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Enterprise, Number 6, March 1996.
Sharing the Blame
by Victor Milan
Exclusive to The Libertarian Enterprise
Stop me if you've heard this -- no; I don't mean that. Because you have heard it: you're arguing for truly free society, and somebody whips it out, "That's all well and good, but it'll never happen. It's Utopian. "
Well, we've got a comeback to that little show-stopper now. Because what is really is Utopian is to expect a government that plays by its own rules. We've got fresh reeking evidence of that.
A Federal investigation into the Ruby Ridge atrocity has found, according to Headline News, that US agencies should "share the blame" with "white separatist Randy Weaver" [when did he go to court to get "white separatist" made his first two names?] for the deaths of two members of Weaver's family and one Federal agent.
Wow.
Agents of the United States government decide, in their infinite goodness and wisdom, to take a man with unpopular political beliefs, hustle him into committing a crime, and then coerce him to become a police spy in order to stay out of prison. When he refuses they try to kill him. That's it; that's the whole story. It isn't as if it's controversial: I saw John Magaw, at the Senate hearings into the attack, trying to convince his listeners that Randy Weaver brought it all on himself -- not to mention his wife and son, and, oh yes, his friend Kevin Harris, who like Weaver was shot but somehow managed to live -- because he would not cooperate with law enforcement agents.
Indeed.
Now, for the slow on the uptake, there is nothing in American jurisprudence which suggests "law enforcement" agencies have the right to attack you with murderous intent, besiege you in your own home, and slaughter members of your family because you won't become a fink for the secret police. That's not all: real Americans have a tradition of hunting and killing people who do work that way. I have friends who were decorated by the US government for killing such scum -- they were called "SS" and "Gestapo" then -- in WWII.
"Share the blame." Hey, that's rich. And the murderer of Nicole Brown Simpson -- whoever that might be -- is almost as guilty of the deed as that bitch was.
Aside from not following their own rules -- and I don't just mean trifles like "the Bill of Rights;" the jack-booted thugs at Waco and Ruby Ridge didn't even follow their own departmental procedures -- the Feds are wandering all over the map. At about the same time Magaw is telling America what a dangerous criminal Randy Weaver is at the Specter hearings, the Federal government agrees to pay Weaver over $3 million. Who says crime doesn't pay?
Jeez. Imagine what the government might've given him if he were innocent. Or "not guilty" -- as a court found him to be, of all charges except of failing to appear for a court appearance, as to the proper date of which he was misinformed. And, by the way, a judge also ruled that the modifications he made to the shotgun were not, in fact, illegal.
What's the moral here? That the Federal government regards itself as being altogether above the law. You and I have no rights which Federal agents or employees are obliged to respect. No rules bind them, only politics and public relations: if through incompetence as stupefying as their brutality they get caught acting like a foreign army of occupation, as at Ruby Ridge, they make a few bizarre gestures, a bad stage- magician's passes in the air -- Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! -- and keep on keeping on. Nothing changes.
Nor will anything change if BATF gets axed. If even that much is done, it's more smoke-and-mirrors. It was the US Marshals who killed Sammy Weaver, and the FBI who murdered Vicki, as it was the FBI who brought about the final solution to the Branch Davidian problem at Waco. And what the hell difference does it make what three initials the black-clad Ninja Boys who kick in your door, stomp your kitty to death, and shoot you in your bed are wearing on their backs? Only the names will be changed, to protect the guilty.
Meanwhile, this horrific shadow-show -- "sharing the blame" for murder done, for the rights of all Americans ground into the mud like Sammy Weaver's dog -- unfolds without a hiccup from the public or the "straight" media. Unlike Olaf, glad and big, whom e. e. cummings sang, there is apparently no shit we will not eat.
Prometheus Award-winner Victor Milan is the author of over 70 novels, including the just-released CLD from AvoNova and War In Tethyr from TSR.
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