already represented. Remember in the second season of The O.C.—when Ryan’s brother is released from prison and moves in with the Cohens? It was the same exact dilemma faced by Ryan in Season 1—a troubled teen adjusting to life in posh Newport Beach—except with a slightly different haircut. I knew right then and there that The O.C. was finished. I can’t fathom how it lasted 3 more seasons—or how Dawson’s Creek lasted 6 seasons with it’s Pacey-Dawson-Joey love triangle. Kids today will watch anything, apparently.

Saved By the Bell was all about Zach’s shenanigans—Zach getting out of detention, the Bayside-Valley prank wars--and it's still in syndication after 20 years! Even 90210 had decent non-relationship storylines, like Steve’s quest for the school’s “legacy key”—preposterous, but entertaining nonetheless.

I still love GG for now, mainly because Chuck Bass is the coolest teen villain since Johnny Lawrence in The Karate Kid. I’ll keep an open mind , but I’m not optimistic.

You know you love me. XOXO.

EVERYBODY PANIC

2008-10-04T10:25:00.000-07:00

Since the dawn if the Industrial Age, people have feared that the modern world is spiraling toward destruction. None of these doomsday scenarios has come true. Here’s a quick rundown.

Overpopulation. In 1798, Thomas Malthus predicted that the word’s population would grow faster than the food supply, leading to mass starvation and chaos. In 1968, Paul R. Ehrlich predicted it would happen in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1980, the Carter Administration predicted it by the year 2000. It never happened because people learned how to grow more food on less land. If advances in farming productivity continue, the world will be able to feed 10 billion people with half of today’s cropland.

The population is projected to grow from 6.6 billion people today to about 8 billion in 2050 and start declining to 5.5 billion in 2100. Global birthrates are falling because the world is getting wealthier. Rich people play golf; poor people screw.

Water. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has predicted that water shortages will trigger bloody conflicts in the 21st century. Not likely. The last “water war” was fought 4,500 years ago. As Alister Doyle notes, “International rivals sharing waters…have generally favoured cooperation over conflict.”

“The simple explanation is that water is simply too important to fight over,” said Aaron Wolf, a professor at Oregon State University. “Nations often go to the brink of war over water and then resolve their differences.”

In the U.S., water withdrawals peaked in 1980 and have been flat since. Entreprenuers are developing innovative technologies like low-cost drip irrigation systems and seawater agriculture to stretch and develop freshwater supplies.

Biodiversity. In 1970, Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Instituiton, predicted that somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all animal species would be extinct by 1995. In 1980, Paul Ehrlich predicted that 15 to 20 percent of all species would be extinct by the year 2000.

In recent decades, a handful of known species extinctions have been vastly exceeded by the number of species that have been observed and described over time. Scientists have counted between 1.5 million and 1.8 million species, and up to 100 million might exist. In the last two decades, the number of known mammals has grown by 25 percent—and that doesn’t include Bigfoot! Patrick Moore, founder of Greenpeace: “In fact, to the best of our scientific knowledge, no species has become exctint in North America due to forestry.”

Even a worst-case scenario wouldn’t doom mankind. Martin Jenkins from the United Nations Environment Program: “In truth, ecologists and conservationists have struggled to demonstrate the increased material benefits to humans of “intact” wild systems...”

Landfill Space. In the 1980s, we were supposedly running out of places to put our garbage. Today, there is an oversupply of disposal space.

Deforestation. The planet’s overall forest land area has hardly changed in the last 60 years, U.S. forest area is about the same as it was in 1990, and forests are expanding in much of the developed world.

Air Pollution. As Ronald Baily notes, “Air pollution in the U.S. has been declining for decades and even China’s notoriously bad air pollution may be decreasing.”

Economic Collapse. In 1848, Karl Marx predicted that capitalism’s internal contradictions would lead inevitably to worldwide communist revolution. In the 1930s, the “stagnation” theorists said that modern economies would mature to the point where there would no jobs. In the 1970s, a copper shortage was going to destroy all economies based on electricity. Also in the 1970s, the Arabs were going to own half the U.S. In the 1980s, Japan became new threat. In the 1990s, Microsoft was going to take over the information superhighway. Needless to say, none of this crap happened.

Technology. My favorite doomsday scenario is that machines will exterminate or enslave mankind, a theory expressed most eloquently by The Simpsons’ Professor Frink: "You’ve got to listen to me. Elementary chaos theory tells us that all robots will eventually turn against their masters and run amok in an orgy of blood and the kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving."

The Terminator predicted Judgment Day in 1997. Termintor 3 pushed it back to 2004. It’s now 2008, and a Japanese-built robot is getting attention for climbing stairs. Run for the hills! Computers will never become creative, autonomous, or self-aware, because anything built by humans is going to break. Spaceballs:

Colonel Sanders: Out of order?! Fuck!
Dark Helmet: Even in the future nothing works!

Besides, enslavement by robots might not be so bad. The cylons on Battlestar Gallactica can make me their slave any day. Rowr!

In an article for Wired magazine, “We’re All Gonna Die!” Gregg Easterbrook makes a good case that none of these scenarios measure up—chemical weapons, germ warfare, particle chain reactions, runaway nanobots, black holes, shifting magnetic poles, supervolcanos, sudden climate change, and asteroids. He quotes John Maddox, editor emeritus of Nature, who wrote in in 1972, “most apocalyptic claims are dubious, inflated, or have such a low likelihood that rational people need not think about them.”

Tainted Products. Most consumer scares turn out to be false alarms—power lines causing cancer, cranberrys causing cancer, the alar-in-apples hysteria of the 1980s, the dangers of nuclear power and DDT. Pretty much everything is both a cause and cure for some kind of illness. Cell phones don’t cause cancer, then they do, then they don’t, then they do again! Coffee is bad for you, then it’s good, then it’s sorta good and sorta bad. The bottom line is that Americans are living longer, healthier lives than at any time in the past. Most companies know that it’s bad for business to kill their own customers.

Oil. The Peak Oil theorists argue that civilization will collapse when the world begins running out of oil. Princeton geologist Ken Deffeyes predicts “war, famine, pestilence and death.” Colin Cambell throws in “the extinction of homo sapiens.” However, similar predictions were made in 1855, 1919, 1928, and the 1970s. It’s now 2008, and we’ve only consumed 18 percent of the world’s oil and gas.

Another fear is that a “price shock” could destabilize the U.S. economy. In truth, the economy is highly adaptable to changes in the price of oil, and the price of oil is very resistant to political manipulation. Political turmoil in the Middle East would not threaten our way of life.

Epidemics. Oprah Winfrey once claimed that one in five heterosexuals would be dead of AIDS by the 1990s. It is now clear that AIDS is confined mostly to high-risk groups. Ebola, Sars, Bird Flu—none has lived up to the hype. The “obesity epidemic” was a total fraud. Severe obesity affects only about one in 12 overweight adults, and it it does not present a significant mortality risk. Furthermore, people in the overweight category have a lower risk of premature death than do “healthy” people.

Moral Decay. The media fuels an endless stream of moral panics with sensational stories that turn out to be bogus or exaggerated (pregnancy pacts, rainbow parties, Internet predators). In truth, rates of violent crime, divorce, abortion, and teen pregnancy have been dropping for years or decades. Social critics have been predicting the imminent collapse of Western civilization for 150 years, but we’re still here! Elvis, the Beatles, Black Sabbath, NWA, Jerry Springer, When Good Pets Go Bad (that was my favorite), Grand Theft Auto, Celebreality, Mixed Martial Arts—each supposedly represented a “new low.” No, no. We haven’t hit rock bottom yet—not if I have anything to say about it!