The core goal of tyrants: The "Red-Caesar" Cult and a restored era of The Great Man.

Amid all the recent hubbub and frightening global messes, what can I possibly offer you? 

Perhaps some step-back perspective? A litle context? Not just bigger-picture habits learned from astronomy and science fiction, but also from the real obsession of most SF authors... which is human history.

I refer to the 6000 year litany of pain, crises and dreadful errors that afflicted all our ancestors. That grueling climb from mud, caves and superstition was almost always far worse for those forebears than anything that 99% of us today have ever experienced. Yet, they persevered through a morass of sickness and oppression and death... of mistakes, good intentions, delusions and agony, mixed with streaks of utter malignity, then dollops of heroism and brilliance that - during just the last couple of centuries - finally became something resembling progress... 

...and more recently, something bordering on marvelous! Proving that we can rise up and do and be better. Even if we wind up choosing - tragically - not to.

So let's go for a little of that context. Starting with an absurd (and noxious) notion being pushed nowadays, that the Great Enlightenment Experiment or GEE is no better than our foes - those who aim to bring it crashing down. 

We'll start with the rationalizations offered by foreign rivals... and then by our own domestic traitor nut-jobs.

== Those rivals are busy in ways that seem... frantic ==

Let's begin with the obvious, that both Russia and China have been expressing resentful revanchism for all of this century so far, demanding control over neighboring regions based upon dubious historical claims, over-riding or ignoring local sovereignty and popular will. There are different textures to the same theme, as told by Nathan Gardels in Nōema:

“China and Russia are battling different demons of the past. Xi is seeking to rejuvenate Chinese civilization, hoisting it back to its rightful centrality in the world after being subordinated by Western imperialism. Putin, possessed by a millennial vision of restoring the “great Russia” of the 11th century, is seeking to recover from the post-Cold War humiliation of becoming a rump state.”

Let's recall that ol' Vlad was recorded many times calling the fall of the USSR "The greatest tragedy of the 20th Century." He and his fellow "ex"-commissars - the very same fellows whom folks on the U.S. right hated, back when they recited Leninist chants and wore hammer-sickles - became darlings of the U.S. right, after simply changing lapel pins and erecting some statues to Nicholas II. Of course the renamed KGB is staffed by the same agents and plotters, using the same methods (including blackmail of western elites), with the same goals. 

‘Multipolar world’ and ‘civilization state’ are phrases used to provide a patina of high minded diversity-cred to those goals, justifying an end to a presumptively bullying American Pax – whose most macroscopic outcome across 80 years (outweighing many awful mistakes) has been inarguably the best era of progress, science, development, prosperity, freedom and per-capita peace the world ever knew. The greatest compared to all other eras… combined.  

(As I write this amid waves of violence in Eurasia, recall that even now, 95% or so of the world's living humans have never personally witnessed war with their own eyes. A figure that would seem incredible to our ancestors.)

In China’s case, there are rightful complaints about past colonialist bullyings that wrought almost as much harm to that great nation as mal-governance by their own feudal castes! (It's hypocrisy to blame one without acknowledging the other.) Though attributing any of that colonialist oppression to America is a real stretch. In fact, that broad-brush untruth is slanderously ingrate fabulation and almost-pure calumny, playing upon clichés and ignorance to justify anger at a nation that - across 4000 years - was China's only real foreign friend.  But that is for another time.

(I do welcome wagers though, with major escrowed stakes, based on actual, historical facts.)

Putin’s revanchist pitch has differences, but there are two shared themes. 

First, that ‘rule of law’ is only a mythology, spread by Western imperialists in order to justify continued hegemony… 

…and second that lifelong tenure of a single leader and clique – the kingship pattern that made the previous 6000 years a morass of unaccountable misrule – must be preserved! Presumably because their respective nations cannot afford to risk a regular churn of leadership that allows fresh talent to rise from hundreds of millions of fellow citizens. 

It is the tiresomely venerable (veneriable?) myth of the irreplaceable man.

For all of America’s political dysfunction, the regular cycle of leader-churn is observable evidence to the world of a nation unafraid of replacing leaders with fresh talent... though what it all means is a matter vexatiously wrestled for 240 years, along eight phases of America's ongoing culture war.

What's fundamental here is that this is not about multipolarity, or tolerance of diverse civilizations. Hey, you want diversity? Diversity-R-Us! Let eight billion varied flowers bloom! 

