UNCOMFORTABLE SUBJECTS : IMPERIALISM AND CONQUEST

AN ESSAY

Over the last half century, "imperialism" has become a dirty word in American academic discourse. During that time, prevailing rhetoric has extolled multiculturalism, tolerance and multiperspectivism. It has championed the rights of historically disadvantaged groups while denigrating traditionally powerful ones. It has empowered the downtrodden and strengthened the weak. It has justified the historically unjustifiable. In the process, university rhetoric has identified "imperialism" as the worst thing one culture can do to another. Great civilizations, so the rhetoric goes, no longer conquer and dominate others. Great civilizations tolerate everyone and allow every culture to flourish within their borders.

Yet I venture that this is an anomalous trend. In fact, I argue that Nations unafraid to act imperialistically are strong Nations, while Nations afraid to do so are weak.

I understand that this squarely contradicts how we are "supposed to think" about imperialism today. But true to my word, I am determined to speak out this week about uncomfortable subjects. To use Nietzsche's term, I am determined to make "Uncontemporary Observations" concerning subjects we have been taught never to consider any other way.

Imperialism is about national power. In its purest form, it means the purposeful, intrusive projection of one Nation's military and cultural power over another Nation. To understand what that entails, it is essential to understand what "Nations" are. In past essays, I have noted that "Nations" and "States" are distinct terms. "Nations" refer to discrete populations united by common linguistic, cultural, genetic and religious traditions. "States," on the other hand, refer merely to a population's adherence to a particular governing instrument for the sake of common administration and convenience. Many Nations can exist under a common State. But Nations are unique.

Throughout history, some Nations have prevailed, while others have fallen. Nations that have prevailed generally have successfully engaged in imperialism. They have crushed and dominated their neighbors. They have brutally stamped out opposition and imposed their own cultural traditions on their defeated enemies. These Nations cared nothing for multiculturalism or tolerance. They did not blink at brutality. Rather, they felt so secure in their own power that they gladly violated other Nations' territory to absorb them into their own realms. This is not a popular thing to do these days. But history shows that the most influential Nations have been the most imperialistic, too.

Consider Rome. Rome grew to eminence because it projected its values across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. By sheer will and military prowess, it subjugated its neighbors, occupied their territory and imposed its values on them. It even made them speak Latin and build infrastructure according to the Roman model. It forced them to live under Roman law and observe Roman customs. Rome was strongest when it was unafraid to conquer. It affirmed its own beliefs when it ruthlessly destroyed all who stood before it. Through imperialism, Rome made itself great. At its height, Rome conquered and killed without a second thought. It believed so strongly in its own values that it did not hesitate to eradicate whole Nations.

But consider now how Rome fell. Rome collapsed several centuries after it stopped waging imperial wars. Once it reached its territorial zenith, Roman values began to weaken. Its government began tolerating new ideas and new cultural trends. Internal cultural cracks developed. Its military power waned. Barbarians began picking away at the frontiers. Put simply, Rome lost its appetite for imperialism. It lost faith in its own rightful dominance. So Nations with more assurance in their own values filled the void. They overran Rome and destroyed it.

Turn now to England and Spain, the "great" European colonizers of the Americas and Asia. Both Nations achieved spectacular eminence because they shamelessly engaged in imperialism. Both Nations reached their zenith when they brutally laid claim to others' land and genocidally slaughtered anyone who opposed them. They unswervingly believed in their own causes: Just like the imperial Romans, the British and the Spanish believed that their values were far superior to the Natives they displaced. So they killed, enslaved and uprooted them without a second thought. In the process, they reshaped the world. Like it or not, the fact that English and Spanish are among the world's most spoken languages is the direct result of unabashed, vicious global imperialism. Like it or not, the only reason why European white people live in North America today is because England and Spain barged in and killed everyone else who used to live there. The very existence of the United States is the product of an original, shocking act of imperialism by Great Britain.

To summarize, Nations are strong when they conquer. They believe in their own values so much that they do not shrink from trampling and absorbing other Nations. Nations weaken when they lose faith in their own dominance and begin tolerating dissention in their own borders. Imperialism showcases a Nation's shameless belief in itself; and its contempt for any culture that differs from it.

Needless to say, it is no longer popular to endorse imperialism. It is no longer acceptable to say that one Nation is rightfully superior to another, let alone to suggest that one Nation has the authority to seize territory and butcher native inhabitants in another country. Yet it is precisely that vicious cultural intolerance that created the United States. That same intolerance sustained all the world's mightiest empires. When a Nation engages in imperialism without shame, it declares to all the world: "My Nation is so great that it deserves to dominate you."

America presents an interesting case. Despite all the recent discourse condemning imperialism, the United States remains an immensely imperialistic country. Since roughly 1865, America has engaged in imperialism all over the world. First, it eradicated or marginalized native populations in its own continental borders. Second, it overran Hawaii. Then it battled Spain and conquered Cuba, Puerto Rico, Panama, the Philippines and numerous Pacific islands. In World War I, it projected its national power into European affairs, playing a substantial role in dictating the peace terms at Versailles. In World War II, the United States achieved monumental national power by almost single-handedly defeating Japan and Germany, then permanently occupying both defeated countries. After World War II, the United States created the United Nations and oversaw "world peace" by policing various national conflicts from Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan and Central America. Later, the United States invaded Iraq on fabricated "self-defense" grounds, plunging that country into civil war.

America's voracious imperialism does not end with military conquest. Beyond physical incursions into other Nations' affairs, America also engages in unabashed cultural intrusion. Its music and film industry dominate the entire world. Children from China to Germany to Africa all learn English so they can listen to American songs and watch American movies. People in Beirut listen to Michael Jackson and Rihanna. Business people all over the world adopt English as their lingua franca. America's cultural imperialism is so complete that when two foreign businessmen meet, chances are they will speak English to each other, even if neither is a native English speaker. None of these things would ever have come to pass if America had not engaged in overwhelming, successful imperialism over the last 150 years.

In this light, perhaps it is not a bad thing to say that a Nation like the United States is "imperialistic." After all, America dominates the world in a way not seen since Rome. Its culture, language and military cow the globe into submission. All other Nations measure themselves by the American standard. Like all empires in history, America's imperialism shows that the United States ruthlessly believes in itself. It does not tolerate dissention abroad. And it has shown that it will crush any Nation that opposes its power. Put simply, America is strong; and it is not afraid to beat anyone down who thinks otherwise.

