The Slaughter of the Willing

Government employees have lied to us right from the very beginning.  The lie that hostilities between people in different groups benefits at least one of the groups is a particularly odious example.  People indoctrinate children within prisons called schools to believe that government officials grant to them their rights and government employees defend their freedoms by dying.

Coming on the heels of the shooting spree at Ft Hood in Texas, local Veterans Day Celebrations in honour of government employees were telling examples of the immense disconnect between the rationale for their behaviours and the reality of their results.

Designated folks spoke about service, including human sacrifice to the purported benefit of protected people.  Folks told stories about bravery, and courage, and discipline, and on and on.  Speakers wearing costumes festooned with ribbons extolled killing other people at the direction of their masters as defending listeners’ freedoms. 

People living within the boundaries of the American Empire currently have less freedom than previously.  With the passage of legislation regulating health care, U S Constitutional restrictions on government actions will be gone. 

Poverty has increased from War on Poverty.  Drug use increased from War on Drugs.  Terror increased from War on Terrorism. 

But freedom, that light whose protection justifies war, has dimmed.  You can be snatched away, coercively interrogated, crippled, and even killed with no recourse to you.  You do not even have to pick a pocket or break somebody’s leg to be a target.  There are plenty of government employees who are willing to target you, to pick your pocket and/or break your leg at your expense.   

You are responsible for your safety.  You may delegate such responsibility at your expense to a willing agent.  You are still ultimately answerable for your agent’s actions on your behalf, and you are still ultimately responsible for your safety.  Unless you are a willing agent to whom another delegated the responsibility for his safety you have no standing to defend anyone else.

This means that you have no business going, in the name of eradicating certain behaviour, to faraway lands to kill folks who just happened to be unlucky enough to be in the area of your hostile actions.  Hostilities against behaviour become hostilities against folks.  These folks are just like you. 

3 January 2010