Want a fair competition based upon happy-prosperous populations, freedom and measurable outcomes? A fair, grownup rivalry between different versions of state-moderated market economics would seem just fine. I expect that later decades of this century might see loose 'leader-status' of this globe pass across the Pacific. Even the language that folks use for culture and commerce may migrate.

What matters is the core thing that enabled the post 1945 world to flourish as never befere. Some call it Rule-of-Law - much derided by every autarchy on the planet. Others call it Democracy - a word that Fox shills now deride, while riling a re-risen Confederacy against everything that actually 'made America great.'

If rule-of-law and democracy aren't the deepest, fundamental, then what?

I say it's something far more basic. It is recognizing that all humans - especially all leaders - are inherently delusional! (So are you! So am I.) And only one tool ever offered a way to pierce delusions, reducing the wretched litany of error/calamity/misrule that we call 'history.'

That method requires freedom to reciprocally criticize one-another, even ... especially ... the mighty. To spot (and denounce) each others' errors. To form and renegotiate agile coalitions, generated from below. To inconvenience power and encourage negotiation based on facts... and maturity... and transparency & light. 

Freedom, democracy and rule-of-law have proved to be the best methods for delivering that reciprocal error-correction. They are the tools we have used to (partially, so far) save ourselves. They are justifiable - and worth fighting for - not just because they are morally good, but also because they smash any claim by despots to offer better, positive outcomes.

Make no mistake: this is about sheer survival. If we return to an era of delusional Big Man rule, immune from thorough criticism - in a world of nukes and designer bugs and cyber Skynet gods - we're all gonna die. 

Scratch the surface and it isn't about this or that multipolar 'civilization.' It is literally - and not metaphorically - about friends-of-light vs. enemies-of-light.

Which brings the topic back on home.

== Our own neo-feudalists want rule-by-Nero ==

Across America and Europe, the 'populist' Mad Right’s fetish - its only priority - is neo-feudalism. It has always been thus, in every phase of the 250 year American Civil War.

 In 1778 Lord Cornwallis went south because he knew he'd find more king-lovers down there. In 1861 it was "Gone With The Wind" plantation barons who got a million poor whites to march and die for their slaveholder 'rights.' (Mark Twain blamed that Phase 4 of the Civil War on the romantic-feudal novels of Sir Walter Scott!) Today it's billionaires and their inheritance brats who Republicans must protect - at all cost! - from being forced by the IRS to pay their share of taxes. But also from nerds, who keep inconveniently reciting those fell words that oligarchs most hate to hear.

"Sir, that is factually untrue."

Alas for the hopes of would-be lords, it appears that the voting populace is wising up. Soon, citizens are likely to start using democracy to rectify skyrocketing wealth and power disparities. And if voters might do that, then democracy, itself, must be demonized! And then made to go away. Leading at last to:

 “For the last three years, parts of the American right have advocated a theory called Caesarism as an authoritarian solution to the claimed collapse of the US republic in conference rooms, podcasts and the house organs of the extreme right…”

 

I've been denouncing this trend, ever since it was a festering yammer cult in fetid corners of LaRouche-land and rage sci fi, back in the 1980s. Now, funded lavishly by fellows like Peter Thiel, it is burgeoning, as I said it would. (See the 'Holnists' in The Postman.) 

Let me put it plain: After 6000 years of wretchedly stupid misrule by inheritance-brat kings and lords, we broke from that feudal Divine Right romantic twaddle, accomplishing vastly more - in every conceivable category - during the last 250 years of gradually improving constitutionalism – and especially during the post-Rooseveltean era – than ALL other human cultures… combined. 

 

Yes, I mean combined. Put up wager stakes.

Anything that is consensus-good and factually verifiable has done vastly better in liberal democracy. Like the % of human beings who have been able to raise healthy children in conditions of light and peace. Or science. Or production, economics or entrepreneurship. Or the thing Adam Smith promoted, but that now the neo-lords hate, above all else. Flat-fair-creative competition.

 

== Where do they think this will take them? ==

Of course by any name, Red Caesarism is an insane goal, chased by incel yammerers who see no other way to become Top Dogs. So, let me turn and address them, directly.

Sure guys, you will try, and we know you are girding your bluball loins for this. If the 2024 elections don’t go your way, you will unleash on us waves of McVeighs, expecting, in masturbatory fantasy land, that macho howls and basement arsenals will outweigh mature competence. That nerds won't rise up and respond, when everything we all depend upon is attacked.

