Archives for June 2006

There exists, by my count, about one million definitions for the overused and misunderstood multi-purpose-pejorative-at-large: fascism. This section from Wikipedia gets closest to what I judge to be its essential defining characteristic:

Fascism is also typified by totalitarian attempts to impose[s] state control over all aspects of life: political, social, cultural, and economic. The fascist state regulates and controls (as opposed to nationalizing) the means of production.

(strikeouts & brackets, mine)

See here as well for a broader discussion. I don’t have a reference in front of me and Google didn’t save me, but I think Ayn Rand did the best job of crystallizing the difference between socialism and fascism. Both wield absolute control and power over everything, but in socialism there is no pretense at "property rights," whereas in fascism, there is. In fascism, the corporations are turned into the agents of the state, i.e., pretty much what the United States is today.

You, my dear friends, live under a fascism that you have easily been fooled into believing was "freedom," and you have for a pretty long time now. Perhaps now the Leviathan is getting to be such that people might start to get a clue. I dunno, but I certainly applaud anything that makes a serious try at waking people up to it.

So I came across what looks to be an interesting new film today. Head over there and do watch all three trailers. They are worth more than several thousand words of description here. Oh, yea: I could pick at it quite a lot. The whole Federal Reserve and tax protester stuff is nonsense. I mean, it undercuts the entire premise of the film: if your problem is a fascist State that creates funny money and taxes you, your problem isn’t funny money and taxes. Your problem is a fascist State. More fundamentally, your problem is the State.

Baby steps.

This sort of thing is step one for most people. Before they come to recognize the total illegitimacy of the State, per se, they perhaps must first come to understand how it arbitrarily creates politicized laws it does not itself abide. Of course it doesn’t: it’s the State. It seems simple enough, but the journey of enlightenment from democrat or republican to libertarian to anarchist can be a long road that takes decades to traverse.

In that sense, it looks to me like this film is potentially a great step along that road. Not everyone will be convinced, of course. At a point along the journey, everyone must ultimately grapple with one single principle: do you believe that domination of others  (excluding small children and the infirm) through the initiation of force (non-defensive) to achieve any goal is ever justified for any reason, including retribution? If you cannot answer in the unequivocal negative, then you are either a brute whom peaceful people ought never associate with, or you’re unwilling to dominate people yourself, but are content to have your agents (those people you "vote" for and those in their employ) do your dirty-work for you. You know, dirty work like deporting "illegal" immigrants:

(I posted that photo here before, but John Lopez just reminded me about it.)

I’d meant to hit on this early in the week, but here it is now: I don’t get the whole American Civil War reenactment, enthusiast, nostalgia thing. I don’t get it at all. 600,000 people died in that war, killed by their own countrymen–a figure that represented three percent of the American population at the time. That would be the equivalent of a conflict that took 9 million lives today.

As I blogged earlier, I spent Memorial Day (formerly Decoration Day, originally to commemorate fallen Union soldiers of the Civil War) camping up in the pacific redwoods near Santa Cruz. A short hike down a trail brings one to Roaring Camp and it was here that hundreds (at least) Civil War "enthusiasts" (for lack of a better term) gathered for their annual mock-up, display, and battle reenactment. This is no idle hobby. These people range from the serious to the obsessed. We’re talking authenticity down–I imagine–to their underwear. In that sense, I was quite impressed with the whole thing. I like and appreciate people who take things seriously and go all out for their values, particularly when it involves the resurrection of things long past. Such endeavors require years of painstaking effort to scour, collect, restore and preserve.

But I just don’t get the whole enthusiasm for it in the way it appears to be presented in this context–as a value. I won’t dispute that there are some valuable lessons to be learned from it, but the nostalgia is just a bit over the top, I think.

Let’s not forget the most fundamental reason for the war: secession. Now, of course, there were reasons underlying why those seven confederate states acted to secede from the United States but the point is that they were not recognized to have any right to determine their own affairs. The Union did not go to war with them to free the negro slave as many of you were taught in school. Ironically, the Union went to war in order to keep the southern states chained to the north. In Lincoln’s own words:

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

Not quite what you leaned in grade school, eh? Well, it is a very complex topic and I don’t mean to paint the confederacy as victims, per se. They established a coercive state too and appear to have laid their own expansionist plans. That’s what the state does.