28 August 2009

Rise of the Ghouls

To honor the dead one must, indeed, respect the time of their passing and give latitude towards those in grief so that they may properly mourn the deceased.  While I had very few points of agreement with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy I do respect and honor the dead.

For those who attempt to exploit his death for purely partisan means, to add his name to this bill or that project, I have the same answer as to those who were putting President Reagan's name on so many things: I remember when a wait past a person's death by a decade or more before doing so was customary so that we could, truly, appreciate if a man was dues such memorials and honors.  A small shrine is one thing, as it gives a central point for mourning and remembrance.  Use of public power to anoint that name upon bills or structures is another.  It is ghoulish to do so for purely partisan reasons, and those who want such things are doing no honor to the person involved or their Nation.  I do not like it for people still alive, as is done with so many pieces of pork legislation, nor for those recently deceased without giving the public time to determine if an individual is truly great for all generations to remember, or just of passing fame.  If truly great, then a decade will not matter as a permanent spot would be given in history.  And if not, then there has been waste of time and effort and others that could be memorialized were not to get such passing fame put in place.  I have called the unhealthy fascination with the late President Reagan as an individual a form of 'necrophilia' and it is when a party tries to put forth the star power of a dead individual and ignore his policies that he put forward to get him to office.  The concentration on the charisma, although fine for Hollywood gossip columnists, is an unhealthy thing for a political party in a republic.

When those who eulogize the dead do not weigh the good and ill of the life of the deceased, I know that I am hearing not only well wishing and not wanting to speak ill of the dead, but the inability to say those negative things and say that they were part of an entire man, and that if we exalt the good then we must also come to terms with the bad.  For such legislation that he got passed that helped the Nation, Sen. Kennedy deserves our respect, honor and gratitude.  For leaving a young woman to die in icy waters trapped in a car and seeking no help to rescue her, he deserves our incredulity, disdain and serves as an object lesson of how not to act as a person, as a man.  These can be weighed, the good and bad both spoken, and say that the sum of this man's life was that of a flawed man, imperfect in many ways, laudable in some, but that of a man, nonetheless.  He would not face civil justice nor judgment for what he did and used power and influence to escape it, and that is the mark of no Lion at all but of frail, imperfect man who sets himself above the law by his actions.

To leave a person who trusts you to die without seeking as much aid as possible TO help, is dishonorable in the extreme.  To suffer no justice for it, and account for yourself is to set yourself above society and its law, and that is not the act of a citizen, but of aristocracy, royalty and nobility.  Save that under Common Law there is no one who is not to hold themselves to account for their actions under the law.  That corrosive effect of using power, wealth and influence to escape justice not only sets one apart from the law, but degrades the law for all citizens.  What is the use of making good laws if those making them feel they are immune to its actions?  Sen. Kennedy, in that instance, demonstrated why the law is necessary for all people: the powerful can use that power to escape it and get away with acts that no ordinary man could do.  What one gains is not fame and respect, but infamy and disgrace. 

No good law can make up for that when put down by the very one that seeks to escape its scrutiny.  No representative democracy can last long when the lawmakers set themselves above the law.  In that Sen. Kennedy was but an indicator of the wider corruption in the legislative branch, which has seen fit to exempt themselves from many laws that the rest of the public must abide by.  Those that seek to distract from the rot they feed on, to laud one who had active disdain for the law as a legislator, they, too, are Ghouls feasting upon the corruption of the public body and saying how good such rot is as they ingest it.

 

The US Justice Dept goes after the CIA and those in charge raise no fears of what this will do.  Fault lies in the fact that the CIA is a civilian entity given needs that, before our modern time, were carried out by the military either overt or covert.  When a Japanese Admiral came to espy Pearl Harbor he did so quite openly, and none molested him.  Espionage has ever been a game played by Nations and many who were not of any military were recruited and put into harms way to gather INTEL.  And for that they would fall under both civil and military law and understand that what would garner them a prison sentence at home would garner them a death sentence from our enemies.  When we ask our citizens to go 'undercover' during any war, we are asking if they want to die for us in what they are doing, for the very act OF espionage DURING wartime is a DEATH SENTENCE when captured.

Our modern enemies, these that fight Private War against our Nation, they do not abide by any law and put themselves above all law to say that they will determine the fate of all mankind.  They say so.  Openly.  Repeatedly.

The Law of Nature is that which is in all of us as we are all creatures of Nature.  When we create society we learn to put our negative liberties to use to protect us from Nature and those other societies that mean us no good.  There is no benefit to keeping them, as one man would then be able to set all of his people to war on a whim.  We regularize this process, gain input from society, weigh matters of war and peace and let our representatives know where we stand and they speak for us.  Governments represent their societies even when that society has no say in that government: Kings and Emperors all acknowledge this.  Under the way of the Common Law do we hold these actions accountable to the people so that no leader, no King, no President in a Common Law system is above the Law and neither is any Legislative body.  So to are all the organs of government responsible to the society that they are part of for the limited powers they are granted.

I have heard much of how our society will fall from grace nearly instantly if we do not bend over backwards to treat these ones waging Private War under civil courts.  Their activities put them at risk for two forms of justice: military and civil.  That is no 'double jeopardy' as their actions fall into both realms and each has different distinguishing characteristics to them.  The civil law concentrates on civil society and protections via due process of law: the accused has the right to a jury trial and the full protections under civil law.

Military law is a different realm, however, and it is not one of evidence gathering and weighing rights versus liberty.  It is weighing actions versus the protection of the entire Nation, of society and all its organs as an entire thing.  This is not the realm of 'international law', either, although it can play some role in this.  We pursue military ends when the civil means have fallen far short for our needs.  They have fallen far short.

In 1993 Mir Amal Kansi would murder CIA employees as they waited at a signal to turn into the CIA facility in Virginia.  We treated this as a mere civil mass murder, not as an act of warfare upon our Nation's civil servants.  We were wrong to do so.  We would pay a price for that.

In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed by an alliance of Islamic Radicals.  We pursued it as a civil matter and that did not put an end to these groups or their actions.  We were wrong to think that a bombing done as a military action deserved civil response.  And we would pay for that oversight.

In 1993 the attempted Landmarks Bombing plot was found to be run by one of the men held in civil jail for the WTC bombing.  Through good luck we found out about it before it happened.  If he was in military custody as having waged Private War against us, he would not have been able to do so.  He would subvert his lawyer to help his cause.  The price paid for not treating him as one waging Private War goes on, to this day.

In 1996 we would see our military personnel attacked not once, but twice by Private War groups.  Saudi Arabia would drag its feet in helping us when we made that a civil matter, and then sequester one of the known operatives from us and execute him.  For his attack upon their soil, they had every right to do so.  As they had openly hosted the US forces in their Nation, they did not allow our Nation to find out the perpetrators so we could respond militarily to this military attack.  For that perfidy and lack of hospitality on the part of Saudi Arabia, we would pay, and pay dearly.

In 1998 our Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed.  We did not treat this as any Nation should, as an act of war upon sovereign soil in extraterritorial enclaves.  Embassies are foreign soil and this is understood going back more than 2000 years.  As it is guarded by the US Marine Corps, it is an attack upon our military.  We would treat this as a civil crime and not the acts of war that they were and are for all those that attack Embassies of any Nation.  We would pay for that when that President would not ask Congress to declare that organization to be at Private War with us, so that we could respond openly, freely and make our objectives clear.  We would pay for that with ineffectual responses and in more blood.

In 2000 one of our warships, the USS Cole, with open access to the High Seas was brazenly bombed in an act of war.  The US has never responded in an effective manner to this act of brazen Piracy which is Private War.  We would pay for that.

In 2000 a Private War group was found to have set a bomb in place to assassinate President Clinton.  By placing that device to attack the Head of State of a Foreign Nation with military means, we wouldn't take much action at all, civil or military.  We had been working long years to get at that organization and its deep links with transnational organized crime and transnational terrorism was putting people in many Nations at risk.  We would pay for that weakness.

Stretching far back into the 1960's when the PLO and FARC and other Private War groups started up, all the way to the present with just one exception, the United States has always wanted to deal with these organizations as a civil matter.  We had been losing not just military personnel, although that has been horrific in its long-term toll, but we have lost CIA personnel, civilians in government unaffiliated with DoD or the CIA, private contract personnel domestic and foreign, oil workers, farmers, teachers, clergy of many denominations and religions, aid workers, doctors, nurses, the fit and the disabled, and just plain tourists seeking to find out more about foreign lands and paying the ultimate price in a war declared upon them that our government deigns not to recognize.

Those that declare such Private War are NOT mere Public Enemies, and we treat them like that at our peril.

They follow no civilized rules of warfare.  They establish no prison camps nor allow neutral parties to examine their captives.  They have no accountable State structure over them, to hold them to account for any action.  They do more than 'just' terrorize: they loot, rob, kill, rape, plunder, and attack any they wish to for any reason they want or no reason at all.  When civilized man reclaims all his rights and liberties granted to him under the Law of Nature, he is far worse than any beast or animal.  Beasts and animals have no choice as to their lot in life, they have few decisions save kill or be killed.  Living in Nature, red of tooth and claw, is all they have and they utilize what rudimentary abilities they have so as to protect themselves in life.

