The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. – Thomas Jefferson
The quote which forms today’s epigram is probably a familiar one, but few people are familiar with the larger paragraph in which it is embedded. Jefferson was referring to Shay’s Rebellion (arguably the single strongest motivator which caused the weak central government of the Articles of Confederation to be replaced by the strong one established by the US Constitution) when he wrote:
God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion…If [the people] remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty…what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?
Every November 5th I call for a rededication of the holiday from one in which rebels are burned in effigy to one in which tyrants are burned in effigy instead; in most of those essays I have quoted what I wrote the first time, words which echo Jefferson’s sentiments expressed above:
Governments need to be reminded (at least annually if not constantly) that they only hold power by the sufferance of all the people, not merely the majority, and that the overthrow of any government by a disgruntled minority is always a possibility. I would like to see most if not all politicians and their minions paying for their power and privilege by being forced to live in a constant state of nervous anxiety; maybe then fewer would choose that path and more would concern themselves with keeping all the citizenry happy rather than merely pleasing barely enough of the population to keep themselves in office.
Every time a cop murders some unarmed person, pig apologists sonorously remind us how dangerous police work is (which it isn’t, by the by), and how tewwified the poor widdle coppies are, boo hoo hoo. To which I reply: They aren’t nearly terrified enough. I want them to be so fucking terrified that they can’t sleep at night, so utterly frightened that they don’t dare leave their fucking stations. I want them so scared they piss themselves on a daily basis and quit long before they can develop the kind of swagger that lets them go around beating, robbing, raping and murdering without fear of repercussions. I want them to have nightmares of surveillance cameras recording their every move, and I want televised trials of bad cops every fucking day to serve the same function as a coyote’s hide nailed to a fence post by a rancher. Tyrants and their thug-enforcers alike deserve to be burned in effigy, to be cursed and spat upon every time they venture into public, to be (figuratively) crucified for the slightest abuse of power. We make government positions attractive to sociopaths by heaping accolades and privileges upon them; instead, those positions need to be made so repellent that nobody will stay in them for very long. The price of power needs to be very high indeed to prevent exactly what the United States has turned into: a fascist police state whose rulers can do anything they like to the ruled without any consequences at all.
It’s much, much too late for this to happen in the US; no decaying empire in the history of the world has ever been revived once it got to the level of corruption this country reached a generation ago, and things have grown much worse since then. Two years ago I wrote:
…old, decaying things must be cleared away – sometimes forcibly – in order to make way for new, younger and often better things. Old people must pass on to make room for new children; dilapidated buildings must be demolished to pave the way for new construction. And old, moribund governments which serve only the entrenched and wealthy must be removed if we are to build new ones which better serve all of the people and protect minorities from oppression by both majorities and other, more privileged minorities…
Like it or not, this is the future Americans face; our rulers have made peaceful change impossible, therefore violent change has become inevitable. The system will be burned to the ground, whether we want it to or not; I don’t really want to see it, but if I live to be as old as Maman that will be a forlorn hope, as I don’t actually believe the system can survive another 40 years the way things are going. The fire is coming, but as The Onion satirically reminds us, that is not a bad thing:
…a study…found that regular, controlled Washington, D.C. wildfires are crucial to the restoration of a healthy political environment. “Periodic blazes that destroy sections of the Beltway region are a natural part of the political cycle and play a key role in maintaining democratic balance,” read the study in part, which explained that occasional wildfires of mild to moderate intensity are the most important and effective mechanism for clearing out old federal agencies so that new ones can take their place and flourish. “Although such fires are often considered a hazard, without them government would quickly become dense, overrun, and impenetrable, stifling political diversity and inhibiting the germination of new ideas”…The study concluded that attempts to suppress the wildfires would likely only lead to the occurrence of far more powerful blazes in the future capable of causing significant, permanent damage to the government’s branches.
In reality, the entrenched establishment has prevented those moderate fires; the big one which will cause permanent damage is coming. We can only hope that the ashes left behind are fertile soil for something better, leaner and healthier.
Australia’s lone self-described libertarian party, the Liberal-Democrats, has a single member in parliament, David Leyonhjelm.
The man’s an idiot and a racist and like almost all libertarians in power is interested primarily in legislating in favour of greater power and less oversight for big business, particularly the tobacco and firearms companies who are the chief donors to his party. He has, however, promoted several bills restricting the freedom of the poorest Australian welfare recipients.
Nonetheless, every now and then he comes out with some commonsense that is unsayable by politicians and the media right across the spectrum here.
This week he had the temerity to suggest that if police don’t want to be seen as bastards they should stop being bastards. It was said in the context of an oppressive police crackdown against all supporters of a particular sporting team justified by the fact that a small number of them had been involved in violence.
And didn’t the shit hit the fan.
Commentators from government ministers to right-wing shock-jocks rushed to the microphone to condemn Leyonhjelm’s ‘appalling comments’ and to claim they made it harder for cops to do their job and thereby made all of us less safe.
Of course it was the pigs themselves who went completely ballistic, with the spokesman for the NSW Police Association calling not only for the sacking of Leyonhjelm – a kinda-sorta democratically elected representative of the people – but for the abolition of the entire Australian Senate. When Leyonhjelm gently reminded him that police are the servants of the public, not their masters it only stoked the rage of the red-faced boys in blue.
We haven’t got quite the sort of police problem here you do in the US. They only kill a few dozen unarmed people in a typical year. But they do so with utter impunity. There has never been a cop imprisoned for killing someone while on duty in Australia. Not once in the history of federation. And anyone who makes even the slightest public criticism of them can consider themselves lucky if they only receive the sort of vilification Leyonhjelm has just experienced.
Reblogged this on Crazy Little Redneck Goth.
Back in the 70’s (I think) congress allowed the various agencies to pass regulations and enforce them as if they were law. That’s why you see the FDA’s SWAT team raiding farmer’s markets for the sin of selling raw milk! The Dept. of Education has a SWAT team…the EPA…etc., all so they can use a heavy hand to enforce their will.
