Guns For Women--An Armed America? 1/2? 3/4ths? 4/4ths even??

This is one that probably won't get posted on the NYTimes comments logs, in response to the June 2, 2009 piece by Randy Cohen, the NYT's “ethicist,” Moral of the Story: The Ethicist's take on the news: Give Women Guns, so here it is anyhoo:

LtrGunsForWomen9Jun09

Not a modest proposal at all [one comment asked, "A modest proposal?" referring to Johnathan Swift's eponymous pamphlet (and proposal) for solving the Irish potato famine by letting the Irish eat their children].

I think arming women is a super idea. And men should "carry"--in plain sight--as well.

We might require men to "hang them up" when the enter a bar, say, or in a polling place, but only until they leave.

When I was in Vietnam, everyone in my unit had both their own sidearms and their 40-ton M-14 (if you were a clever supply sergeant, of course, you would be carrying the lighter M-16, have nylon jungle fatigues (good air circulation) and the lightweight jungle combat boots, with punji-stick protection (steel sole inserts).

And we didn't shot at one another. Given the bellicose nature of our local police departments nowadays, emboldened as they are by infusions of military gear from the so-called Department of Homeland Security (Heimats verSicherheitnessness, I call it), the abysmal, Constitution-repealing so-called Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, "national security letters," and so on, not only should every citizen have a side arm with them at all times, but they probably should carry at least a carbine as well.

I recall pictures of gatherings in Israel where young mothers pushing their kids in a fold-up strollers also carried M-16s slung over their shoulders.

And having just dived into "Overthrow", a record of the 14 "regime changes" America has directed, funded, backed, hatched since the overthrow of the ruler of Hawaii in 1893, it is clear that it's very, very dangerous to be near members of our government unless you're armed and equally dangerous, and unwilling to back down.

Imagine how different history would have been if every citizen in every country in which we knocked off the leaders (many democratically elected, but who made the supreme mistake of trying to take over THEIR OWN NATURAL RESOURCES) had been armed, and confident. There would be far fewer "random tasings" and probably many fewer beatings of victims to prove the universal charge in any arrest, "resisting arrest." Particularly by "macho cops"--who come out of the same neighborhoods as many of the criminals do--policing is dangerous, has rotten hours, doesn't pay all that well, and is DEFINITELY not a 'prestige-enhancing' occupation in this country. So it's no wonder that "the men in blue" feel, armed and dangerous as they are, that they're entitled to "take back their pound of flesh," certainly from crooks, protesters, and whatever other "types" press their "I don't get no respect" buttons.

Author Stephen Kinzer's list is: Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Philippines (and a few other little islands), Nicaragua, Honduras, Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam, Chile, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan & Iraq.

Imagine the FBI going into the library in Connecticut with a so-called "national security letter" and demanding silence and compliance in breaking the laws and morals of privacy between the library and the library patron. I can imagine all of the librarians in MY library, even though they're more likely to "display admirable restraint," as you put it, drawing their SEMI-automatic Glocks and telling the fuzz to "beat it."

I can also imagine that in small meetings or large ones with our so-called "elected representatives" (so-called both as to "elected" AND "representative" that a congressman or senator would be all the more attentive if he or she knew that every member of his audience was armed--and, under our republic, HIS OR HER BOSS.

My congressman called in the police when a couple of town meeting members raised their voices--they didn't shout anyone down, they just made their points loudly.

Also, if everyone is armed and trained in the use, we'd have a better chance of fighting our "optional" wars the right way, that is, by serial duels between the highest-ranking officials of each putative "warring party." And the armed citizens could enforce that practice.

In Iraq, Bush would have had a duel with Hussein. The survivor would duel with the next in line (Cheney, say, or Tariq Azize, whatever). And the duels would continue, by presidential succession, then seniority, in house and senate, until one side or the other "cried 'hold.' Enough'."

(Of course, both you and I know that if that's how "optional wars" were fought, there would have been no invasion of Afghanistan, and CERTAINLY no invasion of Iraq. At all. Period.)