Is imperialism unpopular? In university rhetoric, of course it is. But when we look closely at what imperialism means--and what it has wrought in the United States--we discover an embarrassing truth: We are all the products of imperialism. Our "American civilization" arose because England and Spain were unafraid to savagely kill the natives who once occupied this land. We speak English and Spanish in North America because the British and Spanish felt so superior that they had a right to set up shop on a foreign continent. And we now live in the world's most powerful Nation because the United States carried on the imperialistic tradition that gave it life in the first place.

America was born in imperialism. It will always be imperialistic. Imperialism showcases American values. It reflects intolerance for all who oppose us. In a perverse way, however, it also confirms America's health. As long as America is unafraid to savagely destroy its enemies and to project is culture over all the world, it is still--as Rome was--at the height of its power. America has not stopped expanding. Indeed, it is not in our nature to stop expanding. Once we stop expanding--whether culturally or militarily--we are no longer imperialistic. And when that happens, we can expect our power to gradually wane, just as Rome's did.

Thus, despite all the criticism, an imperialistic Nation is a healthy Nation. Imperialistic Nations might act like ferocious animals, but ferocious animals defeat any living thing that opposes them. In that light, we can thank imperialism for giving us this mighty Republic, as well as all the comforts it brings.

This is my uncontemporary observation for the day.

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF AVOIDING MASSIVE CRANIAL DAMAGE TO CAREER SUCCESS IN THE UNITED STATES

TOP NOTCH CAREER TIPS

By : Ms. Vanessa H. Breaker, M.S., University of Texas (Facilities Management); Founder and Chairperson, Help-U-Advance, Inc., a Career Management Consulting Bureau (Houston, TX); Author, You Can Do It : A 10-Step Formula to Achieve Wealth, Success, Money (And Yes, Love, Too); Owner, several real estate tracts in central Texas; Married; Cowboys fan.

Recently, a college graduate came into my office and asked: "How will I ever get a job in this economy? How will I ever pay my own rent?"

I can understand his frustration. By all accounts, times are very hard out there. For people just starting out in the world, life looks intimidating. No one is hiring. No one even gets an interview. And without a job, you can't pay your rent.

But success is possible. It is possible to defy the odds and live the American dream. Anyone can learn how to be successful. There is a recipe for success: You can learn it. Successful people all behave in a similar way. They all have similar habits. By learning those behaviors and acquiring those habits, you can be successful, too. And when you achieve success, you not only get the job, you get the promotion, the raise, the bonus and the beautiful wife, too! Doesn't that sound nice? You bet it does.

So what are successful behaviors and habits? Well, let us begin by stressing that success is a lifestyle. Success is not a hobby; it is a discipline. You must eat, drink and breathe success. You cannot tolerate failure. And you must be tough: This is a race; no one hires the runner-up.

Living success begins at an early age. Successful people get on the track to success when they are children. They understand what they want from life and they commit themselves to excellence. To that end, stable households produce more successful people than broken ones. After all, a child will not develop the basic skills needed to get good grades and work hard if he or she suffers parental sexual abuse and beatings every day. Those challenges make doing math homework difficult. And kids who fail math won't go to Harvard. In that light, a peaceful home is essential to growing up successful: It allows the focus needed to "home in" on success.

Successful people do not give in to distractions. To achieve success, it is necessary to "stay on track." That means working hard, getting good grades, going to bed early, taking instructions seriously and remembering your place. Yet it is easy to forget these rules when peers goad you to go dancing on Friday night, or when you'd rather watch television shows all evening than do your homework. Put simply, distractions surround us every day. And they threaten to derail us from the success track. To resist distractions, you must simply say: "I want to be successful. I will avoid these distractions." It is about mind over matter: Forget the video games: Think about the accounting job you want.

Education is essential to success in America. In bare outline, success means getting a good job at a good company, making good money and owning property. Yet good companies do not give good jobs to just anyone; they only give them to good people with good educations from good schools. In that light, success requires that you get a good education at a good school. That, in turn, requires that you live successfully without distractions. Only children who live appropriately during childhood will get into the schools needed to get good jobs. It is not so much about learning as it is about showing: Firms want to see good grades from good schools. As long as you get into a good school and show the good grades, you will get a shot at the good jobs. It does not matter whether you remember what you learned. And you will stand no chance at all if you don’t get into a good school: Good grades from bad schools will not impress good companies.

Still, successful living means more than just getting good grades. Once you actually get a job, it is essential to observe successful habits. Successful people keep their jobs because they know what is expected. That means they understand their employer's mission and loyally advance it. They also observe decorum by dressing appropriately, speaking respectfully and refraining from all distractions while carrying on the employer's business. In this sense, successful living is all about acting appropriately on the job: Loyal workers advance far. Ultimately, they rise through the ranks. Good companies love loyal workers who suppress their own interests to earn profits for them. Self-sacrifice is a hallmark of successful living: And it is rewarded.

Intangible factors also influence career success. For better or for worse, birth has much to do with success. Wealthy children stand a better chance to live stable early lives. That, in turn, prepares them to "get on the success track" without distraction. Additionally, powerful parents who attended good schools can assure that their children, too, attend those schools. Wealthy parents can also pay large tuitions and urge employers to hire their children. In some cases, wealthy parents are the employers; and they naturally award jobs to their own blood. In this light, the importance of fortunate birth cannot be overstated. Although it is impossible to "learn" how to be related to powerful people, blood is a sure way to get a big head start in the success race.

Still, success is never guaranteed, even for people who enjoy all the advantages. After all, even a minor mishap along the path to success can sink an entire life. A student may develop a drug addiction, ruining his semester grades and costing him a job at a banking firm. A junior associate might have a relationship dispute and perform poorly at work. A promising employee might fall in love and show up late for work. A woman might give birth, requiring her to put off career focus. Put simply, things can happen in life. And they can easily knock a person off the "success track." Just one distraction can unravel a lifetime of work.

And that is to say nothing about the danger of massive cranial injuries. In the above examples, otherwise successful people gave in to distractions through some fault. In other cases, otherwise successful people might fail to achieve success simply because something massively damages their cranium.

