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 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 849, November 29, 2015 To eliminate a society's weapons, it is necessary first to eliminate knowledge of weapons, and to eliminate knowledge of weapons, it is ultimately necessary to eliminate all knowledge of any kind.
Attribute to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise In Paris a couple weeks ago the wolves had a field day in the Sheeple pen. That was the impression I got from the audio clips on Quinn one morning. The screams of helpless people being slaughtered by terrorists. That in itself ought to be a wake up call and in many ways it is. The French have mostly brought this problem upon themselves via government sponsored immigration which amounts to the importation of Third World populations into first world countries for what amounts to the farming of chaos and social problems of which they are now reaping a bountiful harvest. Much to the detriment of the people and those currently in power are running damage control and bracing for the backlash. France has suddenly closed its borders and is now alongside Russia bombing ISIS. But it is unlikely the French government will allow their people to have guns. And the wonks in other western nations including our own are still insisting on bringing in more refugees. They don't care. They'd rather see their own people dead than abandon an agenda. Neil pointed out in his article written in the aftermath of the Paris Attacks on how the restrictions on firearms creates soft targets that terrorists and criminals like to exploit. Unfortunately very few people are capable of seeing it that way—and many in government or those who want government to be all things to all people don't want to see it. Like those who want to use something like what just happened as an excuse to beat the drums of war and a grab bag for pushing various agenda and power grabs in general. Because maybe the political tide is ready to turn in favor of reducing government interference in private life again and making the system accountable and fiscally disciplined again. And so the statists are ready to run off to war. Works every time. Politicians often make promises they can't or don't want to keep. War is the best way to justify putting those things on the back burner—in most cases; forever. Like after 9/11 the republicans didn't have to deliver on the promise of their 2000 campaign slogan "Vote Freedom First". Which was even slicker than Bill Clinton going back on the promise of middle class tax cuts after telling the people that he'd ran the numbers and realized it wouldn't work. They can't wait to go to war. For them war truly is peace. Peace of mind that comes from being able to distract and manipulate the people and escape accountability for a bad domestic economy and other things. That's why Obama—the former darling of the peace movement back in 2008 is upping the ante in Syria. He appears to be positioning the nation to be at war going into the 2016 election and I was even thinking that in regard to some of his moves before Paris because in the word of Grandma's generation pertaining to the election on the eve of World War 2; "You can't change horses in the middle of a stream". In hope that his party might retain power after he leaves office since they there are term limits now and a good bet is that Hillary might get to replay the role of FDR in his third and fourth term. The signs of the times seem so clear that it is downright scary. History seems to be repeating itself and we seem forever doomed to repeat it. What I'm talking about is the 4th Turning Theory minted by the authors Strauss and Howe. Which seem to have a lot of empirical validity if you examine historic patterns. In the case of Strauss/Howe—they examine the course of Anglo-American history and its generational cycles going back to the generation of King Arthur! In their analysis a pattern or 4 cycles of generations and 4 historic moods repeats over the course of a timespan called a Saeculum which is the complete course of a "Natural Human Century" or an exceptionally long life of 80 or so years or 4 generations. The four eras are sort of like 4 seasons or the Four Ages of Man mentioned by Shakespeare and various writers of Ancient Rome and Greece."The first being a High which correlates with springtime in which civic authority is revered and society is confident where it wants to go collectively. Individualism is weak and social conformity is king. In our current Saeculum which began in 1947—that period runs through the prosperous 1950s up until the Kennedy assassination in the early 1960s. Which marked the beginning of the upheavals of the Civil Rights marches and Vietnam era—that are the hallmark of what is known as an Awakening—or Second Turning which can be either religious or secular in nature. In the case of the hippies and the antiwar movement and ecology crusade—it was more the latter."It was the time when my generation—the Xers was born and it was the previous cohort known as the Baby Boomers were kicking up their heels pushing back against against the pragmatic authoritarianism of the World War II Generation which is usually the case whenever the next turning in the cycle comes. Much like the 60s and 70s became the backlash against the conservative 50s—the 80s were the backlash against the pet issues of the "Consciousness Revolution" of the counter culture movement which gave way to the Reagan Revolution and the Long Boom and the Culture Wars in the continuing"power struggles between conservatives and liberals. This hallmark of a Third Turning or Unraveling—the polar opposite of a High in which individualism is king and civic authority is weaker and it is difficult for societies to deal successfully with important issues. Wars tend to be inconclusive as opposed to total- like in the case of