Our top officials don't have the moxie to accept responsibility for ANYTHING they've done in office--but with armed civilians, we could march Cheney in to the nearest public prosecutor's office from the NBC or CBS or ABC sunday news studios where he's confessed to directing waterboarding, a violation of 18 USCode §2441, and instructing the DA to "lock 'im up" for his war crimes. Or heck, the TV moderator and the camera crew, director, makeup person, etc., could draw their weapons on the former VP and themselves march him down to the DA's office to face the music.

It becomes a different world when someone of "power" is met by someone of EQUAL power. Which is why the handgun is often called "the old equalizer."

Anyway, I think this is a SPLENDID idea! i'm going to get my $100 pistol permit tomorrow. (Unfortunately, I didn't keep my Browning Parabellum (13 rounds w/ one in the chamber) because I didn't want my children to have an accident with the weapon.

Now, however, we've had a very long "accident" with our Constitution, the failure of our "leaders" in all branches to honor their oaths of office to "support and defend" the US Constitution (or, in the case of the President, to "preserve, protect and defend"--but only to the best of his ability, a loophole if I ever saw one).

Hey, here's an interesting note you probably didn't know unless you were drafted and also knew an officer or two in the military: Enlisted men (non-commissioned 'boots' or 'legs' or 'grunts') swear to "support and defend" the constitution, AND to obey the orders of the President and their superior officers. However, OFFICERS SWEAR ONLY TO SUPPORT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION.

If our military officers had the moxie--and the courage of the Nuremberg principals and the Geneva conventions--they could have taken the President and Vice President into custody for violating the Constitution and the laws of our land. And officers are ALREADY armed, and trained.

Heck, we always tried to get the military men in the countries we wanted to control--that list of 14 above--to do exactly that with their rulers, elected or no. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Uneasy should rest the head that wears the crowns of other kings, or something like that.)

Wow. No more having citizens speaking out, assembling, petitioning the government for the redress of grievances shoved into "free speech" zones where they can be tear-gassed, tased and truncheoned, or microwaved by the new, so-called "non-lethal" protestor-control equipment "Homeland Security" is rolling out into a community near you.

Grade school and high school and college marksmanship competitions, PTA vs. the Students vs the Teachers' sharpshooting teams. A proud, uncowed, powerful electorate.

Imagine the sad souls in Ohio, standing for hours in lines waiting to vote, standing up and saying, "OK, guys, let's roll down to the election bureau and straighten out this voting machine mal-distribution problem, right now!"

Armed citizens would outnumber the police in every Middlesex Village and Town, as the Revere Ride put it. And everywhere else.

Connecticut would experience an economic boom, manufacturing all the Colts and Remingtons people would be buying. DuPont would flourish on the sale of propellant ("gun powder"). Dunno who makes brass shells, projectiles (bullets), but, no pun intended, this would give the economy a big shot in the arm.

Really great idea. Double-plus-good, in Orwellian Newspeak--and what more appropriate language could we adopt in this our current 1984 (with NSA "splitter boxes" on every fiber optic trunk line in American and the rest of the world, at all of the trans-oceanic undersea "cable landing sites" around the world, getting every bit of voice, email, data that comes over the internet, telephone, telegraph, cell phone--the only reason we have ANY privacy left at all, since 2003 or so, is because there's so much data it's like trying to drink out of an aqueduct, never mind a fire hydrant or garden hose. But NSA and its many, many, many, many private contractors the world over, are working on the data-glut problem, so it's only a matter of time until the so-called "our" government can eavesdrop on every one of us in real time--like that BBC "docudrama" called "The Last Enemy" --the picked up the name of their omniscient, ubiquitous surveillance computer system, Total Information Awareness, from convicted felon Poindexter's "little" data-mining operation. Poindexter was forced out, but Total Information Awareness took a new name and burrowed down a few more levels to stay "out of sight, out of mind."

But what a difference a completely armed citizenry would make! Or even just the distaff side of the equation; even though men are from Mars and women from Venus, an armed female population wouldn't sever relations between us. Might make it a whole lot "more equal"--a little like Animal Farm--some animals might be more equal than others. But having half the population armed and carrying is certainly better than having just the police and the military armed. And dangerous. To the citizens of their own country--and to the citizens of the world.

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D'you Remember That 'God Damn America' Flap?

