The Real Terrorist Threat

     The central, all-important question of our age is Cui bono? Who benefits from what has just happened, or what has just been proposed? There’s no more reliable way to trace the genesis of events.

     About ten years ago, I wrote a column delineating my fears as I was about to enter upon retirement. That column has attained a certain status. Yet it says little that others haven’t said before – and as the years since then have passed, that has come to concern me.

     “Fear, like pain, can be useful, but it’s no fun.” The number of striking and important quotations about fear don’t usually include that one. (The mantle of greatness persists in eluding me! Curses!) The “no fun” part is probably what keeps us from rendering it useful by asking the most important questions about it:

• Who caused you to fear?
• What was his most persuasive pitch?
• In retrospect, were your fears well-founded?

     For nearly all fear that doesn’t spring from impersonal natural causes (e.g., aging, avalanches, AIDS) is inflicted by a purposeful agent. It’s brought to you, gift-wrapped and custom-delivered to your door. Someone wanted you to feel that fear.

     At that realization, Cui bono? time is upon you:

     If you refrain from asking that question, you’ll get the whole downside of fear without getting any use out of it.

     I could be wrong, but I don’t think it requires a Certified Galactic Intellect to grasp any of that.

     More recently, I wrote:

     Fear is the primary weapon in the hands of those who seek to shrive you of your rights. They aim to destroy America’s norms of individual liberty, private property, free markets, and the degree of tolerance consistent within public order. And they’ve made one hell of a lot of progress.

     Their aim is what it has always been: unbounded and absolute power. They currently control the instrument called “the State:” i.e., government. They’re striving mightily to extend its reach through every nominally private institution in American life: companies, media, churches, schools, neighborhood associations, and other venues for social or commercial intercourse.

     The federal government of these United States has a number of organs in whose interests it is to promote general fear. I hardly need to enumerate them for a readership as intelligent and observant as the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch. One that has commanded heightened attention recently is the FBI. Brianna Lyman notes several things which the FBI has encouraged us to fear:

• Catholics;
• Trump supporters;
• Parents at school board meetings;
• Pro-lifers;
• Grandmas.

     Has anyone bothered to ask the “What does the FBI get out of making me fear this?” question about those groups? The answers strike me as important:

• Pursuing those groups is safer and less tiring than pursuing criminals and terrorists;
• The number of persons in those groups justifies greatly increased personnel and funding;
• Increasing social division, regardless of the reason, amplifies the power of the State.

     I submit that the question has been answered.

     Just this morning, I added an entry to the LIS Codex:

     Every time government says they are doing something for our “safety,” they are taking our rights away under false pretenses. — Diogenes Sarcastica

     Safety, of course, is the antithesis of fear. The encouragement of fear reduces one’s sense of safety. If a person or agency can plausibly promise to make you safer from the feared thing, you will be drawn to him / it. Once again, it doesn’t take a brain the size of a planet. Neither does Diogenes’s following observation:

     It means, at best, that they are capitalizing on the tragedy, and at worse, that they created it.

     Does it not follow that the State has a powerful incentive for fomenting and amplifying general fear? Does it not follow that whenever any element of the State proposes that we should fear this or that, the Cui bono? and “What do they get out of making us fear this?” questions should be asked – nay, must be asked?

     But this examination has both an obverse and a reverse face. For there are elements in our nation that are genuinely hostile to decent Americans and American values. Note that the most prominent of these – Islam – has been regularly downplayed as something to fear. Rather, we’re told it’s “political Islam,” a.k.a. “Islamism,” that we should fear – and that we can relax about it, as our intelligence agencies and law enforcers are “on the job.”

     But all Islam is political in nature. It demands the submission of all persons, and the complete dominance of all authority structures. It prescribes deceit and violence in the service of that aim. Islam’s war against the West – it calls us “Dar al-Harb,” the “House of War” – is unceasing. It’s in the Koran, Gentle Reader.

     We are told to fear Catholics, pro-lifers, grandmas – people and things that are plainly un-fearsome – and told that we must accept and tolerate something that is genuinely fearsome. Who is telling us this and why?

     Corollary: Who is it that we should really fear?

     I could go on, but I believe the point has been made. The greatest threat to the safety and well-being of Americans is its governments, from Washington D.C. all the way down to the local school board. That alone argues for their abolition. To the extent that they persuade us not to pay attention to other real threats, they are traitorous. To the extent that they actively import and empower those other real threats, they are villains of the first magnitude, beyond all possibility of forgiveness.

     Ralph Waldo Emerson once famously wrote that “Fear always springs from ignorance.” While that was a bit of an overstatement, it had value. We must not be persuaded to ignore the real threats to us. Always and everywhere, those threats start with governments: the State.

     Have a nice day.