Only, what if we're far more ready than you imagine? Exactly how do you think this is gonna go, when you are waging all-out war vs ALL fact using professions? From science and teaching, medicine, law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror? 

Against ALL the nerds who know cyber, bio, nuclear, chemistry and all the rest?

 

No, they never think that out. In The Postman I portrayed an aftermath of them succeeding. But far more likely is the scenario portrayed by Robert Heinlein in Beyond This Horizon, in which violent dopes attempt a putsch - hoping to become feudal top dogs - but instead wind up as kibble. Much like the 1930s German brown shirts, just before the Night of the Long Knives. 

(See how Heinlein predicted today's mass anti-intellectualism and racism as a recurring American madness.)

In fact, it goes both ways. Science fiction – sometimes even well-written – has also played a role in nurturing this cult! Foremost among those pushing rejection of the American Experiment has been Orson Scott Card – a writer of unquestionable persuasive genius and gifted psychological manipulativeness. Scott spent his entire career relentlessly inveighing that democracy is futile - all hope of decent institutions is forlorn naïveté - and we all should all throw ourselves at the feet of some super-uber-Caesar, hoping that the demigod will be as nice as Ender Wiggin. 

Only, as in Card's prescriptive manifesto EMPIRE, the new Caesar should also have an all-chastising whip – and maybe cattle cars and smokestacks – to back up his unquestioned (unquestionable) wisdom.

== The story is the same, inside and out ==

Okay this was a long one, so let's bring it around.  Strip away all the rationalizations... from Putin's rabid ethno-nationalism to 'clash of civilizations' to MAGA nerd-hatred, to vapid "both side-ism."  

Those who plot downfall of the Great Enlightenment Experiment (GEE) seek one thing: a return of the Big Man (feudal) model that dominated nearly all human societies - aside from a few islands of light... e.g. Periclean Athens, daVinci's Florence... that were crushed by surrounding oligarchies and kingdoms, for daring to question absolute rule by imbeciles.

Now, faced with the spectacular successes - top to bottom - of the GEE, they try to counter that undeniable record with magical incantations. I described some of those pushed by external rivals... and other chants fomented (under lavish subsidy) by domestic traitors. There is so much more to say... and I'll get around to more. (You know that!)

How I wish the Good Guys leading the GEE right now had better tactics!  I tried to offer some in Polemical Judo! But for now, what I have tried to say, this time, is...

...about why we (including you) must gather the courage and resolve to fight for a world of light.

An Unstable World: Part III: Tyranny's Logic and the Dilemma of "Reasonable Men"

Continuing our discussion of recent global crises from Parts I and II, I want to say a few words about the current ISIS-Crisis.  But -- typically -- I will get to the "new caliphate" only after taking an intellectual detour!  

Starting with a look at a couple of brilliantly dark explorations of the human potential for tyranny. Then distinguishing among many types of "reasonable" and "unreasonable" men.

== Food for thought ==

Let's start with a fascinating quotation from George Orwell's classic "Nineteen Eighty-Four" -- 

"...it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction — indeed, in some sense was the destruction — of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. 

"It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance..."

I've always found Orwell fascinating. In this case, yes, he's right... sort-of. Any degree of broad empowerment is, indeed, what would-be lords fear most. The trend after World War II to create a diamond-shaped society, with an empowered and educated middle and working class so large that it outnumbers the poor and politically dominates the rich... this was key to every piece of good news since civilization's nadir in 1943. It led to all fine things, from science and moon landings to the plummets in world poverty and (per capita average) violence that Steven Pinker documents in his book that I cite below.

It would lead, eventually, to Star Trek and to a society in which a person might get rich... through smithian competition over new goods or services... but there would be no way for such creative capitalists to pass on to their children the kind of obligate-unearned lordship that was the fiercely obsessive goal of every generation of brutal men, during all of the millennia leading to our Enlightenment Experiment. 

It cannot be allowed to happen again! The pyramid is not only a proven attractor state but most-likely the "natural" (99% of the time) human condition.It will also lead, inevitably, to the logic that Orwell described (above) and to the calamity that Robert Oppenheimer predicted (that we'll get to, below.) Orwell gave us a graphic warning, one that might indeed become a "self-preventing prophecy"... if we gird ourselves to protect the experiment that is humanity's only hope.

