End the War on Freedom

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED NOV. 24, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
'Ridicule and emotionalism ... serve no useful purpose'

"Ed" is back, weighing in again in our discourse based on my column of Nov. 12:

"Dear Vin, Thanks for taking the time to read and respond to my brief broadside. I was, however, somewhat disappointed when it ended with a denouement for the sale of your book. ...

"My reply will be brief; You seem to have missed my point, probably due to my inadequate explanation. I'll attempt to restate that point in clearer more concise terms.

"Human history reveals a motherlode of inhumanity; It is easy to find acts worthy of total condemnation and easier yet to ridicule the people who committed them. This century, with its estimated 400 million violent human deaths, offers perhaps the ripest pickings. There were sufficient atrocities in the course of the 20th century to provide you with a lifelong source of material to ridicule.

"This, however, serves no useful purpose and does nothing more than inflame the emotions of a select few of the populace. ...

"I can find nothing even remotely humorous in the Russian situation. Those peoples allowed a horrible mistake and suffered tremendously for it. Tens of millions died; mothers and fathers, sons and daughters.

"We allowed and committed horrible mistakes and suffered two World Wars as a result. Tyrants and despots around the world have been -- and are being -- allowed to wreak unspeakable horrors on millions of people.

"This is fodder for cackling glee? I think not: Not the acts themselves nor the idiocy and immorality which allow them; It is cause for grieving and repentance. It is motivation to look for ways to raise the human mind and spirit. It is reason to examine the frailties in ourselves and advance the cause of human evolution.

"As a specific example, the facts you state about Russia would be cause to examine the Russian people, their history, their mindset, and lend logic and reason to an exposition which may help lift the yoke of their past and allow them to take a responsible and productive part in human society. Let us not kick an adversary when they are down; let us not point fingers and cackle in glee at their frailty and ignorance. Rather let those of us who are able offer a hand.

"There is a philosophy by which I have tried to live: If I give a man a fish, he can eat for a day; If I teach him to fish, he can eat for the rest of his life. I see little value pointing a finger at that man and cackling at his ignorance, regardless what he did.

"I am not suggesting that you put aside your clever and sagacious observations: they definitely draw readers. I am suggesting that once having pointed out the absurdity and horror of what you have chosen to shed your literary light upon, reveal then a path, some insight, some understanding, so reasonable, so logical, so crystal clear, that your readers will have but one thing to say: Of course.

"You are too good a writer to be mired in what I call emotionalism. Rise above it, get past it, and with your words, lead others. You have a broad readership you could lead to much greater things.

"I must comment further on two particulars in your response.

"You stated a phrase, '... if our liberties are ever to be restored ...' implying the huge misconception that any people in the world ever had the liberties of which you speak. No people anywhere have ever had such liberties. The United States was the first country to firmly establish such personal liberties, but if you look briefly at our history, those liberties took a long time, till the last half of this century, to reach the common man. The complex reality is that we have more laws governing us and more freedoms to enjoy than ever before in our brief history as a republic and as a species. ...

With warmth and respect, Ed.

I replied:

# # #

Hello again, Ed --

Do I have this straight? The idea that this was a "free country" before 1912 is just a terribly tedious and inconvenient myth -- America has never been more "free" than today, under the wise, benevolent, and levelling hand of OSHA, the Dept. of Health and Human Services, the EPA, the BLM, the EEOC, the DOC, the DOE, the other DOE, the BATF, the DEA, the FBI HRT, the Fair Labor Practices boys, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Agriculture, and the Justice Department Anti-Trust Division?

Why, come to think of it, it's a miracle Americans didn't starve, outright, before 1933!

One more time, Ed: Our personal liberties were not "established" by our founding fathers (let alone by Messrs. Farley and Roosevelt, or "Landslide Lyndon" Johnson.) The founders were careful to note that they found mankind's natural rights to be pre-existing. (We were "endowed" with them by our "Creator," in the words of Mr. Jefferson.) The founders merely forbade the new government they were constructing from ever INFRINGING on those rights. (As a matter of fact, the founders insisted that the "securing'" of those pre-existing rights is the only legitimate purpose of government.) Thus, your contention that our government has somehow brought all these wonderful rights into being, with all their new laws and agencies dreamed up in the past 70 years, renounces the founders and all their works ... in addition to being simply evil and wrong.

