 |
|
|
 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 658, February 19, 2012 Freedom, Immortality, and the Stars. For me, that's what the current rEVOLution is all about.
Special to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise Who really runs things? Follow the money. The people who run things evidently get an enormous amount of profit from war industries and prison industries. So they make campaign contributions and pay lobbying fees and, frankly, let's not mince words, bribe politicians and bureau-rats into making more wars, more laws, enforce them more ubiquitously, and put lots of your friends and neighbours in cages. They justify these actions by saying that the world is full of crazy people, that people who are "other" are dangerous, and that they need to be paid lots of money to provide strong governments with massive weapons to attack the foes of decency. Some of those foes are organised in foreign nations that oppose an orderly society, and must be fought with instruments of warfare. Some of those foes are terrorists living amongst everyone else and must be rooted out before they can strike. Some of those foes are disobedient to orderly society and must be caged, they say, for the ludicrous made-up "crime" of owning some plants. None of it has anything to do with Biblical traditions, actual decency, nor honesty. In fact the proportion of people with criminal intent is vanishingly small. Right around 1.8% of the population ever commits a violent crime, and many of those people are pushed into it by repeated attacks of all kinds. If the other 98.2% of the population were simply armed with ordinary hand guns, they could easily defend themselves against the violent criminals. Better yet, the number of violent crimes drops dramatically wherever people are able to easily get and bear weapons, especially concealed weapons. Somewhat more persons, maybe four or five percent, ever commit a property crime such as theft, burglary, vandalism, or arson. Again, the vast majority of these are well-meaning persons who turn to property crimes because they are unable to make ends meet, the system utterly fails to help them with education (public education is a very bad joke, at best, and a cruelty at worst), economic assistance, or a work opportunity. Idiocies like minimum wage laws attack the ability of people to get entry level work of any sort. Endless regulations provide endless jobs for bureau-rats, but nothing but difficulty and pain for everyone else. It turns out that people are people, everywhere we go. There are no more "others." The Neanderthal sub-species has been entirely removed from Earth since roughly 40,000 years ago when homo sapiens still co-habited the planet with them. There is considerable evidence of inter-breeding. The dominant strains have won out—presumably hybrid vigour of greater strength and greater intelligence. There are no meaningful differences amongst people. The Afghans love their children. They love their independence. They love their part of the world. They want to be safe from invaders. They like the nice things, like plumbing and paved roads, and the electronic stuff that provides for easier communication. Their children would like to play football (which Americans persist in calling soccer) and video games. They would like very much not to be blown up by Predator drones. The Vietnamese, in case you did not notice, had no lust for global conquest. Having entirely lost the Vietnam war, the USA military's claims that the "domino effect" or some other threat from what was actually called in the early 1960s "the yellow peril" by their propaganda machine was proven to be bullshit. They simply lied. There was no threat to "our way of life." Vietnamese suicide bombers are not destroying buildings on the West coast of the USA. Why? Because all they wanted was to have their own country and be left alone to run, or screw up, their own affairs. Gee. The oft-told lie has been told over and over again since 1794 to justify conscription, mass murder, taxation, war profiteering, and laws against all manner of activities. Perfectly ordinary work like turning corn and wheat into grain alcohol has been taxed and licensed to pay for Alexander Hamilton's national debt. Because people resisted these taxes, there were draft riots in major cities in 1794. George Washington demanded conscripts and got them. He marched 12,950 slave soldiers across Pennsylvania to attack peaceful farmers whose "crime" was tarring and feathering some evil vicious disgusting tax collectors. Twelve men died on the march. Some people were threatened, others hanged, and the Whiskey Rebellion collapsed. There were no "others" of some foreign bizarre alien, un-earthly behaviour. The people in Western Pennsylvania were ordinary Scots-Irish and English speaking persons. They didn't deserve to be invaded and occupied by a military. The people who resisted the draft in Maryland and eastern Pennsylvania did not deserve to be enslaved as conscripts. The constitutional government was a counter-revolution, opposed to the basic freedoms identified in the declaration of independence, and it remains evil to this day. Another huge series of wars was built on the oft-told lie that there were Native American Indian tribes and clans that were "other," and somehow a threat. Oh, the Cherokee were eager to assimilate, and many converted to Christianity, wore American clothing, lived and traded as the white settlers did, even owned slaves to fit into the economic system prevailing in their Georgia and Tennessee territories. But they were cast out by Andrew Jackson just as wickedly, just as if they were entirely hostile. The Cherokee and the Seminole had treaties, but the USA government is notoriously evil about treaty obligations, and does not do its part, ever, at all. There was a huge war with Mexico. A huge war with the Confederate States of America. A huge war with Spain. A huge war with Germany. A long series of military occupations of the Philippines, Central and South America, Cuba. Another huge war with Germany, Italy, Japan. A long simmering conflict with Russia. A long simmering conflict with China. A hot conflict with Korea that has not yet been settled. A conflict with Cuba that has not been settled. A war in Vietnam. A war in the Persian Gulf. A war in Afghanistan. A war in Iraq. A war in Libya. A war in Yemen. A continuing war in Somalia for those bankers who want someone to tax the Somali people to pay back the $2.6 billion borrowed by a former dictator now long dead who used the money to slaughter and oppress the Somali people (the bankers don't give a shit, they are evil and only want their money). A new war in Uganda, whatever that might be about. It goes on and on. The oft-told lie is still a lie. People are just people. They don't need to be caged. They don't need to be brutalised. They don't need to be made war upon. If you simply leave other people alone and stop bullying them, stop fucking with them, they are really quite pleasant. But if you insist upon teasing them, stealing from them, and fucking with them, if, in short, you are taught to be a jock and a bully and a popular kid, and if you fuck with the other people around you, someone is going to get fed up and kill you, or hurt you very badly. And you shouldn't be surprised. And it really is your fault. So, stop telling the lie. Stop believing the lie. Stop being a bully. It isn't like you can afford the taxes and the parasitical bureau-rats that infest your economy. Give it up. It isn't orderly. It's painfully stupid. Look at the truth. It isn't ugly. The simple beautiful truth is that we all bleed red blood, we all love our children, we all belong here.
Was that worth reading?
TLE AFFILIATE
|
|
|
|
Previous
Contents
Next