It really doesn’t matter anymore who we send to congress or put in the Whitehouse. The government machine has grown in to a monster sucking all of the resources out of the country. An agency passes a set of new regulations, which means it has to open new offices to manage the enforcement of those regulations, and the new director of THAT office creates new regulations and has to hire more people to enforce THAT set of new regulations and on and on it goes.
Last time I heard, if you add together everyone living on “social programs”, local, state, federal governments and the military, about 1/2 of the country is living off of the government teat. That means the other 1/2 of the country is supporting them. As the government grows, it will soon be more than 1/2…and eventually they will be sucking up so much of the country’s resources that it will all collapse in on itself.
One day people are going to walk in to the local Kroger and their EBT card is going to be rejected…or the money on it will be so worthless that all it will buy is a loaf of bread. That’s when the panic will start…and that’s when it will hit the fan for the whole world.
Actually, of the 240,000,000 people of voting age, only 130,000,000 of them work, and only 70,000,000 pay taxes at the federal level (the rest get back all their taxes plus their FICA payments as a “refund”, some actually get back MORE than they paid). So we’re already way past the 50-50 point.
So with less than 30% of voters actually paying the direct costs of the federal government (we all actually pay, it just isn’t readily visible, more on that later), it’s no wonder we can’t get fiscally responsible politicians elected. They’re buying the votes of the non-payers with the taxes of the payers. That’s why we need to tie voting to paying taxes. As long as voting is possible without paying taxes, we’ll always devolve into a system like we have now: politicians pandering to non-payers by giving them benefits at the expense of the outnumbered payers.
As to the actual costs of government, a study was done about 10 years ago which looked at what the costs of some consumer goods were. One such item was the Ford Taurus. The idea was – what would the car cost if there were NO taxes involved in its cost, but every PERSON still received the same amount of “post-tax” money. In other words, all the workers had the same take home pay, but payed NO taxes of any kind, all the shareholders got the same post-tax dividend, but there were no corporate or personal taxes paid on profits, there were no sales taxes, or value added taxes, etc. It turned out that 50% of the price of the car was taxes, but they are hidden taxes – the consumer has no idea how much of the costs they pay for products are taxes. It turned out that the hidden taxes in pretty much everything we buy are about 50% of the purchase price. So imagine how much nicer your life would be if your gross pay were lowered to your net pay, but everything you bought was 50% less expensive. That’s the true cost of government – it doubles the price of everything we buy.
So Cabrogal, would the situation you describe with Mr. Leyonhjelm be a case of ‘a broken clock is still right twice a day’? More to the point, why do you think the police situation in Australia is not to the same degree as in America. You’ve got stricter gun control laws, correct? I would think that would make bad police killings at least as likely as in the US, if not more so, because the police know they’re less likely to encounter someone firing back. In that case, do you have a similar group of people in Australia who wish to destroy everything?
Which brings me to the topic in this entry. I’ve been waiting for one like it so I could express my thoughts about this line of thinking without derailing another discussion. In a nutshell, I invoke a phrase that Maggie has used in the past: “good fantasy, bad reality.”
To start with:
“I want them to be so fucking terrified that they can’t sleep at night, so utterly frightened that they don’t dare leave their fucking stations.”
Sorry if this sounds glib, but good luck with that. First, do you think anyone experiencing that level of fear is prone to rational, prudent decisions that take others into consideration? Because I doubt an officer’s first reaction in that situation is going to be “well, might as well resign.”
Even if you don’t agree with what I say above, what then are the Libertarians waiting for? What atrocity that hasn’t already been committed has to happen before people go beyond merely cataloging the outrages and taking purposeful action? It seems like while they talk a good talk, great even, they aren’t going to start a revolution because to do so would be ‘initiating aggression’, the very thing they abhor because it’s already being done to them.
More importantly, what shape does anyone expect this revolution to take? I can guarantee that because of the interconnected world we live in, quite a few of our erstwhile friends (and probably some of our enemies) are going to want a say if the system that enables theirs goes belly up. Further, how do Libertarians plan to reconcile the seesawing beliefs of “people are intelligent creatures capable of self-governance” versus “people are idiots that deserve to be slaughtered because they haven’t figured out what we have”? If we think innocents are dying now, I can only imagine the slaughter that will take place when police and armed services, their backs to the wall, decide that self-preservation through arms (which they’ll still have superior forms of, make no mistake) will be their only option.
The only way I see anyone signing up for that sort of risk would be if someone were to offer an actual strategy, with plans to ‘win the argument’ as I recall Mr. Bianco saying in a tweet a long time ago. Until then, until the next Washington or Jefferson or whatever elder statesman you admire comes along, I predict things are going to continue just as they are because the alternative is more than likely not going to be “fertile soil for something better, leaner and healthier.” It’ll be the same system rebuilt, or one that’s ten times worse than the one we have now.
You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that I want a revolution. I don’t; I merely think it’s inevitable. Decaying empires always end thus unless they’re actually conquered from without. The US is not a magical, unique exception. As for your last statement, I expect that the replacement will be worse; I merely hope that it will be better. And hope, as you may recall, was the most deeply-buried of the ills in Pandora’s box.
I guess I fail to see how speaking so strongly about how it’s inevitable is all that different from actively calling for it. How is it supposed to happen (and more importantly turn out the way Libertarians want) if it appears like we just expect it to happen organically somehow? And if we don’t actually want it, why bring the subject up in the first place? I’d rather hear about what I can do to avoid such a terrible outcome. Otherwise, we might as well just start living as if we’re already dead.
Speaking in a general sense now, this confounds me especially when it’s coupled with the detached view Libertarians seem to take about ‘the system’. Since they’ve chosen not to sully their hands by participating in it and thus change it into a form that better suits them and perhaps society at large (this touches on the topic of whether or not to vote, but that’s for another day I think), all they can do is sit, shake their fist and mutter ‘someday…’ when Someday never seems to arrive.
