Insubordinate Americans

BallotsorBullets

Two cheers for exit-as-threat, or dialectical lumpenconservatism

I sure hope Elias Isquith is right about this:

… the Tea Party’s philosophy of government (again, as understood by Salam) has embedded within it an aversion to basic democratic principles that goes far beyond a typical contempt for Washington, politicians and pundits. … He’s describing a childish and essentially anti-political belief that a return to an Articles of Confederation-style U.S. order — in which each state is more of a sovereign unto itself than a member of a larger American whole — will produce 50 mini-nations where everyone basically agrees.

It’s strange to me that someone would object to a pluralistic world in which he could wait months for medical procedures in Bennington while I stock up on assault weapons in Sedona. Call it a patchwork, or an archipelago, whatever you call it we’re dealing with an ambi-ideological concept. Anyway, it must be crushed:

If the basic, irresolvable questions of identity that each generation must answer for itself — What do we value? Whom do we respect? What do we want from each other? What do we demand of ourselves? — are no longer contested, then, really, what’s the point? Just appoint a CEO of State for life, a charismatic technocrat to make sure the trains are running on time, and be done with it.

That isn’t a bad suggestion, but perhaps he doth protest too much. See, it’s not dictatorship he finds so distasteful, it’s that people could peaceably agree to disagree about those questions he says are “irresolvable.” Almost, you know, the opposite of a dictatorship. I asked him on Facebook what he thought about the Hawaiian independence movement, which despite containing the only significant royalist sentiment in America today, is generally supported by the academic left because of its anti-colonial sympathies. I haven’t gotten an answer yet.

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Armed civil disobedience and the patriot movement

I wrote a column this week over at TheDC about the Las Vegas shooters, and how, after the media has gone to great pains to trump up any connection between spree killers and the right, they’ve finally got one that seems to fit the profile:

For Sunday morning’s shooting in Las Vegas, in which Jerad and Amanda Miller allegedly shot two police officers and a bystander before the latter took both of their lives, no such dissembling is required. We appear to have on our hands a pair of bona fide right-wing terrorists — cosplaying Cliven Bundy supporters, Mickey and Mallory with a head full of meth and Alex Jones. Amanda Miller even claimed on her Facebook that she worked for Hobby Lobby. They’re just perfect.

Read the whole thing, it goes into some other cases and notes another shooting with a Gadsden motif. Dishonest movement bloggers like the neocon Jim Hoft react to this news by sticking their fingers in their ears and going ‘nyah nyah he was a socialist.’ But in this case, at least, it doesn’t appear that way.

One of the more interesting wrinkles in the story is their apparent support for the III Percenters — so named because that is supposedly the percentage of American colonists who took up arms against the crown. We can’t necessarily infer the significance of the connection from the fact that they ‘liked’ them on Facebook — I do too, for one thing — but they were supposedly Adam Kokesh fans too, and made it down to Cliven Bundy’s ranch, so there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence that they’ve taken up significant parts of III Percenter ideology.

Who are the III Percenters? Well, have a look at this speech in Connecticut by the man who created it, Mike Vanderboegh:

I’m fascinated by Vanderboegh, for a lot of reasons. He broke the Fast and Furious scandal to Sharyl Attkisson and introduced her to the whistleblowers, for one thing. For another, when he speaks, he says very radical things, but doesn’t come across as hateful or crazy, unlike, say Adam Kokesh’s bizarre libertarian headspace in which killing cops is implicitly an act of self-defense. For what it’s worth, it’s also hard to see him abide the Millers’ fanboy bullshit; the far right is unbecoming when clothed in V for Vendetta slogans and Batman haberdashery. This isn’t about fame, or martyrdom, or the new world order, or any of that. It’s about letting those in government know that their is a limit to what the armed populace will take lying down, telling them, in the hope that it will make them change their minds, that “if you try to take our firearms, we will kill you.”

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Committee For The Republic’s 80th Birthday Tribute to Jon Utley

Video is now online of the Committee for the Republic’s tribute to American Conservative publisher Jon Utley back in March, for his 80th birthday, which I had the great pleasure of attending.

If there’s ever been a meeting of the good guys in a Washington salon, this was it, featuring (quoting from the YouTube description): “John Henry, Chairman of the Committee, fundraising giant Richard Viguerie, Lee Edwards of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Dan McCarthy, editor of The American Conservative, Allan Brownfeld of the American Council for Judaism, Alex Chafuen, President of the Atlas Economic Research foundation, Norman Birnbaum, Georgetown University Professor emeritus, British writer Francis Beckett, author of Stalin’s British Victims, and Fran Griffin, President of Griffin Communications, who also read a message from Pat Buchanan.”

I forget which one it was that comments that the thing that distinguished Utley from the other anti-communists is that he never held his own government to a double standard.

