More and more these days, one hears that the best way to support
our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the hundred and umpty-odd
other
countries they're stationed in around the world is to bring them
all
home.
It's very difficult to disagree with that sentiment, or with
the
thinking behind it. However for me, at least, it's equally difficult
to agree without some amount of trepidation. I have my reasons,
as a
novelist who reflexively constructs plots out of facts that may
appear
isolated and unrelated to other people, and as a student of classical
history.
You may call them "factoids" if you prefer.
Whatever you call them, three of these things have been keeping
me
up at night, recently, and, I think, bear discussion and perhaps
even
some kind of action on the part of those who wish to avoid the
kind of
state slavery we have witnessed in China and elsewhere over the
past
century.
The first consists of stories we've all been reading for at
least
a decade that the federal government has been constructing enormous
"relocation centers" out in the middle of nowhere for
taking care of
disaster refugees (they say) or the detention of dissenters as
the
Noose World Order grows tighter around the vulnerable throat of
Lady
Liberty. Recent rumors have the concentration camps being built
by
Halliburton, principle corporate beneficiary of the wars in Iraq
and
Afghanistan.
Http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1062
will get you started, but there is plenty of material out there
that I have no certain way to evaluate. Put "concentration
camp"+"american" in your Google window and then
jump back out of the way to see what I mean.
I haven't written about these stories before, because I had
no way
of knowing whether they're true or not, and they're depressing.
They
seem certainly plausible, given the character of the Bush and
Clinton
regimes.
The second thing keeping me up is a story that an elite cabal
is planning, without consulting any of us, to merge Canada, Mexico,
and the USA economically and politically. Wikipedia says it isn't
so <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Union>.
Human Events <http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=14965>
says it's happening already. The merger's supposed to occur within
the next couple of years.
It's also said that they're creating an enormous super highway
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_SuperCorridor_Coalition>
(Halliburton again?) from Canada to Mexico, bisecting our own
country. The strategist within me feels the hair stand up on the
back of his neck, remembering that the Autobahn was built by Hitler,
not as a convenience for German motorists, but as a means of getting
tanks and troops around the country quickly to maintain political
and military control.
This new country, goes the story -- the "North American
Union" --
would not feel bounded by the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of
Rights,
but would govern as many another nation does, through "management"
policies that look upon us, not as entities endowed with certain
inalienable rights, but as cattle to be branded, tracked, and
herded
around.
Do I know if any of this is true? I do not. Do I worry that
it might be? You bet -- it's perfectly consistent with things
I do know about.
But it's the third thing that has driven me to my keyboard (after
checking to make sure my powder is dry) is a slowly dawning awareness
on my part of another corporation presently benefitting from the
Bush
Administration's illegal wars, a corporation apparently also looking
forward to being of much greater use to the New Fascism right
here at
home.
That corporation is Blackwater USA, which, under the guise of
a private security company, has become an army unto itself, rivaling
the government's forces in numbers and power. Supposedly there
are around 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Some reports say that
there are 25-40,000 Blackwater personnel over there, as well,
just itching to finish establishing an overseas empire, and then
to come home and start pushing us Americans around the same way
they have done the Iraqis.
Learn more at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_usa>
and at <http://www.wtprn.com/Blackwater.html>
In a way, Iraq is just a great big rehearsal stage for them,
with
their house-to-house searches for "illegal" weapons
and so-called
"insurgents" (a fascist euphemism for individuals attempting
to throw
off a foreign occupying army). Blackwater personnel were also
among
the machinegun-toting thugs who wandered the ruined streets of
New
Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina (see the URLs above) and
now
they're establishing additional headquarters in Illinois and in
California, creating what amounts to a string of private paramilitary
bases.
You can probably see where I'm going with this. Suddenly a new
government, the North American Union, is thrust upon us whether
we like it or not. The United States Constitution and the Bill
of Rights are hereby null and void. If anybody tries to object,
there's always kidnapping and indefinite incarceration, made politically
possible by the War on Terror. And if the military doesn't like
it -- remember that two thirds of the Marines questioned in the
1995 "Twenty-Nine Palms" survey conducted by Lieutenant
Commander Ernest Guy Cunningham said that they would not
participate in any general disarmament of the American populace
(see <http://jpfo.org/alert20041112.htm>
and <http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/m/militarysurvey.htm>)
-- they, exactly like the rest of us, will have to face the hired
guns of Blackwater USA, mercenaries eager to do the bidding of
whoever pays them.
Of course I could be wrong, but I'm afraid that the history
of the last several decades in America doesn't support that kind
of hope. Any country in which something like Ruby Ridge or Waco
can happen -- and the perpetrators get medals and raises instead
a long jump at the end of a short rope -- any country that endorses
incarceration without due process, and the torture of prisoners,
is ripe for this sort of coup d'etat.
Can anything be done? For the moment, it's a matter for lawyers,
of which I know there are many, among the readers of this column.
I'm
limited in what I can say here, by the rules that govern nonprofit
corporations, but I'd be interested to see what legal writers
might
come up with by way of federal and state prohibitions on concentration
camps, on political mergers, and on maintaining private armies.
I'd
like to see the kind of "purely symbolic gestures" at
the city and
county levels that neoconservatives make fun of so nervously and
unconvincingly.
I know that it isn't customary for a libertarian, especially
a
notoriously radical one like yours truly, to say "There ought
to be a
law". But when the proposed law acts to further bind the
government,
and only affects politicians, bureaucrats, and their hirelings,
I have
come to believe that it's not only permissable, it's also vitally
necessary.
More than anything else, what I'd like to see is a Constitutional
amendment that would make it a capital offense for any politician,
bureaucrat, or other government employee to violate -- or attempt
to
violate through legislative activity -- anybody's liberties under
the
the Bill of Rights. How the Founding Fathers manged to miss that
one
is the great mystery -- and the continuing tragedy -- of American
history.
The ancient Roman senator Cato the Elder is probably most famous
for making speeches -- they may have been about the price of grain,
or rebuilding some monument, or anything else -- that always ended
with "Carthago delenda est": "Carthage
must be destroyed". Eventually the other Romans got sick
and tired of hearing it and went and destroyed Carthage.
My wife Cathy -- the fountainhead of many of "my"
best ideas --
suggests that from here on, whenever any libertarian, or anybody
else
who wants their free country back again, makes some kind of political
statement, that, no matter what that statement is about, they
should
always append a final paragraph demanding the swift passage of
a
Constitutional Penalty Clause, until such a clause becomes a political
reality.
Now if I can just figure out how to say it in Latin ...
--
=============================================================
Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith has been
writing about guns and gun ownership for more than 30 years.
He is the author of 27 books, the most widely-published and
prolific libertarian novelist in the world, and is considered
an expert on the ethics of self-defense. His writings may be
seen on the following sites:
The Webley Page: http://www.lneilsmith.org
_The Libertarian Enterprise_: http://www.ncc-1776.org
_The Probability Broach: The Graphic Novel_, _Roswell,
Texas_, and _TimePeeper_ (August 2007): http://www.bigheadpress.com
LNS at Random (blog): http://www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/
LNS at JPFO:
http://www.jpfo.org/smith/smith-nra.htm
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