World War II and therein lays the problem which sowed the seeds for the current crisis. Which many of us thought was starting when the planes hit the Twin Towers in 2001. I had just recently discovered the Strauss/Howe theory and the 9/11 attacks seemed like that great cataclysmic event that the authors said kicked off the beginning of a 4th Turning. Also known as a Crisis Era. But that assumption proved premature. The next seven years were just a continuation of the Long Boom in which the bursting of the Tech Bubble and the shock of the attacks that catapulted us into the War were just hiccups. It was still Harry S. Dent's Roaring 2000s and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq were great spectator sports along with the political theater of talk radio and the 2004 elections. The great exurban exodus continued unabated as a frequent commercial on my favorite talk station hailed the Ohio town of Steubenville "The Burb of the Burgh" as in Pittsburgh with a campy tune. In retrospect I sometimes find myself looking back on those days with a touch of nostalgia like people in the last great crisis—the Great Depression / World War II Era might have looked back on the 1920s—the Roaring 20s of my Grandmother's flapper days"-- which were the previous incarnation of Dent's Roaring 2000s according to Strauss & Howe. There was kind of an eerie weirdness to the last couple years before the real crisis hit as I sort of lost myself like I often do at times in personal things. My hobbies and I drove down to Appalachicola those two springs to collect fish and plants and remember vividly from the 2008 trip the abundance of Ron Paul signs in the backwoods of the Florida panhandle. Perhaps the birth pangs of both the Tea Party movement and the beginning of the end of the Unraveling going into the final act of the current Saeculum—the Age of American Superpower. The Fourth Turning thereof which began very much like the one in the previous cycle with the Crash in the fall of 2008. Which would be the analog of the one that happened in 1929. An authentic Crisis Era in which the nation faces a great existential danger and civic authority is revitalized. And wars are total. Many people—especially in talk radio such as Jim Quinn, Glenn Beck and Michael Savage—I remember best—were calling it the repeat of the Great Depression of the 1930s. El Neil says pretty much the same in Down With Power and there have been countless other books and articles written on the subject. Neil Howe—the surviving member of the Strauss / Howe Duo is still at it running an informational website and maintains that 2008 was indeed the turning point and the crisis era is ongoing. The Paris Attacks may be yet another turning point much like the transition between the ending of the last Great Depression and World War II. Which in a great way really sucks because if this is a Winter of History—it means we are only half way through it and the halfway mark really is the point of no return. The first half was not as bad as it had been in the previous cycle- mainly because the impact of the depression was softened by a welfare state being propped up by deficit spending that was not in place in the 1930s. But the next part—the war phase could be very rough for a lot of other reasons. Paramount among them the existence of nuclear weapons which were just in their infancy and much fewer in number when the last great crisis was winding down. That in itself represents a great existential danger that even Neil Howe wonders whether civilization on this planet can survive. Neil Howe's blog contains some other interesting stuff. Like his thoughts on Mitt Romney's lackluster campaign in 2012. He echoes my thoughts and frustrations in regard to how he would not put up a fight on so many issues. Michael Savage was right in saying that Romney was another Fall Guy like McCain. And Obama has turned out to be an unmitigated disasterville. It's Jimmy Carter's third term on steroids! I think Howe like many others is deeply disappointed in the current President. In the earlier day they seemed to be counting on Barry to be like FDR and take the bull by the horns. But other than keeping the game of buying votes with more debt and kicking the can down the road and building more road to kick the can down—he's done nothing to solve any problems and his foreign policy has turned the the Middle East from a powder keg into a train wreck and he's canceled the Keystone pipeline on top of it. That was definitely the hallmark of sane policy on the eve of World War 3. Forget Jimmy Carter or FDR. America has Nelville Chamberlain in the White House which begs the question; Where's Winston Churchill because the way things are going, the country is really going to need one in 2016. This is alway the way the politicians screw everything up—be it with insane foreign policy, equally insane economic policies or gun laws that turn people into defenseless Sheeple inviting aggression from the wolves among us. They've stirred up yet another hornet's nest and will soon be calling on someone else to deal with the consequences. It's the conservative solutions—which are mostly libertarian solutions that the pragmatic among the Progressives turn to in order to clean up the messes they and their ilk have made when things get too hot to handle. And sadly when it comes to total war it ends up the lot of the Productive Class to do the heavy lifting and even sacrifice life or limbs to get it done. And many of them will rise to the occasion because they believe the Nation is still worth saving. The halfway mark. That really is the point of no return. The only hope now is to survive and persevere until the end of the current cycle where some of the things we can only dream of now are actually in the process of becoming reality. Like this: Reusable rocket test launch
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