What I fail to get is why you’re talking to me about Libertarians when I’m not one. Methinks you need to reread last year’s column for this day, and also to watch your capitalization. A Libertarian is no more equal to a libertarian than a Democrat equals all who believe in democracy.
Fair point, Maggie. I guess I’m guilty of using “Libertarian” as a sort of shorthand. In my defense I’ve come across many more people identifying themselves as such than I have people who consider themselves agorists. To take it a step further, I wonder if a new term isn’t needed for the various groups of people (libertarians, anarchists, minarchists, agorists such as yourself) who (to my eyes) have in common this view that the only way out is revolution, but differ on what might or should come afterward.
I’m more or less with Maggie on this.
I think the factors that will cause the collapse of civilisation this century are already in place and it’s unlikely that either highlighting or ignoring them will make much difference. But pointing them out enable some people to prepare in such a way that will make the results slightly less catastrophic. (And no, I’m not talking about paranoiac individualist survivalism or citizen militias.)
I’m not trying to start another argument, but I wonder if you and Maggie are talking about the same thing. Unless I’m mistaken, Maggie is referring primarily to the collapse of the US government and the police powers that go with it, while you’re looking at a much bigger picture. While I would agree that it would be impossible for the US to collapse without affecting the entire world, I find myself thinking of the chain of events that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was a case of the old system being swept away (mostly) but at the same time it didn’t lead to worldwide death and destruction.
You’re probably right that Maggie and I are talking about something different but you’re also right that I think it likely the collapse of US government authority – or even more likely the desperate attempts to avoid it – will be the trigger for more widespread collapse of civilisation.
But I don’t particularly place the blame for that on US tyranny. In fact I think the government itself has long been pretty irrelevant except inasmuch as it acts as a catspaw on behalf of other powers. It’s the institutional structures themselves that will drag us over the precipice, most particularly the ones whose internal logic demands perpetual growth on a finite planet.
That’s true of governments – especially imperialistic ones – because they have to keep making themselves bigger than the other ones to avoid becoming vassals (or just being destroyed) but it’s even more true of corporations and economies as a whole. Whether it’s perpetual growth of power over subjects, of material goods or of money it all comes down to the same thing in the end.
And I don’t for an instant believe those who say technological advances can provide the requisite growth. Institutions need to stay ahead of their rivals, which are primarily similar institutions. They will gobble down every morsel of growth technology or anything else can provide them but still demand more until they destroy the political, social and ecological environments that sustain them. And because our civilisation rests on both the institutions and the environments they devour it will go down with them.
I guess I’m a meta-Malthusian.
Our civilization such as it is is a long term project and many sorts of institutions have come and gone within it. In principle there is no reason that our present institutions could not be replaced by sorts that worked better.
The trouble is that we are stuck in a vicious circle. Bad institutions make bad people and vice versa. But if we broke out of the circle somehow we might even get to a virtuous one.
If everyone denies the possibility of improvement it will certainly never happen.
Well, lots of civilisations have risen and fallen but for the last 2500 years or the Eurasian ones have been interconnected enough, yet separate enough, for there to be a lot of continuity of culture and technology.
Now we’ve essentially got a single, world-wide civilisation that draws its resources from every part of the planet. When it sucks its reservoir dry everything turns to dust.
I don’t really think the morality of institutions and people is closely connected.
Yeah, sure, a lot of big corporations and government departments couldn’t function if there were no potential psychopaths to fill key positions and oppressive authority or rampant consumerism can turn people against each other, destroying social capital and personal empathy. But mostly people and their institutions operate in different realms with different survival imperatives and evolve different moralities. That’s how you see good family men running concentration camps and pillars of their community mounting PR campaigns to whitewash human rights abuses.
The institutions either break you to their own survival needs, replace you or fail in the marketplace; making way for other institutions that are better at bending people to their wills.
How many people do you know in managerial positions who really feel their working life is consistent with their personal morality?
There is a semantic confusion. I was talking about Civilization as a unitary human project and you were talking about civilizations that come and go within it. Actually I think neither of these concepts holds up very well to scrutiny. Civilization is actually composed of several different streams which got started in different places and interacted and have finally merged. The succession of civilizations is a questionable idea because it is hard to know where to draw the lines between them. It seems more like what I meant by the change of institutions.
If you were saying only that our institutions were crumbling that would be something to celebrate. But I have the impression that you were predicting the end of Civilization in general and the collapse of the economy. Frankly I doubt it. I think the present institutions will be replaced by other institutions which IMHO are likely to be substantially better or substantially worse. I think that predictions of disaster tend to drive people into defensive and self-centered ways of thought that are likely to make things worse. I was trying to point out that society is something we create and which then comes back and changes us, so in principle there is a lot of room for change.
Actually I was trying to point out that the difference between ‘civilisations’ and ‘civilisation’ has evaporated with globalisation. When the Roman Empire controlled most of Europe then collapsed that was it for European civilisation for a long time but those in other parts of the world did OK. Europe was eventually able to rebuild in part with infusion of knowledge and ideas from other civilisations – especially the middle-eastern Muslim civilisation which had retained a lot of Greek knowledge.
When the current globe-spanning civilisation collapses there won’t be any pockets of civilisation anywhere that won’t take a serious hit.
I think our institutions are pretty bad on a lot of levels but unfortunately we’ve made ourselves dependent on them. It’s hard to imagine how the planet could support 7 billion people without the state and corporate institutions that underpin industry and transport. Maybe I just lack sufficient imagination but I just can’t think what could replace them or how it could be done non-catastrophically.
Perhaps.
But without Cassandras disasters would always take us by surprise and I hardly think that’s much of an improvement.
To be honest I think the faith so many seem to have in the power of positive thinking is one of the things bringing on the impending collapse.
