-Caveat Lector- from alt.conspiracy ----- As always, Caveat Lector. Om K ----- <A HREF="http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_excomm/19990423_xex_invitation_t.sh tml">Invitation to anarchy </A> ----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Invitation to anarchy ------------------------------------------------------------------------ By Jerome Zeifman � 1999 Jerome Zeifman The recent slaughter at Colorado's Columbine High School has generated a wave of media experts who are ignoring one factor that possibly contributes to psychopathic behavior. Admittedly, special consultants to CNN, MSNBC, et al. can enhance our understanding of the "alienation" of the young members of the "Trenchcoat Mafia" -- who celebrated Hitler's birthday by shooting and bombing their more well adjusted peer groups. But these days it is not fashionable to raise the question of our own government's role models as a contributing factor. To explain the slaughter, the mainstream media declared its own kind of war against its main competitor -- the Internet. It now contends that more and more psychopaths are gathering together in secret Internet chat rooms to give each other aid and comfort -- and share information on bomb making. Some Clinton spin-meisters also make insidious subliminal suggestions. They would have us believe that all armed cultists are in reality paramilitary units of the Republican "vast right wing conspiracy." Ironically, Attorney General Janet Reno, who personally ordered the fire-bombing of the Waco Davidians -- and whose "moral authority" and political partisanship has been questioned by critics on the Internet -- held a televised press conference on April 22. She visited the Columbine survivors, recalled the Oklahoma bombing and stated: "It's important not to politicize this." Perhaps we need to be reminded that our government and the media has taught several generations of Americans to admire "James Bond 007," "Mission Impossible," "Man from U.N.C.L.E." and "Green Berets." Who can forget the famous scenes? A white haired government official sits at his desk in Washington with the Stars and Stripes clearly visible. He gives secret orders to a handsome young hero to "take out" an enemy, adding: "...but remember, you are on your own. If you get caught, we will deny any official responsibility." Such programs have produced a new kind of hero -- one who will both lie and die for his country. To protect their anonymity, the government does not give such heroes official medals. Instead the new patriots enter media heaven identified by code names. In an earlier era, members of my generation had a different type of role model. During the days of raging McCarthyism as a Democrat, one of my heroes was George F. Kennan, U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union. Kennan spoke out against political demagoguery. He warned us that totalitarian threats to our national security are not only an external danger: "They represent a danger within ourselves -- a danger that something may occur in our own minds and souls which will make us no longer like the persons by whose efforts this republic was founded and held together, but rather like the representatives of that very power that we are trying to combat -- intolerant, secretive, suspicious, cruel and terrified of internal dissension -- because we have lost our own belief in ourselves and in the power of our ideals. The worst thing that [the enemies of our freedoms] could do to us, and the thing we have most to fear from their activities, is that we should become like them." Another hero of mine was Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. He gave my generation of government lawyers this good advice: "The government is the potent omnipresent teacher. For good or ill it teaches the whole people by its example. "Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. "To declare that the end justifies the means -- to declare that the government may commit crimes -- would bring terrible retribution." These days, I fear that it is becoming more and more politically incorrect to quote Kennan and Brandeis -- and to regard President Clinton (whose approval ratings are high) as a dangerous role model for high school students. But I also have hope that the brighter side of the Internet may help save us from ourselves. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jerome Zeifman formerly served as the House Judiciary Committee's chief counsel and as a law professor at the University of Santa Clara. 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