Supporting Your Enemies

I have been a member of The National Rifle Association off and on since I was about twelve years old and a Life Member for about the past twenty years. The management of the organization takes the members for fools. There are better and more aggressive organizations such as Gun Owners Of America and Jews For The Preservation Of Firearms Ownership to name two, but as somebody said years ago, gun owners are like fleas on an elephant and must go where the elephant goes because the other organizations don't have the clout of the NRA.

Wayne LaPierre once famously referred to agents of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms as “jack-booted government thugs.” I don't know about their footwear, but they are thugs. The problem with the NRA and many other organizations is that they think certain agencies are bad, but the government overall is good. They're all thugs. Many issues of The American Rifleman will have some kind of laudatory article about some cop, military man, sheriff, FBI agent or some other government hack who is trained to follow orders. The BATF is the bogeyman because it is the agency charged with enforcing the firearms laws. If it were the FBI, the FCC or the EPA that enforced the laws they would be the ones wearing the jack-boots.

The February 2014 issue of The American Rifleman has an ad on page 73 seeking bequests to the NRA with the caption, “Where Do You Want Your Estate To Go?”: “To the government?” (with a very unflattering picture of Obama and Biden) “Or freedom's future?” (with a picture of a guy coaching a woman with a shotgun). This is all fine, but why is “the government” bad when it's Obama, but good when it's Sgt. Doright of the First Cavalry or the Podunk Sheriff's Department? Obama is not the one who is going to kick down your door for violating a gun control law; it's Sgt. Doright that will handle that. You are probably never going to be in any danger from Obama. It will be one of his agents who kills you, seizes your property, breaks into your house, hauls you off without charge, prohibits you from flying, spies on you, prevents your leaving the country, and on and on. Almost all of these outrages will be perpetrated by a person wearing a government uniform of some kind.

It's not just the NRA that propagates this sort of Zoroastrian/dualist view of the government; it's the gun manufacturers and advertisers too. One manufacturer has an ad for its product that shows an entry team of cops preparing to break in a door with the caption in boldface type, “BUILT FOR THOSE WHO REQUIRE NO INTRODUCTION.” Well, actually they should require an introduction, otherwise called a search warrant issued upon “oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Hardly any “dynamic entries” are ever justified. When the police are confronted with real danger, they usually cordon off the area as in school shooting cases or burn the place to the ground as in the case of Christopher Dorner, Gordon Kahl, MOVE in Philadelphia or the Branch Davidians in Texas.

There seems to be broad support for the military even though the Founding Fathers feared a standing army and would not even authorize funding for one for longer than two years at a time.

It is easy to see why a standing army is a danger to society when you consider how easy it is to get ordinary people to obey authority with very little coercion. This was demonstrated by Stanley Milgram in his experiments and chronicled in his book Obedience To Authority. If ordinary people are so easy to command, it is a fortiori the case that young boys who have been through obedience training known as boot camp or police academy will follow commands like trained dogs after their personal judgment and individuality have been reduced or destroyed.

There are plenty of products sold only to government agencies that John Q. Public is not allowed to have. Why manufacture a product – other than for money, or course – that is going to be turned against you? Why, in a nation founded upon the idea of unalienable rights and popular sovereignty is the government permitted to have weapons that are prohibited to the individual? This is exactly backwards; it is the government that should be prohibited certain weapons. The government is the agent, not the sovereign.

Remington used to market a folding stock for the 870 shotgun that had “For law enforcement only” stamped into the side of it. Why? There was nothing illegal about anybody having it. Why provide your government customers products that you deny to non-government buyers?

I used to joke about – although not entirely in jest – forming a company that sold weapons and equipment that stated in its ads, “Civilian sales only.” We would all be better off if the government feared the people instead of the other way around.

Crocodiles And Government

John "Pondoro" Taylor was an Irishman who went to Africa to become a big-game hunter and ivory poacher.
He wrote several books on his exploits. In one of them he mentions how it used to puzzle him why the natives would go down to the river after having seen a crocodile erupt from the water the previous day or hour and drag one of their fellow villagers under.

Finally, it was explained to him that the natives believed that the crocodile was an incarnate soul of someone who had been wronged by the victim- sort of an avenging angel. They reasoned that since they hadn't cheated or killed or otherwise wronged anybody they had nothing to worry about.

To most Westerners this seems like an obvious superstition, but many people entertain a similar idea about government. Any time someone expresses apprehension about some government program he can be sure that somebody will accuse him of being "paranoid." Fifteen or so years ago I coined the term (which strangely has not been adopted by the Psychology profession) "sanguinoid" to describe a mental disorder that renders the sufferer subject to delusions that everybody is out to help him. It seems that many people entertain this notion vis a vis government.

Many people in totalitarian societies had no fear of the secret police because they knew they hadn't done anything wrong. They didn't worry about the submerged saurian because they were innocent of any crime, real or imagined.

Every day there are stories about some TSA outrage; cops bursting into the wrong house and killing an occupant or two;  feds raiding a farm selling raw milk, or seizing the computers of a guitar maker. Anybody who reads news stories has heard of at least a few of these, but most think that the victims "must have done something or they wouldn't be after them."

I have had someone tell me personally that he "hadn't had a problem" with the TSA even though he is aware of the agency's antics such as groping six-year-old girls or making eighty-something year-old women in wheel chairs remove their diapers. This is the American equivalent of going to the river after a croc attack.

"I'm from the government and I'm here to help"

It seems as though the average person has an infinite capacity to think that government abuses are never going to be directed at them. From drone attacks to planting drugs to detention without charges to roughing up demonstrators of various persuasions, it's never going to affect them. Besides that, "We" are the government, so there's another reason we have nothing to fear.

Japanese and Italian Americans found out just how much "We" are the government when the government concentrated them in internment camps during WW II.

Americans have forgotten - or never been taught - that government is a very dangerous tool. It is organized, monopolized force and should be kept on a short, securely anchored chain. St. Augustine wrote that the devil is a chained dog. He cannot hurt you unless you go within the radius of his operation. Government was set up to be something like that, but it keeps increasing the length of its own chain until its radius of operation encompasses all human activity.

Those who don't see the government for what it actually is are like the woman in the children's song who thought she could ride the crocodile:

She sailed away on a sunny summer day on the back of a crocodile,
"You see," said she, "he's as tame as tame can be;
I'll ride him down the Nile,"
The croc winked his eye as she bade them all goodbye, wearing a happy smile,
At the end of the ride the lady was inside, and the smile was on the crocodile!

2011: A Civil Liberties Year in Review

From The Rutherford Institute

"More powers for the FBI. As detailed in the FBI’s operations manual, rules were relaxed in order to permit the agency’s 14,000 agents to search law enforcement and private databases, go through household trash, and deploy surveillance teams, with even fewer checks against abuse. FBI agents were also given the go-ahead to investigate individuals using highly intrusive monitoring techniques, including infiltrating suspect organizations with confidential informants and photographing and tailing suspect individuals, without having any factual basis for suspecting them of wrongdoing. These new powers extend the agency’s reach into the lives of average Americans and effectively transform the citizenry into a nation of suspects, reversing the burden of proof so that we are now all guilty until proven innocent. Thus, no longer do agents need evidence of possible criminal or terrorist activity in order to launch an investigation. Now, they can “proactively” look into people and groups, searching databases without making a record about it, conducting lie detector tests and searching people’s trash."

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