A Brief Political Diatribe

Some say it was Thoreau, others old Tom Jefferson, and still others Thomas Paine; but whoever said "that government governs best which governs least" spoke words with which I heartily concur. In fact, I embrace the so-called "Anarchist" ideal that every human being ought to be brought up to take responsibility for himself/herself and his/her dependents, and to have enough sense to recognize that the limits to one's own rights and freedoms are the rights and freedoms of others--which it is each individual's responsibility to look out for. Fully self-actualized human beings know how to play together cooperatively and to care for one another.

Unfortunately, I am painfully aware that fully self-actualized human beings are the exception and not the rule. The rule is that most adults are really still babies in big bodies and, left to their own devices, will not place a premium on the rights of others. The "golden rule" just never seems to sink very deep into the average individual's psyche.

But even if we were to achieve a society of fully self-actualized human beings, there would still be situations of conflict in need of mediation and that mediation, even if temporary, would represent a form of governance. So, "pure" Anarchism (what is rightly termed "libertarian socialism") is best understood, in my view, as a worthy ideal but not one that anyone should hold their breath for. Marx jousted with the Anarchists of his day, but his concept of the "withering away" of the State was an approximation of their ideal--deny it though doctrinaire Marxists may.

So where does that leave us? It leaves us to minimizing the role of government in particular ways. The first step would be to dismantle the military-industrial complex that has seized the reigns of governance in the United States. If there is to be any kind of standing army, it should be a sort of "peace corps"--not sent abroad, but kept at home where it has its work cut out for it rebuilding the infrastructure of this country. This would be an "army" in the sense of a disciplined organization--but it cannot be armed and it must in fact be trained in the philosophy and tactics of non-violence.

The second step would be to change the direction of wealth re-distribution in this country. One of the great canards that the average American is wont to mindlessly repeat is that there is no systematic re-distribution of wealth in the United States--that's what the Communists were up to.

The Internal Revenue Code is, in fact, the legal basis upon which the United States government re-distributes wealth. Political lobbying is a second basis. The re-distribution has been steadily moving in the wrong direction throughout my lifetime--from the "have nots" to the "haves." Those who have been paying attention recognize that corporate welfare (not "Horatio Alger" bootstrapping) is what underwrites the great financial success stories of our time. We need to reverse the direction of the money flows towards the creation of a "commonwealth" society.

Third, political "trust-busting." The Republicrat-Democan mono-party (or politburo) has a stranglehold upon this caricature of a democracy we call the American Republic. It is time for a non-violent people's revolution to seize power and convene a Constitutional convention that will write a multi-party parliamentary system into federal law. As Americans, we deserve a "political spectrum" that IS a spectrum in more than name only.

So far, this may not sound as if I have reduced the role of government in our lives very much but I would argue that the dismantling of the military-industrial complex as it presently stands is, in effect, the dissolution of government as we have come to know it. The Federal bureaucracy would indeed whither away as the bulldozers decimate the Pentagon and its operatives on K Street are conscripted into the peace corps to see if they can be morally rehabilitated. Wealth would return to the individual states which would operate once again as a confederation of republics. The role of the Federal government would be mainly to coordinate the efforts of these republics to behave like fully self-actualized human beings and not self-centered babies in big bodies.

Enough dreaming. We need to get to work...I would encourage any reader still awake to read the late, great, Richard Rorty's "Achieving Our Country."

From the radical-reformist Left, your resident unreconstructed Utopian,

Mazeppa

The Greybeards Who Terrorize America

In my lifetime, these are the faces that have been presented to me as the faces of evil. Two of the three (Ho Chi Minh and Osama bin Laden) were, at one time, allies of my country. Khomeini had little use for us after the CIA engineered a coup to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran and installed an autocrat (the Shah) who would be more compliant with our oil companies. Ho Chi Minh was disillusioned when we stepped in to take the place of the French after they had given up on Indochine as a colonial possession. Bin Laden turned against us after we abandoned Afghanistan once the Soviets were driven out.

I do not deny that all of these men bear responsibility for the shedding of innocent blood. But they are not the only ones by any means.

Where are the faces of those who turned these former friends into sworn enemies? Who will call them to account?

What goes around, comes around.

Submitting ourselves to the requirements of justice would be the first step on the road to peace. Until we make such a move, all of our protestations about being a "peaceful people" are nothing more than lies.

Act For Change

The activist organization Act for Change (probably soon to be listed as a "terrorist cell") emailed me the text of a letter that I had to admire for its underlying sense of poetic justice. I gladly added my signature and sent one on to both of North Carolina's Senators. Here is the text:

Senator Richard Burr
U.S. Senate
217 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-0001

Dear Senator Burr,

Former President Bush called them the "most insidious of
traitors." He was referring, of course, to those who reveal the
identities of America's covert operatives.

Scooter Libby is a traitor and is being detained in jail while
his appeals are being heard. Why not send Libby to Gitmo? Unlike
other people currently detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he's
been convicted of his crimes in a court of law. You might say
this is inappropriate -- but if it isn't good enough for Libby,
then it isn't good enough for anyone.