Do you happen to remember the flap over Rev. Jeremiah (as in jerimiad?) Wright stupidity, flap, kerfuffle, contretemps during the run up to the 2008 presidential election?

Well guess what! Rev. Wright was a mere plagiarist, johnny-come-lately.

Here's who said it first, William James, a really, really white guy, then teaching at Harvard. He put it this way: "God damn the U.S. for its vile conduct in the Philippines!"

We used a precursor to waterboarding, called “the water cure.”

Here’s page 53-54 of Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, by Stephen Kinzer:

Newspaper reporters sought out returned veterans and from their accounts learned that American soldiers in the Philippines had resorted to all manner of torture. The most notorious was the “water cure” in which sections of bamboo were forced down the throats of prisoners and then used to fill the personers’ stomachs with dirty water until they swelled in torment. Soldiers would jump on the prisoner’s stomach to force the water out, often repeating the process until the victim either informed or died. This technique was so widely reported in the United States that the Cleveland Plain Dealer even published a joke about it:

MA: What's the sound of running water out there, Willie?

WILLIE: It's only us boys, Ma. We've been trying the Philippine water cure on Bpobby Snow, an' now we're pouring him out.

Others took the matter more seriously. “We have actually come to do the thing we went to war to banish,” the Baltimore American lamented. The Indianapolis News concluded that the United States had adopted “the methods of barbarism,” and the New York Post declared that American troops “have been pursuing a policy of wholesale and deliberate murder.”

David Starr Jordan, the president of Stanford Universithy, declared that Filipinos had done no more than repel against “alien control” and that therefore “it was our fault and ours alone that this war began.” The revered Harvard professor William James said that the Americans were guilty of “murdering another culture”and concluded one of his sp[eeches by declaring, “God damn the U.S. for its vile conduct in the Philippines!”

Mark Twain suggested that the time had come to redesign the American flag with “the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by skull and crossbones.”

This pattern of recrimination continued for several months, but soon a counter-campaign began. Defenders of American policy, who at first were too overwhelmed by the onslaught of horrific revelations to respond, finally found their voice. Extreme conditions, they insisted, had forced soldiers to act as they did. The New York Times argued that “brave and loyal officers” had reacted understandably to the “cruel, treacherous, murderous” Filipinos. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat said that American soldiers had done nothing in the Philippines that they had not done during the Civil War and that “in view of the provocation received and the peculiar nature of the task to be performed, the transgressions have ben extremely slight.”The Providence journal urged its readers to accept “the wisdom of fighting with fire.”

A second theme that echoed through the press was that any atrocities committed in the Philippines had ben aberrations. They were “deplorable,” the St. Paul Pioneer Press conceded, but had “no bearing on fundamental questions of national policy.” The New York Tribune said only a few soldiers were guilty and “the penalty must fall not upon the policy, but upon those men.”

This is 1902, mind you, a good long time before the Geneva Conventions were signed concerning the treatment of prisoners of war. Of course, the U.S. is still doing the same thing, just that now it's actually breaking our own laws, not just any semblance of morality.

Overthrow continues on page 55:

By the time this debate reached its crescendo, in theearly months of 1902, President McKinely ahd been assassinated and replaced in office by Theodore Roosevelt. To Roosevelt fell the task of defending the nonor of the troops he loved, and he embraced it even though he had never been enthusiastic about the Philippine operation. He enlisted his close friend and ally Henry Cabot Lodge to lead the defense. In a long and equipment speech on the Senate floor, Lodge conceded that there had been cases of “water cure, of menaces of shooting unless informatioin was given up, of rough and cruel treatment applied to secure information.”

But Americans who lived “in sheltered homes far from the sound and trials of war,” he warned, could not understand the challenges of bringing law to a “semi-civilized people with all the tendencies and characteristics of Asiatics.” [Thank God? for racism? The funny thing is, probably the only part of the human race that will survive global warming and the tearing of more holes in the ozone layer will be those whose skin can manufacture the greatest amount of melanin to block the ultraviolet rays of the sun. The so-called Aryans? Not so much. ed.]