Consider, for example, a first-class legal scholar who has done everything right. He has been born into a good family, his father was successful, he had a stable childhood, he followed instructions, he went to bed early, he dressed appropriately, he got into first-class schools and got first-class grades his whole life. He even landed a job at a first-class law firm and the managing partner said: "He is bound to be successful because he has successful habits." He worked hard his whole life and had every reason to expect success. But he amounted to nothing because someone shot him in the forehead with a .38 caliber revolver. This example proves that massive cranial injury can ruin even the most successful lives.

Consider, too, a respected office manager with an excellent salary. This man did everything for his company. He gave up personal relationships to make sure his employer profited. He worked nights and weekends as he advanced up the company ladder. Through his childhood, he followed instructions and did everything he was supposed to do. He never rocked the boat; people called him a square, but it never bothered him because he achieved success. But one day on his way to work he tripped over a piece of fruit and fell into the street, where a concrete mixing truck rolled over his head. Once again, massive cranial injury derailed an otherwise successful life.

These examples say nothing about all the potentially successful people who suffer massive cranial injury prior to achieving success. What about the countless young people who study hard for exams, refrain from drugs, avoid peer pressure and go to bed early, only to be shot in the head with rifles? What about the super interns who give up everything for the company and win glowing reviews from supervisors, only to have their brains dashed out by falling cinder blocks?

No matter the circumstances, these examples teach a clear lesson: Avoiding massive cranial injury is a crucial step on the road to success in the United States. While it is essential to learn positive behaviors to achieve success, it is also vital to avoid being fatally struck in the head while practicing those behaviors. After all, a lifetime of hard work, study, high birth and promise can be instantly destroyed by a single bullet to the brain. That is why the most successful people absorb this lesson: You must not only live successfully; you must also avoid massive cranial injury at all costs.

Massive cranial injury is a worse threat to success than distraction or inappropriate workplace behavior. After all, it is possible to rally from distraction or an office faux pas. But it is not possible to rally from having your skull crushed by a concrete mixing truck. A person's career can recover from an embarrassing extramarital affair or a "C+" on an exam. But it cannot recover from a pointblank shotgun blast to the face.

In all these cases, the lesson emerges: The real key to success in America is to avoid massive cranial injury. After all, no person who suffers massive cranial injury will ever achieve success. And any success he has achieved up to that point instantly vanishes. To that extent, massive cranial injury is the worst thing that can happen to a promising career. Interview mistakes, bad resumes, lackluster university performance and even drug abuse do not threaten careers as much as being brutally slammed in the head with a baseball bat.

You can fix a resume. But you can't fix a shattered cranium. And people with shattered craniums do not get promoted or hired.

In conclusion, if you wish to achieve success in America, remember what is important: Avoid massive cranial injury first. The rest is just details. Because even the best career habits can vanish the moment someone cracks your head open.

JOIN THE TEA PARTY : BE PATRIOTIC--AND IT'S MORE FUN THAN YOU THINK

LET FREEDOM RING

By : Mr. H. Henry Patrick, Esq., Former State Legislator (Virginia); Real Estate Owner (1400 Acres in several Virginia counties); Former Chair, Citizens for the Abolition of the Income Tax (1982-1997); Outdoorsman; Contributing Editor, Breathe Free Magazine (2004-present); Author, Government, Get Your Goddamn Stinking Hands off my Hard-Earned Keep, And Stop Poisoning My Children : I'll Spend my Money Any Way I Please, Thank You Very Much (a Pamphlet published by Freedom Press)(forthcoming 2010); Winner, West Virginia Sport Shooters Remington versus Doe Contest (1999); Volunteer Fireman.

In 2008, Barack Obama took the White House promising "change we can believe in." But in the months that followed, Obama did something terrifying: He expanded the government. He began policing banks, stealing private property, handing out cash to unemployed luggards and awarding free health care.

Now, government threatens everything we hold dear. It threatens to seize our property, tax our children and kill our grandparents by condemning them to wait in grimy clinics for necessary care. Government threatens to spy on our wives, monitor our whereabouts and punish us for defending liberty. Put simply, government is suppressing freedom in a way never before seen in the United States. And we're all paying for it.

Barack Obama may have thought government could solve our problems. But to quote Ronald Reagan, government is the problem. And if we don't act soon, we will live in a gulag in which our daughters will be forced to wear red bandanas and sing workers' hymns.

Smart Americans recognized Obama's shtick for what it was: Socialist snake oil. That is why they banded together to form the Tea Party. We are committed to resisting Obama at every turn. We are committed to protecting our children from government propaganda. We are committed to the ideal that every American deserves to own his own property without governmental interference. We are committed to keeping every penny in our paychecks.

Obama believes exactly the opposite. He believes that government has a right to take away property and give it to people without property. That is why we resist him. We refuse to surrender our property so that some black beggar in New York can get a free heart transplant. We refuse to give up our rifles to government agents. We refuse to pay a single nickel so that lazy unemployed people can get a free meal. After all, free meals are un-American.

In the Tea Party we believe in a simple virtue: Responsibility. Sadly, that virtue does not carry much weight in Obama's America. Yet responsibility made America great. Our forebears did not wait around for government checks. They cut down trees, built homes and warded off Indian raids. They did not whine about being poor. They started wholesale companies, sold wheat and made their own fortunes. Or they died trying. That is the American way: Make money, ask no one for help, or go down like a man. In this country, you need to fight hard to survive. We aren't softies. We're toughies. We pass by dying people in the street without a second thought.

Government used to know its place in America. Our forebears established government in this country not to feed the poor, but to protect their property. They did not establish government to handicap their economic affairs. Rather, they established government to keep order so that they could attend to business in a responsible way. Furthermore, our forebears hated taxes. They revolted from England because they did not like paying taxes on their hard-earned labor. After all, who would want to work knowing the government could just come in and take away all his profit? That is why our forebears broke from England.

And that is also why we began the Tea Party: To resist tyrannical government and to protect private property from government seizure.

We believe that every American should join the Tea Party. If you are sick and tired of paying away your honest paycheck to the government, you should join us. If you don't like the idea that you slave away at a horrible office job so a toothless homeless man can get a free hospital stay, you should join us. If you don't like the idea that your children read propaganda praising the Kennedys in public schools, you should join us. And if you can't stand the idea that government can steal your land, you should definitely join the Tea Party.

Americans are all about freedom. So are we.