== An argument over tyrannical method ==

And yet, let's pause and note that Orwell was crude in his interpretation of method. War, as a means of keeping society pyramidal, instead of diamond-shaped? Well, sure... but over time war is a chaotic, unreliable, destructive method, especially when an educated populace - if even 5% of it truly understands - will have the technological means to shatter everything. In other words, Orwell's villainous oligarchies are brutal and predictably fit the standard human pattern. But they are also deeply stupid men.

No... here is the fellow who got it right. The one who will win their old argument over tyrannical methodology. Aldous Huxley. As illustrated chillingly in Brave New World, future despots who want to last, will use a velvet glove and not an iron boot. If such rulers truly are smart, they will fool the majority into thinking they are still in charge. Distracting them not with pain, but with pleasure. 

Was Orwell right about war being used as a distraction to keep the masses stupid? It happens. And without any doubt we should all have skeptical hackles, whenever a president or politician raises a clamor for combat. Indeed, elsewhere I have carefully parsed the differences between democrats and republicans in HOW they wage war, a stunningly opposite matter of style and effectiveness.

In other words (as I portray in Existence) even callously pragmatic oligarchs will fashion their dominance very differently, depending upon whether they are short-sighted lunatics, crudely rational, or at least bent on genuine, long term self-interest.

In fact, I'd like to now dive deeper. For Orwell's thoughts about the inevitability of oligarchy-driven war mirrored another debate that was going on, about the same time that he wrote his epic.  And this one, also, revolved around the whole notion of "reasonable" leadership.

== The saint vs the madman ==

If you do not know about it, immerse yourself in the debates that swirled in and around the scientific community, at the end of WWII, over what to do about the atom bomb.  (There have been several excellent movies and books.) 

On one side was a spectrum of sad-cynics and idealists, ranging from those wanting a total, worldwide ban on nuclear weapons to those -- like Robert Oppenheimer -- who urged putting them under some kind of international control. Steeped in knowledge about history (most scientists are vastly better-read than anyone would expect), they had just witnessed humanity plunge into its deepest nadir of horror. Their cynical view was deeply rooted in reality. 

Oppenheimer -- deeply respected by all who met him -- felt guilt-wracked over having been forced (by Hitler) to hand such instruments of potential devastation over to men who seemed much more reasonable (than Hitler). Oh, indeed, reasonable men (e.g. Marshall, Acheson, Truman and Eisenhower) were vastly better than monsters! But they were still men. And men had never been known to show restraint, at any point in our gruesomely impulsive past. There were no examples of men not using a new weapon, once it was offered to them.

On the other side of the debate was a staggeringly smart but zany "mad Hungarian" with spectacular eyebrows, Edward Teller. The George Soros of his day, Teller was fanatically anti-communist, which may have propelled his eagerness to invent the hydrogen bomb. But completely aside from all that, he also had an interesting hypothesis... that "this time is different."  That the Bomb would shake up reasonable men... and even moderately unreasonable ones... forcing them to ratchet up their powers of prefrontal contemplation, especially realization of the obvious, that it was time to make a change. To get past history's pre-adolescent reflexes and start doing things better. If for no other reason, because they were looking death in the eyes.

Put less colorfully, Teller maintained that reciprocal fear would accomplish this miracle.  That Mutual-Assured Destruction (MAD) might cause the Soviet and American empires to tamp their rivalry below the normal level of ignition into full-scale holocaust. That deterrence would suffice to bring into being an era of (relative) peace.

Where would you have put your money, way back in 1948? On such a blatantly mad fanatic? Or the blatantly brilliant and saintly Oppenheimer, and nearly all of his equally brilliant and history-wise associates? Would you have bet on the endlessly repeated pattern of human behavior, across all of our annals? Or upon a new notion, that "this time is different?" (A phrase that nearly always gets the speaker into terrible trouble.)

Consider your almost-daily habit of expressing cynical contempt for humanity and its institutions.  Yes, I mean you. It is so common a reflex that I am pretty safe in assuming you - dear reader - engage in it almost relentlessly. I examine this elsewhere, in many places, and how unproductive, but personally satisfying the reflex can be! No doubt you deem my tentative and surprised optimism to be just as mad as Edward Teller.

I do know this, however -- that the image of the mushroom cloud has to have been the most effective work of art ever, across all of the last 40,000 years. For it persuaded hundreds of millions, visually and almost without argument, that something had to change! 

Supporting artworks like Dr. Strangelove and On The Beach helped with this transformation, by providing explicit self-preventing prophecies that stirred great efforts to prevent some Accident from triggering the Unthinkable.

