Ending The Warfare State

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 21 May 2006 13:42:45 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

L. Neil Smith at The Libertarian Enterprise - a speech given to the Libertarian Party of Larimer County (Colorado), May 15, 2006. Good ideas, some old, some new. [tle]

Instead of continuing with electoral politics, I propose that we libertarians break with an honorable tradition (but only in a single, extremely limited way) and agree that, for once, "There ought to be a law". There ought to be a number of laws, in fact, and each and every one of them would affect and control only those who work for the government.

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First and foremost, the Bill of Rights must be given the teeth it's lacked--by Hamiltonian design, I fear--since 1789. We must offer a change to the Constitution making it a felony to deny rights protected by the first ten amendments. Equally, I believe it should be illegal--a jailing offense--for a sitting politician to knowingly propose, sponsor, or vote for a law that violates those rights, as well.

Second only to that, it must be a crime for a President to engage in a conflict overseas without a Congressional declaration of war. "Start a war, go to jail." And in the case of a lawfully declared war, the instant the bill passes, every representative who voted for it--regardless of age, sex, or physical condition--will leave his desk to receive a uniform and a weapon in the hall outside, and be among the first shipped to the front. The power to send other people's kids off to kill and be killed must come with a price--a price Presidents will pay, as well, the very instant they sign the declaration of war, themselves.

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There are other remedies I could discuss with you if I had the time. Sooner or later, we must disarm all federal employees, as such. (If they wish to be armed off duty, like any individual, that's fine, although they'd be forbidden to "enforce the law" on their own time.) If the FBI had "business", say with someone here in Larimer county, then they would have to go through the Sheriff and be escorted by a deputy.

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The first thing, no matter how hard it may seem, is that we must do away with taxes. With the very concept of taxation. This effort should be looked upon as an extension of the worldwide movement that in the 19th century put an end to thousands of years of chattel slavery. (Of course in the United States and elsewhere, despite the claims of Lincoln idolators, slavery wasn't abolished, it was simply nationalized.)

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Heinlein--a former military man himself--once said that any country that requires a slave army to defend it, doesn't deserve to be defended. Certainly, as the Bush Administration is now discovering, it's harder to fight wars of imperialism without conscript troops--whereas if the country really needs defending, there's never a lack of volunteers.

There's no way around it: conscription, for military or any other purpose, is slavery, which is forbidden--and was deliberatly meant to be according to at least one historical scholar I know--as "involuntary servitude of any kind" by the 13th Amendment. As with taxation, other countries should regard starting a draft as an act of war.

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