I ask that you publicly call for Scooter Libby to be imprisoned
in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- or, join fellow senators in
co-sponsoring legislation to shut down Guantanamo. Senator
Feinstein has introduced legislation (S. 1249) that will require
President Bush to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba.

You should sign on as a co-sponsor -- or publicly call for
Scooter Libby to serve his sentence there.

I look forward to your response to my letter.


Sincerely, etc.

An identical letter went out to old Elizabeth "Libby" Dole.

As Senator Dole's Viagra-popping husband was fond of shouting during the Clinton years, "WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE?!?"

Of course, the disposition of Scooter Libby is, as I have blogged before, more "theater of the corrupt." The money has been deposited in Scooter's Swiss bank accounts and the pardon has long been inked and placed in our dear President's desk, awaiting issuance during his final hours in office. There will be no black hood and water-boarding for our Scooter. Just a few months in the pen where he will be writing his self-vindicating memoirs, negotiating the multi-million dollar publication deal, and dreaming of his release to enjoy the ultimate fruits of public service. Yes, indeed. Makes me wonder why I lacked the patriotism to dip my hand into the Federal feed-bag.

On The Mindless Menace of Violence

If you read nothing else today, please take a few moments to read this speech, delivered by the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy almost 2 months to the day before his fatal shooting.

Then reflect on what was stolen from us all...

O See With What Ease

our religions adapt themselves to power and to the violence necessary to procure and sustain it.

Surely true religion, if there be such a thing, arrays itself against it all.

Reporting the Wars

In his Journals from the 1960's, the novelist John Cheever wrote:

The President, on the deck of an aircraft carrier, says, "Your weapons and your wings are the swords and the shields of our freedom. The names of your planes--Phantom, Intruder, Hawkeye, Vigilante, Skyhawk--they are the watchwords of our liberty."

The President he was quoting was the Democrat Lyndon Johnson. The war was Viet Nam--a little southeast asian country that was supposedly a threat to American liberty. The deck of an aircraft carrier: it seems our political image-makers and propagandists have a fairly limited symbolic vocabulary. But, apparently, it is expansive enough for the limited imaginations of many of their constituents. Cheever continued:

Republicans and Southern Democrats have hamstrung the anti-poverty program. Men and women of Jewish descent are blackballed at the country club. Next to armaments, the nation's largest-selling product is whiskey and drugs. Wall Street capitalists are real, militaristic, and avaracious. You can see them on the station platform any morning, the overt and cheerful sponsors of tyranny all over the world. They raise the bonds for Salazar, Franco, Papa Doc.

It strikes me that our "democracy" differs from the Turkish variety only by degree, not by kind. In Turkey, ever since the revolution, a military junta stands by and permits civilians to run the country unless they (the members of the junta) feel that the civilian-face of the government has moved too close to the religious values of the majority of the population. At that point, they stage a coup and put the "right kind" (read: unelected) civilians in charge.

In the Spring of 1963, President Kennedy announced at American University a new, cooperative vision for U.S. foreign policy. He had already demonstrated the previous year, during the Cuban Missile crisis, a determination to oppose the Pentagon's "bomb-'em-into-the- Stone-Age" method of settling disputes. In so doing, he averted a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. November 22, 1963, Jack Kennedy was shot dead by a "lone gunman" and Lyndon Johnson, he of the flight deck, was Commander-in-Chief.

In the final months of his life, Martin Luther King, Jr., had begun to draw connections in his public speeches between racism, capitalism, urban American poverty, and U. S. militarism. As I say, those turned out to be the final months of his life. Another "lone gunman."

A few months after King's murder, Bobby Kennedy, whose anti-war candidacy for the Presidency was gathering real steam was shot dead by a "lone gunman."

Next to armaments, the nation's largest-selling product is whiskey and drugs. Wall Street capitalists are real, militaristic, and avaracious. You can see them on the station platform any morning, the overt and cheerful sponsors of tyranny all over the world. They raise the bonds for Salazar, Franco, Papa Doc.

Cheever, in 1967, writes:

One knows all of this, and the corruption of the war is inestimable...This is madness...

And it's business as usual.

There are, today, so many besetting madnesses. Greed and violence--or their passive acceptance--seem to me to have overtaken the American character. Grasping and striking; the cheerful sponsorship of tyranny all over the world.

The current poster boy of the flight deck stole the election of 2000 and very likely the election of 2004. But he has no worries; no "lone gunman" stalks him in the shadows. He has made sure of that by staying close to the "winning side." Yes, he wins--no matter how the wars turn out--because the "winning side" is the side of the war profiteers. War is profitable Big Business. George W. Bush is the civilian-face of the military-industrial-complex.

Welcome to Turkish democracy--American-style. Of the two versions, ours is less honest.

If only the religious values of the majority of the American population were such that we found ourselves scandalized by our government's militarism--then the Pentagon-junta would be forced to come out of the shadows and play their hand straight. Stage an open coup. As it stands now, they get away every day with murder.

War without end. Amen.

War Criminal