Terrorists are not beasts, though they reclaim all the beastly rights and liberty to themselves once more.

They actively step away from civilization, disdain civilization, attack civilization and seek to be the sole lords over everyone and everything.  No tract they put out will make them a Nation or State until they actually work hard to establish laws for themselves that they will be held accountable to, and then put down a flag, put on a uniform and openly protect this society they are forming.  We recognize them as humans only in form, not in humanity.  They wage war without oversight, accountability or any thought save to intimidate and kill their way to Conquest without Mercy.

What we have in the Laws of War are very, very succinct: these ones are not due anything more than the determination of their status.  Their status, as in all civilized realms, determines their fate.  When they declare war upon us on their own with no backing from any Nation nor State, and declare that upon ANY NATION ON THIS EARTH they then declare their hostility to ALL NATIONS.  When they declare war, their status is set to be judged by the Laws of War upon the battlefield.  When captured in civil settings they are Pirates, no matter the place of their action, be it upon the High Seas or dry land, their attacks set them aside from normal crimes and the only, singular, determination that matters is if they are part of that organization that has so declared war upon us or if they do so as individuals.  Under all military law up to our modern era, this determination was given in the battlefield by the active combatants and summary justice was delivered: no prisoners were taken save for INTEL needs and then, once that was done, they were executed as spies.  In our land, on the civil side, the price for Piracy is rather low: Life Imprisonment.

CIA members who risk their lives to get INTEL from such beings are stepping into the area where man has renounced all civil authority over him, and trying to get information from those who have reclaimed all their rights and liberties that Nature gave them.  My sole worry is for the health and well being of those men and women who step into that situation and that they come out whole and undamaged physically and mentally as they are stepping into a world far worse than that of any psychopathic killer.  They step into the chaos of Nature and seek to wrest any scrap of information to save the lives of their fellow citizens.  They pay a price in remorse for their actions and need for counseling and even having to step away from that work when the price to THEM becomes too high, and they risk themselves and their Nation by breaking down.

When one President gives sanction for this, and has duly informed Congress and another gives lip motions to support those agents and then sets another agency against those very same agents, that is the act of a Ghoul.  Even when they have had misdeeds, even horrific ones, they have gotten our sanction via TWO Presidents.  From all readings of the redacted IG report, the problems and abuses early on were addressed, the programs changed to have more accountability and include better information sharing to ensure that our men and women who had to get INTEL from those being held maintained their civilized stature.  Of systemic abuses, we have seen none to date.  Of accountable actions, keeping Congress informed, and acting in a civilized manner and adjusting the system to be held to HIGHER accountability, we have seen much.

This is not upholding the law unless there is PROOF of long-term deceit, misinformation, lack of oversight and treachery.  To state that there has been any of that when all evidence, to date, points in the exact opposite direction, then leaves you in with the other Ghouls of Conspiracy theories. 

Really, anyone who can run such a good conspiracy should be doing a better job running everything else, no?

And yet our minor problems are enlarged with the electron microscope so as to be made out to be civilization ending.  And those who kill wantonly, without any law to back them?  They get every excuse for their actions, which are to tear down the civilization that allows those who excuse them to live good lives.  That is dishonorable to the overwhelming majority, indeed the near totality, of all those who serve this Nation and put themselves into harms way for us that act with honor and justice on their side.  Forgiving mass murders is to invite more mass murder and to say that you do not value the lives of civilized man any more highly than that of those who have walked away from civilization.  That is not a mark or honor of being civilized, but a mark of how uncivilized you are when you uphold those that fight Private War above those who are accountable to the law by placing themselves under it.  To be unable to recognize that this most precious of voluntary associations is WILLING and that those UNWILLING are uncivilized misses the point of being civilized: to DISTINGUISH between the two and end the latter as they are a threat to all mankind.  Which includes: you.

To do otherwise is to cruelly say that barbarism is civilized behavior and to invite worse and far worse, by doing so.  That, too, is a rot within the body of our society, and has many feasting on it as well, who say this is good, this inability to distinguish.  They wish the rot to spread and think themselves immune from it.  And yet by consuming and spewing such rot far and wide they proclaim themselves as part of it and willing to be barbaric and support any barbaric action against those who hold themselves accountable to the law.

 

Then there is the attack that DID get a military response: 9/11.

A day when the hand of Private War reached out to end the lives of nearly 3,000 innocent people in a single day.  Both civilian and military were killed, our Nations airspace put at peril, our transport system used against us, and a blatant act of war from a Private War group got a military response against those harboring them.  Helping Pirates gets you 10 years.  Becoming a Pirate gets you life.  Thwarting civil justice gets you war when so many are killed.

This war started to shine a light on the dark web of connections between terrorists, 'Rogue Nations' and transnational organized crime.  I've spent the last couple of years chronicling those links, those connections, and tracing them high up into the power structures of Nations.  I haven't found that to be fun, but it has been extremely enlightening if not just down right horrifying.

When I find politicians in bed with thugs, killers, and transnational organized crime leaders I am horrified.

And that is just on the political 'Right'.

On the 'Left' I get to add terrorists and radical Marxists of various stripes.  Even more fun is that some of the same individuals in the various underworlds support BOTH 'sides' of politics in America.  There is a lovely neutrality of organized crime to politics, save when it threatens them directly, as Mussolini did the Sicilian Mafia.  No one in the MSM or even the blogosphere really has seemed to step up to the plate on this for politics, but that is due to the uncomfortable ties between politicians, businesses, and organized crime.  The few individuals who do that are standouts, and I applaud them, mightily.  Now if only those on the 'Left' who try to say those on the 'Right' are in the thrall of corporations would ever bother to look at their OWN politicians and organizations, but if you have good intentions you can't be bad, now, can you?  If you have blood on your hands and contribute to a 'good' cause, you can't be bad, now, can you?  If you are cozy with organized crime and terrorists but have the right political flavor du jour, you can't be bad, now, can you?

When 3,000 innocents are killed in an act of war by a Private War organization, that requires a military response and GOT ONE.  Those who made war now have it visited upon them.  It was their choice to walk away from civilization, return to the Law of Nature of the Strong over the Weak and to be able to kill without compunction or reason.  No one 'forced' them to do this.  No one 'oppressed' them to do this.  Many of the individuals involved with 9/11 were college educated, middle-class and able to speak sweetly and nicely.  They had all the benefits of civilization and walked away from them with open eyes and closed minds.  They don't value 'multiculturalism' and that is anathema to them.  Trying to 'understand' them means understanding that they do not want your 'understanding' only your compliance with their will.  And if you don't they will just as readily kill you as talk with you.  That is what happens when you turn away from civilization: you turn away from civility.

You believe that power is an absolute right to rule others to fit your beliefs.

We now see that 9/11 is to be turned into a day of 'National Service and Remembrance'.

I can see Remembrance, there is no higher goal than to remember the sacrifice of the innocent dead.

National Service, however, is not part of that.

Giving back to your fellow man to build society is this thing we call 'Charity' and no government can take the place of individuals building society.  When it tries to do so it robs society via oppressive taxation and believes that one can create 'good' by legislative fiat.  When those in power try to 'Nationalize' Charity, it becomes enforced giving, enforced work and slavery to the State.  To use the innocent dead to push this is ghoulish in the extreme, and is a direct feasting upon our memories of the dead and trying to turn it towards the State.  That has not worked so well in any Nation that has tried it, this concept of 'National Service' being a good idea in its own right.  Italy, Germany, Russia, China, North Korea, and many, many, many other Nations have tried this and found only Despotism and Tyranny as the end of this 'good' idea.  Don't mind the millions dead due to death squads, gulags, concentration camps, re-education camps, gas chambers, firing squads and a World War that resulted when these 'good' ideas are tried out.

The dead are heaped at the feet of those who have tried this.

And now the ghouls appear to want more of this, and try ever so sweetly to ignore history and the final result of where these 'good' ideas lead.  Since these claim to be 'intelligent' or even 'smart' individuals, I will then say that they must KNOW history and WANT this end for their fellow citizens.  Tens, hundreds, thousands, even millions of 'smart' people have wanted this, only to find that what they create has no use for them and, even worse, sees them as a THREAT once it gets going and some of the first to find out how 'good' this is are those that backed it.  Often at the point of a bayonet.

Conscription during wartime is a National Survival necessity: there will be no ability to have a Nation without it.

Although modern warfare is changing that, yet again.

During peacetime, for a republic of free people, it is enforced work upon the population, dictated by government.  We removed that with Amendment XIII.  That is not limited by race or color: it is true for all citizens of the Nation.

 

I heard the ghouls moan about the high cost of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and heard about it for years.  How they would impoverish the Nation.

