Survival Optional

By Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, 28 April 2009

It used to be said that self-preservation is the first law of nature. But much of what has been happening in recent times in the United States, and in Western civilization in general, suggests that survival is taking a back seat to the shibboleths of political correctness. We have already turned loose dozens of captured terrorists, who have resumed their terrorism. Why? Because they have been given "rights" that exist neither in our laws nor under international law.

These are not criminals in our society, entitled to the protection of the Constitution of the United States. They are not prisoners of war entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention.

There was a time when people who violated the rules of war were not entitled to turn around and claim the protection of those rules. German soldiers who put on U.S. military uniforms, in order to infiltrate American lines during the Battle of the Bulge, were simply lined up against a wall and shot.

Nobody even thought that this was a violation of the Geneva Convention. American
authorities filmed the mass executions. Nobody dreamed up fictitious "rights" for these
enemy combatants who had violated the rules of war. Nobody thought we had to prove
that we were nicer than the Nazis by bending over backward.

Bending over backward is a very bad position from which to try to defend yourself. Nobody
in those days confused bending over backward with "the rule of law," as Barack Obama did recently. Bending over backward is the antithesis of the rule of law. It is depriving the people of the protection of their laws, in order to pander to mushy notions among the elite.

Even under the Geneva Convention, enemy soldiers have no right to be turned loose before
the war is over. Terrorists-- "militants" or "insurgents" for those of you who are squeamish
--have declared open-ended war against America. It is open-ended in time and open-ended in methods, including beheadings of innocent civilians.

President Obama can ban the phrase "war on terror" but he cannot ban the terrorists' war on
us. That war continues, so there is no reason to turn terrorists loose before it ends. They chose to make it that kind of war. We don't need to risk American lives to prove that we are nicer than they are.

The great Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that law is not some "brooding
omnipresence in the sky." It is a set of explicit rules by which human beings structure their
lives and their relationships with one another.

Those who choose to live outside those laws, whether terrorists or pirates, can be -- and have been-- shot on sight. Squeamishness is neither law nor morality. And moral exhibitionism is beneath contempt, when it sacrifices the safety of those who live within the law for the sake of self-satisfied preening, whether in editorial offices or in the White House.

As if it is not enough to turn cutthroats loose to cut throats again, we are now contemplating legal action against Americans who wrung information about international terrorist operations out of captured terrorists.

Is The Progressive Super State Hastening It’s Own Downfall?
27. April 2009 by William R Collier Jr

The trouble with the idea that “if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em” them” as applied to the massive power grab by the present Progressive regime in Washington is that if you join them by going along with their rules and policies, and doing what they say you are supposed to do, you lose your own identity and your own sense that society is a product of the People in their sentiments rather than a product of a few people who control culture bearing institutions.

When the sentiment of the People, the course of history, and the technological possibilities all point towards a stronger desire for more individual and local control and more direct participation in culture creation, without artificial limitations based on an anti-religious bias or a bias against one type of philosophy, then those who stand athwart this are standing in the path of a tsunami!

Progressive Super State had its nightmarish heyday in the 20th century regimes of “left” and “rightist” Progressive super states built on the Progressive ideal that the best way to create a “good” society or solve “social ills” is through gigantism, a massive state apparatus managed by a few leaders or one leader. Progressivism has taken many forms, from the New Deal to the New Order and the Soviet Man.

All forms of Progressivism, both “right” and “left” were organized around the Progressive ideal of maximum efficiency, curing of all social ills, and producing a more advanced human being in the evolutionary process through a large scale organization of society by its leaders, be they heroic leaders (Germans, Argentina, Chile, etc.), the Party (Russia, China), the Divine Leaders or Messianic Leaders (Japan, North Korea), or even “elected” career politicians (the welfare states of Western Europe, America under the New Deal and today). This is the old paradigm, a paradigm of the universal state which is the final form of organization before a civilization falls and new civilizations of a vastly different nature emerge.

The future belongs to the sustainable LOCAL society: a sustainable society is a society that depends on the sentiments, the resources, and the abilities of the People on the smallest possible of scales to produce a culture and a way of life that meets their needs- both spiritual and physical.

Sustainable communities are communities that connect on a global scale but that depend primarily on local sentiments, local values, local people, and local resources as a nearly autonomous fractal of the whole society- the common culture and way of life becomes a reflection of these community cultures which are themselves the bedrock of personal and public life.

Unfortunately, the Progressive mind is conditioned and hard wired to bitterly cling to its “zeitgeist”, even if it has to reinvent it, repackage it, and stand up every day and insist, in the media and culture bearing institutions it controls, that it is “forward looking” and that the opposition, who are the true torch-bearers of an inevitably victorious new paradigm, are the ones who are “backwards” or, as the “sophisticated” and Progressive Romans called them, “Barbarians.”

Progressive Super States are, like all versions of the Universal State of decaying civilizations, a roadblock to human progress which often impede the necessary launching of a new civilization by hundreds of years- the British Empire, the USSR, and other versions of the universal state have been hindering the creation of new civilizations for nearly 300 years!

There is not now nor has there ever been any justifiable excuse for preventing community level cultures from becoming self-sustaining in every possible way. The end of gigantism is a necessary and inevitable product of the technological possibilities of our day, and the natural human drive towards independence and self-reliance which have been quickened by over 100 years of various forms and shades of Progressive gigantism rooted in utopian notions as diverse as racial purity, equality, and, now, “saving the planet”, but all trending towards the need for the few to direct the affairs of the many, often in the most minute of details.

