- When our lives are filled with conflict and contradiction,
events have a way of producing a kind of unproductive energy that is slow
to get worked out of our system. Slavery, the despoliation of American
Indians, and the Civil War, are the more apparent examples of unresolved
disorders that continue to disquiet us, like the symptoms of a chronic
illness. The destruction of the World Trade Center towers last year appears
to be another expression of this tendency, the entropic consequences of
which continue to agitate beneath the surface of our daily lives.
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- The study of "chaos" helps us to better understand
how variability and uncertainty make it impossible to predict outcomes
of complex systems over any extended period of time. Such unpredictability
has given rise to the concept of the "unintended consequences"
of our actions. Because there is no such thing as "cost-free"
behavior, and because it is impossible ñ within a complex system
ñ to anticipate all the effects of our conduct, the rationale for
political planning and control of societies is collapsing.
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- At its base, "government" has long been defined
as an institution enjoying a monopoly on the use of force within a given
geographic territory. The hubris that animates all who yearn for authority
over their neighbors has rarely allowed for any questioning of this concept.
Accordingly, the state has ñ particularly in the 20th century ñ
engaged in efforts to continually expand upon the tools of death, destruction,
and control with which to forcefully compel others to its will.
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- In furtherance of such ends, powerful nation-states have
expended billions of dollars in research and development funds to create
"weapons of mass destruction" such as nuclear bombs, ICBMs, plastic
explosives, and chemical and biological agents designed to kill men, women,
and children by the millions! When it became evident to the institutional
interests who control the apparatus of the state that such weaponry could
also destroy buildings, airports, roads and bridges, factories, and other
physical facilities, work was completed on a neutron bomb, which permitted
the state to only destroy human beings, while leaving structures intact!
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- Like our ancestors who defended slavery or the annihilation
of Indian tribes, most of us have been content to allow the state to continue
functioning on the basis of its arrogant assumptions. Though we would have
mortgaged our homes to pay for the therapeutic couch-time needed by any
of our children who announced their intentions to engage in such deadly
activities for their own ends, most of us pipped nary a squeak when the
state undertook such programs.
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- Perhaps we shared with our political masters the implicit
assumption that such destructive powers could be entrusted to their hands
because we had been conditioned in the view that the state was not only
a necessity, but an expression of civic virtue. If our political leaders
were not philosopher kings, were they not, at least, the "best and
the brightest" that a free, productive, and peace-loving people could
bring to the surface as their "representatives?" Our leaders
would never use such tools of mass destruction for any improper purpose,
would they?
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- We seemed to share with our political masters the belief
that (a) such weaponry would only be available to political systems, and,(b)
institutional interests, desirous of preserving the status quo, would exert
sufficient pressures on the state to make certain that the use of these
weapons would remain limited. Until recently, in other words, we enjoyed
the illusion that the control over such weapons would be confined to state
authorities, who would use them (or not) in the conduct of their games
of war that could be begun or ended whenever institutional interests decided
to do so.
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- When the state began exercising its monopoly of force
on men, women, and children in foreign lands, we went along with the announced
pretense that it was only engaged in "peacekeeping" activities;
or that dropping bombs on distant villages was a "humanitarian"
undertaking. When the state undertook the same campaign in America ñ
such as at Waco ñ most of us wrote off the wholesale butchery as
an unfortunate consequence of maintaining "law and order," or
found comfort in believing that David Koresh was a "kook."
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- Had we spent more time in government schools studying
physics, and less time learning to recite inane civics class catechisms,
we would have become familiar with Newtonís "third law of motion"
(i.e., for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction). Such
an awareness might have been a tip-off that the acts of violence in such
disparate parts of the world as Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Chechnya,
Indonesia, and the World Trade Center, have their origins in how governments
use their monopolies on the use of force against others. While apologists
for statism persist in their lies that the WTC attacks were but the products
of cultural envy, a more realistic explanation can be found on every childrenís
playground in the world: "if you push me, Iíll push you back."