Then when one of their own is elected and spends more in 6 months than the entire cost of both conflicts COMBINED?

Our dead soldiers served their purpose for these partisans to 'win' at any cost, and try to say that those of us who spoke up about rampant spending during the previous Administration were actually supporters of it and shouldn't criticize when one of theirs is spending far more than the previous Administration did by multi-fold.  I do not expect reason from those that feast upon the dead to push their talking points.  They have demonstrated they have no ability TO reason, no moral compass and will utilize the dead to mere partisan ends and do not give a damn for the deep and hard sacrifices others make to let them keep their hides unscathed.  They push 'health care' after bemoaning how bad the VA system is and refuse to actually FIX THAT FIRST TO HONOR OUR SOLDIERS.

Because they deserve it more than the worthless people who use their deaths to their partisan ends.

They seek to remove Charity from our society and call that 'good' as Charity just 'can't do what government can do'.

Like have enforced 'National Service'!

Or run concentration camps.

Or firing squads.

Or send out thugs to beat up the innocent who merely disagree with them.

Strange to say it, but Charity just can't do those things so it must be so very bad...that is where the partisan 'logic' and 'reason' ends up whenever it is deployed to put 'National Service' ahead of Charity.

Ask a ghoul to fix something and they will destroy it.  They always want more flesh to consume so they can tell you how good it would be for you to be a corpse for them.

I am not the one who wants 'National Service' built upon the dead.

I am no ghoul, but wish to respect the dead as best I can without having someone tell me how to do it and that, really, I should think about 'National Service'.

I served in DoD on the civilian side for 14 years.

Feeling I was not doing enough for my Nation during wartime, I volunteered for an NIH study so as to help my fellow citizens and let medical science try out something that was relatively 'safe'.

The lead up to that, however, turned out to be not so safe, and I accept the price I paid as part of what goes with giving back to my Nation and my fellow citizens.

I have seen 'health care' up close and personal.

I have seen the very best in the business befuddled by my case.

I have seen and bear witness to a practicing physician who helped to finally start tracking the problem down.

And I continued on with the NIH trial to its conclusion, even when I had to be picked up and dropped off and could barely walk 50' on my own.

I have seen people even worse off than I am with conditions so rare they don't have names.

'Health care' is no magic bullet and is still more an art than a science.

No amount of money, no amount of insurance, indeed NOTHING can help you if you get one of those rare and nameless maladies.  The ghouls have no sovereign cure, save to take your money, your liberty, your freedom, and then tell you exactly what you will get in life... until life does something to you they can't figure out.  Then you are on your own, and it is best not to be on your own without liberty, freedom and the ability to get your own answers outside of a rigid system.  Your life depends on it.

I have freely, willingly and with open eyes served my Nation.

Gladly did I volunteer for medical research as it is important for me to support my fellow man.

I would never, ever support any move to MAKE YOU DO GOOD.

There is no greater evil than that, taking away your liberty in that way, as it is enslavement.

Even such as Sen. Kennedy deserves his rest and our remembrance of him, good and ill, so we may take our measure of the man.

For those that have walked away from civilization, they have decided their fate and the only question is how much blood they can spill before their demise.

Those that feast upon their dead to enact their agendas?

They define themselves: Ghouls.

21 August 2009

Fantasy Ideology and its fallout

The following is from The Jacksonian Party.

The following is a white paper of The Jacksonian Party.

From Lee Harris, Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology:

"Know your enemy” is a well-known maxim, but one that is difficult to observe in practice. Nor is the reason for this hard to fathom: If you are my enemy, it is unlikely that I will go very much out of my way to learn to see things from your point of view. And if this is true even in those cases where the conflict is between groups that share a common culture, how much more true will it be when there is a profound cultural and psychological chasm between the antagonists?

Yet, paradoxically, this failure to understand the enemy can arise not only from a lack of sympathy with his position, but also from a kind of misplaced sympathy: When confronted by a culturally exotic enemy, our first instinct is to understand such conduct in terms that are familiar to us — terms that make sense to us in light of our own fund of experience. We assume that if our enemy is doing x, it must be for reasons that are comprehensible in terms of our universe.

A Fantasy Ideology is one that can only determine the course of events and give policy within a limit set of mental boundaries that form up that ideology. Al Qaeda has a belief system that includes the concept that if one good and strong deed is done, then Allah will sweep his hand out to do the remaining deeds for you and lower your enemy. Lee Harris gives very good analysis of how that works and why, but the crux of the problem is that any fantasy ideology has within it fantastical concepts, magical concepts, that anyone without the ideology is put into a position of wondering why these people believe the world works that way when all experience demonstrates otherwise.

The premise presented by Mr. Harris is that when operating within a fantastical realm of thought that is supposed to determine how reality works, that those who get negative results do not take those results as an actual feedback to their actions, but as having missed some particular set of nuances inside the belief system that then need to be rectified. One particular point is brought up by Mr. Harris when he examines how this plays out in America, and it is an extended quote so as to get full context of his observation when having talked with a friend about an Anti-Vietnam war rally in Washington, he disagreed with a friend about the productiveness of a disruptive event that could turn very counter-productive, his friend disagreed and that even if it was counter-productive it was good for his soul:

What I saw as a political act was not, for my friend, any such thing. It was not aimed at altering the minds of other people or persuading them to act differently. Its whole point was what it did for him.

And what it did for him was to provide him with a fantasy — a fantasy, namely, of taking part in the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors. By participating in a violent anti-war demonstration, he was in no sense aiming at coercing conformity with his view — for that would still have been a political objective. Instead, he took his part in order to confirm his ideological fantasy of marching on the right side of history, of feeling himself among the elect few who stood with the angels of historical inevitability. Thus, when he lay down in front of hapless commuters on the bridges over the Potomac, he had no interest in changing the minds of these commuters, no concern over whether they became angry at the protesters or not. They were there merely as props, as so many supernumeraries in his private psychodrama. The protest for him was not politics, but theater; and the significance of his role lay not in the political ends his actions might achieve, but rather in their symbolic value as ritual. In short, he was acting out a fantasy.

It was not your garden-variety fantasy of life as a sexual athlete or a racecar driver, but in it, he nonetheless made himself out as a hero — a hero of the revolutionary struggle. The components of his fantasy — and that of many young intellectuals at that time — were compounded purely of ideological ingredients, smatterings of Marx and Mao, a little Fanon and perhaps a dash of Herbert Marcuse.

For want of a better term, call the phenomenon in question a fantasy ideology — by which I mean, political and ideological symbols and tropes used not for political purposes, but entirely for the benefit of furthering a specific personal or collective fantasy. It is, to be frank, something like “Dungeons and Dragons” carried out not with the trappings of medieval romances — old castles and maidens in distress — but entirely in terms of ideological symbols and emblems. The difference between them is that one is an innocent pastime while the other has proven to be one of the most terrible scourges to afflict the human race.

This concept is not unknown and was seen decades prior to the Vietnam war by another man who was examining the decline of Western Culture. From Oswald Spengler, The Oswald Spengler Collection: Biographical Essay; Extracts From The Decline Of The West: The Hour of Decision:

We live in momentous times. The stupendous dynamism of the historical epoch that has now dawned makes it the grandest, not only in the Faustian civilization of Western Europe, but - for that very reason - in all world-history, greater and by far more terrible than the ages of Caesar and Napoleon. Yet how blind are the human beings over whom this mighty destiny is surging, whirling them in confusion, exalting them, destroying them! Who among them sees and comprehends what is being done to them and around them? Some wise old Chinaman or Indian, perhaps, who gazes around him in silence with the stored-up thought of a thousand years in his soul. But how superficial, how narrow, how small-minded are the judgments and measures of Western Europe and America! What do the inhabitants of the Middle West of the United States know of what goes on beyond New York and San Francisco? What conception has a middle-class Englishman, not to speak of a French provincial, of the trend of affairs on the Continent? What, indeed, does any one of them know of the direction in which his very own destiny is facing? All we have is a number of absurd catchwords such as "overcoming the economic crisis," "understanding of peoples," "national security and self-sufficingness," with which to "overcome" catastrophes within the space of a generation or two by means of "prosperity" and disarmament.

Spengler was coming to grips with a movement of Western Civilization that had started before his time and was gaining steam in his life. He saw the results of the inward-looking trends of Western Civilization and in identifying those trends he sought to understand them as they play out in society. He would examine this playing out in Germany, but the general thesis is plain across Western Culture that the insularity was leading to a belief that by giving popular catchwords or phrases that a problem could be defined, refined and then addressed all in good order. Yet there is only the order we create in the world and it is not one that broad generalizations or categories can properly address. The idea of a citizen being self-responsible and knowing enough of the world to make good decisions was being supplanted by one of moving decisions from the citizenry and upwards to governments. By giving pleasing words to represent what were thought to be the problems, the citizenry was given that their politicians actually knew what they were doing. That, however, led to World Wars and global ideological conflicts as those not joining in this Western inward conception of the world continued to act outside the constraints of political definition.