But the main effect of the mushroom cloud lay in redefining what terms "reasonable" and "unreasonable" were to mean, in the second half of the 20th Century.

(Note, as I've said often, the second great visual artwork to come out of physics was the image of Earth, as a lonely oasis in the desert of space, provided by Apollo 8 at the very end of that awful year, 1968... a picture that also transformed our hearts and our behaviors, perhaps even just enough to save us.)

== Was Teller right? ==

For the West it meant continuing to spend, as if we were in a real war. Because it would have gone hot the instant we let up. We are now told, explicitly, by ex-Soviet generals that they were always poised to strike, and intended to, if the West ever let down its technological and military advantages. 

And hence (as I've said many times and will reiterate next time), there must be a limit to the complaints of any living human against Pax Americana. Yes, like all Pax imperiums, it committed crimes (though less deliberately and persistently and with a higher ratio of compensating good deeds than any other people who were tempted by such power; name one counter-example.) We must learn from those crimes, though!  

Moreover, our agenda must be to create a new world that does NOT depend on any "pax" power to keep the peace, a peace we should maintain ourselves, as planetary citizens!  Nevertheless, if you are currently alive, and know anything at all about our species history, then you'd be a hypocrite to deny any need for gratitude.

But I'll go farther in swimming contrary to modern habit. Shall we all pay homage to Saint Bomb? The greatest invention for peace ever made? Oh, sure, we might see those long-delayed mushroom clouds tomorrow. But my generation of males would have all died on World War III battlefields, if not for the unprecedented peace that Steven Pinker so well documents in The Better Angels of Our Nature.

Even if it turns out to have been a temporary reprieve, it lasted an entire human lifetime. So Teller was right. Things were different. At least... it had become so for reasonable humans, confronting others who -- while unreasonable -- at least lived in a logic of cause and effect.

And so, you can see the segue coming, to discussing world problems that are currently being caused not by reasonable folks, or even logical-unreasonable ones like our old Soviet adversaries. Rather, recent news forces us to pay heed to the far more common types that Robert Oppenheimer saw in the pages of history books. Those who would never refuse a weapon or pause for a moment before using it. Those who -- like all of our insatiably unreasonable ancestors -- will concoct any excuse to prevent their own citizens from offering up criticism...

...as so many of you are leaping to your keyboards right now, in order to criticize me for calling our own civilization "reasonable"! Pounding keys, as free women and men, exercising a right of upward and lateral criticism that you take for granted, but that none of our ancestors... nor the poor folks living in Russia or under ISIS... could ever do. A habit -- the habit -- that has kept us at least a little bit "reasonable."

Sorry boys and girls. If you are doing that, without once pausing to consider the irony, then yes, alas, we have fallen since the days of giants like Teller and Oppie, or Marshall and Ike, or Gandhi and King.

But I've gone on too long.  So we'll hang fire a bit, on ISIS and Ebola and such. Don't worry.  These things aren't about to go away. Not yet. So much for an "end of history."

== Continue to Part IV: Pax Americana

or Return to Part I: An Unstable World: Russia

Preventing Tyranny: Part Two

Face it... the “War on Terror” was won by the heroes of UA 93... on the very same day that it began! Since then, we have been told that “terror” justifies a reversal of our principles, a shirking of all accountability, abandonment of diplomacy, pissing upon allies, frisking us and humiliating us in airports, suspending civil rights, spying on private citizens without warrants, demolishing our military reserves, purging the officer corps, dissipating our readiness for new crises (currently at an all-time low), politicizing all of our intelligence agencies, and dozens of other measures that add up to a gradual creep toward Big Brother.

the political lamp is lit...

Following up on that article by Jonathan Schell, The Hidden State Steps Forward, in The Nation, here are two key points that need further elucidation, (continuing from Part 1.)

The first of these, Schell only alludes to.
The other, neither Schell nor anyone else seems able to make clear--

1. One of the greatest unmentioned scandals of this era is our near total lack of a legislative branch of government. The GOP majorities in both houses are simply uninterested in deliberating, in governing, or, indeed, in pursuing any agenda other than graft. They do not even try to push forward the “conservative” social agenda! (e.g. there have been no substantial efforts to affect abortion or science education or even the so called“War on Christmas.”)