“Let us, oh, let us be just, at least to our own,” Lodge begged the Senate. At Roosevelt's suggestion, Lodge arranged for the Senate to hold hearings into charges of American misconduct in the Philippines. It was a clever move. Lodge himself ran the hearings, and he carefully limited their scope. There was much testimony about operational tactics, but no exploration of the broader policy that lay behind them. The committee did not even issue a final report. One historian described its work as “less a whitewash than an exercise in sleight-of-hand.”

On July 4, 1092, soon after the investigating committee ended its work, President Roosevelt declared the Philippines pacified. He was justified in doing so. The important guerrilla leaders had been killed or captured and resistance had all be ceased. It had been a far more costly operation than anyone had predicted at the outset. In three and a half torturous years of war, 4,374 American soldiers wee killed, more than ten times the toll in Cuba. About 16,000 guerrillas and at least 20,000 civilians were also killed. Filipinos remember those years as some of the bloodiest in their history. Americans quickly forgot that the war ever happened.

Sound like a pattern here?

What's great about Kinzer's book is that it covers, in order, the 14 cases in which the US actually was directly involved in regime change, not just where we had an indirect hand.

Here's the list:

1. Hawaii
2. Puerto Rioco
3. Cuba
4. Philippines (& Wake, Society Islands, Guam, Samoa)
5. Nicaragua
6. Honduras
7. Iran
8. Guatemala
9. South Vietnam
10. Chile
11. Grenada
12. Panama
13. Afghanistan
14. Iraq

The pattern is astoundingly repetitions: These places had something the US Government and US corporations wanted. The damned natives decided they were going to try a democratic form of government, or they already had one.

(One silly leader opined that the people in his country "are all created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Such crust, temerity. Why, the NERVE of the fellow!).

And THEN, to put the icing on the cake, these democratic leaders, damn their eyes, decided to -- I hope you're sitting down -- NATIONALIZE THEIR OWN NATURAL RESOURCES, sometimes even paying the American companies they were kicking out for THE VALUE OF THE BUSINESSES THAT THE AMERICAN COMPANIES LISTED IN THEIR BOOKS.

I mean, talk about being hoist with your own petard. Those numbers of course were there only to avoid or evade taxes. One US guy said of the turnabout in one of the countries: “We used to be the fuckers. Now we’re the fuckees.

So, of course, some pretense, any pretense, was found to attack and overthrow the regime.

If you figure 14 in 110 years, that's an average of one overthrow every 7.14 years. In that same period, we've had how many presidents? Nineteen, or one every 5.789 years. Seems like we're less stable than the democracies we've overthrown? Or maybe that there's bipartisan support for taking over other people's governments--just not our own. Hmm. Come to think of it, maybe that should read, “take over people’s governments--INCLUDING our own.”

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America, We Are A Nation Gone Off The Rails

My request is that you visit & watch the links below, especially if you’re old enough to have grandchildren. And in fact do have grandchildren. Because this is what we’re leaving to them, a Nation Gone Off The Rails.

And while you’re watching, please keep in mind that the event that started all of this, 9/11/2001, has not been “proven” in any way, shape or form. That is, now that independent research has made it provable that #7 World Trade Center, #2 World Trade Center and #1 World Trade Center were brought down with sophisticated, pre-rigged, computer-controlled demolitions explosives and Thermate “cutter charges,” it is no longer possible for ordinary Americans to accept Philip Zelikow's novel, The 9/11 Commission Report, as anything BUT fiction.

What that means is the excuse we were, and are, being given for submitting to the loss of our economy, the loss of our civil rights, the loss of our privacy (Obama is fighting in the courts to keep the illegal, warrantless wiretaps in place) the loss of our soldiers lives, the loss of millions of Iraqi lives, influenza scares, internment camps built by Halliburton, Presidential Homeland Security Continuity of Government Decision Directives (has Obama rescinded them? Nope, don't think so.) is, with a very high degree of certainty, a huge lie. I mean   h u g e .   Not to mention the deaths of 3,000 of us on 9/11/2001.

What it means, being a nation gone off the rails, is that none of us can be sure how to avoid being run down by the proverbial “more powerful than a speeding locomotive.” You can't just keep clear of the tracks; the trains are not running on ’em.