That latter effect he would go into, and it was one that politicians would utilize to further isolate the common man from world affairs and even the affairs of government:

Added to all this is the universal dread of reality. We "pale-faces" have it, all of us, although we are seldom, and most of us never, conscious of it. It is the spiritual weakness of the "Late" man of the higher civilizations, who lives in his cities cut off from the peasant and the soil and thereby from the natural experiencing of destiny, time, and death. He has become too wide awake, too accustomed to ponder perpetually over yesterday and tomorrow, and cannot bear that which he sees and is forced to see: the relentless course of things, senseless chance, and real history striding pitilessly through the centuries into which the individual with his tiny scrap of private life is irrevocably born at the appointed place. That is what he longs to forget, refute, or contest. He takes flight from history into solitude, into imaginary far-away systems, into some faith or another, or into suicide. Like a grotesque ostrich he buries his head in hopes, ideals, and cowardly optimism: it is so, but it ought not to be, therefore it is otherwise. We sing in the woods at night because we are afraid. Similarly, the cowardice of cities shouts its apparent optimism to the world for very fear. Reality is no longer to be borne. The wish-picture of the future is set in place of facts - although fate has never taken any notice of human fancies - from the children's Land of Do-Nothing to the World Peace and Workers' Paradise of the grown-ups.

Little as one knows of events in the future - for all that can be got from a comparison of other civilizations is the general form of future facts and their march through the ages - so much is certain: the forces which will sway the future are no other than those of the past. These forces are: the will of the Strong, healthy instincts, race, the will to possession and power; while justice, happiness, and peace - those dreams which will always remain dreams - hover ineffectively over them.

At this point we now merge Spengler and Harris, to see the passage of Western Civilization going into a mode of thought that is fantastical not only in its beginnings but in its outcomes. The actual 'do this activity because it is a good activity' that was present before the ongoing urbanization of the West was being replaced by a fantastical conception of what man had to actually do to get good results: you just had to have good intentions and talk a good game, and let others do the hard work for you. That is not living with reality, but a fantasy in which what is said gets magically enacted in the real world and made perfect because it had such a good start as an idea. Narrative for your own life that you write now replaces actually living a life that is worth being narrated by others. Instead of being ground up in the urban environment where you are just one individual isolated from others within a large city by yourself and unwilling to do the hard work of actually getting to know others around you, as was done in small towns heretofore, you need only join isolated social groups that have such similar beliefs that you think by acting across a wide-ranging physical landscape that you are also doing that for the mental landscape and that all other areas believe just as you do. Never mind that is one, single, individual from a farther area that believes as you do, that individual must represent 'the masses' around him. That is how personal heroic narratives go, and so you make your struggle that 'of the people' while not actually reaching out of your limited mental confines to experience a variety of the people who just might disagree with you.

Western Civilization, Spengler's 'white culture', is part of the ongoing evaluation of how man examines himself, places himself amongst his fellow man and then uses the observed differences to inform him so as to make decisions. What this boils down to, although Spengler could not know it, is a more generalized condition of man via his own works, that would separate man from the inherent wisdom of working with nature and understanding it. If all of our great works are so wonderful, and they are, then why are we to die so as not to appreciate them forevermore? By creating the works, themselves, man does that self-isolation, and to live in cities is to live in a created realm that has little attachment to nature and yet nature comes to pull man out of it as nature can only be built upon, not replaced. This new form of man has a name to him: Homo Urbanus.

What happens when man moves from nature to urban environments? This is what Spengler addresses and the disconcerting problem is that as urban areas are created, they have a seeming facade of control to them via that creation. Yet this urban creation does not cater to the needs of those who are there: the poor remain poor, the sick remain sick, and the needs to get basic 'services' to such people then taxes our creation that is not meant for so many to be crowded into urban environments. The cries we hear, today, of the 'global problems' are not a reality but a reaction to our urban world being unable to cope with the needs of our own people and, thus, we recoil from it and cast about for something, anything, that we might be able to do something about so as to ignore the things we can do nothing about. Our great works fail in many areas and our own mortality is reflected in that failure.

Those that follow politics see this play out on the Left that asserts certain future 'facts': that everyone will have affordable health care, that everyone will live in peace with each other, that our world is being destroyed by us, that we must change NOW in order to get to a perfect world. That imperative is repeated for everything from Dreadnoughts to nuclear arms to 'population bombs' to a coming global ice age to being irradiated by nuclear reactors to the dangers of cars to the dangers of not eating right to global warming to health care: there is nothing that cannot be put off as a future 'fact' that can not be addressed NOW if you would just give up some of your liberty to those that run urban societies. Do not bother these adherents of urban fantasy with such things as economics, human culture, manufacturing needs, limits on what can be done with medicine or the very fact that man being a creature of nature will never be perfect or perfectable, just able to be more perfect than he was. By putting that into play and to show our advances, those who want a perfect world will then castigate you for how far we have yet to go... yet we can get there instantly if we give up our liberty, our self-identity and our worth to government.

To them.

Those that use the past to guide their decisions, who examine civilizations of all cultures, see this siren song again and again: serve Pharaoh and all will be well, be forced to unity under a warlord and all will be well, give Caesar the power to rule and all will be well, let the smart decide for you or the powerful or the politically well connected and all will be well. Be it Agamemnon, Ramses, Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, Castro... the idea that an entire people can be embodied in a single representative who rules arises so often in mankind's past that it is to be seen as the norm of how man works. Yet the Enlightenment was to move us down a path away from hero worship and from belief in a perfect State and to one of imperfectable man creating imperfect works and dealing with problems as they arose. With increasing urbanization comes the belief that we CAN control what we build, that nature CAN be made to do our bidding, we forget the actual nature of the world and ourselves. The grotesque fantasies of childhood are not dispelled so long as there is a belief that by dealing with WORDS you can deal with THINGS and EVENTS. We have clear evidence over the history of mankind that trying to make future 'facts' come true, requires the most horrific of events to happen so as to make those 'facts' arrive.

We CAN make sure that the elderly are always cared for by government. And create a system headed to insolvency that will bankrupt the Nation.

We CAN wage a 'war' on poverty. And yet the poor are ever with us no matter how much we spend.

We CAN wage a 'war' on cancer. And find that it is not one thing but many, many things that each need different approaches so that there is no 'silver bullet'.

We CAN have a post office for first class mail. That now runs a deficit each quarter and needs massive subsidies to run in an inefficient manner.

We CAN give government the ability to 'regulate' our banking and currency. Yet that has made one recession into a Great Depression and spurred on another recession to something deeper.

We CAN give government the ability to regulate corporations. And find it was unable to do so and helped cause at least one recession if not more of them.

We CAN help people 'live the American Dream' to buy a home. And build a corpulent bureaucracy full of political cronies who then strong-arm banks to give loans to people who don't have good credit or ANY credit at all nor the means to pay off such loans.

We CAN make drugs illegal. And then spend billions upon billions chasing the now illegal drugs, putting small time users in jail by the truck load and giving a massive stimulus to global organized crime and terrorism.

We CAN give government the ability to tax disproportionately because it will NEVER tax the working class. Which died as an ideal within years of the passage of that.

We CAN give government tremendous 'oversight' to the banking industry. And find that it misses huge fraud systems by organized crime that even a decade on can not be unraveled.

We CAN give government more to do to make us better off. And find our liberty, our lives, and our freedom threatened by so many regulations that even the regulators can not keep up with them all and YOU are at risk for breaking many, many federal regulations each and every second of every day and should probably be put in jail for your own good when you are born so you can have your life dictated to you without the niceties of faking civil society.

It is that worrying last part that makes the cycle difficult to understand, in that thinking that the words we put into regulations under law will, actually, change society and change mankind. Instead we find ourselves coming to be not only ignorant of the proliferating regulations but coming to understand that such regulations, no matter how 'good' their ends, are not worth the means of their creation. From that we come to accept that we, as individuals, will practice common sense when leading our lives with the understanding that all the good worded regulations are not worth learning. From that we become criminal not from conscious intent but from not caring about the regulations and their goals. Mankind under Homo Urbanus then moves towards Homo Criminalis: Criminal Man.