You advise: "Let us not kick an adversary when they are down; let us not point fingers and cackle in glee at their frailty and ignorance. Rather let those of us who are able offer a hand."

So, in the autumn of 1944, rather than "kicking the Germans when they were down," we should have arranged a negotiated peace with the leaders in Berlin, "compassionately helping" Hitler and Goebbels and Speer, "lending them a hand" with a massive American relief effort to help them "rebuild a kinder, gentler, Nazi Germany"? After all, there was nothing to be gained by ridiculing and demonizing them, after they were down and out.

It "serves no useful purpose" to identify and loudly condemn the doctrines which led to this century's 400 million civilian murders -- the vast majority committed against their own populations by the very collectivist state agencies you revere?

Sounds to me like you also need to sit down and have a nice chat with Mr. Santayana.

Thanks for that bit about "teaching a man to fish, so he can eat for the rest of his life," though. Think that one up yourself?

More importantly, is that what we're doing in Russia today, Ed? Are we warning the "former" Reds we're going to stop handing them seed corn if they keep on eating it, that they must instead take a crash course in Ayn Rand and Hayek and Rothbard and von Mises, in John Locke and Adam Smith and Tom Jefferson and Richard Henry Lee -- establishing a limited government and honest and accessible court system for the sole purpose of guaranteeing personal liberties and PROPERTY RIGHTS? Have we told them, "When you're ready to completely abandon and publicly disavow all this socialist crap, and LEARN how the free market works, come see us again"?

No, Ed. Instead we send Al Gore over there, hauling along billions in (taxpayer-backed) World Bank loans, precisely so the ruling kleptocracy WON'T get themselves hanged and replaced by some young radicals who have read Jefferson and Thomas Paine -- precisely so the Russian people WON'T be radicalized enough to shoot the SOBs and open up all the former "state enterprises" to entrepreneurial homesteading, since that might breed "instability."

Freedom and independence are SO scary. So Bill Clinton actually goes to the Ukraine and tells them NOT to become an independent nuclear power: "Instead we want you to turn over your nukes over TO THE RUSSIANS"! Stability: good. Freedom and self-determination? ... wouldn't be wise; wouldn't be prudent, too many variables there. ...

Finally, your helpful advice to me (other than chiding me for urging you to read a book where all this stuff is laid out in enormous detail for only $22, instead insisting I take my time to write it all for you again longhand, in a personalized manner, and to do it all for free, since others obviously "owe" us anything we "need," and to "charge" for such "compassion" would be greedy and wrong) appears to boil down to: "Avoid emotionalism."

Ah. Now I think I get it. There's no reason to write anything EMOTIONAL, anything that might get the peasants UPSET. I'll just write arcane footnoted research papers to be published in obscure academic journals, concluding that "the underlying premises of the Weed & Seed program, while noble in intent, may require some further double-blind fiduciary analysis in the light of the somewhat counterintuitive real-world results ... probably about seven years' worth. Our grant application is currently in the mail to the CDC in Atlanta."

Some day, Ed, I fear you may have your own run-in with our "kind, compassionate government bureaucrats" who are so busy giving us (as you gush) "more laws governing us and (thus) more freedoms to enjoy than ever before." After they have beaten you up, thrown you or your offspring in jail, seized your property, or some combination of the three, you will whine (as so many of us have whined) "This can't be right. That wonderful law wasn't meant for ME! It was only meant to be used against the drug-dealers and the racial minorities -- you know, 'that' kind. There's obviously been some terrible mistake. I never did anything wrong. Why won't anyone listen?"

Mind you, Ed, I don't WISH this on you -- I honestly hope it never happens. But I fear it WILL happen, as it has happened to hundreds of thousands before you.

Perhaps then, you will find yourself asking, "Why isn't anyone UPSET at all this? Why do they all turn away and go back to watching the game on their wide-screen TVs? Why do even the people I thought were my friends and neighbors now tell the TV news crews, 'Well, he must have done SOMETHING wrong. They don't send a SWAT team to your house for a parking ticket. And he always seemed like such a QUIET guy'? Isn't there anything ANYONE can do to stir them from their bovine complacency? Can't they see what's HAPPENING here?"

But as Pastor Niemoller recalled, "By the time they came for me, there was no one left to speak out."

Have a nice life, Ed -- here's hoping your way works out for you.

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Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and editor of Financial Privacy Report (subscribe by calling Norvald at 612-895-8757.) His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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