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"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence." --Charles Austin Beard, American Historian, 1874-1948
We stand on the eve of great conflict. The onset of tyranny in the guise of a new American fascism is all but inevitable in this country. Civil disturbance if not outright civil war will be an inevitable consequence if the march towards tyranny is left unchecked.
The prospects for the advancement of individual freedom and liberty have never been so fragile as they are now. Past and present US administrations have pursued the systematic abrogation of the rule of law and the nullification of the Constitution and Bill of Rights; the evidence for this is beyond dispute. If we are to successfully reassert our birthright of life, liberty and private property without violent revolution, then we must thread a narrow passage between the following likely outcomes for the US:
Consider that all of the foregoing conditions exist in the world today; this is a reality that the observant cannot deny without resorting to the worst kind of intellectual fraud. An intellectually honest and dispassionate look at these prospects suggests a high probability for social disorder and economic upheaval - 'sooner, rather then later - more, rather than less' - to quote the fascist filth currently befouling the White House. Even though totalitarian Socialism collapsed worldwide in a series of often-spectacular failures - even though the prostrate condition of its few remaining practitioners virtually guarantees that it will not persist past the first half of the 21st century - that will not deter the mankind-hating and the power hungry among us from pursuing that same failed course. There are indications that the collapse of the world's existing democratic welfare states will proceed with shocking rapidity and violence.
America is immune to none of the outcomes listed here.
Were we to judge public policy by its outcomes and consequences (as we should), then we would be obliged to conclude that such policies were formulated expressly to promulgate class and gender warfare, ignorance, passivity, racial division, poverty, envy, and hatred of the good for being good. It is, in fact, precisely the outcome desired by the Gramscian Marxists who comprise our cultural elite.Yet, the majority of our fellow citizens openly applaud this course. A significant number of us sanction it by our silence and inaction - and that silence is the silence of the damned. Judgemental, you say? Intolerant, you claim? Then look elsewhere - this essay is not a 'values-neutral' zone, and you will surely be offended by its content.
We have made a choice to stand on the side of darkness or on the side of light - there is no middle ground.
The side of darkness is best represented by those who demand other human beings' lives as sacrifices. That ultimate evil rests on the premise that your life is not yours, and that you do not have the right to live as you wish. Liberal fascists embrace the notion that the state has the right to forcibly restrict your life. Liberal fascists arrogate the right to forcibly substitute their judgment for yours, to forcibly prevent you from making your own choices.
Any economic/political/ethical system that treats peoples' lives (or any part of someone's life) as if they were property or some sort of fungible asset is unspeakably evil. Any individual, institution or political entity whose ultimate argument is the barrel of a gun should and must be resisted. Anyone who claims that the concepts of right and wrong amount to intellectual bigotry or that there is no such thing as an absolute human right exhibits a worldview whose outcome has been the enslavement and slaughter of millions in this century alone.
The side of light is best represented by those who truly believe that the Bill of Rights and the Constitution as they were originally written were works of inspired genius. These documents still stand today the best guarantors of individual rights and liberty. The side of light is represented by those of us who believe that our lives and our minds are sovereign, and that the fruits of our labors are not forfeit to the first thug who demands them at the point of a gun. The side of light is represented by those of us who judge a man by solely by his competence and by his character. Yet today, those of us who stand on the side of light and live these beliefs with conviction are called extremists.
Yes, I am an extremist. From the point of view of the liberal fascist, an extremist is someone who objects to having his life controlled, whether by a single self-appointed tyrant or by the dictates of an entire elected mob. He is someone who recognizes his rights and is willing to defend them. He is someone who has read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and understands them. He is someone who upholds the ideals of the Founding Fathers because he knows that these are the logical and proper conditions for a just and a free society. Above all, an extremist is guilty of the unpardonable crime of consistency. An individual of intransigent purpose and character is, to the totalitarian social engineer, highly dangerous. He is not willing to compromise his principles for the sake of "getting along." He disavows the alleged "good of others" as justification for the seizure of his property or the destruction of his life. He recognizes that need does not constitute a claim on wealth. He rejects Kant's creed of the unearned reward and the unrewarded duty. He dismisses as absurd the notion that the pursuit of his own happiness is evil. He refuses to believe that life is guilt. He is an honest man who never consumes more than he produces. He knows that the most depraved sentence you can utter is: "Who am I to judge?" And that the second most depraved sentence one can utter is "Who am I to know?"
I am the sort of man the elitist social engineer wishes to attack and discredit. It is for people like me that the current context of extremist was designed and invented, because such people resist control and manipulation. When you see the term "extremist" in the media or if you hear it spewing from the lips of socialist looters like Richard Gephardt or criminal filth like Bill and Hillary Clinton, the implication is that the person so labeled is not 'normal'. Those who hurl the extremist epithet define as 'abnormal' anyone who refuses to compromise the premises of the foundation of their values. For the arrogant, self-congratulatory and guilt-ridden liberal elite, 'normality' is defined
The fact that I insist upon thinking things through; that I exhibit resolute intransigence in the face of irrational disapprobation and ridicule; that I uphold and defend of a set of values based upon reality and rationality - that now defines me as one of those dangerous extremists. My philosophy owes much to Ayn Rand's Objectivism: the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. As such an extremist, I oppose with every fiber of my being statism, socialism, collectivism, racism, altruism, internationalism, tribalism, unlimited democracy, pull politics, and the "New World Order;" - in short, I oppose any philosophy or ideology that aids and abets the genesis of tyranny. Since I view modern American liberalism and socialism in any of its various guises as the vilest of crimes against man and nature, justice and reason, I am therefore the sworn and avowed enemy of our present crop of moral, economic, and social interventionists. And the struggle is not one of political party vs political party. It is an error to persist in thinking in terms of Left vs Right. Rather than Left or Right, Republican or Democrat, the end points of the continuum really are:
George Orwell, in his classic work of totalitarian triumph, 1984 claims that the ultimate end of power is - power. He says, "If you want a picture of the future of Man, it is a boot in a human face - forever." It matters little what label you attach to perpetrators of atrocity and murderers of human freedom. It matters little whether the boot in your face is on the left foot or the right foot.
Never forget that those who pose the greatest danger are those who would claim our lives as tribute to a vague and transigent "public good." C. S. Lewis warns us in God in the Dock: "Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
So, by the standards of all leftists, liberals, socialists, collectivists, intolerant religious fundamentalists, statists, racists and other advocates of coercive utopia - I am an extremist. And proud to be considered so. I'm proud to say that I'm simply incapable of the appalling intellectual dishonesty and abject moral and ethical failure required to sustain a left wing, liberal, or collectivist point of view. And it's not a matter of disagreement with any particular policy of the liberal left or the religious right - I challenge their entire range of moral, ethical and philosophical premises. As an extremist,
When will you stand up and say 'no' to the next intrusion into your lives? What line must be crossed before you actively resist those who have arrogated to themselves the right to determine the terms of your existence? When will you refuse to sacrifice your lives and your children's lives to the statist monsters who claim them as 'assets'?
Make no mistake about it - the killers have taken over - and they will eventually come for you. Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death." I say that I am already free, and that anyone who attempts to enslave me or my family risks his own death. There can be no peace, no compromise, no accommodation - ever - with anyone who views my life, my property, or my children as a resource or an asset to be disposed of by the state or by the church.
(c) noumenon 1998.
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16 July, 1998