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 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 374, July 2, 2006 "The power elite don't give a damn about you"
Wannabenazis
Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise I live in a state where there are fires during hot, dry summers, a bit of flooding here and there, and an occasional calamitous blizzard. Now and again, somebody will go "postal" at work and start shooting the people he's labored beside peacefully for months or years or decades. Frequently, the authorities—sadly afflicted with a condition I'll call "Wannabenazism"—will come to believe that they have some mandate to exceed the Constitutional limits on their power, in order to "protect" the innocent members of society (whether they wish to be protected or not), and then, in the aftermath of whatever catastrophe they invariably made worse, announce that their victims will now be allowed the illusion, once again, that they are free and sovereign adults. Some of those fires, and a still-unexplained mass-shooting at a Safeway distribution unit in the supposedly gun-free Utopia of Denver, gave the Wannabenazis-in-blue excuses, recently, to drive individuals living nearby from their homes, and later magnanimously permit them to return. Meanwhile, the national news was full of federal Wannabenazis spying on folks illegally and resenting the hell out of being caught and exposed by newspapers that have actually started doing their jobs again. (To state the apparently not-so-obvious-anymore, the job of a free press is to be adversarial toward government, not to pimp for it.) And while all this was going on, it seemed like every other advertising spot on TV was a "public service message" from a private gang of Wannabenazis, rubbing everybody's faces in the successful throat-cramming of a new Prohibition that prevents individuals from smoking in public places, even if those places happen to be private businesses whose owners want customers to be free to smoke if they like. Trying to keep from yelling at the TV, I began thinking about Wannabenazis. A government, I realized, that has the power to order you from your own home at gunpoint because the Wannabenazis decide there's an emergency, instead of leaving you to assess and undertake your own risks, has the power to drag you out of your house and haul you off to a concentration camp—although, of course, it may call it something else. A government that has the power to force a restaurant or bar to forbid its customers to smoke, has the power to drag you out of your house, haul you off to a concentration camp, search you and take away your prescription drugs, personal weapons, or whatever else the Wannabenazis don't approve of (that very atrocity happened in New Orleans)—although they may pretend to be doing it for your own good. A government that has the power to pry into your bank records and every exchange you make with your credit card or its increasingly worthless lowjacked currency, has the power to drag you out of your house, haul you off to a concentration camp, search you and take away your prescription drugs, your personal weapons, or whatever else the Wannabenazis don't approve of, and then torture and murder you—although they may later claim they had some secret reason why it was necessary. A government that has the power to listen in on your telephone calls, intercept your e-mail, and make a note of every website you visit, has the power to drag you out of your house, haul you off to a concentration camp, search you and take away your prescription drugs, your personal weapons, or whatever else the Wannabenazis don't approve of, and then torture and murder you, and pry the gold fillings out of your teeth—although by then everybody will be afraid to ask them why. A government that has the power to track your phone and car by radio, watch you with devices that make your walls transparent, and record every word you say, has the power to drag you out of your house, haul you to a concentration camp, search you and take away your prescription drugs, your personal weapons, or whatever else the Wannabenazis don't approve of, then torture and murder you, pry the gold fillings out of your teeth, and render your body fat down to make soap. A government that has the power to assign numbers to your body and every other possession you own, and use those numbers to control your life, has the power to drag you out of your house, haul you off to a concentration camp, search you and take away your prescription drugs, personal weapons, or whatever else the Wannabenazis don't approve of, torture and murder you, pry the gold fillings out of your teeth, render your body fat down to make soap, and tan your skin to make lampshades. They'll grind up the rest of your body to feed their drug-sniffing dogs. Understand that we are not "close to a police state" any longer. In many ways, it was all over the day the first driver's license was issued, or when "public accommodations" was first used as an excuse to nationalize private businesses in the cause of desegregation, or when federal Wannabenazis murdered innocent individuals in broad daylight at Ruby Ridge, and on national television at Mount Carmel, and