Private interests (the “Fed” bankers and cronies in the Gambling Casino Services Sector —formerly called bankers and investment bankers, but the boy who noticed that the Emperor Has No Clothes will tell you they're just gamblers — but with other people's money, rule the roost. No "promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our grandchildren" from this government in this land. Hunh-unh.

We have a cast of indictable characters, for capitol felony torture or conspiracy to torture (publicly confessed, actually, and proudly): former President Bush, VP Cheney, White House officials (Rice, Addington, etc.), cabinet officials, justice department officials, House Speaker Pelosi, House Minority leader Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Reid, Senate Minority Leader McConnell, the two house & senate torture committee leaders (one or more of the “Intelligence Committees”) (Reps. Harman, McCaul, Sens. Feinstein & Bond) and whoever else. I pretty sure I’ve heard Bush & others mention that they have a gang of eight from The Hill that got briefed on these matters.

The US War Crimes Act, 18 US Code §2441, mentioned in Yoo's memo, I think, that was released ages ago, carries a death penalty if the tortured POW dies while being tortured. Fein points out that last year Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff, said that the count of POW dead was then about 108, with 25 of the deaths classified, by American investigators, as murders.

 
Bill Moyers’ Journal Friday (link 1) had three particularly powerful, stomach-souring, cold rage-stoking pieces, two on torture (link 2), and one on a Boston “Community Activist,” John Meacham, who’s heading a group called City Life to force banks to stop evictions (that keeps a roof over people's heads), then stop foreclosing and renegotiate a fair mortgage on a fair market price).

As part of the banking piece, Moyers quoted Sen. Dick Durbin, concerning his bill to help the underwater mortgage-holders do the very things Meacham is doing in Dorchester, but on a national scale. Here's Moyers' quote:

 …The number two democratic leader in the Senate made an extraordinary confession [Monday]. Senator [Dick] Durbin of Illinois has been battling for bankruptcy reform, but many banks don't want reform, and they're pushing back against meaningful change -- especially change that might help homeowners in danger of foreclosure.

On Monday an exasperated Senator Durbin told an interviewer that although…, “We're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created, the banks are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill, and they frankly own the place.” One of the Senate’s own leaders says the banks own the place. And just yesterday, as if to prove Durbin’s point, bankers killed the Senate’s latest effort to staunch that wave of foreclosures, squashing a measure Durbin says would help one million seven hundred thousand (that's 1,700,000) Americans save their homes.

[Emphasis added--and, Bill, you don't need the “as if to prove.” They proved it. Once again. (Think bankruptcy “reform,” removal of credit card usury limits, massive FDIC cap hike, S&L Bailout, 2008 Depression Bailout....).]

  The Torture segments included Mark Danner (who ran the ICRC--International Committee of the Red Cross--interview reports, in the New York Review of Books on the “high value POWs” who were tortured by the US (hereinafter just "us" or "we")), and Bruce Fein (books, former member of Bush Office of Legal Counsel--home of Johnny Yoo, Torture Memo Author, who's demanded the impeachment of Bush & Cheney, among other great things). Moyers ran this web coda that did not broadcast.

 
It’s hardly reassuring that I’m not alone when I insist that all those engaged in breaking our laws and the international laws on torture be brought before a grand jury, a special one, run by a special prosecutorial team of citizens no longer connected with government (maybe folks like Ramsay Clark, Bill Kunstler, Leonard Weinglass, Michael Ratner of the Committee for Constitutional Rights, heads of the ACLU, Judicial Watch, maybe a couple of lawyers from the Natural Resources Defense Council, Bruce Fein his own-self, maybe soon-to-be-former Justice Souter.

Problem is, we can't trust our government to tell the truth any longer. Maybe the flu vaccinations will get rid of a lot of us old-timers who've been through Korea and Vietnam and Gulf I and the rest of the people will be easier for the oligarchs to “manage,” and dropping the world population by a coupla’ dozen million or so would “decrease the surplus population.” [Google for Ft. Detrick, Maryland, anthrax, 1918 H1N1 reactivation.]

 
But it's the grandkids who will be dying young. And poor.

 Not that Obama wouldn't pardon Bush and Cheney and all the rest if they were tried, convicted and sentenced to death for the commission of war crimes. But can you imagine what an incredibly telling, historic event it would be if these law-defying "leaders" were put to death?

