-Caveat Lector- From http://www.rockfordinstitute.org/News/Wilson/NewsCW031201.htm }}>Begin Monday, March 12, 2001 "CITIZENS AND SUBJECTS" REVISITED by Clyde Wilson "Citizens or Subjects?" was the interrogatory title of an essay of mine published in 1980 in Robert W. Whitaker's New Right Papers. In it, I discussed what was, from the point of view of the Founding Fathers, the progressive imperialization of the American regime and the different condition and fate to be expected by people as imperial subjects rather than republican citizens. I do not claim any originality for describing what was, to me, obvious. Thinkers of the Old Right had already pointed out the imperializing effect of global warfare; and Murray Rothbard had, I believe, already used the phrase "military-industrial-welfare complex." At best, my essay was an early entry in the contemporary discussion, but it got considerable attention at the time. National Review, then still a semi-principled journal, called me the "silver-tongued voice of the New Right," and the article was widely reprinted. Since then, �Citizens or Subjects� has become a hotter concept. It was a theme of Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign. I am even told that the phrase was used by George W. Bush in a recent message. (I never listen to those things. I do not have so many years left that I can waste time on meaningless babble.) If so, I am sure Bush, in a typical imperial maneuver, turned the concept inside out. I was concerned with the government�s threat to citizenly virtue; the President sees citizenship as a support for imperial government. I concluded the essay with this statement (Reagan had just become president): What the future will resemble if we succeed in the renewal of the republic cannot be predicted, because for communities of self-confident, self-governing citizens, the future is open. If we fail, the future is certain to be shaped by the sad, sullen outlines of servitude. The verdict may not have been formally announced so far, but it is pretty clear from the evidence how the jury will have to vote. The counter-revolution hoped for in 1980 is as dead as can be, and the imperialization of American society has progressed beyond what we could then have imagined. In a republic, I argued, citizens had intrinsic value--to protect them was the purpose of government. In an empire, people are material for the rulers to do with as they wish. They may be expended in the interest of or even for the whims of rulers. What have we learned in the decade of Bush Senior and Clinton? If you prove irritating enough to the government or powerful groups it favors, the government will kill you, your wife, your children, and your dog. Congress, the federal courts, and the media will cover up for the killers. Indeed, state and local police have been federalized and militarized to a significant degree. As one would expect in an empire, the primary mission of the police is no longer to protect the people: it is to manage the people for the benefit of the government. The common law traditionally distinguished between malo in se (something wrong by nature, such as murder and robbery} and malum prohibitum (something wrong only because the government says so, like driving over 55 or not filing your income taxes). Emphasis has shifted dramatically to the latter. While federal judges make it difficult to prosecute and punish the criminals who prey on you and me, it becomes ever more dangerous for a citizen to infringe government regulations or oppose government agents. The chief mission of the police now is not to protect the people from criminals but to protect the government from the people. There can be no more certain evidence of this than "gun control. A President, like an emperor, may lie at will to the people (Bush: "Read my lips." Clinton: "I did not have sex with that woman.") and suffer no adverse consequences in law or public opinion. Abortion is now just as acceptable in the U.S. as in a country that has never been Christian. The same is true of sodomy. The GOP has abandoned all but the pretense of opposing the imperial agenda on any significant matter and has no identifiable purpose or principle other than serving its leaders. Anyone who still thinks at this date that our present condition is all the fault of the Democrats and the Republicans will save us is either a fool or a paid or unpaid shill for the party. Government, The Media, and Big Business have become almost interchangeable. Our regime approximates what Hillaire Belloc described early in the 20th century as �the servile state.� It is true the enemies of the free market have been vanquished intellectually and praxeologically. Nobody believes the strange pseudo-science/pseudo-religion of Marxism any more except the American professoriate, the class of Americans least equipped to deal with serious ideas. The fact that economic freedom has triumphed in the minds of men may well pay dividends in the long run. But let's not light the bonfires yet: An intellectual triumph cannot overnight quell the power of political patronage and special interests. If enough interests with enough influence are gaining from collectivism, they won't give up their plums just because their theory has been proved wrong. The greatest obstacle to free enterprise has always been the unwillingness of giant corporations to practice it instead of buying favors from politicians (admittedly