I agree there’s a lot of room for change but I think there’s very little scope for direct human control over that change. The institutions operate according to their own logic of survival and unlike the human species have not been forged from millions of generations of birth and death. That’s why so many of them ‘believe’ in unlimited growth.
But as Maggie said in a recent post, all things must die. That includes civilisations. Whether Cassandras like us get it right this century, the next, or a millennia from now the belief in immortality is a delusion. Even a lot of people suffer from it so why would a corporation that’s existed from the dawn of industrialisation have adapted to its own mortality?
Before Civilization there were neolithic farmers and roving gangs of bandits that would steal their stuff. I guess Civilization got started when some genius bandit got the idea of holding permanent territory and excluding other gangs. Looting was replaced by taxation. The bandit gang in charge became known as a royal estate with an army. The army garrisons became towns and cities with specialized non-agricultural workers in residence. The government was able to create infrastructure such as massive irrigation projects which boosted the efficiency of the economy. This enabled the estates to grow into kingdoms and empires.
You say “It’s hard to imagine how the planet could support 7 billion people without the state and corporate institutions that underpin industry and transport.” I agree with you that you lack imagination. In fact it is easy. Science and technology have brought us to a point where everyone could live quite happily if they were not such greedheads. Their greed is an unnecessary survival from the time when life was indeed inescapably precarious. Our institutions are dependent on that greed and do all they can to reinforce it. If you don’t think there are enough resources to go around take a look at what they did in Cuba when they were cut off from the aid they were getting from the USSR.
I think we find ourselves at a bifurcation point. If Civilization continues as it has always been, as an institutionalization of greed and domination, I think you are right, it will collapse. We will revert to tribalism, which will be a great improvement in many ways, but will require us to undergo a terrible die off first. The alternative is for us to cause it to change into a new type of Civilization founded on a basis of compassion and cooperation. I’m not ready to abandon this possibility, and I’m sorry that most people can’t imagine it.
I agree that “there is enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed” – at least under present arrangements – but I still don’t see how you could hope to maintain a city the size of New York or Beijing (or even Newcastle) without the hierarchical supply and distribution networks we currently have. Yes, I know of several potentially viable alternatives (e.g. syndicalism) but the institutions currently controlling the infrastructure aren’t too likely to hand them over through any means short of a revolution that would probably destroy them in any case.
Current arrangements are predicated on consumerism. Gordon Gekko’s mantra might be an oversimplification but nonetheless our entire economic system (especially the stock market) needs endless, demand driven growth and the most reliable way to maintain demand growth is to appeal to people’s greed. Even revolutionary US libertarians are still, by and large, looking for ways to better satisfy their desire to acquire ever more property (which some of them believe is the fundamental basis not only for economies and political systems, but even of ethics, morality and the ultimate determination of truth).
I agree that our country is doomed, but I don’t think we’ll be lucky enough to have it end with a revolution. I believe we’ll just become a banana republic.
I hope you’re right jd, but I’m inclined to support Maggie on this.
The Brits and Russians showed that Imperial powers can quietly decay rather than go out in a bloodbath, but I think the relative autonomy and sheer power of the military industrial complex in the US makes that outcome pretty unlikely. Not to mention the US prevalence of gun ownership combined with a simplistic Manichean cowboy mentality of ‘good guys’ vs ‘bad guys’.
“And hope, as you may recall, was the most deeply-buried of the ills in Pandora’s box.”
I thought that Pandora let out all the evils of the world, then slammed the box shut. But there was this tiny voice, and reopening the box, it was that of Hope. Surely, Hope wasn’t an ill?
It was in the box with the others, and it can inspire people to keep wasting energy in efforts that have absolutely zero chance of succeeding, and which actively cause harm in the process. So you tell me.
I guess it is this crazy format but I have no idea what useless efforts you are referring to. Could you please explain?
Perhaps; I took it to be a positive message, that only Hope can counter all evil, rather than it being Futility or Kismet. Then again, perhaps the story is deliberately ambiguous.
I’m with Maggie on this.
The reason for the sign at the entrance to Dante’s inferno is because in a hopeless situation hope becomes just another form of torture.
That said, I think struggle in the face of hopelessness is not only admirable, it’s the only thing to do. We all die, nonetheless most of us try to stay alive until it happens.
BTW, I’ve seen two versions of the Pandora legend, one in which she slams the box shut on hope and another in which hope is the final escapee into the world. I’ve never been sure which one is ‘authentic’, or if the word means anything when talking about legends.
”…how do Libertarians plan to reconcile the seesawing beliefs of “people are intelligent creatures capable of self-governance” versus “people are idiots…”
I’m not a Libertarian, but my interpretation is that individuals are responsible for their own life and should be, by default, left to make their own decisions with minimal interference from the govenment. This does not mean that they always have the brains or will to actually do that. An individual has a perfect right to let their someone else arrange their lives, so long as they don’t want to impose that on others.
This brings a conondrum: if someone is not suited to make good decisions for themselves, how can they choose a good ”caretaker” for their life? Simply put, the people who rely the most on government are the ones who are probably less able to choose good leaders.
Not quite. I’ve seen this sort of thing before with politicians who haven’t come up through mainstream parties and unexpectedly got elected via one of the quirks of the Australian electoral system (Leyonhjelm got a low primary vote but benefited from canny preference deals with other small parties and had the good fortune to draw #1 position on the ballot paper).
Partly it’s because he hasn’t been groomed by the PR companies that usually keep politicians on message (as per Donald Trump) but mainly it’s because he knows his vote base is insufficient to get him re-elected so he has to establish his image by saying things that attract media attention. “Cops are bastards” is a message that both resonates with the Australian electorate and guarantees a lot of free publicity whereas his legislative record barely rates a mention. I think that also explains his racist outbursts. There’s lots of racists here and they vote. So really I shouldn’t call him a racist but rather someone who cynically exploits racist attitudes. It’s even possible he’s not an idiot but merely chases the ignoramus vote.