From Wim Bernasco, Foraging Strategies of Homo Criminalis: Lessons From Behavioral Ecology, Crime Patterns and Analysis, ECCA Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2009:

Environmental questions on how crime is enacted are perhaps regularly asked in criminology, but elaborated theories that explain behavioral variations are rare. Sometimes, routine activities theory (Cohen and Felson 1979) is used to answer such questions. According to this theory, crime arises from patterns of ordinary legal activities. When these patterns lead to motivated perpetrators and unprotected targets being present in the same place at the same time, the necessary and sufficient conditions for criminality are fulfilled, and crimes will occur. By this theory, crime is thus a question of “systematic coincidence.” An objection to this approach is that it does not take the goal-oriented behavior of many perpetrators sufficiently into account. For many of them, committing crimes is an everyday routine. Moreover, many criminals do not merely encounter unprotected targets by accident but consciously go in search of them, as is shown by the findings of many ethnographic studies (e.g., Wright and Decker 1997, 1994). Rational choice theory (Cornish and Clarke 1986) is also frequently used to answer environmental questions on crime. This theory is not concerned with criminal motivation either, but in this case because it assumes that every person is in principle prepared to commit crime. Rational choice theory regards every form of behavior as a goal-oriented choice directed toward accomplishing objectives. The point of departure is that, after weighing the advantages and disadvantages of various alternatives, a choice is made which is optimal given the aim (benefit maximization). Rational choice theory itself is abstract and requires supplementary empirical content through specification of the relevant aims and choice situations. To be able to apply rational choice theory to questions of how crime is enacted, a supplemental theory is therefore often necessary with respect to the choice situations with which individuals are confronted as they make decisions about when, where, how and against what target an offense will be committed.

An over-regulated world creates a rational choice space within it, that requires that each individual makes the best choice for themselves that is goal-oriented towards what they are doing. As that often requires, or even demands, that regulations be broken to accomplish these activities, individuals do so: to perform legal activities in an efficient manner so as to yield best price vs cost results, the breaking of a regulation is more than just a savings point in monetary terms, but a negation of cost to the activity involved so as to yield greater gains and timeliness to the activity and transaction. When government so believes it can control all behavior, all transactions, everything about commerce, we find that the overwhelming burden of it upon ourselves and our businesses not only does not increase accountability, but diminishes it.

From the WSJ 28 APR 2009:

Mr. Lewis has told investigators for New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that in December Mr. Paulson threatened him not to cancel a deal to buy Merrill Lynch. BofA had discovered billions of dollars in undisclosed Merrill losses, and Mr. Lewis was considering invoking his rights under a material adverse condition clause to kill the merger. But Washington decided that America's financial system couldn't withstand a Merrill failure, and that BofA had to risk its own solvency to save it. So then-Treasury Secretary Paulson, who says he was acting at the direction of Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, told Mr. Lewis that the feds would fire him and his board if they didn't complete the deal.

Mr. Paulson told Mr. Lewis that the government would provide cash from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to help BofA swallow Merrill. But since the government didn't want to reveal this new federal investment until after the merger closed, Messrs. Paulson and Bernanke rejected Mr. Lewis's request to get their commitment in writing.

"We do not want a disclosable event," Mr. Lewis says Mr. Paulson told him. "We do not want a public disclosure." Imagine what would happen to a CEO who said that.

After getting the approval of his board, Mr. Lewis executed the Paulson-Bernanke order without informing his shareholders of the material events taking place at Merrill. The merger closed on January 1. But investors and taxpayers had to wait weeks to learn that the government had invested another $20 billion plus loan portfolio insurance in BofA, and that Merrill had lost a staggering $15 billion in the last three months of 2008.

This was the second time in three months that Washington had forced Bank of America to take federal money. In his testimony to the New York AG's office, Mr. Lewis noted that an earlier TARP investment in his bank had a "dilutive effect" on existing shareholders and was not requested by BofA. "We had not sought any funds. We were taking 15 [billion dollars] at the request of Hank [Paulson] and others," Mr. Lewis testified.

The government as 'regulator' turns into the government as 'strongman'. We go from it being for the common good for all transactions in banking institutional investment to be held openly between institutions for mergers and consolidations, to having them put into secret by government fiat so as to commit the very abuses the regulatory structure was meant to eliminate. The ease of the criminal behavior on the part of those that are supposed to ENFORCE the regulations points to that change over to Homo Criminalis: the shift from breaking minor regulations for commercial expediency to undercutting the structure of transparent transactions for government expediency. Homo Criminalis is Homo Urbanus who is willing to undercut the very structure of regulations that allows the urban environment to prosper because it is a 'good thing to do'. This was what Spengler was talking about when those in government who are unconnected with reality try to force 'facts' to happen.

The dread of reality is not that it can be summed up in nice, neat catch phrases but that it can't. When the expediency of 'we are doing this for your own good' replaces the actual and fair system of due process, you no longer have due process of law, but process to pre-defined outcomes. And when reality does not conform to those outcomes, when bolstering the banking structure leads to unaccountable transactions and money that cannot even be FOUND that have come from the public coffers, you find that the COST of such 'facts' far outweigh any 'solution' that was meant to get to them. That is not only in purely economic terms, although that is horrific on its own, but in social and cultural terms as this is an abrogation of trust at the highest levels of government. As both Parties and both Presidents wanted this to happen, BOTH have demonstrated that they are untrustworthy. If one President leaves with little trust, the next comes in picking up the exact, same methods and procedures and finds his trust eroded no end.

What is even deeper than the corruption of public institutions by such activities is that those pushing for the 'good ideas' that will assuredly lead to good ends, no matter what the process, have forgotten that it is the process that is to make good ends and to be satisfied with that process and its ends as they are a benefit to all of society. This conception of wanting the good end and enacting laws to 'make it so', and becoming a personal hero because you took part in the pushing of the idea, is in harsh contrast with the previous version of heroic acts. Laying down in front of a car to protest a war is not a heroic act to all of society, but to yourself, only: it is a narcissistic conception of hero that sees the only benefit of your actions coming to yourself, with hopes of praise from others that it was, indeed, heroic. Unfortunately much of that praise comes from other self-oriented 'heros' who have a vested interest in giving praise so as to get praise.

Heroic deeds are done in service to an end, of course, no one would deny that. A hero, however, does the deeds as they are related to the end, and does not allow them to become an end in, and of, themselves. Some heroes set out on heroic journeys but find that there is a deep and grave cost to them in lost comrades, lost paths and even lost hope. Odysseus was one such who was already a Hero of the Trojan War, a 'sacker of cities' in the grand set of conflicts that would see Troy stripped of her affiliated trade partners. Returning a Hero from war, however, and helping to bring the Trojan War to an end, was not the end of the Heroes journey and Odysseus would find himself and his men hard put to survive the tempest ride home. Indeed the older and wiser Odysseus would be the sole survivor of that journey: returning alone with the rest of his comrades in arms lost to destiny. Hercules would find Goddess given madness given to him just long enough to have him kill his beloved wife and family. Even knowing that this was not his own rage he saw that this is the rage that flesh is heir to and needed to atone for his being part man and part God. His journey to atonement would require him to tame himself as seen in the Hydra where the passion of battle rage would defeat any who only saw red until they were exhausted and eaten by the multiplicity of heads their combat had created. Jesus Christ would have his fate tested high and low, the problems of being a man exposed and fight through those only to have his final faith tested on the Cross: he was heroic for keeping his faith, not just in any single deed and would point out that we ALL have these problems within us.

The reasons that Heroes are universal is that they speak to the human condition writ large: they face dangers and problems so extreme that ours pale in comparison. And yet the story of them is that they win through or die trying and that, often, achievement of the goal is not the end and it may not even be a good end. Hercules can only find redemption in a living warrior's funeral pyre, Jesus would die on the Cross to have his eternal self revealed and Odin would be pinned to Yggdrasil and lose one eye to the crows only to be bestowed the gift seeing into the future from that empty socket even though he knew what the final destiny of the Gods was, already. Odysseus would return to find suitors clustered at his old home, trying to get the hand of his wife in marriage after he had been presumed dead and gone. She would be rewarded by her faith in him and his return would see the suitors put to a bloody end: there would be no other in the home of Odysseus worthy of his bow. Each of these Gods and Men would seek out those necessary things to them and find a high, high price to pay for their fame, and we would tell stories of their works as ours are so small how can we not find some part of us that can get through our much smaller pains and problems?

To continue on with Spengler we get the following:

But Romanticism too, with its lack of a sense for reality, is just as much an expression of rationalist arrogance as are Idealism and Materialism. They are all in fact closely related, and it would be difficult to discover the boundary between these two trends of thought in any political or social Romantic. In every outstanding Materialist a Romantic lies hidden. [3] Though he may scorn the cold, shallow, methodical mind of others, he has himself enough of that sort of mind to do so in the same way and with the same arrogance. Romanticism is no sign of powerful instincts, but, on the contrary, of a weak, self-detesting intellect. They are all infantile, these Romantics; men who remain children too long (or for ever), without the strength to criticize themselves, but with perpetual inhibitions arising from the obscure awareness of their own personal weakness; who are impelled by the morbid idea of reforming society, which is to them too masculine, too healthy, too sober. And to reform it, not with knives and revolvers in the Russian fashion - heaven forbid! - but by noble talk and poetic theories. Hapless indeed they are if, lacking creative power, they lack also the artistic talent to persuade at least themselves that they possess it. Yet even in their art they are feminine and weak, incapable of setting a great novel or a great tragedy on its legs, still less a pure philosophy of any force. All that appears is spineless lyric, bloodless scenarios, and fragmentary ideas, all of them displaying an innocence of and antagonism to the world which amounts to absurdity. But it was the same with the unfading "Youths" (Jünglinge), with their "old German" coats and pipes - Jahn and Arndt, even, included. Stein himself was unable to control his romantic taste for ancient constitutions sufficiently to allow him to turn his extensive practical experience to successful account in diplomacy. Oh, they were heroes, and noble, and ready to be martyrs at any moment; but they talked too much about German nature and too little about railways and customs unions, and thus became only an obstacle in the way of Germany's real future. Did they ever so much as hear the name of the great Friedrich List, who committed suicide in 1846 because no one understood and supported his far-sighted and modern political aim, the building of an economic Germany? But they all knew the names of Arminius and Thusnelda.