In the Tea Party, freedom is not just an abstract principle. It is an impetus for action. We have work to do before we achieve freedom. We will not be truly free in this country until we cast off the terrible burden that government has thrown upon us. We will not achieve freedom until government removes its filthy tentacles from our bank accounts, mutual funds, paychecks and corporate treasuries. We will not be free until we drive government tax collectors off our property and drive our automobiles without government licenses. Nor will we achieve freedom until we remove our children from pernicious public schools. In a word, we have a battle to fight. And words alone will not win it.

To realize the dream of freedom through the Tea Party in America, we must rise up against tyranny. We must declare that We are the People. We made this government; and that means we can un-make it, too. When government disrespects our property, then turns around to give free meals and diabetes treatment to black people, it must be abolished. We have a right to overthrow tyrannical regimes. Obama is a tyrant. He disrespects private property. Unless we act against his government today, he will plunge our country into a new dark age in which every American can obtain low-cost health care and unemployment insurance. What's more, unless we act against him today, we will drown in taxes. And our children will not be safe from schools that observe Black History Month and Gay Awareness Week.

Do not hesitate to do the right thing. Do not hesitate to be a patriot. But joining the Tea Party is not as grave as you think. It is also very fun. It is fun to angrily carry torches through the streets and chant slogans like: "Down with the income tax!" It is fun to break windows and smash down doors. It is fun to participate in anti-tax riots. It is fun to tar-and-feather IRS officials. It is fun to throw half-clad judges from third-floor chambers. And it is very fun to burn down courthouses. What's more, it is simply exhilarating to exchange smalls arms fire with Federal officers. And it is even more thrilling to blow up police cars. In this light, Tea Party membership is not just about boring policy speeches. It is also about having a great time actively rebelling against the government: And that means fighting, shooting, burning, breaking, smashing and blowing things up. Everyone loves that.

There's a place for everyone in the Tea Party. You don't need to own land to join us. We need everyone. We need young people to storm State houses and string up legislators. We need sociopaths to set fire to government buildings and kill tax collectors. We need children to stop going to school. We need hardened gun owners to give us muscle to match our spirit. And we need educated people--like Sarah Palin--to direct our loyal followers. In a word, we need everyone--and we need you now.

It is time to send government a message it will never forget. It is time for freedom. It is time to stop paying taxes. It is time to own your own property again. It is time to pay your laborers whatever you want, not what the government tells you to pay them. It is time to spend your money as you please, not to pay for unfair entitlement programs and free medical care for lazy people. You want to hold on to your own money, don't you? If you make $10 an hour, you don't want $241.97 for working 40 hours, do you? Well, if you want a fair-and-square $400 for 40 hours at $10 an hour, the Tea Party is the party for you.

Americans want freedom. They want a life without government interference. They are sick and tired of tax returns, excises, duties, imposts and liens. They are sick and tired of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and affirmative action. They are sick and tired of public schools and government propaganda. They are sick and tired of jury duty and ineffective courts. They don't want their sons and daughters learning about cultural perversions. And they want the liberty to hire whomever they please. Put simply, Americans have this to say: "Government, hands off my goddamn money and kids!"

So be patriotic. Stand up for freedom. Tell Obama that he'll get your money and kids--in hell. And have fun doing it. Open your drawer and take out that pistol. Take the shotgun off the mantle. Grab a rock. Light up a torch. Then take to the streets. Start shouting about liberty. Prowl for fire stations and police outposts. Hunt down crossing guards and public school teachers. Get together with your friends, fill up a few Molotov cocktails and toss them into your nearest courthouse. Vandalize police vans. Tear things down. Spit on a town councilman. If the police try to arrest you, fight back against government tyranny until your last breath. Yell out to them: "You may take my life. But you'll never take my freedom!"

Join the fun. Join the Tea Party. Stand up for a full paycheck. And tell Obama that you refuse to allow America to sink into the new dark age of free health care and financial industry regulation.

Over our dead bodies. And Mr. Taxman, you'd better run, because the Tea Party is about to begin.

So to all you aggrieved Americans out there, we have just one thing to say: Lock and load. We're taking this mother down.

NAUGHTY BAILED-OUT BANKERS ARE ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE

Советские Решения Современных Экономических Проблем в Америке Обамы

(SOVIET SOLUTIONS TO CONTEMPORARY ECONOMIC PROBLEMS IN OBAMA'S AMERICA)

By : Mr. Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, Member, Communist Party of the Soviet Union; Commissioner, National Office of Internal Affairs (NKVD)(1938-1945); Senior Investigator, People's Commissariat to Eradicate Spies, Traitors and Unpatriotic Defeatists Uncommitted to the Public Good (1934-1948); Close Confidant to Joseph Stalin (1926-1953); Orchestrator of Soviet Wartime Production (1941-1945); Manager of Undesirable Population Relocation Program to Central Asia (1941-1951); People's Prosecutor against Lithuanian, Polish, Latvian, Estonian, Ukrainian, German, Hungarian, Czech, Romanian, Slovak and Yugoslavian Traitors and Capitalist Counter-Revolutionary Troublemakers (1938-1953); Pistol Enthusiast and Marksman; Executed 1953; Resurrected 2010.

I am here in America at the request of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Mr. Ben Shalom Bernanke. This Mr. Bernanke--Jewish capitalist intellectual counterrevolutionary though he may be--is a capable man. He understands that your country is in grave danger. He knows that the American economy is teetering on the brink. Most importantly, he understands that traditional "American" methods will not return your country to prosperity. That is why he called me.

Let me briefly summarize my conversation with Mr. Bernanke. He said that the United States is now suffering from a "persistent recession" that has resulted in massive unemployment. He attributed this "recession" to unregulated banking practices and large-scale greed among large financial firms. He also informed me that government has begun playing a much larger role in private financial affairs. He even said that government has paid billions to private banks in order to prevent them from failing. I believe I say this correctly: Your government "bailed out" the wealthiest capitalist pigs in order to allow them to continue loaning money to everyone else.

I applaud America's new commitment to government intervention in the economy. Although it does not come close to the Soviet example, it nonetheless represents a step in the right direction. In Stalin's Russia, we regulate everything. There is no private property. The State owns the banks. If a miserable little banker gets out of line, we shoot him and bury him in an unmarked grave. We even shoot his children and wife. That's how we regulate bankers in Russia. True, this frightens bankers. But it also prevents them from defrauding the people. Sometimes pistols are more effective than laws.