Very correct, but only since the late 90s. Mass shootings ended with the new gun laws but the rate of police killings remain unchanged.
I think it’s more cultural than legislative. Both police and civilians in the US seem more caught up in the Hollywood Western fantasies about guns than we do here and many seem to think it’s always a matter of who shoots first – a self-fulfilling attitude. It’s notions like the one that having someone likely to fire back will deter rather than encourage shooters that’s causing a lot of the problems in America.
What holiday are you talking about? Guy Fawkes Day in Britain?
Yes. Just as I have for the past five years.
Here in the USA EVERY mass shooting in the last 50 years, except for one, occurred in a “gun free zone”. So yes, the nuts that commit such crimes ARE deterred by the perception of whether they will receive return fire.
Interesting statistic. Reference?
Here’s one website that insists you’re wrong.
How’s this for a statistic?
The US has one of the highest levels of private gun ownership in the industrialised world and also one of the highest levels of firearms homicide.
Seems all those guns aren’t deterring red-white-and-blue killers too much.
Let us stipulate that in the absence of guns there would be no gun murders. Is it equally valid to suggest that in the absence of guns there would be no murders? I can’t think of anyone who would answer in the affirmative. So why the laser-focus on “gun violence”? Shouldn’t we be more concerned about plain old violence? This is why the pro-gun side so severely discounts such arguments.
There are studies which suggest that guns in the hands of law abiding folk actually prevent more crimes than criminals commit. if true, perhaps America is just a more violent place than anyone suspects, and if that is so, disarming the putatively good would be a recipe for disaster.
Exactly. Remember the old saw, when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns? Just look at the cities with the highest rates of gun violence, and in general they are the ones with the strictest anti-gun laws.
@FrankInFL: “Let us stipulate that in the absence of guns there would be no gun murders. Is it equally valid to suggest that in the absence of guns there would be no murders?”
Just take a look at the UK, with its strict anti-just-about-everything laws, and then look at how many murders are committed with knives and other weapons of convenience, and you’ll get your answer.
@FrankInFL: ” . . . perhaps America is just a more violent place than anyone suspects . . . ”
I don’t suspect it. I know it, and the statistics back it up. But it’s not the law-abiding folks who are committing the murders and violence. It’s those outlaws, the people who have no respect for the law, those who have and would have no respect for anti-gun laws.
Indeed.
The intentional homicide rate in the US is nearly five times that of the UK.
Did you actually take a look before you put your foot in that one Hotlix?
Why not check your dogmatic assertions before making them Hotlix?
According to this easy to verify list the majority of US mass shooters in recent years had no serious prior convictions nor a history of mental health problems.
Of course mass shooters are only a small minority of US residents who commit intentional homicide with guns but if you have evidence that, contrary to Australian figures, American killers are more likely to have a criminal history I eagerly await your evidence.
Unless of course you’re just making the tautological assertion that murderers break the law.
And if it’s not gun culture, have you ever contemplated what it is about your country that makes it so lethally violent?
In the immortal word of my ex-Albanian girlfriend, pfffft.
Which is about the level of reasoned evidence supporting all the opinions you’ve offered here.
Other than those erecting strawmen I’ve never heard it suggested that if there were no guns there would be no murders. However guns are far more lethal than almost any other murder method available so even if you postulate that violence levels stayed the same (i.e. the unlikely possibility that no gun murders are pre-emptive attempts to avoid being shot during an escalating conflict) I think it very reasonable to assume there’d be considerably fewer murders.
Agreed. But I want those who benefit economically(public or private) from this anti-democratic law enforcement to feel similar fear. And that Onion article was brilliant. I was reading it last night before I went to bed.
I hate to say so but I don’t think it is as bad as that. I think as long as we have democratic forms, which might not be much longer, there is a chance for regeneration. I am hoping for one of the major parties to implode and make room for an uncorrupted one. I think it is most likely to be the Ds since the Rs are less hypocritical. I have promised myself never to vote for a D for federal office again. If only a few percent of voters would take that pledge I think it would have a very salutary effect.
Right now they are trying to do an end run around the right to vote by passing those “trade” treaties which make it impossible to regulate big corporations. But they are not a forgone conclusion and even if they go through it will still be possible to elect people who will simply rip the bastards up. So I think sooner or later they will have to overthrow the Constitution. And I think the mission of the teapartiers is to make democracy so dysfunctional that most people will be glad to see it go. And that is when they expect rebellion to catch on and they are preparing for it. But it is not inevitable yet.
Our main hope is information war I think. We need to clarify the details of the plot and broadcast them. Who shot Kennedy and brought the towers down? Who are the agents of the covert imperial government and how have they directed our course? The vampires cannot survive the light of day.
Maggie, have you ever heard of the 3%ers? It’s a growing movement of people who are preparing for just what you are talking about. They get their name from the historical fact that, in the age of the gun, it has never taken more than 3% of the people resisting their government with guns to successfully overthrow it. Look at the USA today, for example: 3% of the population is just over 9 million. There are currently less than 1.5 million in the US military, and less than 500,000 in the US army. The army would likely be the primary tool used by the government to put down a revolution, along with the police (and there’s about the same number of policemen), and they’d be outnumbered 9-1 even if 100% of them would stand with an oppressive government, and they know it.
But we’re no longer in the age of the gun. We’re in the age of the ballistic missile, the tank, and the nuclear bomb, to say nothing of what the future might hold in terms of biological or chemical weaponry.
I had this discussion recently with a friend. We agreed that societies “peak” at some time and then people lose interest and are more concerned with how to spend their free time and whats on TV than what to make of their lives and what needs to be done to protect their freedoms and keep the power-structures in check. This then causes economic and social decline, with the current state of personal freedoms in the US merely a symptom of the problem.
We estimate that the peak has happened in the US somewhere around 30 years ago, with the EU maybe 20 years trailing this.