Those saying they are in 'real world' views and then holding fantastical outlooks are substituting their fantasy of the way they wish the world should work for the way it does work. They will tell you of all the things they support, all the changes they want, and how, really, everyone is striving towards that same end. Without exception! Save those nasty people who disagree with them... what is strange is that those living in this 'real world' conception are unable to put forth their own courage save in the 'I protested, I'm a hero!' way, that is neither heroic nor actually a deeply held theological nor ideological conception of how the world works. Those who have protested war in Iraq, say, have grown quiet even though the conflict continues and grows bloody as we seek to pull out from it: they will take NO responsibility for the blood on their hands for their grand ideals and don't care if others die for their ideals because they are 'right'. To be 'right' however, requires adult ownership and responsibility to one's beliefs and obligation to recognize that ideology has real world consequences. Saying that Jason and the Argonauts getting the Golden Fleece is a great idea and then claiming part of their heroism for yourself is not being heroic: you have not done the hard work, suffered with the grieving, made amends for the dead, but just claim part of someone else's actions for yourself. Leaving a war requires as much, if not more time, care and oversight so as to end it in an equitable fashion than getting INTO it. The United States spend the end of 1941 to mid-1945 at war, and then would require more years to help rebuild Germany, Italy, France... and over a decade in Japan to ensure that a constitutional republic had really been established there. And our forces are STILL not fully out of these problems and on station to continue our help DECADES later.

Thus the political Left in America is not only following a fantasy ideology but, like the Romantics in Germany, unwilling to actually toil at what they talk about. Instead it is 'protest this' or 'march that' and 'chant the other' all the while the things that they seek to ease, poverty, sickness, corruption in politics, a better understanding between Nations, all of that can be DONE by individuals who are willing to put themselves into the fray to actually DO THE WORK. The modern Left in America is not only unwilling to enter the fray, they criticize any who DO that and wish to put those works at an end because people actually dare, DARE to follow through on their beliefs with direct work for them. They are all ready to 'man the barricades' and 'change society', but please don't ask them to move from their computers, coffee houses, or elite social groups to actually get their hands dirty doing any of that. Homo Urbanus knows better because they 'know' what everyone wants. Just don't bother them to talk with everyday people who may not agree with them to find out, as that would take actually going out into the world from their Urban environs which are self-imposed no matter if it is a teenager in an apartment in the heart of any major city or Theodore John Kaczynski who would write diatribes against modern society, spend long hours crafting bombs and then send those out to kill and maim innocents to prove just how deranged society was as he had spent so many hours describing. Really, it had to be true if it would drive a nice man like him to do these things, doesn't it?

With that the Unabomber completed his cycle to Homo Criminalis deciding to impose his tracts on society via brute force of criminal activity. What he did, instead, is show the derangement that comes with believing that mere words and great wishes describe society entire: they cannot. To be flexible in outlook towards cultures means mutual respect of cultures, understanding the good and ills of each culture and working to improve your own while not endangering that of others. The modern Left has no wish of that, and prefers a bland 'multi-cultural' blanket of easy to identify racial and sexual characteristics to the actual work of taking time to understand other people's, their cultures, their mores, their ethics and their moralities. Self-sequestered into pointless 'me too' heroics, and group thinking, the Left demonstrates a form of decadence about their own cultural interests: they don't have any to judge anyone by save within their groups and identity political realms.

It is telling that 'identity politics' so suffuses the Left that anyone who doesn't act according to the precepts of it are then only seen in the prism of 'identity politics'. If you disagree with a black or hispanic candidate you are dubbed: racist. That misses the point of those who can only judge by 'race' and who call 'racism' at every turn are, in themselves, practicing racism. The idea that anyone else just might have a different way to view the world and politics, and accept that policy is a good way to judge character is not acceptable as it requires the actual examination of policy and then trying to see if that is acceptable to an entire Nation. Anyone who criticizes the modern Left on a policy basis is only judged by the Left's own inward looking prism of 'identity politics' based on race, gender, ethnicity, religion and social class. The concept of good policy that must work across all classes, races, genders and not infringe on the rights or liberty of anyone is now apostasy to the Left: to speak of it makes you a RADICAL in their eyes, who is racist, classist and so on.

It would be funny if it weren't so lethal.

This is the politics of 'the ends justifies the means' so that any, and I do mean ANY, excuse as a good end then justifies the expansion of government, erosion of liberty, removal of freedom and vesting more and more power in National government that then can make laws and rules to cover any aspect of life from the moment you are born to the moment you die: the State will decide if you are to be born, how you are to live, and when you die. By forcing society to 'do good' via government, the powers of government being those that we vest in it for our own security, are then turned against the people of a Nation. There is no 'good' in that even if the ends are reached as expected, but those ends are never reached because they are unreachable objects in and of themselves. To remove poverty we must have none that are rich and, thusly, impoverish everyone to a life of servitude in which their liberty gains them NOTHING. Indeed, being able to prosper by one's own works is seen as an absolute threat to the modern Left that prefers to imbue government with being able to do everything good and that people just have to be restrained so that they can do good.

In putting forward so much for the State and so little for individuals, what is sought is the life of servitude, no matter how 'nice' or 'good' for all citizens. The 'elite' will 'toil' with grand ideas that they will then force everyone ELSE to work at. Yet it is that very elite structure now in the highest reaches of government, and it has been there for decades, that have increased the amount of regulations on us to the point where over 2/3, if not 3/4 by now, of all regulations have been enacted since 1972. And yet we have seen no end of poverty. Sickness is still with us. Our infrastructure decays rapidly. Businesses find it hard to expand and grow due to regulations that put high burdens on growing so as to protect Big Business elites. It is laughable that 'regulations' actually threaten large businesses when they are the ones able to get seats at the table to WRITE THEM no matter which party is in power.

Thus the modern RIGHT now has the problems of the modern LEFT in believing that more regulations, more laws, and more interference in the lives of individuals is a GOOD THING. If that is merely lethal when done by one-half of the political 'spectrum' then it is FATAL to liberty and freedom when done by ALL of it. Yet this last election demonstrates that little more than 50% of the public eligible to vote actually voted. That 49% that didn't vote are not absent by mandate, but by choice: they purposefully stay away from the polls as they find nothing, no one, worth voting FOR. They are not 'leaving it to the knowledgeable', but telling the 'knowledgeable' that they have NOTHING to offer these that do not vote. Any organization that could offer even a fraction of the non-voting public a reason TO vote would swing politics in this Nation completely in ways that neither the Left nor Right can fathom. To do that, however, takes hard work, meeting your fellow man, understanding him, and working out the basis of agreement so as to fashion a new political view that starts to bring down the edifice created by these 'modern' parties and yet stay fully in the modern world.

As neither Party seems able to do that, these days, we now must look to the people who don't show up at elections, those who are so fed up with the system that they have withdrawn their support for it. Perhaps they have some folks willing to do things with each other so as to create a better Nation and remove the laws and regulations that have turned us into Homo Criminalis. Because neither Party will support liberty and freedom for the common man as they both believe that by mandating the good they are actually creating it. Instead they practice a far worse evil than mere criminality: they seek to remove the actual good behind doing good of your own free will.

There is no worse evil than that as it becomes the source of all tyranny.

19 August 2009

Political violence is in what part of the spectrum?

Spurred on by those who put forward that it is the 'Right' or 'conservatives' that engender violence in US culture, I decided to take a look at those high level affairs that were either important in their time or in the realm of politics for the US.  This is by no means an all inclusive listing, but one that looks at the realm of high-level assassinations.  I am NOT looking at foreign assassinations nor their political motivations.  And if I cannot quickly discern a political affiliation that is strong for an assassin(s) then I say so.  I am more than ready to put in the actual affiliations, but motivation is far more important than anything else as that is what is implied as being on the 'Right' or with 'conservatives.

So here is the deeply unhappy list I put together.

It is not a list of large scale terrorist events, thus you will not find McVeigh on it as he and other terrorists are generally doing something called 'Private War' against the Nation.  That list is highly diverse, however, and the decades of terror acts aimed at the US has a huge list of events, actors, and motivations behind them.  Terrorists can commit assassinations, but large scale acts aimed at the Nation are Acts of War not assassinations.

If you want a better list of high level assassinations, do it yourself... and read of the unhappiness that can find room in the heart of your fellow man.

