Elites use pretexts like “national security” to impose revolutionary changes April 15, 2007
Posted by reformedville in : Government , 1 comment so farOver the past twenty years I have asserted that the one right in the bill of rights that secures all of our rights is #2. Applied, the one lesson we should take from Iraq is that a armed citizenry is next to impossible to conquer, especially with a invading outside force. I am convinced that other foreign powers have or should have recognized it in the past and in fact, it is our most formidable defense against (both our own government) and hostile nations who would ever invade. The insurgency in Iraq or civil war or armed dissent, however, you wish to paint it, is such a case in point.
In doing some research on this topic, I came across this article, that makes many valid points and some which I do not find of much substance. You chuck the bones but there is a good bit of meat here.
Government can not control populations through force alone. At any given time, the armed agents of the State are overwhelmingly outnumbered by the people, so that even if the people don’t have the same weapons, they could devise their own and “outgun” the State’s forces if they so choose. What really sustains the State isn’t violence and the threat of violence, but rather its ability to persuade the people of its own importance. If the State can get the overwhelming majority to think alike, then they do not need to be constantly threatened and bullied; they will voluntarily go along with the State’s demands.
The Church served this purpose in the Middle Ages. Armies didn’t need to keep the serfs in line, because they were spiritually held hostage by the Church. Obey, conform, and comply, or go to hell. Religion continued to serve as the “opium of the people” in the West even through the Enlightenment. But religion is also troublesome for the State, as it insists on loyalties beyond the State. As organized religion began its decline, new institutions of social mind control took its place.
There are, for instance, public schools. What purpose can they possibly serve except to indoctrinate children and get them to perceive regimentation, conformity, and hierarchy as “natural?” Values and perceptions created by the film and television industries did not necessarily reflect how Americans see themselves and their country, but rather created their impressions. Big Government and the corporatization of America did not need to be “sold” to Americans because the impression the media gave is that this is just the way things are. Advertising and the constant invention and improvement of consumer goods create artificial desires which keep the people focused on work and amusements, instead of on questioning authority or changing the status quo.
The effect is that social and political revolutions can essentially be imposed on the people by elites, and the people will generally accept the new reality. This is why the Bush aide who told Ron Suskind that Bush was not part of the “reality-based community” was on to something. He said, “‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out.”
This is how President Bush could start a war of aggression, claim the right to torture, spy on Americans without search warrants, etc., and get away with it. While John Mayer keeps on “waiting on the world to change,” Bush is changing it for him. The “new realities” Bush has created will be embraced by future Presidents, who will not voluntarily give up the level of absolute power Bush has claimed for the Presidency. Something Bush does may be “shocking” and “unprecedented” at first, but if it is not immediately reversed, soon most people will accept it as part of everyday life and even support it. That’s why Bush, though now unpopular, continues to “get away with it.”
But the creation of “new realities” didn’t start with Bush. Indeed, even the writing and ratification of the Constitution was a “revolution” imposed on the people by elites. The Constitutional Convention broke with its original purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation, and proposed a ratification process that made it hard for America’s rural majority to form organized opposition. Shortly after it was ratified, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton proposed a national bank, something the new Constitution didn’t authorize. Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase was likewise unconstitutional. So was Lincoln’s raising of troops without Congressional authorization, and his quashing of a secession movement. So was the re-creation of the national bank in the form of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. So was Wilson’s takeover of the economy and imposition of censorship during World War I. So was the New Deal. So was Truman’s decision to go to war in Korea without a Congressional Declaration.
But Bush is really building on the legacy of 1947. That year saw the adoption of the National Security Act. That was the year the Central Intelligence Agency was created. And the National Security Council. And it was the creation of what Bill Moyers calls the Secret Government.
Bill Moyer’s 1987 television documentary The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis is available on Google Video. It was made shortly after the Iran-Contra hearings took place. In retrospect, Iran-Contra looks almost like a footnote in a Cold War with the Soviet Union that spanned over forty years. But the seriousness of Iran-Contra - in which weapons were sold to terrorists in Iran with the profits diverted to criminals in Nicaragua - can not be underestimated: members of the Reagan Administration implemented a policy expressly forbidden by Congress. This was - or should have been - bigger than Watergate, and certainly bigger than the Lewinsky scandal.
The bigger point Moyers makes, however, is that Iran-Contra sprang from an “anything goes” philosophy that defined American policy for forty years - now sixty years. Communism was then the pretext; now it is Islamic terror. The National Security Establishment believes that in order to preserve American principles such as peace, freedom, and democracy, we must abandon those very things and remain in a state of “permanent war, a perpetual state of emergency.” As Admiral Gene Larocque says in the Secret Government, the National Security Act changed dramatically the course of our great nation.” Indeed, “national security was invented, almost, in 1947″ and now it is “the prime mover of everything we do.”
Larocque’s use of the word “invent” is telling. When in the 20th century had America ever been in actual danger? The greatest sense of insecurity came from the nuclear arms race - which America provoked. But by maintaining that communism was a threat to America, soldiers and civilians in the Executive Branch felt they were entitled to do anything and everything to keep America “safe.” This included toppling foreign regimes through the CIA. It included going to war without Congressional declaration, and funneling money to dictators in one place, rebels in another. With the emphasis on secrecy, few even in Congress would know how our tax dollars were really being spent and what was being done in our name.
Bush is merely using this pretext, “national security,” to operate in a secretive fashion, go to war whenever he wants, and dispense with the Bill of Rights. “National Security” is just one more “opiate” of the people, another form of mind control; after all, who can be against “national security?” The National Security State is thus just another “reality” of American life - one Americans don’t question because it would be “unpatriotic” to do so. But we’ve certainly paid a heavy price: countless trillions of dollars spent, hundreds of thousands of Americans and countless millions of foreigners killed or wounded, a climate of fear, and the erosion of our most basic liberties such as freedom of speech and habeas corpus.
And almost all those costs were paid overseas. America itself was rarely in any danger.
The founders of the republic believed that maintaining a standing army in peacetime was a threat to liberty. The National Security State, created by President Truman sixty years ago, proves them right.