The modern Progressives of the 21st century are bitterly clinging to the failed gigantism of their predecessors on the right and the left who all shared the basic idea that a large scale organization of society by a more enlightened or just “the elected”, leadership class is the best or the only path to achieving some social good or correcting some social ill as they defined “good” or as they defined “a social ill.” The methodology of Progressivism is always the same- tell the people that the problem is one that “demands united action on a large scale” and use this faux “patriotism” to cause the unlearned to not raise any serious questions whole marginalizing dissenters with
some form of social stigma.

While some seem to think that the trend today is towards a revived super state, they would be mistaken. Western Civilization has produced “universal super states” of various types for the past 300 years and the new emergent civilizations that have been conceived during that time, civilizations with an ideological and theological framework that are opposite of the universal Progressivism of Western Civilization, are simply itching to be born.

Far from revising and extending the Progressive super state, what we are about to witness over the next few years is the first stages of total cultural, political, and economic collapse of the major Civilizations which will lead to a time of chaos all around the world, a time in which new civilizations will emerge These new civilization will be built around community cultures within sustainable communities, as well as sentiment-groups or Peoples that embrace a similar worldview, one that is oppositional to the Progressivism of the West, of Russia, of the Islamic World, of China, and of Japan. It is likely that South America, Eastern Europe, West Africa, South Africa, and part of the present US will ultimately be the new “homelands” and safe havens of these new Peoples and Civilizations.

The Progressive Super State is now trying to show its vitality in a last-days power grab, as if merely passing laws and trying to over-rule a growing opposition will “prove” that it has a future. In reality the Progressive Super State has no future and it is an archaic throwback to the Roman Empire in its last days, a hope for revival of the “golden age” of the “welfare state” and of the British Empire!

The modern Progressive are confused because in their schema, nothing exists outside of the media, academia, the two parties, Washington, and Wall Street, but the REAL opposition does not come from “traditional” sources and does not exist within or even RESPECT the present power structure. In a sense the REAL opposition are the Barbarians, long USED by both sides (by liberal and conservative Progressives), long divided from one another into artificial “tribes” by “race” or socio-economic class and long silenced by the same old tactic of “fear the big monster” myths, such as “the Jew”, “the Bourgeoisie”, and, now “global warming.” Progressives of every stripe always have a “monster myth” with which to distract the people which allows them to BLAME their own failings (because Progressive Super States ALWAYS fail) on the “monster” or those who are not “against” the “monster.”

When Rahm Immanuel, chief of staff to what will probably be America’s LAST “Progressive” President, Barak Obama, said “never let a good crisis go to waste” he was echoing 300 or so years of universal statist ideology and 100 or so years of Progressive ideology EXACTLY.

What this man forgets, as Progressives often do, is that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” and by swinging too far towards a revived super state in an age when gigantism is neither beneficial nor welcome by MOST people he is actually “setting the table” as it were for the rise of the barbarians- those nonconformists who will use technology in bold new ways to OPT OUT of the super state and who will see in the total suborning of the power structure an opportunity to abandon the old power structure and take unilateral action to ignore it, get around it, hide from it, and chase it out of those places where Progressivism is alien and unwelcome.

If Progressives wanted to keep their cushy jobs in government, they should have opted for some sort of accommodation and as society evolves into something new and wonderful with community cultures and sustainable communities as the building block of new Peoples and Civilizations, they could have gracefully retired in peace as the caretakers over the final dismantling of the Progressive Super State, which would also have preserved the existence of the “nation” as a whole.

As it now stands, this massive power grab by the Progressives, mistaking a shallow “approval” for Obama as a sign that the People have somehow suddenly decided to go against the flow of history, and the possibilities of our modern technology, to abandon individual and local control and revert to the Progressive Super State, are actually speeding up the process by which they will lose relevancy and then power, and they are compelling their less organized and cohesive but larger and more powerful opposition to operate OUTSIDE OF the existing power structure.

To put this another way, by blocking access by the opposition to the existing power structure the Progressives are creating a situation where the opposition, which is large and powerful, if not organized and cohesive YET, to operate outside of the existing power structure and even to seek the REPLACEMENT EN TOTO of that power structure!

Let me repeat this to make it clear: by removing the opposition’s voice and influence from the culture bearing, culture marking, economic development, lawmaking, and law judging institutions of the EXISTING power structure the Progressives are forcing their opposition to seek alternatives OUTSIDE of the existing power structure!

The NATURAL craving to create culture that reflects your innermost beliefs, to make laws, and all these others things coupled with the realization that we have the technology to do these things on a very small scale to a much greater degree of efficiency than any gigantic establishment ever could is enough to conclude that blocking off the opposition from the existing power structure is a far greater threat to the existence of that power structure than to the opposition- the opposition is not going away and if it has to choose between its own survival and that of the existing power structure, it is painfully obvious that the power structure will lose that fight.

The Progressive Super State DOES NOT have the means, the money, the technology, or the manpower to impose its will like the British did in India for a good long time or the National Socialists did in Germany, or the Russians did in their “Soviet Empire.” The people, the manpower, they would have to use, the military and the police, are more ideologically AGAINST them then for them and their present efforts to create a “civilian defense force” made up of recruits from ideologically reliable organizations like ACORN will spark more and more OPEN confrontation- in short, THEY ARE TOO LATE, the “genie is out of the bottle” and they cannot put it back in now.

Progressives need to seriously take stock of the historiological facts- we are trending towards “localism” in terms of self-governance, economics, and culture, and away from “Gigantism”, the age of Western Civilization’s “universal states” is over and it cannot be revived. The only thing the present, and probably FINAL, “Progressive Regime” in America is accomplishing by trying to make the most out of every “crisis” is undermining the very power structure upon which it stands!