=====

2000

Attempted assassination of President Clinton by FARC - Motivation: Terrorism. In general the Colombian police found a bomb planted in a room that President Clinton was to give a speech in within a few hours and the device was traced to FARC.  Political party - Unknown/FARC.

1998

Assassination of Tommy Burks by Byron (Low Tax) Looper - Motivation: Political opportunism to murder an opponent to get his name removed from the ballot.  Looper had changed his middle name to signify his political beliefs, had previously switched parties, and ran numerous false news accounts of his political achievements.  Also an ex-girlfriend sued for child support and fraud and charged Looper of using his political office to harass her.  Republicans helped the wife of the murdered Tommy Burks run a write-in campaign to win the election.  Political party - Republican.

1994

Attempted assassination of President Bill Clinton by Francisco Martin Duran - Motivation: Possibly infamy. Plead guilty, attempted insanity defense that involved a celestial alien umbilical cord and incitement by a conservative talk radio host, and was convicted for his crimes.  He had an aggravated assault conviction prior to this while in the Army.  Political party - Unknown.

Assassination of Meir Kahane bye El Sayyid Nosair - Motivation: Terrorism and member of al Qaeda.  Political party - Unknown.

1981

Attempted assassination of President Reagan by John Hinckley, Jr. - Motivation:  Insanity caused by obsession. Political party - Unknown.

1980

John Lennon killed by Mark David Chapman - Motivation: Seeking infamy.  Sought to be found insane at first, but recanted and was found competent to plead guilty, but was deemed in need of mental treatment at sentencing. Political party - Unknown.

1979

Assassination of District Judge John H. Wood, Jr. by Charles Voyde Harrelson - Motivation: Hitman hired by drug dealer Jamiel Chagra.  Previously tried for the murder of Sam Degelia. Political party - Unknown.

1978

San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk assassinated by Daniel James White - Motivation: City politics/depression.  In general the infamous 'twinkie defense' is best known as Dan White's legacy, and he would later commit suicide while out on parole.  Political party - Democratic.

1975

Attempted assassination of President Ford by Lynette Alice "Squeaky" Fromme - Motivation: Unknown, previously a member of the Manson Family.  Political party - Unknown.

Attempted assassination of President Ford by Sara Jane Moore - Motivation:  Uknown, possibly mental instability, later in life stated it was due to her "radical views".  Political party - Unknown.

1974

Attempted assassination of Richard Nixon by Samuel Byck - Motivation: Derangement/personal, depression, attempt to start "Operation Pandora's Box" given in tapes to columnist Jack Anderson, belief that government was trying to suppress the poor.  Had sent other tapes to Jonas Salk, Abraham Ribicoff, Leonard Bernstein and attempted to join the Black Panther Party, as well as held protests in front of the White House without gaining permits to do so.  Political party - Unknown.

1972

Attempted assassination of George Wallace by  Arthur Bremer -  Motivation: Personal statement about his manhood, wrote that he would kill either Richard Nixon or George Wallace to demonstrate it and become infamous.  Plan to assassinate President Nixon was thwarted due to high security, stopped on initial attempt against Wallace due to teenagers being near glass behind Wallace who might have been blinded.  In general obsession with assassinations, personal derangement.  Political party - Unknown.

1968

Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated by James Earl Ray - Motivation: Racial/Habitual criminal.  In general Ray had been convicted of burglary, armed robbery twice, and mail fraud, thus being a habitual criminal.  He had left the scene of the crime and after conviction attempted to escape from prison.  Political party - Unknown.

Attempted assassination of Andy Warhol by Valerie Solanas - Motivation: Paranoid-Schizophrenia/mentally unstable, possible infamy to get her play produced.  Political party - Unknown.

John F. Kennedy assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan - Motivation: Political, anti-Zionist/mentally unstable.  In general he was a Palestinian-American who did not want a positive foreign policy towards Israel, and was obsessive that RFK would do that.  Political party - Unknown.

1965

Malcolm X assassinated by Talmadge Hayer, Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson. Motivation: Killed by members of the Nation of Islam after leaving it and shifting his agenda from equal rights to human rights and changed his views after the Hajj that racism by any color is destructive.  Jury convictions covers all three men, Butler claims the others were not involved.  Political affiliation of the assassins - Nation of Islam, Political party - Unknown.

1963

Medgar Evers assassinated by Byron De La Beckwith - Motivation: Racial - KKK member, Phineas Preisthood member, anti-semite, anti-multiculturalism, anti-taxation.  In general hatred of Blacks, Jews, Catholics and the US Government.  Also planned to murder the head of the B'nai Brith in 1973.  Political party - Democratic.

President Kennedy assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald - Motivation: Political, seeking infamy.  Prior attempted assassination of General Walker who was an anti-communist, segregationist and member of the John Birch Society.  Political party - Communist sympathizer.

Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated by Jack Ruby - Motivation: Mental instability, depth of feeling for Kennedy family.  In general Jack Ruby was a small time hustler who came from Chicago and was described as 'meshuga' or 'not having a full deck' and known to be unstable in both criminal and social environs.  Political party - Unknown.

1960

Attempted assassination of President Kennedy by Richard Paul Pavlick - Motivation: Mentally unstable/insane.  In general believed that the 1960 election was stolen, criticized the government and was anti-Catholic.  Political party - Republican sympathizer.

1958

Attempted assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. by a black woman,  Izola Curry - Motivation: Derangement/Insanity determined incompetent to stand trial and committed to a mental hospital.  Political party - Unknown.

1935

Huey Long believed to be assassinated by Carl Weiss, but that is since been put into question - Motivation: Dave Haas led an anti-Long group called "Minute Men" and claims that Weiss drew the straw to kill Long during an ambush.  Dave Haas' statements have been shown to be less than truthful, but it can be said that Long died in a shoot-out with anti-Long individuals.  Political party - Unknown/anti-Long.

1933

Attempted assassination of President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt by Giuseppe Zangara - Motivation: Zangara was a small time pawn shop owner living off of his savings and hated the capitalist system which he saw the President-elect as one of the people involved in capitalism undermining workers.  In general he was convicted of one of the others that he shot at wildly as the chair he was standing on collapsed under him.  Political party - Unknown.

1912

Attempted assassination of President Theodore Roosevelt by John Flammang Schrank - Motivation:  Mentally unstable/insane/political and declared to be insane.  Schrank did not believe any President should seek a third term and also had visions from the previously assassinated McKinley, plus other mental problems.  Roosevelt continued on to give a 90 minute speech with a bullet lodged in his chest, and then was hospitalized after that.  Political party - Unknown.

1909

Jim Miller lynched for killing the local Sheriff - Motivation: Outlaw, gun for hire and assassin.  Political party - Unknown.

1901

President William McKinley assassinated by Leon Czolgosz - Motivation: Disaffected Anarchist using the template of another Anarchist assassination as inspiration.  In general expressed support for anarchism and the working man. Political party - Unknown/Anarchist.

1893

Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison, Sr. was assassinated by Patrick Eugene Prendergast - Motivation:  Seeking political appointment after supporting Harrison's run for election/mentally unstable declared insane.  Harrison did not know who Prendergast was.  Political party - Democratic.

1882

Jesse James assassinated by Robert Ford - Motivation: Betrayal/reward for killing an outlaw and getting a pardon for his crimes, infamy.  Political party - Unknown/City Councilman of Las Vegas.

1881

Assassination of President Garfield by Charles Julius Guiteau - Motivation:  Mental instability/derangement.  Failed lawyer and theologian who felt he deserved a job in the Garfield Administration for his support of it.  Political party - Republican.

1876

Assassination of "Wild Bill" Hickock by Jack McCall - Motivation: Revenge for Hickock having killed his brother years previoiusly/act of generosity by Hickock offering to buy McCall breakfast after a bad night of poker for McCall.  Tried for murder on US territory, convicted and hanged.  Political party - Unknown.

1865

President Abraham Lincoln assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, with help from Lewis Powell and David Herold who was supposed to assassinate Secretary of State William Seward, along with George Atzerodt who was to kill VP Johnson . Motivation: Pro-Secessionist, Confederate sympathizer, opposed the abolition of slavery and emancipation of the slaves.  In general support of the Southern cause during the Civil War, hatred of abolition, attempt to turn the tide of the war with a failed plot to kidnap Lincoln.  Booth's father had threatened the assassination of President Andrew Jackson.  Political party - Know Nothing Party.

1835

Attempted assassination of President Jackson by Richard Lawrence - Motivation: Mentally disturbed, believe that Jackson was in the way of Lawrence receiving funds that would allow him to become King of England.  Also ahistorically blamed Jackson for the death of his father who had never been to the United States.  Political party - Unknown.

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So how many of these are carried out by the 'Right' or right-leaning individuals?

I would argue that Schrank, Pavlick, and Looper all have elements of the 'Right' in them, but in the first two there are reasons to doubt sanity overall and in the last there are personal motivations in the misuse of power that go with it.  So about 3 acts of assassination.

Ok, how many from the 'Left' or left-leaning individuals?