  
  You take a guy who’s signed the death warrants for a few folks on Death Row in Texas, as governor, who’s consigned a few million people to their deaths, give him a fair trial, a thorough trial. A jury convicts. A judge sentences him to “judicial execution.” The appeals go on and on for years, but finally, he’s brawht tuh justis, along with all of his co-conspirators.

 
Wouldn't that suggest to ALL of us, in or out of government, and to the rest of the world, that when we say “We are a nation of laws, not of men,” we actually MEAN IT?

As Bruce Fein suggested, take a look at Federalist #8, by Alexander Hamilton, on the effects of the need for "safety." I think these might be the paragraphs Fein referred to (the 1st, especially). But the 2nd graf shows just how prescient a soul was our naturalized citizen, Alex. Hamilton:

Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.

[Emphasis added. Think USA PATRIOT Act, illegal wiretaps, constantly fluctuating "threat levels," torture, threat of martial law if Congress didn't immediately pass Hank Paulson's War of Economic Terror Against The American Peoples Bill, reactivated 1918 strain of H1N1 influenza at Ft. Detrick, Md. Think the unthinkable — 9/11/2001 as an "inside job" in some way, shape or form, esp. as to WTC 7, 2 & 1.]

Hamilton again:  

The institutions chiefly alluded to are STANDING ARMIES and the correspondent appendages of military establishments. Standing armies, it is said, are not provided against in the new Constitution; and it is therefore inferred that they may exist under it. Their existence, however, from the very terms of the proposition, is, at most, problematical and uncertain. But standing armies, it may be replied, must inevitably result from a dissolution of the Confederacy. Frequent war and constant apprehension, which require a state of as constant preparation, will infallibly produce them. The weaker States or confederacies would first have recourse to them, to put themselves upon an equality with their more potent neighbors. They would endeavor to supply the inferiority of population and resources by a more regular and effective system of defense, by disciplined troops, and by fortifications. They would, at the same time, be necessitated to strengthen the executive arm of government, in doing which their constitutions would acquire a progressive direction toward monarchy. It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority.  

[Remember again that this is written in 1787 — Tuesday, November 27, 1787, it says on the copy. “A progressive direction toward monarchy. It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority.”

 
[Man oh man, 1787. Did Alex. Hamilton have time-traveling gear when he wrote that? Does this remind you of “The Unitary-Liar-In-Chief ” (or “Unitary Commander-In-Chief”?) Does it remind you of “Our first job is to keep you and your wife and kids SAFE, Charlie [Gibson],” Bush said, to one and all. But the Preamble puts “provide for the common defense" in priority #4, behind “more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility.” And that prioritization actually makes sense: Without a union holding together, no justice; without justice, no domestic tranquility, so what's to defend? Not a whole heck of a lot.]

So, what're we gonna do, folks? Just let all this slide. No laws, no Constitution, no freedom, no safety, no money, no health care, no homes, no college funds. Except for our banker friends with their money (oops, with OUR money) and their seven houses, three planes, two yachts, two mistresses, 18 automobiles, 55 servants — and no need to pay taxes — that's the two accountants lookout, and the off-shore accounts in Guernsey, Channel Isles, Bermuda, Bern, Basel, Geneva or Lausanne or Zürich, I don't think we're doing all that well. But, hey, What-ev-er.

Or maybe not. Like, what if we took our power, and our Constitution, the four-page “We the People” employment manual we wrote and fought for, and actually insisted that our employees (from the President on down) followed that employment manual? Insisted that the police work for us, not the bankers and oligarchs? What would that look like?

Final note: Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States, 1492 to Present), found this quote from Adam Smith, long touted as the father of economics, and champion of “the free market.” Here's what Adam Smith said in a lecture on Tuesday, February 23, 1763, in a Glasgow lecture series on Law & Jurisprudence:

Laws and government may be considered in this and indeed in every case as a combination of the rich to oppress the poor, and preserve to themselves the inequality of the goods which would otherwise be soon destroyed by the attacks of the poor, who if not hindered by the government would soon reduce the others to an equality with themselves by open violence.

Sounds about right, doesn’t it.