From a bit of a different angle, government, the law, etc. have only become more and more complex over time. This massively and sometimes exponentially increases waste and inefficiency and eliminates the ability to actually serve the original purpose and really deal with problems. Western governments are in various advanced stages of this.
Now, the only way to fix a complex system is to tear it down and build freshly, preferably with the minimal feature-set and hence complexity needed. And to keep it there for as long as possible.
Hence I agree, there is a pretty big collapse coming.
Wow, some really disturbing thoughts expressed here. Well, if nothing else, the tree has been shaken.
For half a century I have subscribed to the thought of Alfred North Whitehead, the academic theoretician, that what is needed is a state of continual revolt, not revolution. Revolution just winds up returning things, in time, to the mess they started out in. Continual revolt is a way of fixing things as they occur, continually keeping the government and politicians on their toes, refreshing society at every step. Unfortunately, we are long way from this.
“I want them to be so fucking terrified that they can’t sleep at night, so utterly frightened that they don’t dare leave their fucking stations.”
I’ve lived in such countries, been in such places, where the police were so frightened they wouldn’t even respond to knocks on the fucking doors of their fucking stations, wouldn’t open the fucking doors out of fear, and I can tell you I don’t think you’d like living in such a country, however you feel about the police.
The only other thing I think I’ll say is that there are some really whacked-out views of libertarianism expressed on this thread, and they sure come as news to me.
It’s probably too late to make much discussion, but since I’m guessing the thoughts I’ve posted here are the “whacked-out views of libertarianism” you’re referring to, I feel I ought to try and explain myself.
As I said in my response to Maggie above, I’m guilty using the term “Libertarianism” as a shorthand. I suppose what I’m really pushing back against are people who either want or expect violent revolution and upheaval, regardless of what they actually call themselves. My choice of word stems from the fact that it’s only been in the past few years that I even heard of libertarianism, let alone seen gain a certain degree of exposure in the culture at large thanks to people such as Ron Paul and his son.
To that end, I actually find much that I can agree with in your post, Hotlix. Thank you for sharing it.
@thequietman: Thank you for your comment and response.
Well, yours weren’t the only “whacked-out views of libertarianism.” But I have to say, they’re right up there.
I should preface what I’m going to say by saying that I think this is the problem with labels. They can mean vastly different things to different people, and most of the time people and their views can’t be fit into any one general box, anyway.
For lack of anything better to call myself, I consider myself a libertarian (note the small “l”). This is also what some of those simplistic online political-scale tests usually put me, about one step away from anarchy (but NOT anarchy).
To me libertarianism (in the U.S. context) means I am a fiscal and Constitutional conservative, and a social — the usual term is liberal, but I have always despised that term — radical (actually, I go way beyond “liberal” on the social side of the scale). No where in my belief system do I believe in the violent overthrow of the government, the social order, or anything else for that matter. Nor do I know any people who consider themselves libertarian who do. Until this thread I never realized there are people out there who think libertarians espouse this.
To me, if we’re going to throw around labels, that sounds more like what anarchists or the radical left or radical nativists, or some other group who do, in fact, have whacked-out ideas, might seek. It is certainly not a tenet of any libertarian views of which I am aware. Hey, we’re more like, go away and leave us alone and we won’t get in your hair too much. Oh, and while you’re at it, cut out the overspending and putting future generations into bottomless debt or whittling away our Constitutional rights.
Does this help clarify things, or at least give you gist to look into the question in more depth?
Thanks for summing up several of the contradictions inherent in US style libertarianism Hotlix.
You are a social radical. You want large changes in the way society operates (presumably in the direction of more of the kind of rights you approve of). Yet you’re a fiscal and constitutional conservative. You want the social infrastructures that have historically denied people those rights to remain in place.
You want people to ‘leave you alone’ but want a say in how the public taxation and spending that has a profound impact on the lives of others will be managed.
You don’t want a revolution but you want to maintain an economic system that has been steadily redistributing wealth and property upwards and leaving those at the bottom with fewer options, less social mobility and increasing desperation (not to mention rendering the economic system you wish to remain in place nonviable for all strata of society).
Of course ultimately the only way to keep a lid on the aspirations of the economically dispossessed is through increasingly heavy-handed enforcement of property ‘rights’ via more powerful police and security forces (whether public or private). And naturally those forces will increasingly become power centres in and of themselves who will demand more resources from those whose property they protect and allow fewer rights for those who don’t have property to protect.
A brave new world indeed.
I suppose it does, and further perhaps I’m guilty of conflating disparate groups of people. The common denominator, I think, is they’re groups who are deeply unsatisfied with the path the world is on.
However, you say libertarians (small “l”) don’t believe in the violent overthrow of government. Fair enough. If that is the case then, how exactly do libertarians expect to affect the change they seek? In my view they’ve been either unable (perhaps even unwilling) to gain any traction in the mainstream political process; the closest they’ve come is perhaps Ron Paul. Sites like Reason? They get lost in the vast noise of the Internet, cataloging the outrages and acting as a safety valve for people to anonymously vent their unhappiness and righteous indignation. I’ll gladly eat my words if there was evidence that effective resistance was actually taking place, but I’ve not seen it. It seems like engagement and informing have either been dead ends or discarded. What’s left?
Just as an aside, I’ve always wondered how far a politician with Ron Paul’s beliefs and strength of conviction combined with the charisma of a Kennedy or Obama could go.
So far, this far.
@thequietman: I think you’re making the mistake of thinking that all libertarians think, believe, act, and vote in the same way. It would be the same mistake if you thought all Democrats, Republicans, Catholics, Lutherans, Jews, or whatever thought, believed, acted, or voted in the same way.
