Bill Clinton's Reichstag Fire
by L. Neil Smith
How very convenient.
How very damned convenient.
A heinous act is committed in Oklahoma City -- the bombing of a
federal building in which many lives, including those of a dozen
innocent children, are blasted away -- and the spokesmen of both
established political parties see nothing in it but another
opportunity to nourish their insatiable desire for control over the
lives of others at the irrational, unnecessary expense of a sacred
American tradition, more than two centuries old, of unfettered
individual liberty.
The spectacularly popular Republican showman who frequently identifies
himself on his national radio program as the "Doctor of Democracy"
spends two days wallowing in orgiastic fantasies of collective
punishment -- a variety of socialism characteristic of Europe or Japan
(where the light of the Constitution never shines) wholly alien to
anyplace in America but the Army and the public schools. He pompously
declares the moral equivalent of war and implies that it is time for
Americans to sacrifice their time-honored and vital liberties for mere
physical security.
Meanwhile, American history's most discredited president and
his power-hungry wife get a second lease on their worthless and
destructive political lives as, lower lip extended and trembling, he
struts and pouts on national television like the comical transvestites
in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, pretending to a strength of
character and resolve he never possessed and never will.
Having done her level best to start a second Civil War, his Attorney
General, a dangerously stupid and incompetent piece of work who has
allegedly stated on more than one occasion that anyone is a potential
criminal or terrorist whose opinions regarding life's most fundamental
issues happen to differ from her own, is now free to assert without
public opposition that she is vindicated.
Likewise, equally stupid and incompetent people in the national mass
media, who have sucked up unceasingly during the 20th century to
those in power and have lately made a habit of attempting to identify
distinguished and respectable civil rights organizations such as
the Libertarian Party and the National Rifle Association with
hate-motivated groups like the skinheads and the Ku Klux Klan,
continue to profit from the lies they shovel daily at the public.
Efforts in Congress -- some of them apparently in earnest -- to
repeal more than four decades' worth of viciously unconstitutional
legislation get sidetracked and, if the president and his cronies
have their way, derailed altogether.
Outlaw government agencies responsible for one increasingly illegal,
murderously violent attack on innocent citizens after another receive
a massive whitewashing by the whorish, authority-bedazzled media,
while local police who have taken to imitating those agencies renew
their "license to kill".
Private talk and public forums on the computer internet, previously
immune to scrutiny, censorship, or control by the establishment media
or the government get closed down "for the duration" -- for which
anyone even faintly familiar with history reads "forever" -- to the
colossal relief of both major parties.
Americans who were beginning to regain control of their own political
lives can now be lumped together with racists and perverts -- and
effectively silenced. The Bill of Rights, threatening for the past
several years to make an unwanted resurgence in American political
life, goes into the shredder, instead.
What a windfall.
What a damned convenient windfall.
It's exactly the kind of windfall enjoyed by Adolf Hitler's National
Socialist German Workers' Party when the Reichstag, the seat of
representative government in that country, burned down and the
newly-elected Nazi chancellor, blaming the fire on his political
enemies, used it as an excuse to turn his country into a dictatorship.
Historians are generally agreed that the Nazis themselves started the
fire -- whereas the pattern of the Democratic Party in America has
been to wait around, like vultures on a cactus, until something
horrible happens (the assassination of a presidential candidate, the
shooting of a score of restaurant patrons) that they can make the best
political use of.
Nevertheless, the effect is the same.
The simple, politically inconvenient fact, however, is that terrorist
incidents do not stem from any insufficiency of government, but
invariably from too much of the stuff. This country's problems in
the Middle East -- very much on America's guilty conscience following
the explosion in Oklahoma City -- would not even exist if American
politics were kept within American borders. Yes, that's what I
said -- and if this be isolationism, let us make the most of it!
If, as it presently appears, the Oklahoma tragedy relates, instead, to
the infamous and tragically needless events of 1993 in Waco, Texas,
then it is time to drastically reduce the role of government in
American lives, as well, not to condone and expand the scope of the
state terrorism which apparently provoked it.
There is only one way to accomplish that -- and to prevent this
bombing from being used as yet another excuse to terrorize and punish
millions of Americans who had absolutely nothing to do with it -- but
there are many ways to begin.
First, all federal agencies must be disarmed, their employees
forbidden to carry personal weapons on the job (or to wear masks
or to affect military clothing), and their heavy weaponry and
vehicles-of-war surrendered to the nearest units of a denationalized
National Guard. These agencies must then be reduced to that number
specifically authorized by the Constitution under the Ninth and Tenth
Amendments. If a few remaining federal investigators wish something
to be done that is both lawful and requires the use of force, they may
apply to local law enforcement for assistance -- and, more importantly,
for consent.
Next, the "War on Drugs", a disastrous Republican error which, by
design or otherwise, has provided most of the justification for
government incursions on individual liberty in recent years -- and
which has served only to enhance departmental appropriations, numbers
of personnel, and the dictatorial power of bureaucrats and politicians
(while enriching their nominal enemies the so-called drug lords) -- must
come to an immediate, screeching halt. It was never anything but
a war on the Bill of Rights in any case. And any law -- like RICO -- which
authorizes unconstitutional seizures of property must be repealed.
All foreign aid, defense assistance, and overseas military presence
must end, and a drastic reduction in "diplomatic" activities
undertaken, as well. Americans are not the "cops of the world" and
every attempt to make them so merely adds to the likelihood of another
disaster such as that we have just witnessed. Scholars mindful of the
dismal political history of the 19th and 20th centuries, once warned
that the Vietnam War would lead to shrinkages of freedom at home, and
they were right. We are witnessing the culmination of that process.
Stringent -- make that, "draconian" -- enforcement of the highest law
of the land, the Bill of Rights, must become America's number one
political priority. The population that must be scrutinized all
collect government paychecks.
These measures would constitute a good beginning. The question
arises, how is it to be accomplished? Certainly not by relying on the
Democratic or Republican Parties which have long since betrayed all
of their constitutional responsibilities. Before the Oklahoma City
bombing, the media were full of reports that Americans are hankering
for a third party, although mention was seldom made of which party it
might be or what they believe it should stand for.
America has had a third party for more than twenty years. Perhaps
it's time to make use of it. Those who wish to see it achieve power
and do the things listed above (and more) must work with those who
only wish to continue living in a free country. If both groups -- to
give an illustrative example -- were to begin putting bumper stickers
on their cars that say, "NEXT TIME I'M VOTING LIBERTARIAN", it
wouldn't matter what all those bumper sticker stickers really
intend. For some it would be the literal truth. For others -- those
who only want their own parties to straighten up and fly right -- it
would be a threat, one that could be conveyed in letters and phone
calls, as well.
Try thinking of the Libertarian Party as a rolled-up newspaper, useful
in making the Republican puppy (I've given up on the Democratic bitch)
go where he's supposed to -- not on that beautiful antique carpet we
call the Constitution.
BAP! BAP! BAP!
BAD Bobby, BAD Newtie!
BAP! BAP! BAP!
Of course to Janet Reno, such an exercise of free speech would be
terrorism.
But then, so is the rest of the
Bill of Rights.
Permission to redistribute this article is herewith granted by the
author -- provided that it is reproduced unedited, in its entirety, and
appropriate credit given.
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