Dig it. The only broadly assertive agenda pursued by Congress in this 21st Century has been to pass bills that benefit rich friends, ranging from huge aristocratic tax cuts to the greatest pork barrel frenzy in all of human history. A drive that has been so broad and intense that noncompetitive, no-bid contracts are being granted at a higher rate PER YEAR than happened during the entire Clinton Administration. (And this is capitalism?)

Beyond vampirism, the congressional GOP appears to have no interest in governing, legislating, or exercising its sovereign power of advice and consent. Take these examples of legislative nonexistence:

(a) G.W. Bush is the first president in US history to use his veto power only once after 5 years.

(b) The House Government Reform Committee issued a grand total of two subpoenas on Bush Administration officials in five years, in contrast to more than a thousand issued for former Clintonian officials.

 (Again, all those subpoenas, plus a billion dollars in related efforts, resulted in a total number of Clinton-era indictments, for malfeasance of official action, amounting to ZERO. No indictments, whatsoever. I am sorry, but this fact of a TOTALLY non-smoking gun is the ghost at the neoconservative banquet. Will anyone else ever even mention it?)

(c) Actual hours spent by members on the House and Senate floor, in quorum session, or in active committee session, have not been this low in a hundred years. Yes, that is a hundred years. (This week, the Senate President Pro Tempore was reduced to talking to himself, in an empty chamber.) (Of course, this frees up plenty of time for mischief, like trawling K Street for pork-corruption dollars.)

Of course, this situation is closely related to gerrymandering. The latter led to the former. But it’s all part of the same stew.

In effect, our legislative branch does not exist... it has become a joke... because it has been sinecured into irrelevancy, just like the Roman Senate, during the era of Nero. No other comparison does justice to what has become of the august Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America.

See these contrasts laid out in: How Democrats and Republicans Wage War.


2. All of today’s “emergency” measures are being justified on the basis of a state of war that does not exist. Not only was war never declared, but there is no emergency at all!

Seriously, Iraq does not count.

Whether you think the Iraq Intervention is

(i) a great crusade (rightwing madness), or

(ii) it was totally wrong to topple Saddam (lefty madness), or

(iii) it’s a noble endeavor to spread freedom, that is being well executed (neocon madness), or

(iv) toppling Saddam was a moderately desirable - if totally optional - goal, that has been intolerably booted by monstrously venal incompetents (the position of any pragmatic moderate American)...

...whichever of these things you believe, the simple fact is that this foreign adventure has nothing to with being “at war”... at least not in the sense of justifying other Bushadmin endeavors in proto totalitarianism. Or allowing the “Commander-in-Chief clause” to be used as an excuse for presidential whim to over-rule all law.

After all the dust settled from the “WMD Fiasco,” and putting aside all the suspected ulterior motives (including those turgidly promoted by Michael Moore), what are we are left with? Only this.

The BEST POSSIBLE explanation for our presence in Iraq is a somewhat acceptable surface goal of nation-building after toppling a brutal dictator. (Neocons will never mention that, pre-2000, they savagely rebuked the “failed and hopelessly naive doctrine of so-called nation-building.” Nor will they mention that Saddam was their own boy, from start almost to finish.)

Yes. It is possibly a worthy objective to try and replace Saddam with a democratic Iraq. (Liberals who deny this only shoot themselves in the foot.) But even if we do accept this goal, the intervention is without question an example of voluntary and elective surgery. Something to which the word “emergency” can in no way be attached with any justification, whatsoever. Surgery that could have been timed to our convenience, that should have been professionally planned to achieve maximum goals while minimizing deleterious costs and consequences for all concerned, starting with our troops, our alliances, our social cohesion, our budget, our people, and especially the Iraqis themselves. (See my posting: Wars of Emergency vs. Wars of Policy).

What this totally voluntary war most definitely is NOT is a situation dire enough to warrant even the most minuscule abridgement of our citizen rights.

Indeed, we Americans have NEVER had that kind of emergency... though at least during the Civil War and WWII there was some basis for argument. Today?

Any attempt to excuse executive lawbreaking in the interest of urgent security is nothing more or less than a travesty.

No, Iraq is a distraction.

Only one relevant fact might contribute any support to the “emergency” excuse.

That fact was 9/11...

... and that fact is getting very, very tired. Elderly, in fact. Five years old and not a reasonable justification for anything, anymore. (Five years after Peal Harbor, we had won WWII! So, what does mighty, imperial America have to show for the last five years? How long must a quag-mire before it reflects upon the competence of our leaders?)


And yes, I can see the obvious! The terrifyingly obvious.