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- Until recently, those who have been pushed around by
the prevailing power structures have had to content themselves with token
forms of resistance: demonstrations or throwing rocks at tanks. All of
that has changed. On September 11, 2001, nineteen terrorists brought to
the attention of the world a new "weapon of mass destruction,"
namely, the box-cutter knife. But it didnít take long for most of
us to realize that virtually anything could be considered a "weapon
of mass destruction," and quickly knitting needles, fingernail clippers,
and hatpins were confiscated at airports. But the list need not end there:
what about trouser belts, scarves, or even a strong pair of hands? Indeed,
what about any item that is capable of placing any degree of power in the
hands of individuals?
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- This was only the beginning of a new rage of state-induced,
media-encouraged insecurity: terrorists might have access to nuclear weapons,
plastic explosives, and biological or chemical agents, and they could unleash
these at any time and in any place. It was considered impolite to ask where
such weapons had come from in the first place; whose research and development
funds created the means for destroying life on this planet. Worse yet:
virtually no one was prepared to think about (and certainly not to discuss
in public) the implications all of this had for the future of the state.
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- If government is an institution that enjoys a monopoly
on the use of force, the events of 9/11 have shown ñ to any who
are not afraid to look ñ that state systems, throughout the world,
have lost this monopoly. When the decision to start World War III is no
longer the prerogative of presidents, prime ministers, and chairmen, but
can be made by a dozen or so angry men; when the obliteration of a city
can be accomplished by one man with an atomic suitcase, or a vial containing
a biological agent that can be dumped into a water supply, it is time for
us to acknowledge that the state has reached a terminal state!
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- The decentralization of destructive power, in other words,
is producing a decentralization of political power, a relationship that
helps to explain the importance of a well-armed public to the maintenance
of liberty. This centrifugal process is also being facilitated through
the development of the computer and the Internet, each of which was created
by the state in order to further centralize information and, thus, control
over the minds of its citizenry. But just as the state was unable to foresee
the decentralization of its weapons of mass destruction, it also failed
to anticipate the diffusion of information wrought by the Internet.
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- The statists know ñ even if most of us have not
yet figured it out ñ what is implicit in the stateís loss
of domination in these areas. When the state loses its monopoly on the
use of force, as well as its capacity to propagandize the popular mind
without fear of competition from alternative sources of information, the
continuation of its deadly games is pretty much in doubt.
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- Like Uncle Louie, whose lifetime of excess with bourbon
has brought him to his deathbed, the laws of causality may finally have
caught up with the state. The statists are, I believe, fully aware of their
terminal condition. What else would account for conservatives ñ
who, by definition, have been defenders of established institutions, the
status quo ñ becoming the "founding fathers" of a domestic
and international police state? Out of desperation born of the realization
that the state has lost its monopoly on the use of force, the conservatives
have devoted themselves to the creation of ever-more-Draconian statist
measures. If other nations will not kowtow to "American interests"
ñ such as by "voluntarily" disarming themselves upon command
from Washington ñ they shall be attacked.
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- Nor are Americans, themselves, immune from such despotic
practices. In the "Homeland Security" measure that President
Bush is feverishly promoting we see a reflection of the underlying premise
of every oppressive regime: the real "enemy" is to be found at
home, in the will of those who refuse to be subjugated to the unfettered
will of tyrants. If the unintended consequences of complexity are diluting
political authority, the state is likely to react by intensifying the levels
of force against its own people. Those who raise any principled objections
to such tactics might find themselves whisked away to an American concentration
camp in Cuba, there to await some untold fate at some uncertain time. Kurt
Vonnegut once wrote of a futuristic society in which people were charged
with "suspicion of intent to conspire." That future is now!
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- Our thinking has created this Frankenstein monster that
now threatens to destroy its creator. Those who cheered on the state as
it developed its ever-more-destructive weapons systems did not foresee
ñ anymore than did the statists ñ that persons and groups
on the receiving end of state violence might one day get their hands on
such tools and use them for their purposes. But that is where we are: the
knowledge that produced these weapons cannot be unlearned. But we can unlearn
the thinking that led us to believe in the need for the state in the first
place. As we look around the world at the slaughterhouse we have created,
perhaps some primal level of intelligence will be awakened within each
of us, and we shall then put down our blood-stained flags and walk away
from our crumbling citadels.
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- Butler Shaffer teaches at the Southwestern University
School of Law. Copyright © 2002 LewRockwell.com
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- http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer32.html
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