I understand that your country is not the Soviet Union. Mr. Bernanke informed me, however, that these ungrateful bankers have actually taken government money and used it to pay their own bonuses. Additionally, they have thumbed their noses at the very government that saved them from ruin. Mr. Bernanke told me that "something must be done" about these devious, greedy bankers. He asked my advice on the subject.

I am happy to lend my expertise in dealing with your banking problem. First off, let us understand the situation. Your government has taken an unprecedented step to rescue private banks from their own capitalist follies. It has actually given State money in order to prevent them from failing. In return, government can expect allegiance from the banks. In essence, "bailed-out" banks are no longer private. By taking government money, they have subjected themselves to government regulation. They have ceded their private nature. As such, they must listen to your orders. If they don't, they must suffer serious consequences.

Yet now the bankers act as if they never took your money. Worse, they have used your money to invest in the evil New York stock market, where they earned spectacular profits. Rather than return the money to you, they have insolently awarded themselves monstrous bonuses and sent their children on European vacations. They have renovated their villas and hired high-priced prostitutes for week-long champagne orgies at sultry Caribbean hideaways. They have purchased long yachts, "cigarette boats" and Bentley automobiles. They have gallivanted on million-dollar ski trips. All the while, they have refused to hire more workers or act in the public good. To the contrary, they have done little but enrich themselves. They are having the time of their lives--all thanks to government funds.

I share your disgust with these ungrateful outlaws. I am pleased to offer my assistance in "regulating" them. They are Enemies of the People.

We must increase our regulation efforts. Your country must cease relying on "laws" and "procedures" to tame wayward bankers. You will only stop naughty bankers by adopting Soviet-style banking regulations. Bankers are ruthless pirates by nature. Ruthless pirates only understand one language: Brutality. If America wishes to rein in these pirates, it must start regulating with pistols.

Let me explain what I mean by "pistol regulation." As Commissioner of the Secret State Police in the Soviet Union, I became an expert in the craft. Here’s how it works: Once I identify an enemy of the People, I quickly dispatch agents to his home at about 4:30 AM. Generally, most people are either asleep or just waking up at that time--even ambitious capitalist pigs like your wayward bankers. They are in no position to resist ten armed police agents. Most surrender without a fight. In fact, very few ever know we're coming. We investigate in secret.

Once taken into custody, my agents bring the enemy to a secret building with no windows. There, a State security agent informs the enemy why he is an enemy, then tells him to explain himself. This is just a formality: Nothing he says will save him. Basically, it just gives us an opportunity to have a good laugh while the man pisses himself, falls on his knees and begs for mercy. After we've laughed enough, we bring in an officer who says he has judicial power to pronounce sentence. He gravely tells the enemy that he has been found guilty of treason, at which time several armed guards take him into another dimly-lit room. They push the enemy face first against the wall, then shoot him in the back of the head with a pistol like this one:

After that, the guards clean the blood, skull fragments and brains off the floor, remove the body and send it off for cremation. Then I release a press statement describing the enemy's crimes against the people. I close the statement by noting that the "dangerous enemy" has "faced justice for high treason."

Now, once your naughty bankers know that they may face "pistol regulation" for squandering State funds, they will think twice about buying new homes and throwing lavish dinner parties. In fact, some might even invest their money in public projects or--God forbid--hire some people. As you can see, "pistol regulation" carries two benefits. First, it eliminates bad behavior, like embezzling public money. Second, it encourages good behavior, like reducing unemployment. After all, no one wants to get that knock on the door at 4:30 AM. Bankers start behaving much better once they notice that their greedy colleagues aren't in their offices anymore.

You have made a wise decision to enlist my help in regulating your financial industry. You understand that your traditional "American" methods will not impress these rapacious profit-hounds. To the contrary, your entire constitutional system--with its burdensome right to counsel, "independent judiciary" and "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" procedure--favors the accused. Worse, when the accused has money--as these bankers do--it is even more difficult to convict them. Even then, it takes years for appeals to pass. Plus there's a chance that banker-friendly judges will free their pals. Under your laws, you can't even execute these piratical bankers for their offenses.

This is simply unacceptable: You need Soviet "pistol regulation" or these dogs will walk all over you with "procedures."

Still, you can do it. You have already made an unprecedented step by allowing the government to intervene in the economy. Now, you must take the next step by holding bailed-out bankers to their bargains. If a banker takes government money, he must do as the government says. No more can you tolerate their ingratitude. It is not just embarrassing. It is bad for the country.

To that end, I will do my part to hunt down these criminals. Their lawyers and cash bribes will not stop my agents from putting bullets in their brains. I have wide experience sniffing out wrongdoing; nothing escapes my notice. We will work together to send a simple message: "If you take government money, you had better not use it to pay your own bonus."

I will find every banker who scoffs at government regulation. Believe me, they won't be scoffing after my agents show up at their swanky penthouses at 4:30 in the morning. In fact, they'll be crying, begging, moaning, wailing, pissing and shitting themselves. A few will get angry and shout. But my men will pistol-whip them until they behave.

Enough talking. Let's get to work. We have an industry to regulate. And we have Enemies of the People to eliminate.

TRAMPLED TO DEATH FOR A 10% DISCOUNT SALE

OESTERHOUDT STRIKES

On November 28, 2008, the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, N.Y. braced itself for "Black Friday," the notorious shopping frenzy the day after Thanksgiving. It hired temporary employees to work longer hours. It also planned to open earlier and close later. Still, that was not enough to placate a mob of predawn shoppers who assembled at the front door long before the slated 5 AM opening time. These shoppers did not want to wait until 5 AM, so they smashed down the door and stampeded through the entrance. In the process, they trampled a temporary employee to death.

I presume they went straight to the discount aisles and did not even notice what they did.

I read about this story in the New York Daily News. See N.Y. Daily News, Wal-Mart set for shopper frenzy, Nov. 12, 2009 at p. 6. The News reported that Wal-Mart faced prosecution for its "wanton and willful disregard" for its employees' safety. Rather than face crippling fines, however, Wal-Mart struck a deal with prosecutors. It promised to implement better "crowd control measures" this year than it did last year.

This story interested me for two reasons. First, it confirmed to me how truly violent people can be when engaging in commerce. Second, it reminded me that the criminal law does things beyond merely punishing human bodies and individual bank accounts.

