The Serbian Mirror

By L. Neil Smith
[email protected]

Exclusive to The Libertarian Enterprise

         It's fascinating -- and revealing.
         Good, correctly-thinking socialists -- of the variety that prefer to call themselves "liberals" -- hate, loathe, despise, and revile the Serbian warlord Slobodan Milosovich almost as if he were ... well, Newt Gingrich. The man is a butchering, gory-handed mass-murderer, they'll tell anyone who'll listen, a monster who must be put on trial before the world for his many crimes against humanity.
         Then why, I reply, haven't you been after the UN to arrest and try Bill Clinton?
         Listen to them caterwauling. The plain, unmistakable fact is that they don't give a damn how many real, live individuals Milosovich has eighty-sixed, or how terribly the survivors suffer under his heel. Again I say, listen to them. They're hardly aware of his victims as anything but numbers that suit the convenience of their agenda -- and calculatedly heartwrenching TV images that accomplish the same purpose. It's just another of their toy causes, in the self-righteous pursuit of which, ironically, they're fully as content to rape, loot, pillage, torture, and murder to get their way as Milosovich ever was.
         As long as somebody else pulls the trigger.
         And somebody else puts up the money.
         Be that as it may, the third most important thing you can ever learn about the socialists who call themselves "liberals" is that they're cheerfully willing to see millions die a horrible death over matters that they themselves consider trivial. This is so important to understand that I'm going to repeat it: the socialists who call themselves "liberals" are cheerfully willing to see millions die a horrible death over matters that they themselves consider trivial.
         Why? Because their attitude, fundamentally, is that of a nasty-tempered two-year-old who will throw himself down on the floor, hammer it with his hands and feet, and hold his breath until he turns blue if he doesn't get his way in even the smallest, least important thing. Or, more accurately, their attitude is that of people suffering from a form of mental illness that causes them to recapitulate the infantile outlook and behavior of a nasty-tempered two-year-old.
         I can't think of a better example than (blessedly) former Congresscreature Pat Schroeder, who's accepted presidency of something called the Association of American Publishers to further her interest in "protecting intellectual property rights". High ambition, for a woman who's demonstrated over the past quarter-century that she has no intellect, and doesn't believe in property. (My wife Cathy observes that the only time socialists care about intellectual property rights is when they intend to use them as an excuse to suppress free speech.)
         The first most important thing you can ever learn about socialists who call themselves "liberals" is that everything they do is motivated by a self- hatred so profound that it approaches psychosis. The second most important thing is that everything they accuse others of -- racism, sexism, elitism, hundreds of other "isms" -- they are, first and foremost, massively guilty of themselves.
         Knowing all of this about them, we are now in a better position to examine that historical event which best typifies the attitudes and behavior of the socialists who call themselves "liberals", and represents the moral high-water mark of their influence on American politics: the massacre of the Branch Davidians.
         Aboive all, the Branch Davidians' crime is that they resisted the Will of the Collective (see "nasty-tempered two-year-old", above). Human beings are individualists by nature, who don't "play well in groups". The collective Intelligence Quotient of any group is the IQ of the brightest person in the group divided by the number of its members, and produces "reasoning" like this:
         "It's no fair! I don't care what your rotten ol' Constytooshan says, those Davidians are playing 'the Religious Gamne' by different rules than we're used to, which makes them sick and weird!" Ask the Huguenots, the medieval Spanish Jews, or 20th century German Jews how that one usually turns out.
         "It's no fair! I don't care what your rotten ol' Constytooshan says, those Davidians have too many nifty war toys!" In fact, the Branch Davidians possesed fewer weapons, per capita, than the average Texas family, but what nasty-tempered two-year-old, throwing a jealous temper-tantrum, ever pays any attention to the facts (or, for that matter, even to the laws of physics)? "We can't let those bad old Branch Davidians have as many nifty war toys as we do!"
         Worst of all, of course -- although I seriously doubt that their enemies were capable of analyzing something like this at a conscious level -- the Branch Davidians were a collective unto themselves that was ignoring the will of the "greater" collective, compounding all of the other reasons they had to die.
         The psychological bottom line is that the socialists who call themselves "liberals" see themselves in Slobodon Milosovich, and they fear that others will see them in him, as well. Which is why, at any cost, Milosovich must be discredited and destroyed in a manner that will associate him, not with them, but with those they believe to be their political opposites, the World War II Nazis.
         Too bad all the helmets, tanks, and poison gas in Waco tell a different story.

Permission to redistribute this article is hereby granted by the author, provided it is reproduced unedited, in its entirety, and appropriate credit given.

L. Neil Smith's award-winning The Probability Broach opens a window onto a Libertarian civilization. More of his books (see The Webley Page: http://www.lneilsmith.org//) are available at bookstores everywhere, at http://www.amazon.com, at Laissez Faire Books, (800) 326-0996, or Frugal Muse Bookstore, (608) 833-8668. Neil will speak at the AZLP annual convention in Phoenix, 4/19/97.

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