Here are Jim Bovard’s remarks:

Jon has been in the forefront of the antiwar movement since 1990, when he spearheaded a group to oppose George H.W. Bush’s war against Iraq.  He has been a rare voice of reason and grace in conservative circles, patiently pointing out how foreign warring was destroying American freedom – as well as wreaking pointless havoc abroad.  He has also been a generous supporter of groups ranging from the Future of Freedom Foundation to Antiwar.com, where his columns continue to trounce bloodthirsty politicians of all stripes.

Jon has always been kind in his comments and encouragement on my writing. Some years ago, I saw that he was heading to an ACLU awards dinner that featured some fashionable left-wing keynoter who didn’t seem truly concerned with freedom. I asked why he was going to the ACLU event.

Jon replied, “So that somebody will care when government agents take us away.”

Hearing that line from someone whose father vanished in the Gulag makes it impossible to forget.

Happy birthday, Jon, and thanks for all you’ve done for freedom for 60+ years!

Check out the documentary, “Return To the Gulag,” about Jon’s search for his father here.

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Happy May Day: ‘To hell with the government’

One of my favorite editorials published in The Blast — the anarchist newspaper based in San Francisco, not Wyndham Lewis’s vorticist magazine — on May Day, 98 years ago. Taken from the AK Press anthology, which is very good:

Three successive issues of THE BLAST have been vetoed by the Post Office censorship. The determination of the Washington authorities to suppress this publication is obvious. But the high muck-a-mucks of the government are too cowardly and hypocritical to inform us to that effect, honestly and frankly. That would not befit a “proud government.” By the way, who was it that said that a government always represents the lowest social level? Evidently he knew. The methods used by the Federal government, the chambermaid of the money paunches, to suppress THE BLAST are beneath contempt. We were first informed by the local post office officials that issues 9 and 10 of our paper were prohibited to pass through the mail by order from Washington. When No. 11 of THE BLAST appeared, it was again held up and we were informed that the Postmaster General had wired a SPECIAL ORDER to hold up EVERY issue of THE BLAST, and that our paper would not be permitted to pass through the mails until a copy of each issue had been forwarded to Washington, there to be passed upon its “fitness” to be circulated in this good and pious country. Accordingly, the first assistant Postmaster of this city, William Burke, informed us that he immediately forwarded a copy of No. 11 to Washington, and that he requested a reply by wire.

It would take five days, we were told, to receive the decision of the Postmaster General. At the end of that time we again got in touch with Mr. Burke. He expressed surprise that no reply had been received from Washington and promised to look into the matter. We waited a few more days and again sought information from the local postal officials. No reply had been received, we were informed, but Mr. Burke assured us that he would immediately telegraph to Washington to request the decision by wire. 

We waited another week, two weeks. Still no reply from Washington. In the absence of further instructions, the local postal authorities continued to apply the previous order excluding THE BLAST from the mails.

THE BLAST must have hit ’em pretty hard to make them so mad. But we are tired of awaiting the pleasure of His Majesty, Postmaster General Burleson, and his Comstockian censorship. Who the hell is Burleson, anyhow, to presume to dictate what is or is not “fit” to be read by the American public? As our friends, Douglas B. and Annie Bruce Carr Sterrett, of Washington D.C., so well put it in their protest to Burleson, “The Post Office was supposed to be mechanically efficient, and nothing beyond that. That it should now dictate on ethical questions is as absurd as if the railroads and street car companies were legally empowered to refuse to accept passengers whose ideas they did not like.”

To the filthy mind, all things are filthy. The Postmaster General is evidently suffering from this Comstockian disease, but we have reason to believe that the suppression of THE BLAST is not so much due to the unfortunate mental condition of Burleson, as to pressure from other quarters that have found our frank criticism “too strong” for their digestion, and very unpalatable to the powers that be. But whatever the reason or forces behind the suppression of THE BLAST, we are tired of the whole pestiferous gang and of the postal tyranny. We hereby declare our independence from the Autocrat of the Post Office and of his governmental and plutocratic chiefs. We are heartily sick of the whole canaille. We know that THE BLAST is a thorn in their side. We defy them to do their worst. We will continue to publish THE BLAST as long as we can find friends to support our resistance to this postal despotism. Rebels and liberty lovers, it is up to you to show if you are really sincere in your protestations. Help us to keep up THE BLAST. There is no greater menace to progress than the suppression of the radical press.

And let the overlords and their hirelings be warned that their craven and sneaky methods of stifling unpopular thought will but serve to drive our propaganda underground, sub rosa — as in Russia, for instance — and force it to assume more aggressive expression. In vain is the hope of the American governmental Black Hundred to suppress the Spirit of Revolt. In vain! For

Ye fools! Do I not live where ye have tried to pierce in vain?
Rests not a nook for me to dwell in every heart and every brain?
In every workshop breeding woe? In every hut that harbors grief?
Ha! Am I not the Breath of Life, that pants and struggles for relief?

‘Tis therefor I will be — and lead the people yet your hosts to meet,
And on your necks, your heads, your crowns, will plant my strong, resistless feet!
It is no boast — it is no threat — thus history’s iron law decree —
The day grows hot, O Babylon! ‘Tis cool beneath thy willow trees!

ALEXANDER BERKMAN