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The Man Who Sold The World: Reagan's Betrayal of Main St.

 

Well, here's a perfect antidote (or perhaps emetic, though the medical profession's no longer high on Ipecac for inducing vomiting after swallowing poisons) for a treacly read of Little Miss "Just Walk On By" Peggy Noonan's Political Civility thing that I read a couple of volumes before this one.     As  author William Kleinknecht puts it up front in the first line of the introduction,  This book is borne of annoyance: a great bewilderment over the myth that continues to surround the presidency of Ronald Reagan. It gives voice to a vast swath of psychically disenfranchised Americans, millions of them, lumped most thickly in the urban areas on eaither coast, who never understood Reagan's appeal. For more than two decades they have stood by, puzzled, as this Hollywood actor and shill for General Electric, this obvious enemy of the common people he claimed to represent, this empty suit who believed in flying saucers and allowed an astrologer to guide his presidential scheduling, held sway over the American imagination.  ...  The bitter legacy of Reaganism -- the sub-prime mortgage scandal, the near collapse (maybe complete collapse, I'd say) financial system, widening income inequality, the emergence of Lockdown America, the obscene inflation of CEO compensation, the end of locally owned media, market crashes, blackouts, drug company scandals, rampant greed and materialism -- is all around us. As D.H. Lawrence once wrote in another context, "The cataclysm has happened; we are among the ruins."       Actually, Bill, I think it's just another proof of the adage that evil triumphs only when men and women of good will say, and do, nothing. We're at that "take back America time". Hope you'll join with me in the Preamble Project-- before every school day, students recite the Preamble to the US Constitution, and before every governmental body begins its regular course of business, all present also recite the Preamble. First off, it's the embodiment of the concept that We the People, supposedly, have all the power, some of which we delegated to a federal government, and some to the states, and to the counties, towns and villages and school districts. Second--perhaps the most telling of the six "priorities" in the 52-word sentence is this one: "promote the general Welfare."      I can't think of a single administration that has ever done that, over the course of our entire history. Johnson perhaps came closest, and but for his profound failing with Vietnam, he'd have done pretty well. And of course there was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Perhaps he came closest of all to promoting the general Welfare. But in his case, the nation was almost "saved" by World War II.      My only quibble is that Kleinknecht doesn't mention (or not prominently enough that I picked it up) what I learned from Kevin Phillips' "Politics of Heads I win, Tails You Lose" (politics of rich & poor).       Namely, that the United States slid into a net debtor nation status in 1984-85 timeframe under Reagan, and we have not managed to climb out of that hole ever since. In other words, Reagan propelled the nation into poverty, at least as a net-net kind of thing. He was a liar his every waking moment. Perhaps we're fortunate that he didn't stay awake for more of the days than he did. (But I still think Nancy actually ran the country, and Ronnie was her stooge.)    And, what with the 2009 global Depression, I doubt we ever will again, in my lifetime.     This is a good reminder that ol' Ronnie was a union-busting (oh, Bill forgot to mention the air controller strike! How could I forget!!), red-baiting, mean-spirited fraud.     One page covers the ground nicely: Page 193: ¶2  "By the end of Reagan's two terms, 138 [one hundred thirty eight--my emphasis] members of his administration had been convicted, indicted or investigated for criminal activity, a record of graft that far surpassed even the Nixon, Harding, and Grant administrations, Reagan's closest competitors in the sweepstakes for the most corrupt presidency."  His boys were smuggling guns into Nicaragua and smuggling cocaine back out, dumping it where? In Billy Clinton's back yard. US weapons to Israel, Israeli-sourced weapons to Iran, a US/CIA rake-off or skimming of the profits to buy more guns that went into Nicaragua. And Casey was at bat-- in the CIA. See Steve Coll's "Secret Wars" for some insights on how Cowboy Billy ran the CIA and the "proxy war" using Osama Bin Laden's database (al Qaeda) of fighters to bring down pain on the Russians.  (My current thinking is that Osama is ensconced in relative comfort, however ascetic he likes to live, somewhere he can get hemodialysis treatments for his ailing kidney(s). And it's probably not in Tora Bora. Or Bora Bora, for that matter.)  --30--

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