I would argue that Pendergast, Zangara, Oswald, the three convicted of the Malcolm X assassination, Moore, White, and FARC.  About 7 acts of assassination all told.  For Pendergast, Zangara and Moore I would argue that mental disturbances play a major factor in their motivations.

 

But that doesn't end the political slicing and dicing, now, does it?

How many actual or convicted conspiracies are there in this list?

  1. Lincoln's assassination, of course, as that was but one intended assassination that evening.
  2. Taking down Jesse James required a conspiracy with the Ford brothers, the Governor and the President.
  3. Huey Long being taken down by anti-Long individuals.
  4. The assassination of Malcolm X, even with the protestations by one individual that he acted alone, the jury thought otherwise, so that, too, is a conspiracy.
  5. The assassination of Meir Kahane by al Qaeda is a long-ranging plot that spans from Europe to Africa to America.
  6. FARC attempting assassination is part of their stock and trade, as they had been doing that long before and long after President Clinton, but he was one who helped get an effective anti-FARC system started.  It is one of the real feathers in President Clonton's cap that he helped start the process of taking down that leftist narco-terror group.

So 6 conspiracies, all told, large and small.

 

How about party-on-party assassinations?  Leaving out the criminal ones, that is, as crime has only temporary allegiances.

  1. Guiteau thought he was due a job for his political support, even though no one knew who he was.
  2. Prendergast expected favoritism for his support, too.
  3. Malcolm X obviously had a falling out with the Nation of Islam.
  4. White had difficulties with fellow Democrats within San Francisco's government.

In two cases the unknowns think they deserve recognition for support, one is a factional falling out and the other is just a build-up of problems within government.  At least we aren't having government by defenestration!

 

Lets flip this around and see how many we get with the mentally unstable, the disturbed, the insane, shall we?

  1. Richard Lawrence, obviously, the man who would be King, somehow, with money.
  2. Guiteau a failed lawyer, theologian, plagiarist and just not all there.
  3. Prendergast for thinking he was someone when no one really knew about him, especially his target.
  4. Leon Czolgosz - how do you tell insanity from fervently held anarchism?  Looked insane then and now.
  5. John Flammang Schrank had visions, some held political beliefs and found that they played together.
  6. Giuseppe Zangara demonstrated a lack of touch with reality during his trial and after, so probably before, too.
  7. Izola Curry was judged to be unfit to stand trial, her race had nothing to do with it, period.
  8. Richard Paul Pavlick decided to spare the Kennedy children but still thought killing him was a good idea.  That is not ideological commitment.
  9. Jack Ruby was meshuga.  His life points to that and he did lack a full, mental deck.
  10. Sirhan Sirhan had a definite instability on who did what in politics, and became obsessed into the bargain.
  11. Valerie Solanas - was she nuts or just a good actress?  If she was that good she didn't need to act nuts.
  12. Arthur Bremer - would it by Nixon or Wallace?  Nixon or Wallace?  To show his manhood?
  13. Samuel Byck decades before al Qaeda wanted to fly a plane into the White House.  Personally.
  14. Sara Jane Moore and her 'radical views' which she regrets or doesn't depending on when you talk to her.
  15. Lynette Alice "Squeaky" Fromme is the fallout of Charles Manson and pretty it isn't.
  16. Daniel James White the jury bought the 'twinkie defense' and he did commit suicide.  Contrition or just one twinkie too many?
  17. John Hinckley, Jr. wanted to kill the President to get the girl... that just doesn't work out in anyone's book.

Now that is painful, isn't it?  We get 17 acts of assassination that are spurred on in whole or in part by lack of sanity, delusions or just plain losing it.  The 'it' being sanity.  From wannabe King of England to kill the President to get the girl, the range of insanity over the past couple of centuries is damned interesting.  And nothing you can actually pin down for politics in all of them.

 

How about infamy?  You know: kill someone famous to be famous by intent?

  1. Richard Lawrence just had to kill the President to get government money to be King of England.  Something got lost between steps 1 and 3, but the fame was a factor.
  2. John Wilkes Booth an actor from start to finish, and only an actor puts out a great line to be remembered after he kills someone.
  3. Robert Ford would always want to be known as the man who took out Jesse James, before and after he did it, as afar as I can tell.
  4. Lee Harvey Oswald wanted to make a name for himself: he was always the loud misfit and even defected to/from the USSR,and STILL no one noticed him.
  5. Jack Ruby loved the spotlight, and some part of that must have been a wildcard in that wild deck.
  6. Valerie Solanas - was she truly insane or did she do it for her art at the expense of Warhol?
  7. Arthur Bremer was going to be known as a REAL man.
  8. Mark David Chapman, really it would be better if he was just nuts, but he wasn't.
  9. John Hinckley, Jr. he was nuts and that didn't help, but the fame was there too.
  10. Francisco Martin Duran, just maybe, but he didn't really earn much of anything, save prison time.

This idea that you can get famous by killing someone famous really has got to be nipped in the bud: it just doesn't work out that way.  Really, do you want people to have scorn when they say your name?  Or is it that they will say your name, with or without scorn?  Really you just have to be nuts to think that way, and most on the list are nuts... but not all of them.

 

Next up is the famous topic from the Left that just won't heal because they won't listen to anyone outside of the Left on it: Racism.  Here I will bundle in anti-Semitism, as it really is a form of racist thought, too.

  1. John Wilkes Booth didn't see blacks as equal to whites and was willing to kill for it.  Die for that as a cause.
  2. Byron De La Beckwith was a racist: member of the KKK and other racist, anti-Semitic groups.
  3. Sirhan Sirhan was anti-Semitic and feared power in government supporting Israel.
  4. James Earl Ray had some racist motivations, even with being a habitual criminal.
  5. Arthur Bremer had many racist tracts and such at his apartment and his car.  Plus anti-Republican ones.  The man just had hate as a habit, it appears.
  6. El Sayyid Nosair as an operative for terror backed groups looked to spread anti-Semitism.

Well, so much for the 'racial divide' in assassinations: there isn't one.  Racist assassinations do happen, yes, but as an overall factor in all assassinations? No.

 

The last part is the interesting one: being taken out by professional killers or because you ARE a professional killer.  Here the people are a bit more interesting as this is their line of work, more or less.

  1. Jack McCall taking out Hickock.
  2. Robert Ford taking out Jesse James and getting he and his brother's sentence wiped out by the Governor.
  3. Jim Miller finding out that killing can get you lynched.
  4. Charles Voyde Harrelson was a hitman.
  5. El Sayyid Nosair trained by al Qaeda.
  6. FARC a terrorist organization that does a bit of everything criminal from small to Nation State size.

One less than Left violence and equal to conspiracies.  I don't put down the Huey Long one as that doesn't appear too professional and more in the line of: mutual Charlie Foxtrot and the last ones alive win.  Numbers help, but when you shoot one of your own to get to the target, by accident, well... no... especially as the guy you shot was the purported triggerman, but that was probably a fib, too.

 

What this all shows is that assassination is a multi-vector event that depends much on individuals and very little on politics or racism.  Those do have their events, yes, but they are never clear and concise 'this causes that' sort of thing.  In America the #1 cause of high level assassinations is: being nuts, demented, insane, whatever the term of the moment is to describe those not in close touch with any reality.  It is the Trump Card of assassinations: you are more likely to be nuts if you carry out an assassination or try to.

Next up after that is infamy, which is the fame of killing someone famous and not being well loved for it.  Your name might go down in history: as a bad example, of someone to be scorned, not in a good nor positive light.  Together being nuts and trying to be infamous covers a huge swath of assassination events in America.

The residuals are telling.

Criminals taking out criminals or being taken out, in turn.  Fascinating that those sorts of killings of the infamous get you infamous, not famous.

Terrorist organizations, with only a couple of spots on the list, make their depth of hatred towards civilization felt by going down to the individual level and up to the Nation State level.  Truly they are Enemies of All Mankind.

Inter-factional struggles within a party or power structure.  Huey Long, Nation of Islam, and the San Francisco political machine each give us a look at just how nasty politics can get to drive people as groups or individuals against each other.  No one is so hated as those that share 95% of your beliefs: that final 5% becomes more divisive than the joining 95%.  Of course that is why factional fights get so bloody, too... if only you could get that final 5%, and yet, in forcing it you get death.

 

I have many articles on terrorism and why terrorism is a different beast than mere assassination.  Assassinations can be done by terror groups, but not all assassinations, as we have seen, are terrorist acts.  For terrorists the act of assassination is a tactic as part of a strategy.  For individual assassinations, they are purely personal affairs or, at chilling worse, factional within a group.  When that internal hatred and killing gets turned on all others, then you get terrorism.

Our politics have remained remarkably civil.

Let us work to keep it that way and not try to say that violence is engendered in any one part of the political spectrum.  So that we can join together against terrorists who have no love of civility or civilization, and who despise your life and mine.  They are the common enemies of all mankind.

We should be treating them that way.

It is what they ask for.