Shutting Them Down

"Gentlemen, you see that in the anarchy in which we live, society manages much as before. Take care, if our disputes last too long, that the people do not come to think that they can very easily do without us." – Benjamin Franklin, to the Constitutional Convention of 1787

The so called "government shutdown," which the Obamunists and their hangers-on claim will "blow up the economy," along with miscellaneous other horrors to be inflicted on the poor, Negroes, children, women, homosexuals, grandmothers, the snail darter, the Delta smelt, and the spotted owl, has now been in effect for a little more than a full day. My neighborhood is just as it was before. New York State is lumbering along in its usual quadriplegic fashion. The stock markets appear to be taking it calmly. No one has invaded us. So why all the fuss?

Because of the Benjamin Franklin quote above, of course.

The Ruling Elite is far more threatened by the shutdown than any other sector of society. Granted, some of us, myself among them, might need new jobs if it were to go on indefinitely, assuming private enterprise doesn't pick up where the Pentagon leaves off. But we have skills...well, most of us, anyway...that can easily be transferred to other applications than killing people and breaking things. But what about politicians and bureaucrats? Except for the ones that hold credentials of other kinds, what would they do to stay in coffee and cakes?

Bureaucrats are persons who read and write memoranda. That's a skill made valuable solely by government; therefore, once government is gone, there will be no niche for them. Except for the ones that pack guns, of course, but I'm sure the private sector can deal with them...one way or another. However, I can't think of any portion of the private economy that has a grinding need for officious, self-important bastards consumed by a lust for power but are incapable of anything but vilifying one another. Can you, Gentle Reader?

Franklin's caution to the Constitutional Conventioners might yet be realized in this year of Our Lord 2013. Whether he would look upon today's developments with alarm or satisfaction, I cannot say.

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The late Samuel Francis is probably best known for his conception of anarcho-tyranny:

What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny – the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through "sensitivity training" and multiculturalist curricula, "hate crime" laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny....

The laws that are enforced are either those that extend or entrench the power of the state and its allies and internal elites ... or else they are the laws that directly punish those recalcitrant and "pathological" elements in society who insist on behaving according to traditional norms – people who do not like to pay taxes, wear seat belts, or deliver their children to the mind-bending therapists who run the public schools; or the people who own and keep firearms, display or even wear the Confederate flag, put up Christmas trees, spank their children, and quote the Constitution or the Bible – not to mention dissident political figures who actually run for office and try to do something about mass immigration by Third World populations.

This crossbreed between the tyranny made possible by an overweening political power and the chaos too many persons have associated mentally with "anarchy" strikes the superficial as impossible. Governments exist, they argue, to enforce order; therefore, while they can tyrannize, to attribute chaos to them, simultaneously at least, is misconceived. What the superficial manage to miss is that while a government can "enforce order," it need not do so for everyone. Indeed, the history of governments is without any examples of a government that enforced a truly uniform order, in which the same laws have applied to everyone regardless of his identity, his occupation, his wealth, or his station in society.

Go ahead. Check me on it. Then come back and read the rest.

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"Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us." -- Leo Tolstoy

"I was never molested by any person but those who represented the State." -- Henry David Thoreau

I have come to agree with the late Mr. Francis on nearly everything he thought, said, or wrote. Moreover, the "red thread" that runs through every significant malady of American society, both the ones he cited in the quotes above and any others you might care to name, is that of government. Governments at all levels are the creators and perpetuators of the disorder, the poverty, the social tensions, the suppression of enterprise, and the seemingly irremediable failures of core institutions that plague these United States.

Note that any government in operation is solely an instrument of violence. Governments are distinguished from other organizations in that within the zone of their sovereignty, they are indemnified, de jure or de facto, against penalty for doing what a private individual or organization would be prosecuted for. This privilege frees governments from having to do anything but coerce the rest of us.

Sometimes, such coercions have no imaginable purpose but the assertion of the privilege of coercion itself:

Fifty-seven year old Texas homeowner William Keith Hall shot "a career criminal" who broke into his home on September 26 and was subsequently shot by police after refusing to drop his gun once they arrived.

In fact, Police say he pointed his gun at them when they reached the scene.

According Fox News, 30-year old Jerry Wayne Hale broke into Hall's home and was shot. Thereafter Hall allegedly pointed his gun at the man who called 911 and then allegedly pointed at witnesses who were near Hale.

The 911 caller said Hall actually tried to "fire at the witnesses but his gun apparently jammed."

Fox News carried a report from The Dallas Morning News saying the police did not realize Hall had shot Hale in defense of his home when they arrived. Therefore, when Hall refused to drop his gun--and even "pointed the pistol at police officers," according to Maj. Jeff Cotner--police opened fire.

Hall died with Hale at the scene.

Decide for yourself whether to believe the self-exculpating claims of the police who gunned down a homeowner in his own home.

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"The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from the violence to which it owes its very existence." -- Mohandas K. Gandhi

We may have happened upon a stroke of good fortune. Owing to the most recent developments in Congress, we have an opportunity to observe, while the federal government is (partially) closed down, whether conditions will deteriorate or improve.

Even if nothing were to change except for the removal of government -- if "society manages much as before" -- I would count it as a massive improvement. We would have shed the dead load of government, which coerces, mulcts, and hobbles us in so many ways. That alone would open possibilities governments have repeatedly obstructed.

In writing the above, I am mindful that no change so sweeping would come without cost. In particular, we are not our colonial ancestors, accustomed to looking after ourselves and one another without the "help" of the State. There would be a period during which many addicted to government payments would be at the mercy of their neighbors. There would be a period during which criminals -- "private-sector" criminals, that is -- would perceive increased opportunities for plunder. And there would be a period during which the other nations of the world would have to defend their own borders...hopefully, a period never to end.

But human beings adapt. At least, we do so once we've been convinced that it's adapt-or-die, and that there's no way back to the swaddling comforts of the past. And really, what did our colonial forebears have that we don't, except for Tyrant George across the Atlantic to rebel against?

Give it some thought.