Killers Part 3

     When force is made the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. – Ayn Rand

     If you’ve read the previous two pieces in this little series, you’ve probably got the idea that I don’t much like governments. You’re right about that. The State, the human organization defined by its monopoly privilege of using lethal violence to gain its ends, did not originate from benevolence. Moreover, it is not beneficent in operation. (If you want the details, Franz Oppenheimer will happily provide them.) When Louis XIV of France declaimed that L’etat, c’est moi! he was arrogating unto himself that defining characteristic.

     Americans, for a long time, were inclined to trust their governments. After all, we’d been through a revolution, so we knew a good government from a bad one…or so we thought. We had a Constitution designed to protect our rights and restrain government to its “proper functions.” And of course, we have elections with which to “turn the rascals out” at need…at the bargain-basement price of inserting a new group of rascals to be endured.

     But somehow, it’s all gone wrong. Most Americans no longer trust our governments. They’ve misbehaved far too often and far too seriously. And our elections haven’t provided more than temporary, token relief from their misconduct. In fact, it’s begun to seem that we can’t “turn the rascals out” any longer. The newly elected rascals are often worse than those they replace.

     You have to expect that from killers.

     I’m struggling to resist a temptation here: the urge to drown my Gentle Readers in quotes. I have a large file of them, and the men who gave them to us are much better known, and can boast of much more prominent achievements, than your humble Curmudgeon Emeritus. But there’s this about quotes: the quoted parties aren’t around to be argued with. Here you have me. So apart from the quote at the top of this piece, I’ll try to keep this brief essay “quote-free.”

     The Founding Fathers of this nation were largely morally sound. Yes, a few of them owned slaves, but back then slavery was a going concern worldwide. Their efforts to design a national government for these United States were motivated by the consciousness of tyranny and what it is. They did what they could to avert it.

     But what the Founders did not possess, despite their erudition, was a sense for the dynamic of power. Their inclination was to believe that constitutionalism, buttressed by the English common law that had been developed and refined over several centuries, would suffice to constrain American governments. They were sufficiently humble to incorporate into their product a means by which it could be altered. Their hope, of course, was that any alterations would be for the better.

     I need not go into the history of our political devolution. We can sum it up by noting that a Constitution is an abstract thing. It cannot enforce itself – and successive generations of power-seekers went ever further in misreading it, reinterpreting it, and ignoring it completely. The righteous men of the Founding were succeeded by less scrupulous men. They in their turn were succeeded by even less scrupulous men.

     Today America’s governments are staffed almost exclusively by willing killers.

     No, the killers who reign over us don’t kill by their own hands. They have armed agents for that. Those agents have a shield called “Martinez-Barker.” It’s a U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia decision that ruled that an agent of the State who sincerely believes himself to be acting in accordance with lawful orders that originated from a legitimate authority is legally indemnified for his actions. That is, he cannot be punished for those actions.

     So the “grunt level” killers are legally protected. If you’ve ever wondered why Lon Horiuchi wasn’t punished for killing Vicki Weaver, now you know.

     But of course, these men are merely doing what they’re told. If they’re told to do something that might require them to kill, they go forth and do it. The levels above them originate the orders.

     The people at those higher levels seldom think about the possibility that bloodshed may result from the orders they issue. Yet that possibility inheres in every decision to deploy force against others. By the principles expressed in this piece, they are as guilty, morally, of the deaths their agents inflict as are those agents. Yet they seldom face even the possibility of indictment and trial.

     The point “should” be “obvious” by now. When some activity is put under government authority, that exposes anyone involved in that activity to the possibility of violent death at the hands of agents of the State. That such deaths aren’t an inevitable consequence of a violation of some government decree is merely because most of us aren’t willing to risk our lives in a confrontation with armed government agents. Nevertheless, the possibility is always there – and the folks in the air-conditioned, fluorescent-lighted offices who promulgate the laws, regulations, et cetera under which armed agents go forth must be assumed to be aware of it.

     We know, from many recent events, that you don’t need to be a lawbreaker to meet a violent death at the State’s hands. If some SWAT team commander with a no-knock warrant reads the address wrong, or if the address was mis-recorded in the first place, you could be sent to your reward merely for being slow to answer your door.

     The activity I initially addressed in this series was medicine. We don’t have socialized medicine yet, though other First World nations do. Do you think their citizens ever think about the reality of the thing: that is, that the medical care available to them is determined by killers: people who can decree their deaths for disobedience? Does it occur to them that that same authority can be used to suppress dissent about any subject whatsoever, whether by denying medical care to the dissenters or by compelling them to accept a “treatment” that will send them to an early grave?

     It’s a frightening thing to contemplate for most of us. We aren’t killers. But among our neighbors, friends, and acquaintances are persons who are quite all right with it. Whether or not they understand the dynamic of power, they want to force you to conduct your affairs according to their preferences. If it takes a little bloodshed to make it so, well, remember what Maximilien Robespierre said about omelets and eggs. The “greater good” must be served!

     I’m done with this. It’s your turn, Gentle Reader, to sit before an interrogator’s hot light. What activities do you want to subject to the authority of killers? Take your time.