I felt genuine horror when I reflected on these rabid shoppers. Why does commerce lead people to behave like this? I have written that commercial language is "warlike:" the words "bargain," "purchase" and "haggle" all derive from violent etymological roots. But language alone does not explain why people smash down doors and crush hapless employees underfoot on their way to bargain bins. Something else is at work here. While language may reveal commerce as a warlike enterprise, the activity itself lends itself to contentiousness, strife, cruelty, selfishness and violence.

What was so important to these shoppers? Why was it so important to buy a few Holiday trinkets before the other guy? What emotions did they feel as they battered down the door and heard the employee struggling to escape from under their feet? Put simply, what did commerce do to these people? When they woke up that morning, they were law-abiding middle class drones. But by 5 AM they had transformed into a stampeding horde indifferent to life and death.

Human beings are acquisitive creatures. They like laying their hands on as many objects as possible and calling them "mine." Capitalist apologists even say that this "impulse to own" gives us the greatest economy the world has ever seen. They say it is pointless to deny it, and that communist countries fell because they tried to meddle with humankind's natural propensity to "competitively strive for ownership."

Property law also taps into this maniacal human urge. It proceeds on the reasoning that people will only work hard in society if they know their toils will translate into more "stuff" to call "mine." John Locke called this "The Labour Theory."

Maybe human acquisitiveness does give us the greatest economy in the world. Maybe it does lead people to work harder. Maybe it leads to innovation and greater good for all. But boiled down to its core, it is pretty damn ugly. It leads to scenes like the scene at Wal-Mart last year. I am not saying that human acquisitiveness does not bring direct benefits to society. I am merely saying that there is nothing noble or even attractive about it. The idea that people are prepared to smash down doors and trample others for a few Holiday savings is proof enough that commerce brings out some pretty horrible impulses in our human fellows.

On the second question, I found it interesting that no one went to jail for this outrage. After all, who was really liable? Everyone pointed the finger at Wal-Mart. But Wal-Mart is not a living human being; it is a noncorporeal corporation, a fanciful "legal person" with intangible rights and responsibilities. In the popular understanding, criminal law inflicts pain on "bad people" as "social revenge" for some dastardly choice they made. But how do you inflict pain on a non-human--even non-biological--entity? Corporations cannot be imprisoned, or tortured, or executed. They cannot even feel scared or anxious. Only living things can feel emotions.

So why did the prosecutor pursue Wal-Mart for the stampede? What could the criminal law do to inflict pain on a corporation? Interestingly enough, the criminal law has other, more subtle powers than merely inflicting bodily pain on humans. It can also target property, and corporations really like property. Corporations are private profit-making machines; they exist solely to enrich the people who own shares in the entity. To make profits--and to fulfill their raison d'etre--corporations need to earn more income than they lose in liabilities. The criminal law can impose fines on a corporation. Fines are "liabilities." If a fine is large enough, it could gravely impact the "income/liability" ratio and lead (gasp) to a quarterly loss.

In this case, Wal-Mart's management obviously did not want to suffer a loss. After all, corporate managers lose their jobs--and fat Christmas bonuses--if they report losses. They knew that a criminal fine would lead to a loss, so they bargained with the prosecutor to avoid that fate. The prosecutor took the opportunity to wring some public good from Wal-Mart's private misdeeds, so he insisted that Wal-Mart "implement greater safety controls next time." Thus, by threatening the corporation's monetary lifeblood, the prosecutor extracted a public benefit from Wal-Mart's transgression.

In this example, we see how the criminal law does more than merely punish individual bodies to vent social revenge. Rather, it can threaten corporations, too. In so doing, it can force corporations to take action that leads to greater safety and accountability. That is a public benefit. And because the criminal law is a public function, we should be glad that it has the power to achieve goals like this.

If we can't hang corporations or throw them in prison, we can at least force them to "do better" by threatening their precious "income/liability" ratios. Such public actions may not be as emotionally satisfying as electrocuting a half-insane child killer or lethally injecting a dubious home invader who had a court-appointed lawyer, but at least it's something.

Human beings respond to threats. So do "noncorporeal" entities like corporations. Humans adjust their behavior if they believe the criminal law will hurt their bodies or take away their money. Corporations will adjust their behavior if they believe the criminal law will impact their bottom lines and cause quarterly losses.

Everyone fears pain. Corporations fear fiscal pain. So that's the pain the criminal law threatens to inflict on them.

I say: "Whatever works."

OUR URGE TO BE FREE IS NOT ENTIRELY REASONABLE

AN ESSAY

We always hear about doomed criminals running away from the police. Chases always make the news. They seem to happen in California more than anywhere else. But no matter where they happen, the key element remains the same: Some desperate person tries frantically to delay the moment at which he will be physically restrained. He wants to be free. He wants control over his own body. So he thrashes with incredible energy to maintain that control. He even puts himself and others in mortal danger for a few more free moments. Even the most insignificant infractions put people to desperate flight. They even cause fatal car crashes while trying to escape from a traffic stop. In other words, men love freedom; and they cling to it no matter the cost or the danger.

Freedom has many meanings. It is a common word. George W. Bush used it ad nauseam as shorthand for a complex, biased political value system that had nothing to do with "a lack of restraint on physical movement." But today I want to examine the word's base, bodily meaning, not its metaphorical or rhetorical overlays. "Freedom" is an old English noun that stems from the adjective "free," which in turn relates to the German "frei." In essence, it implies a "lack of physical restraint on bodily movement." At base, it is corporal. It suggests an ability to move the body without being held back. It also suggests an ability to "go where one pleases" without facing opposing physical forces. In this sense, a "lack of physical restraint" intertwines with mental tranquility. People like to go where they want. No one likes to know he could be physically stopped from going somewhere. Physical "freedom," then, closely relates to mental "freedom," and even happiness: You can't be happy if someone prevents you from using your body as you please. Emotional satisfaction flows from physical freedom.

I like the words "free" and "freedom" more than "liberty." I am partial to hard-hitting, German-based words over obscure, imported Latin ones. "Liberty" is a Latin refinement on "freedom." At times, "freedom" and "liberty" mean the same thing. Yet "liberty" sounds somehow more grandiose than mere "freedom." During the Enlightenment, philosophers opted for majestic "liberty" over plebeian "freedom" when discussing man's "natural rights." In the process, they transformed "liberty" into a technical term. "Liberty" was no longer a simple synonym for "freedom." No, "liberty" carried its own theoretical weight. It became shorthand for an entire economic and social value system premised upon "individual choice, conscience and enterprise." John Stuart Mill named his famous ode to free market economic choice "On Liberty," while Adam Smith based The Wealth of Nations on the fundamental assumption that man must enjoy "economic liberty." In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson famously asserted that man's "inalienable rights" included life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." In all these examples, "liberty" took on a meaning far beyond "lack of restraint on bodily movement." It was something more than just "going where you want when you want." It was something freighted with metaphysical assumptions.