The preferred path for me includes four elements: Keeping myself as informed as possible of developments in the country and the world; voting for the candidates whom I think come closest to my beliefs and have a chance of winning (I’ve only voted once for a Libertarian candidate and I knew he had no chance of winning, but my next best choice was going to be voted in in my state at the time so I felt I could make that statement); living my life as closely to my ideals as I reasonably can; and finally, writing the occasional piece to make my views known and possibly influence a few people (or alternatively speaking my views, but the written word tends to be more effective than the spoken word — talk is, after all, cheap).
Note that nowhere does violent revolution or resistance form any part of either my belief system or my actions.
I think the embodiment of libertarian principles to one degree or another can be found not just in candidates like Ron or Rand Paul (neither of which appeals tremendously to me across the range of issues that confront a U.S. president) nor just in sites like Reason. The initial Tea Party movement captured a lot of the spirit, and some Tea Party adherents still stay close to it. People like John Stossel on the Fox Business Network garner large audiences. And there are other advocates and believers in the general principles of libertarianism. How might change occur? My own position is that eventually people will get so fed up with the intrusion of government into their lives that they will simply vote against it by choosing candidates who favor smaller government. We’re already seeing evidence of that trend, though admittedly we’re a long, long way from (at least in my view) the libertarian ideal.
Back around the time of the birth of the Tea Party movement (which has been much maligned as libertarianism apparently is, too), I wrote an essay titled “The Myth of the Independent Voter.” Much is made of independents and how they hold the outcome of many elections in their hands. But the myth, as I see it, is that there are in reality few true independent voters. While they may not register with one party or another (myself included for a variety of reasons, present and historic), most independents have pre-conceived notions that lead them to lean either toward liberal or conservative candidates.
When I boiled things down to their simplest terms in my views and essay, the two tenets of fiscal responsibility and respect of the Constitution I felt could unite the largest number of potential voters (with the question of personal responsibility also on my list, but I saw, and see, that as a potential divider, too, unfortunately). When you look at the initial momentum of the Tea Party movement (and I’m not speaking of the way in which it was distorted and maligned by its no-nothing detractors and much of the mass media), those two elements were the driving forces, with the various divisive social issues left out. When candidates started inserting those issues back into their positions, the Tea Party movement haltered and fractured, as it remains today.
I can’t really address your last question, but I will say that — as a huge supporter of JFK when I was a kid, really the first politician I was to get excited about — were JFK alive today he’d almost certainly be seen as a conservative. This is how far elements of this country have lurched to the left.
Before I proceed, Hotlix, I should mention that your description of ‘constant revolt’ reminds me of something else attributed to Jefferson, the idea that the Constitution should have been thrown out and a new one crafted by each generation in order to suit that generation’s circumstances and needs.
Now, you’ll have to pardon me. My thoughts to follow must sound confused. It’s a confusion borne of frustration and lack of time.
First, I would not claim that everyone of any particular group all act, think, vote the same way, at least not all the time. That being said, how come they haven’t chosen to vote the same way just often enough to make a dent in the duopoly we’re currently facing in the US?
The thing is, there is a sense of urgency that comes from reading all this day in and day out. Look at Maggie’s news columns. People are being tortured and dying out there! This column and its comments points to us (and by extension the world) on the brink of returning to the days of life as “nasty, brutish, and short”! Yet, while the Left and the Right are both claiming the other wants to put everyone in chains, for those who say “they’re both right” to think that blogs, speeches, facebook memes and otherwise waiting for everyone else (who because they haven’t seen the light yet are derided as the “sheeple”) to “wake up” is actually going to work in the long run? How can any of us think we have the luxury of time?
@thequietman: I confess I’m not familiar that Jefferson said that the Constitution should be thrown out and a new one crafted by each generation, but it doesn’t surprise me. I’ve always been an admirer of Jefferson, and it sounds like something he might say.
Well, things are not good, for sure, whether within the U.S. or in much of the world, but let’s not paint doomsday pictures. Yes, people are being tortured and are dying out there, but what else is new? There have been times when things have been much, much worse than they are now. And yet we muddled through. What makes you think things are that different now? One can even postulate that they’re a lot better now than previously.
So I see discussion, debate, information, and the electoral process leading the way through until, hopefully, people see the light or, alternatively, things wind up in a truly hopeless morass.
How can any of us think we have the luxury of time? Well, unless the world is teetoring out of its orbit or some other catastrophic event occurs, we can think there is time to work on things. But regardless one’s conclusion on this, what do you propose?
Since you asked a question, I’ll attempt to answer. I’ll admit some of what I’ve written here is meant in a tone one would take on a debate stage, to try and tease out more about what one thinks.
I agree with you that things have been much, much worse. That’s one of the key things that makes this difficult to talk about. I consider my life on a micro level to be very good and comfortable, and I’m very grateful for that. However, to answer your question about what I think is different about now versus then, do you think that the level of anger, frustration and resentment being seen in the US and world today, whatever the target (the president, people who support/oppose the president, police, people who support/oppose the police, etc.), is simply being magnified thanks to the power of the internet, or is it really reaching something of a tipping point? If people are either actively calling for revolution (whatever their chosen label) or at best have thrown up their hands and acquiesced to it happening, then it seems like some our best minds are being wasted. All the positive steps toward sex worker equality Maggie has reported on during the course of this blog (the Amnesty declaration, the public reaction backfire of Rentboy, increasing skepticism about ‘traficking’ propaganda), I see it all being sent back to square one. It’s selfish, I admit it, but I would not like to see my plans for the future reduced to ashes for a mere ‘hope’ that life after revolution is somehow better, especially since no one seems to have a plan to make it so (at least not that I’ve yet found).
As to what I would propose, I’d prefer a course such as the one you suggest in your fourth paragraph, but it would require the participation of many people who have decided to wash their hands of ‘the system’ and any action that would facilitate it. Just the act of voting, whether it’s ‘for’ a candidate you want in office or just ‘against’ one you don’t want anywhere near power, I think would make a difference.
By the way, since you say you admire Jefferson, have you heard of a program titled “The Thomas Jefferson Hour”? It airs weekly on NPR, specifically Prairie Public in the Dakotas. That’s where I learned about Jefferson’s thoughts about the Constitution I referenced earlier.