If ever a day comes when this argument gains strength -- when the American people start asking ”what emergency?” -- that’s the very moment to be wary!

Suppose people start to notice that the 5 years (or 6 or 7) before 9/11 were safer and richer and happier and less divided and more free than the equivalent period after. Suppose people start to notice that all of this creeping tyranny is justified by just ONE act of terror that might have been a fluke, and not a “war” after all. Certainly not a “war” on the scale of the Cold War... though we are being asked to accept worse restrictions on our rights than ever during the danger from Soviet Communism.

Suppose people start asking why we should stay in panic mode -- enduring spying and frisking and spiralling debt and relentless secrecy - when things have actually been pretty good for a couple of decades.

Well...then won’t we almost be BEGGING for another “incident” to conveniently happen? In the nick of time. To stoke and maintain the fabricated state of “war.” To let the emergency continue.

Stand up. This year. Stand up.

We don’t need doctrinaire leftists, organizing an ideologically rigid Democratic Party to march off - like eager lemmings - toward another of Karl Rove’s prepared cliffs. What we need is something that is even BETTER than shifting a million voters from the right hand side of an electoral chasm over to the left-hand side.

Even if the Blue States win this new civil war against the Gray States -- singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic and restoring accountability to public life -- we will all lose if that is the basis for American politics in the 21st Century.

What we need is 200 prominent American conservatives to denounce this madness. Or 200,000 who are not prominent. Either way, a small number of decent Americans who are willing to do for their country what liberals did, in 1947, when they saw their duty, gathered their courage, and turned their backs on left-wing commie madness, proving that their patriotism could rise above mythologies of dogma.

If liberals could do that, in 1947, why are there no conservatives yet (except maybe Ben Nighthorse Campbell) willing to do the same thing for their country, today?

Just 200 prominent conservatives could save the United States of America, more effectively than adding two MILLION more democratic voters! Because they would not only change the balance of power and kick out the kleptocrats....

...They would also rescue the soul of American conservatism. By helping to end the cynical, heartless, treasonous, divisive and artificially induced “culture war” that is tearing a great nation apart.

This point cannot be overstated. If each of us recruits just ONE such decent conservative, getting him or her to notice where duty lies... it may happen in time to save the soul of genuine conservatism, before this nation plunges into real class warfare. Before the seeds that have been sown by Rupert Murdoch sprout dragons more ferocious than he never imagined.

Stand up.

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Return to Part 1: Preventing Tyranny

See also: How Democrats and Republicans Wage War

Preventing Tyranny: Part One

Okay, I tried not to rant at you too much, during the POE Period... (Peace on Earth... or Purity of Essence)... leading up to New Years. (Get the reference to the greatest movie ever made?)

And, yes. I gave the new year a few days to shape up and do better than 2005, without help from me. Alas, disappointed, I will now return to carping and criticizing and offering suggestions on how we might try to help things along. So, let’s get back to the issue that’s paramount... one that boils down to nothing less than saving civilization.

The political lamp is lit...

Let me offer you a few excerpts from “The Hidden State Steps Forward” by Jonathan Schell. (Published recently in THE NATION) Schell presents a highly aggressive piece about the President and his administration. But, unlike some lefty rants, this one is pure and crystalline cogency. Partly because he presents the issue not as one of left-right policy bickering, per se, but rather, as a matter of fundamental constitutionalism.

It is a complaint that any reasonable moderate might make. Proving that “moderation” need not mean tepid lack of passion. Not when the real culture war is fanaticism versus civilization.

Says Schell....

“When the New York Times revealed that George W. Bush had ordered the National Security Agency to wiretap the foreign calls of American citizens without seeking court permission, as is indisputably required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed by Congress in 1978, he faced a decision. Would he deny the practice, or would he admit it? He admitted it. But instead of expressing regret, he took full ownership of the deed, stating that his order had been entirely justified, that he had in fact renewed it thirty times, that he would continue to renew it and--going even more boldly on the offensive--that those who had made his law-breaking known had committed a "shameful act."

“As justification, he offered two arguments, one derisory, the other deeply alarming. The derisory one was that Congress, by authorizing him to use force after September 11, had authorized him to suspend FISA, although that law is unmentioned in the resolution. Thus has Bush informed the members of a supposedly co-equal branch of government of what, unbeknownst to themselves, they were thinking when they cast their vote. The alarming argument is that as Commander in Chief he possesses "inherent" authority to suspend laws in wartime. But if he can suspend FISA at his whim and in secret, then what law can he not suspend? What need is there, for example, to pass or not pass the Patriot Act if any or all of its provisions can be secretly exceeded by the President?” ...

