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Kerry Me Not
by L. Neil Smith
[email protected]

Attribute to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

Of all the stories to come out of the war in Vietnam, that of Navy lieutenant John F. Kerry is almost certainly the least interesting and significant. Although, very much like George H.W. Bush, Kerry has the most distinguished military record money could buy, his shipmates reportedly would like to frag him today, if it only were still in style.

Kerry, a former United States Presidential candidate and Senator from Marxachusetts is perhaps best known as an early member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, in which he undoubtedly prolonged the deadly and stupid overseas conflict unnecessarily by combining camouflage fatigues with the silliest head of hippy hair ever seen on American television.

Admittedly, I was not the picture of sartorial elegance myself during that period. I wore bell-bottoms, the vest from a three-piece suit I got at Goodwill, and a snap-brimmed hat unsnapped, after the manner of Bob Dylan. I was clean-shaven, never had long hair in those days, but I wore love-beads—and carried a concealed revolver, much as Don B. Kates did while he was involved in the black civil rights movement.

But as I often do, once again, I have digressed.

As ridiculous as it may seem, Kerry, rumored only recently to have learned to communicate his wishes by stamping out numbers on the floor with his front hoof, is now Secretary of State, in the one and only regime whacky enough to appoint him to that, or to any other serious office.

Like many another socialist politico, like Jay Rockefeller, Diane Feinstein, and Hillary Clinton, just to name three examples (and then wash my mouth out with Clorox), Kerry doesn't seem to know how to handle the fact, no matter how many times it has been demonstrated to the embarrassment of politicians and celebrities alike, that in this great Age of Communication, every dumb remark that dribbles from his lips will sooner or later be reported to the public, revealing his fundamental stupidity, his profound lack of character, and his utter contempt for the 300 million individuals he was theoretically hired to serve.

According to Terence P. Jeffrey, writing for CNSNews.com (which he heads) on Tuesday, August 13, Kerry was speaking to the United States Embassy staff that day in Brasilia, Brazil, when he made not just one unintended psychological confession, but several in almost the same breath.

"Since the end of the Cold War," Jeffrey quotes him as saying, "forces have been unleashed that were tamped down for centuries by dictators ... "

This does not sound to me like Kerry thinks those dictators were a bad thing. In fact, I dimly recall an essay that Ayn Rand wrote in the 1960s, sharply criticizing media entertainments like The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and the James Bond novels and movies, because, far from being heroic, far from representing a fight for freedom, their chief concern was to preserve the geopolitical status quo to which Kerry also made nostalgic reference in praising the ideas and works of Henry Kissinger.

Hand me the Clorox again, will you?

The word "tamp" as a stand-in for brutal and murderous repression tells anyone everything they need to know about the kind of man Kerry is.

But it gets worse.

That salutary "tamping" effect that the Secretary of Statism misses so badly has been complicated, he complained to his listeners, "by this little thing called the Internet, and the ability of people everywhere to communicate instantaneously and to have more information coming at them in one day, than most people can process in months or a year."

To which I would respond, speak for yourself, John. The only people I ever hear complaining about too much information—and especially too much unmonitored communication between individuals—have been the kind of fascists who call themselves "liberals" and "progressives". You might recall it was a kind of plague in Johnny Mnemonic.

But wait, as Ron Popeil would say, there's more!

The Internet, "makes it much harder to govern, makes it much harder to organize people, much harder to find the common interest. And that is complicated by a rise of sectarianism and religious extremism that is prepared to employ violent means to impose on other people a way of thinking and a way of living that is completely contrary to everything the United States of America has ever stood for."

Where to start?

Well, to begin with, I personally know of, and even belong to, groups comprised of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and atheists—people Kerry would undoubtedly regard as practitioners of sectarianism and religious extremism—organized all by themselves, thank you very much, around a common interest in not being governed by bucketheaded morons like John Kerry and his class who, contrary to everything the United States of America has ever stood for, employ violent means—as a matter of routine—to impose on other people whatever ways of thinking and living they currently find politically correct.

They're called the government.

Somebody needs to inform the Secretary of Statism that this country was never meant to be easily governed, not in any sense that he's conversant with. Likewise, this country doesn't have any need to be organized, disciplined, or even forced to make its trains run on time. This country was built for and is run properly by individuals pursuing their own private interests, not some "greater" collective good.

As far as "violent means" are concerned, who is it that controls all of the tanks, artillery, missiles, killer drones, and helicopter gunships? Whose minions wear body armor, carry tasers and machineguns, and wear masks to conceal their identity while beating up and killing innocents? Who has spent billions developing crowd-control lasers, infrared skin-burners, and skull-splitting low frequency sound because water cannons, rubber bullets, and beanbag shotgun shells aren't enough?

The Tea Parties?

John Kerry belongs to an elite that are supposed to be smart because of the big name schools they went to and the approval they've won from aged aristocrats of the establishment. But despite all that, the man is stuck in the last century because the most important fact of this century has failed to penetrate to his tiny little reptiloid brain.

The Internet, and everything this government freeloader decries about it, represents the most revolutionary event in human history, not since the development of solid state electronics and computers, not since the Age of Invention, not since the Age of Discovery, not since the creation of the printing press, not since the invention of writing, but since the rise of agriculture itself, ten thousand years ago.

Before the internet, for all of those ten thousand years, human communications were vertical, usually from the top down, and seldom with any way to answer back. The bell rings, the church doors open, the people pray. The King decrees, the criers pass it on, and the people obey. Cronkite lies, the people accept, and the government expands.

Then ... CRASH!

The Internet turned human communications sideways, ninety degrees, toppled the obelisk of Authority, allowing information to travel both directions, "peer to peer", freely and equally, on its own merits. The faux-President's transparently mendacious pronouncements carry no more weight online than any of my daughter's latest silly photos of our cats.

People like John Kerry hate that.

They hate it like Democrats hate ... well ... democracy.

They are determined to do something about it if they can. They pass unconstitutional laws giving power over the Internet to political criminals. They set spies on us, forcing the companies we once trusted with our privacy to give it up to jackbooted thugs. They steal and sift through our electronic thoughts—I hope they enjoy silly photos of cats. I'm certain all kinds of secret contingency plans exist to flip a switch and cut all of us off from one another once again so it can be just like it was in the Dark Ages that Kerry pines for so plaintively.

But here's a warning for the Secretary of Statism, and for his boss, as well. You can't make sirloin steaks back into a steer, and you can't cram the genie back into his bottle. Sure, the physical means—some of them—can be deactivated, damaged, or destroyed. But the idea of sideways, peer-to-peer communication, the ability of any member of the human species to reach out and talk to any other member is out there for good; from here on, it will always find a way.

Those who attempt to thwart it will find themselves in bad places, first in a courtroom, then into prison, finally onto the landfill of history.

Where they belong.

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