not only got away with their crimes, but received commendations and promotions. We are living in a police state right now, in the early stages of its existence. If the Wannabenazi monster isn't suffocated in its cradle, it will be big and powerful enough tomorrow to suffocate us, instead. Reading this column back to myself, I realize that to the average Wannabenazi liberal (I'm told that they prefer to be referred to as "progressives" these days, which demonstrates precisely how out of touch with reality they are—"liberal" was already a misonomer), it's going to sound like some kind of right-wing rant, especially if I criticize any aspect of the so-called Civil Rights Movement, which I lived through as a young adult, remember well, and generally approve of. (Before the government sent troops to Little Rock, it enforced segregation.) There's a reason for that, but not the reason any Wannabenazi liberal might think. The consequences—both unexpected and all too well expected—of their policies over the decades have been fully as damaging to civilization as any of George Bush's excesses. Liberals, in fact, laid the groundwork for them. It was a liberal who first sneered at me and told me that the Constitution is "just a piece of paper". What's more, I've never seen any indication that liberals are capable of learning from experience, their own or anybody else's. So if you're interested in individual liberty, expect no help from the Democrats. Happily, in a Wannabenazi dictatorship compelled to survive, from failure to failure, by pretending to be a democracy, nothing is ever really decided finally. Nothing is ever over and done with. True, we are long past a time when the ballot box could be employed to change things directly. Elections have been carefully engineered, over many decades, to produce the results desired by those in power. Although there are still some sophisticated strategies that can be pursued with elections indirectly (which is one reason I have so little patience with the libertarian movement's rampant electoral pacifism), the active focus of those who would be free must be social rather than political. It is time to fight back against the Wannabenazis; it is time to make everyday living impossible for them, just as they have tried to do to us. It is time to find out exactly who the Wannabenazis are, both in government and the private sector—although that generally isn't very hard—and it is time to find out where the Wannabenazis live. It is time to ferret out the Wannabenazis' telephone numbers and their e-mail addresses and put that personal information on websites everywhere. Once we know who the Wannabenazis are, don't sell them groceries or clothing or liquor or medicine or gas. Don't serve the Wannabenazis meals in restaurants. No local or network news anchor, for example, should ever be waited on by the owners or employees of any private business. Wannabenazis often have "private" business enterprises of their own. Remember Tom Brokaw's federally subsidized mohair goat farm? Most legislators, commissioners, and city council members have businesses, and if they don't, then members of their immediate families certainly do. Those "private" businesses must be boycotted until they've gone belly-up. Wherever Wannabenazis happen to be elected officials, they must be voted out of office. One good reason to keep on voting is so that you can refuse to vote for any incumbent. That's possibly the most important and effective political tactic friends of individual liberty possess. Where the Wannabenazis are appointed officials, file grievances and lawsuits—for anything you can think of, anytime you think of it—against them on any excuse that's handy. Make sure their names are always in the media in a negative way. Right or wrong, innocent or guilty, other officials will dump any employee who represents costly trouble. The object is to make each and every moment of their lives so unbearably uncomfortable for the Wannabenazis—the fireworks Nazis, the porno Nazis, the car Nazis, the meat Nazis, the fat Nazis, the fast food Nazis, the booze Nazis, the victim disarmament Nazis, the womb Nazis, the fur Nazis, the globular warming, ozone depletioning, assed raining Nazis, all of the Wannabenazis who are sure they know how to live your life better than you do—that they'll change, give up, or go away. I'd like to see them tumbling comically over the border into Canada, where they all belong anyway, and will be much happier. Tragically, all of this may require far more determination and grit than most of the sad, graying advocates of individual liberty seem to have left these days. (Maybe it's time to get some new advocates of individual liberty—like the button says, "Ask Me How".) Just remember, nobody can do everything. Just do whatever you can. I don't know how it's all going to turn out—if those of us who still give a rat's ass about individual liberty can currycomb all of the contradictions out of our intellectual hair and (okay, mixing my metaphors thoroughly) get our ethical ducks in a row—but it should at least be interesting to stick around for another few decades and see. That's my plan, anyway.
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