(snip)...

“The danger is not abstract or merely symbolic. Bush's abuses of presidential power are the most extensive in American history. He has launched an aggressive war ("war of choice," in today's euphemism) on false grounds. He has presided over a system of torture and sought to legitimize it by specious definitions of the word. He has asserted a wholesale right to lock up American citizens and others indefinitely without any legal showing or the right to see a lawyer or anyone else. He has kidnapped people in foreign countries and sent them to other countries, where they were tortured. In rationalizing these and other acts, his officials have laid claim to the unlimited, uncheckable and unreviewable powers he has asserted in the wiretapping case. He has tried to drop a thick shroud of secrecy over these and other actions.”

“There is a name for a system of government that wages aggressive war, deceives its citizens, violates their rights, abuses power and breaks the law, rejects judicial and legislative checks on itself, claims power without limit, tortures prisoners and acts in secret. It is dictatorship.

“The Administration of George W. Bush is not a dictatorship, but it does manifest the characteristics of one in embryonic form. Until recently, these were developing and growing in the twilight world of secrecy. Even within the executive branch itself, Bush seemed to govern outside the normally constituted channels of the Cabinet and to rely on what Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff has called a "cabal." Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill reported the same thing. Cabinet meetings were for show. Real decisions were made elsewhere, out of sight. Another White House official, John DiIulio, has commented that there was "a complete lack of a policy apparatus" in the White House. "What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm." As in many Communist states, a highly centralized party, in this case the Republican Party, was beginning to forge a parallel apparatus at the heart of government, a semi-hidden state-within-a-state, by which the real decisions were made.”


-- Please go read the article in its entirety.

Now, first off, recall I am a heretic in the matter of government “spying” on the people. Unlike nearly every other opponent of the Bush Administration, I am far less incensed over their efforts -- through vehicles like the PATRIOT Act and the NSA -- to empower our paid protector caste (e.g. the FBI etc) with better access to wiretaps and other powers of surveillance. Their increased ability to see is inevitable, and not intrinsically worrisome. Indeed, in this new century, we will simply have to get used to the fact that elites will see very, very well. Get used to it.

But this need not be the end of freedom. What I hammer relentlessly is the point about reciprocal accountability -- that average citizens must fight, like demons, to retain our ability to look back! To ensure that the protector caste can never get away with spying or meddling or doing anything else unsupervised and unscrutinized by a citizenry who are both knowing and fiercely determined to the bosses of this civilization. To stay free.

Rather than focusing on a few rogue wiretaps, it is the Bushite frenzy for secrecy, dismantling every tool of accountability and oversight, that we should find far more terrifying.

The utter insanity of our situation cannot be over-emphasized. Ask ANY of your conservative friends what their reaction would have been, had Bill Clinton done 1/10 of any of these things. Take ANY ONE category. From busting the budget to relentless secrecy, demolition of our military readiness, torture, domestic spying, ruination of all our alliances, support for monopolies, the taking of bribes in exchange for pork contracts, interpreting every law as optional under the “Commander in Chief” clause, and utter destruction of international goodwill...

. . . .or the creation of a new category of human being called “enemy combatant.” One that has no legal rights, not even those guaranteed to prisoners of war. (Remind me to go into this further, in “comments.”)

Defy your conservative friends (the sincere ones) to close their eyes and imagine if Bill Clinton had done even a scintilla of any of these things... and tried to justify it all based on a state of “war” that not only was never declared, but that does not even exist.

Then remind them that, inevitably, another Clinton someday will re-take power in the see-saw rhythm of our democracy.

Do they really want the office of the presidency - regally empowered by such precedents - to behave in such ways, so secret and utterly unaccountable?

I mean it, go ask. Find the conservatives around you who are starting to twitch uncomfortably, their rationalizations turning strained and a bit shrill. These are people who know, deep down, that America -- and conservatism itself -- are in big trouble. Talk to them about all this from the perspective of conservatism! For example, their pragmatic need to prevent the kind of backlash that will put the left in power for decades! Grab them by the scruff of the neck and pose the “what if Clinton did this?” challenge.

It is time to make them face their duty. Tell them to stand up.

== Continue to Preventing Tyranny Part 2