@thequietman: I haven’t heard of that program. The local public radio station here does not seem to carry it, nor have others in the other parts of the country where I have lived. Sounds interesting, if a bit out of character for NPR.
I don’t know how old you are, but the present era marked by growing chaos, street demonstrations, and calls for revolution are very reminiscent of the era in which I came of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s. And that was long before the Internet (in fact, I recently read of a bunch of hate mail an author received for her short story that sounded exactly like the kind of stuff people would post on the Internet today, and that was in 1947).
It’s easy to assume that things have never been worse, or better, than they are at present, but in fact societies, the world, governments, and yes, ourselves, go through somewhat circular patterns, and it is easy to lose perspective.
I think that period I speak of at the end of the ’60s and into the ’70s resulted in enormous changes to our own society, changes many of which have spread to the rest of the world. I see — and did at the time — many of those changes as tremendously positive and certainly transformative, but by the end of the period corruption grew from within the social movement (such as it was) and repression was reinforced by the powers without who felt threatened by it. Sadly and ironically, I think that it is people of my generation, and perhaps the one that followed it, who are now attempting to impose the worse elements of their views on society, and especially on younger generations, an ironic distortion of the liberation and move toward individual freedom that marked the initial movement (though admittedly it was a fractured movement).
If we are, as you say, in agreement on the process it will take to move things from their current course, then it behooves us to stay true to the process and do what we can to work toward those changes we would like to see.That takes time, effort, and the willingness to accept it is not a one-directional trend unmarked by setbacks. Revolution, much less violent revolution, is no more a solution now than it would have been c. 1970, just as it was not in other revolutions, such as the Russian and French revolutions or, more recently, the Algerian one or the so-called Arab Spring. The American Revolution is perhaps the sole exception to the negative trend of revolutions throughout history, but we see now the clear signs of its undoing, just as Jefferson foresaw them in its immediate aftermath. It’s just perhaps taken a bit longer to get here than he predicted, but here we are, indeed.
Where the fuck have you been hiding? If anger, frustration and resentment are rising it is is because our situation has become totally outrageous and intolerable.
The problem is that most people are not ready to harness their anger in a constructive way. I know this because I am a hothead who has been trying to practice that for years and failing again and again. Finally I think am getting the idea of doing a controlled burn. It is empowering but it is hard to do.
I’ll give you some hints. If you look like you are angry you are doing it wrong. If you feel like you are angry you are doing it wrong. You need to feel calm, while maintaining an amorphous burn.
But what happens at times like this is that demagogues come forward and found movements that are based on hot outrage. This is frightening to most people and properly so, and then the movement for change can be aborted.
The American Revolution was different because it was not really revolutionary. It consisted of replacing a foreign establishment by a local establishment but it left the class structure intact. The analogous thing today would be to take out the billionaires and leave the multi-millionaires in charge. I don’t think this would be enough. So I think we have to look to nonviolent movements for inspiration.
@pauleaston34: I was wondering. Didn’t see where you got some of that stuff in my posting. The nesting system does present some challenges. It’s not allowing me to reply off your posting so this reply has to go here.
Are you really as self-centered as this makes you appear? The world is going up in flames and you are worried that positive steps toward sex worker equality might be lost? Jesus.
@pauleaston34: I think it’s you who needs to take a chill pill. Where have I been hiding? What planet do you live on?
I’m sorry but this comment nesting format is very hard to follow. Maybe I made a mistake or maybe the software is buggy. My comment was meant as a reply to thequietman where he said “do you think that the level of anger, frustration and resentment being seen in the US and world today, whatever the target (the president, people who support/oppose the president, police, people who support/oppose the police, etc.), is simply being magnified thanks to the power of the internet, or is it really reaching something of a tipping point?”
[…] https://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/wildfire/ […]
@cabrigal: You take such liberties both with my views and the facts that it is impossible to find a logical starting place to respond, and futile besides.I shy away from engagements with dogmatists of either end of the spectrum since they rarely wish to be troubled by reality.
Actually I have got lost. My previous comment was an explanation of another comment. I have no idea whether the comment you were replying to was meant for you or not. Let’s hope it was not.
@pauleaston34: This is why it’s good to follow discussion thread protocol and include the name of the poster to whom you are replying after an @ symbol, as I do here. It’s useful to other readers, but also to the poster and anyone being responded to.
@pauleaston34: Since it appears most of your responses were directed at me, I shall respond to them here to hopefully avoid getting tangled up.
“Where the fuck have you been hiding? If anger, frustration and resentment are rising it is is because our situation has become totally outrageous and intolerable.”
Thank you for answering my question, although I think I was trying to make that point by directing attention to the atrocities cataloged weekly here by Maggie and asking for urgency. As to where I’ve been hiding, I admit that up until about five years ago I had led quite the sheltered life. It wasn’t until after I entered the working world (after a year of college) that I found things like this blog that have exposed me to a much wider range of viewpoints. I’d like to think I’m not hiding anymore.
“The problem is that most people are not ready to harness their anger in a constructive way. I know this because I am a hothead who has been trying to practice that for years and failing again and again. Finally I think am getting the idea of doing a controlled burn. It is empowering but it is hard to do.”
Thank you especially for this. I was looking for an opening to attempt to say something like this but hadn’t found one. I very much agree with you that anger that doesn’t lead to purposeful action can almost be as bad as indifference.
“Are you really as self-centered as this makes you appear? The world is going up in flames and you are worried that positive steps toward sex worker equality might be lost? Jesus.”
I believe I did confess earlier that I had selfish reasons for wanting to resist either passive acquiescence to revolution or calls to revolution without a long-term plan for a favorable aftermath, however I was attempting in this instance to return to the topic this blog is ostensibly centered around in order to question said acquiescence.
I hope I’ve not confused or angered you further.