But today I am not writing about Mill's "liberty conception" or even "economic liberty." I am writing about pure, animal "freedom:" The subjective desire to be free from direct bodily restraint. Based upon my own observations, I believe that human beings have a natural desire to be free. There is both a physical and emotional dimension to this desire. Human beings--like their mammalian forebears--relish the ability to move as they please. They feel at ease when nothing constrains their bodies. By the same token, they hate the emotion that arises when some superior power prevents them from moving their bodies as they please. Dogs and monkeys scream when caged. They become agitated and violent. They obviously do not like limitations on their freedom to move. When restrained, their behavior shows they hate it.

Human beings hate being confined, too. Unlike animals, they know when others seek to confine them. That is why they struggle to avoid capture and "maintain their freedom," even if there is no prospect for success. They know how they will feel when they lose their bodily freedom, so they resort to anything to hold onto it. Human beings anticipate the emotional pain that flows from losing freedom. That explains why doomed criminals flee in desperate attempts to remain free. Even when they have no chance to succeed, people will always try to escape, if only for a few minutes.

But how is that reasonable? If there is no chance to succeed in an endeavor, why bother attempting it? In my view, the "urge to be free from bodily restraint" trumps human reason. After all, if human beings trusted their reason in all events, they would never try to avoid inevitable capture. They would not jump over electrified fences or drive 85 miles per hour the wrong way down a one-way street if reason guided their actions. No, something else guides their actions when they feel something threatens their freedom. Human beings will resort to utterly unreasonable behavior to avoid physical restraint. The "urge to be free" transcends virtually all reasonable imperatives. It overwhelms rational calculation and leads men to engage in dangerous behavior that is almost bound to fail.

In my eyes, all this proves that human beings are not purely reasonable creatures. No matter how much we applaud our ability to triumph over nature through reason, we retain extremely unsettling instincts. Our "urge to be free from bodily restraint" illustrates the lengths to which human beings will go to maintain their ability to move their bodies as they wish. Viewed rationally, who would think that mere bodily movement could trigger such intense emotional responses? But that is exactly the point: Reason cannot account for men's violent emotional responses to certain stimuli. For better or worse, men want control over their bodies, just as chimps and dogs want to roam uncaged. And just like chimps and dogs, they rage uncontrollably when anything constrains their ability to roam.

Physical confinement touches a base nerve in our minds. That explains why human beings resort to anything to avoid it, no matter how unreasonable or ineffectual. This has nothing to do with complex coinages like "liberty." It is just a fact of nature. And we will never escape nature.

EXPLAINING AMERICA'S RACE PROBLEM : RACE RIOTS

AN ESSAY

Two weeks ago, I visited St. Louis. I had never been there before. I grew up in Connecticut and I've spent most of my adult life in New York City. I lived and worked in Chicago for several years; I did not find people's attitudes all that different from people's attitudes in New York. For the most part, I liked Chicago. But before moving there, I had heard stories that it was "segregated" and "had a race problem." These stories gave me a preconception that everyone in Chicago was a racist and that it was "very white and conservative."

My experience contradicted all these preconceptions. Chicago is an extraordinarily Democratic city. Although it is 800 miles from the Atlantic, it is surprisingly cosmopolitan and progressive. New Yorkers are wrong to think it is a "sleepy, backward Midwestern town." Much to the contrary, it is as vibrant a place as you will find anywhere outside the Five Boroughs. And most Chicagoans are ferociously liberal: Republicans don't stand a chance in city government. True, the city is unashamedly corrupt. But benignly so. Sometimes people just like things the way they are, as long as everyone gets a nice paycheck. "Hey, who cares as long as no one gets hurt and everybody wins?" That's how it is in Chicago.

Does Chicago have a "race problem?" To answer that question, I don't think it's fair to single out Chicago. Every American city has a "race problem." Black people do not generally live in wealthy neighborhoods in any American city, and black people commit proportionately more poverty-related crime than whites in all urban areas. This is a "national issue." It holds true in Chicago. The city is economically segregated, and that means it is also racially segregated. Blacks live on the South and West Sides because it is cheaper than the North Side, where most whites live. Blacks do not live on the South and West Sides because government ordered blacks to live there; they live there because they are too poor to live in the white areas. Contrary to Justice Thomas' outrageous assertion, blacks do not live in ghettoes because they made "innocent private decisions including voluntary housing choices." See Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S 701 (slip. op. at p. 51)(Thomas, J., concurring)(2007). For the most part, they have no choice.

New Yorkers mistake these economic realities for official racial discrimination. But the same thing happens in New York. New York is just as segregated as Chicago; white New Yorkers just see more black people on the street. Economic reality makes it impossible for blacks to live on the Upper East Side and downtown Manhattan, not governmental racism. While blacks might walk the streets in "white areas," they likely do not live there: They just took the subway. The same thing is true in Chicago's "white areas" : They just took the El.

In short, "race problems" exist in every American city, not just Chicago. Economic realities translate into racial realities. Government might not legislatively discriminate against blacks as it did a century ago. But private actors can achieve the same result simply by competing in the free market. Blacks stand at a material economic disadvantage in the United States. They cannot compete for housing, goods and services at the same level as whites. Thus, it is possible for cities to become "segregated" simply by action of "everyday commerce." This is generally what happens in northern cities like New York and Chicago.

I had all this in mind when I landed in St. Louis. I thought St. Louis would be like Chicago; after all, they are cities at opposite ends of the same State: Illinois. But this was no northern city. St. Louis was different. Whites lived in sprawling, palatial, mansion-like structures with gates and lush lawns. Just blocks away, blacks lived in dilapidated row houses with boarded windows. I stayed in a hotel with a steel fence and guards. All the servants were black. All the guests were white. White folk frolicked by the pool. Black folk trudged around outside the fence.

This was more than just economic segregation. This was real, social segregation. The great, unspoken reality in St. Louis was that black folk knew their place and white folk lorded over them. Unlike New York and Chicago, blacks did not even show up in places reserved for whites. They stayed home. They did not have a subway to get around, anyway.

