From:
http://lewrockwell.com/rockwell/dreadgop.html
Dreading Republican Rule
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
All things equal, it looks like a shoe-in for George W.
Bush.
So I'm wondering: is it too early to start hating the Republican
administration and all the groupies it is going to bring to town,
all the pork it will hand out, all the flim-flam artists it will
employ to cover the sellouts and abuses of power? You know it’s
going to happen. The presidency of George Bush Junior, however
much of a relief from the Clinton administration, is going to be
a repeat of his father’s with slightly different coloring. That
is, one long dark night of politics will be replaced with
another.
The glory of American democracy is that it permits us to kick out
the nasty tribe of parasitical despots that is currently ruling
us. The tragedy is that it installs another group that will do
essentially the same thing. Already you get the sense that GOP
apologists, propagandists, and power brokers are gearing up for
their turn at steering Leviathan. This is one reason the
Republican Congress didn't cut government. Why shrink something
you are going to inherit?
There are already signs that Republican Rule is going to be
dreadful. Consider the choice of Richard Cheney as vice
president. He was the mouthpiece for the military-industrial
complex during the war on Iraqi civilians that Bush’s father
undertook ten years ago. Watching Cheney justify the killing
fields in a distant country that never did any harm to us
reminded me of Hannah Arendt's phrase: the banality of evil.
To this day, people wonder what the point of that war was. Here's
a good conspiracy theory for you: it was designed to set back
Iraq’s oil business, permit OPEC to consolidate its power,
drive up the price of oil, and put new profits into the hands of
the oil companies that were the sponsors of the Bush presidency.
Hey, take it or leave it, but this theory certainly fits the
facts. You have a better theory as to why American tax dollars
were spent to massacre those poor folks, not just during one
period but for an entire decade of sanctions and bombings?
Also Justin Raimondo points out that Cheney, as CEO of the
Halliburton Company, a major recipient of wartime and postwar
subsidies through its Texas subsidiary Brown & Root, benefitted
enormously from the war on Serbia. It received the engineering
contract to house and feed US troops in Kosovo. It gets better:
Halliburton's main job is providing infrastructure for oil
extraction, particularly in countries with nationalized
industries. With Bush-Cheney, we have an all-oil ticket, one with
a history of war-making and war-profiteering.
Oh what joy it will be to have our guys in charge! The Bush
administration can surely find a spot for the "highly respected"
John Danforth, whose report on the Waco massacre is a model for
how the government goes about justifying itself.
At Waco, we thought we saw a small religious community minding
its own business, suddenly invaded by a huge SWAT team carrying
and firing automatic weapons, tortured for 51days by the best
psychological warfare techniques, asphyxiated with flammable
poison gas, and then crushed by tanks ramming through their home
and church.
But what were we thinking? The government didn’t fire a single
shot. It was merely defending itself against the violent people
inside. The Davidians could have surrendered. Instead, they got
themselves killed or even killed themselves. In either case it
was their own fault.
I might suggest some further employment for this trope.
The government has never stolen anything from anyone. Sure, it
finds the need to collect revenue from those who benefit from its
services, and there are some freeloaders who resent this and try
to make an issue of it. Sometimes the deadbeats have to be
reminded that they must pay a price for civilization. And, yes,
wages are sometimes garnered when the arrears grow beyond that
which the tax code permits.
But steal? Never!
Also, the government has never murdered anyone. In wartime, there
is sometimes collateral damage, as in Serbia, Iraq, Haiti,
Somalia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Colombia,
Vietnam, etc., etc. It is said that these casualties are
"civilian." But in what sense are people who resist the US really
civilians? By failing to overthrow their own evil governments,
they share responsibility for making the war necessary, and thus
are military targets.
Murder? That's just the stuff of conspiracy. There's no evidence.
If there is evidence, there's a justification for US behavior.
There always is. Sure, mistakes are made. But never evil. Never
malice.
Also, the government has never abducted or kidnapped anyone.
Draft registration and conscription are necessary to defend
freedom. The experience young people get from the military is
often valuable later in life. In fact, people ought to pay the
government to draft them!
How dare you compare the draft to actual crimes.
Are you getting the hang of this now? Here's the deal. The
government, by definition, cannot commit crimes. What it does may
superficially look criminal, by the standards applied to private
individuals. For example, if you surrounded John Danforth’s
house with tanks and sprayed poison gas into his living room, you
would be in a heap of trouble. But that’s the way the system
works. Government makes the laws, and decides what's right and
wrong. When it says it isn't doing wrong, it's not. Got it?
Danforth, of course, is a Republican. And even Republican
conservatives are celebrating his silly report. Here's the
actual, real-life words of Michael Potemra, deputy managing
editor of National Review: "Danforth's conclusions are serious
and balanced. What the government did wrong in the Waco case was
on the order of bungling and defensiveness, not evil or malice."
And now, the clincher, the dread words that remind you that
Republicans are just as in love with power as the Democrats, and
that Clintonian misrule will be replaced by Bushian misrule. Says
Potemra: "We're about to have a national election to transfer
power to a new administration.... To be effective in doing the
work of government, that new administration will need to count on
a public sense of its legitimacy. It's important, therefore, that
we not encourage the fantasies of those who want to believe the
worst about our American institutions."
But the central government is no longer an American institution.
It is positively un-American. The only possible reason for
wanting the Leviathan state to have legitimacy today is the
belief that you and your friends are going to be in charge of it.
But don't call that patriotism. It's nothing more than power
lust.
July 28, 2000
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is president of the Ludwig von
Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. He also edits a daily
news site, LewRockwell.com.
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