as easy as seduction in a brothel). The imperial state has shown great ability to co-opt and neuter ideas. It has already established definitions of free trade as government-managed global commerce, and capitalism as private ownership with government subsidy, while small-scale private property--the only real basis for economic freedom and political freedom--is not all that secure in our current regime. The American armed forces are shot through with arrogance, incompetence, and corruption and harbor increasing numbers of persons who are purely instruments of the state and have no real attributes of citizenship. Their main active function is to kill foreigners at the whims of the ruling class and to spread moral depravity through the world. The media, national and local, no longer maintain even a plausible pretense of non-partisanship. It grows ever less possible to get a mass hearing for unapproved ideas. It is impossible to bring up matters that are vital and that were discussed fairly freely even ten years ago. The division between what people really think and what they are required to give lip service to has reached Soviet proportions, the only difference being that the government cannot yet routinely suppress dissenters by murder and imprisonment. Nowhere is this more evident than among academics. There has always been a party line among them, but outside of New York a certain amount of decorum and lip service to evidence and reason had to be maintained. Rather than a forum for ideas, our institutions are beginning to enforce groupthink, which relies on labeling rather than reason. Hopes are placed in talk radio and Internet samizdat as alternative sources of information and opinion, and indeed they have made a difference for many people. However, the government has not yet even begun to exercise its powers to control them. Politicians still plot their courses by the evening news broadcast and the morning paper and the new communications have not changed that. Our ruling elite vaunts itself for its compassion, morality, and wisdom. Perhaps half the population understands the truth---that it is selfish, corrupt, and superficial. But our half of the population is powerless as long as imperialists control the "respectable" bounds of public discourse, as long as Americans tamely obey the oligarchical rule of federal judges, and as long as the Left is massively funded by taxpayers, as it is. Reform appears not to be possible because the Republicans will NEVER stand up to the media and NEVER attempt curbing the judiciary or de-funding the Left. In fact, the party will never even admit these issues into the national discussion. Third World immigration, avidly promoted by both parties, is destroying the coherence of countless American communities, making it increasingly difficult to organize grassroots resistance. "Educational reform," avidly promoted by both parties, is progressively dumbing-down the population and depriving it of its native culture, which has lead to millions of people lacking the ability to question government. Here there is a real ray of hope, however: the growing exodus of responsible parents from the government education system. The time may not be too distant when home-schooled children will be the aristocracy of Ameri ca, the people who have knowledge and reasoning ability. American "culture," except for isolated pockets and families, is trash that has polluted not only our country, but also the entire world. There are now no significant moral limitations on what can be purveyed as mass entertainment. The readers of serious material are a tiny, powerless minority of Americans. Americans' devotion to materialism, athletic spectacles, and trash entertainment, which covers up for their spiritual and cultural emptiness, is intensifying and is the only mental and spiritual reality known to millions of the young. Consider: American boys used to be noted for their self-reliance and know-how. Now they cannot even play ball without being uniformed and helmeted like little Nazis. A boy doing what Jefferson called the best training for character--exploring the woods with a long gun--would, in many places, be seized by the government for re-education. It is quite easy to forecast the next initiatives of the imperial agenda: confiscation of private firearms, "reparations for slavery," official versions of history, enfranchisement of ever more aliens, "hate crime" laws against free speech. All this works to turn American citizens into interchangeable ciphers without any inherited identity that might prove troublesome to government and global capital. Who in power or hoping for power will oppose them? There is a good chance that within a decade they will all be fact and will be defended by "conservatives" as expressions of the true American way. The only other alternative is that many substantial groups of Americans will have enough self-respect to think outside the box and mount an effective opposition. Copyright 2001, www.ChroniclesMagazine.org 928 N. Main St., Rockford, IL 61103 End<{{ T' A<>E<>R Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the "democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded subjects. [[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard, Fox & Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]] <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. 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