Then it dawned on me: St. Louis was a southern city. I had never really seen a southern city. I did not like it at all. While New York and Chicago might guiltily acknowledge their "race problems," St. Louis had a "race problem" and didn't seem to mind it at all. After all, this was just the "way things were supposed to be." In New York and Chicago, everyone knows racism exists. But very few people acknowledge it publicly; they just let private commerce do its work. In St. Louis, by contrast, racism is just assumed. That jarred me.

Why did this jar me? After all, I routinely write about America's continuing racial woes. I am usually the first to point out that we do not live in a postracial society, and that racial problems in America encapsulate everything wrong with American civilization. But it is one thing to theorize and read about these problems; it is quite another to see them up close. Put simply, race problems exist in the United States because they are the poisonous legacy of slavery and State-sponsored discrimination. Not that many generations have passed since the law called black men "chattel property," and even fewer have passed since it was considered "good and legal" in the South to murder black men without trials for perceived offenses against "the social order." No matter how much we learn to be "politically correct" about these issues--and even to rue the conduct of our ancestors--this evil legacy lives on. And it undermines any claim that we live in a Nation of principle.

Racial problems in the North and the Midwest are relatively recent phenomena. They are essentially the "third chapter" in the history of racial intolerance in America after slavery and Reconstruction in the South. I did some reading and discovered that St. Louis was the first "northern" city to which southern blacks migrated in the early 20th Century. At that time, State-sponsored discrimination made life in the South virtually intolerable for blacks. While they might have been "legally equal" on paper, white mobs (some included judges and prosecutors) lynched hundreds every year. To escape life in southern society, many blacks looked north. St. Louis was right up the Mississippi River from the Deep South.

But their problems did not disappear once they arrived in St. Louis. They did not receive a warm welcome from ostensibly "progressive" northern whites. To the contrary, European immigrants and their descendants in St. Louis resented the idea that these "black interlopers" were stealing their jobs and "fraternizing with white women." After America entered World War I in 1917, tensions reached a boiling point. After factory owners began hiring blacks to replace white workers called off to war, white mobs marched on black neighborhoods. The Governor called in the National Guard, but in many cases the troops joined the mob and helped terrorize the black population. Over a three-day period, white mobs killed several dozen blacks and burned down their whole neighborhood. The police basically stood by and let the violence happen, tacitly supporting the white mob's position.

Something similar happened in Chicago two years later. As was true in St. Louis, thousands of blacks settled in Chicago in the early 20th Century. After World War I, thousands more returned from Europe to compete for jobs in the city. Whites and blacks informally agreed to "live in their own neighborhoods." They even respectively agreed not to use parts of the Lake Michigan beachfront reserved for the other race. But in 1919, a black boy dared to go swimming in "white waters." Several white boys threw rocks at him and he drowned. A dispute broke out between blacks and whites on the beach. When the police arrived, they arrested angry blacks rather than the white boys who threw the rocks. This led to rioting. As was the case in St. Louis, white mobs did the damage. They marched into black neighborhoods and burned almost everything in their path. They were just waiting for the opportunity to vent their anger about losing jobs to blacks. And as was true in St. Louis, the police tacitly supported the rioters by refusing to intervene against them.

I use these two examples to illustrate why we still have a "race problem" in the United States. Although they both took place 90 years ago, I think they have genuine relevance to modern urban issues involving race. For one, I find it perversely interesting that we call these disturbances--and others like them--"race riots." Who is the aggressor in a "race riot?" Who is the victim? In both St. Louis and Chicago, blacks were undeniably the victims, while the whites were the aggressors. Yet the term "race riot" implies that a "race" starts a riot. In American discourse, the word "race" generally implies "African-American." For deeply troublesome reasons, the word "race" conjures black men in the white mind. It conjures the perennial, uncomfortable, uneasy racial legacy that has remained with us since the Civil War and before. But in these "race riots," blacks did not cause disturbances to protest their inferior social standing. Unrest may well have been justified in the circumstances. Yet it was whites who caused the disturbances. And why? For economic reasons, and for "pride:" They did not like the idea that blacks threatened their jobs, swam "on their beaches" and "mixed with their women." These are not very noble reasons to riot.

This is not to say that blacks have not begun racial disturbances in our history. In 1992, for instance, black mobs rose up to protest the Rodney King police brutality verdict. But in that case, they did not severely damage white neighborhoods. They likely wanted to, but in the end they wound up burning their own property and some Asian-owned property. No matter who suffered injury, however, blacks rioted because they perceived a serious injustice, namely: that a supposedly "neutral" justice system failed to deliver justice against white police officers who visibly brutalized a black man on videotape. In this sense, "black-launched" race riots differ from "white-launched" race riots. Blacks riot to protest manifest injustice and betrayed principle. Whites riot to protect their jobs and bloodlines.

Race riots offer a revealing glimpse into the reasons why we still contend with smoldering "racial problems" in the United States. There is always tension between blacks and whites, not least because blacks know they stand a much lower chance to succeed in the free market system than their white counterparts. This resignation to failure has everything to do with the same destructive legacy that supported slavery and motivated the northern race riots. These are institutional problems that persevere over the generations, no matter what "legal adjustments" government makes. The fact that authorities generally stand by and let race riots occur--or, worse, join them--only reinforces black cynicism about their place in American society. If the police and courts tacitly condone lawlessness against blacks, how can we blame blacks for believing that the law does not stand for them?

Racism lives on in America because the law cannot touch it. It lives in men's minds. It finds expression in intrinsic social values that resist generational change. Law cannot change minds; it can only plunder pocket books and imprison bodies. Nor can law excise deeply-entrenched values. Racism smolders every day in every American city. Serious pressures--whether economic or ideological--bring the smolder into a flame: Race riots.

Throughout American history, we have seen the same pattern. Race riots honestly tell us what each race thinks and assumes about the other without subterfuge or pretense. Unlike language, violence is never subtle.

A WORD ON JOE WILSON AND THE NATIONAL DEBATE

A REFLECTION

I would be remiss if I did not write something about Representative Joe Wilson’s (R-SC) outburst last night during President Obama’s congressional health care address. I was genuinely stunned when I heard someone—a Washington politician, not some anarchist on the street or even a stealthy outside activist—call out “You lie” as the President spoke. Don’t get me wrong: I’m all about disrespecting authority. But I have some standards about the time and place to do it.

For a moment, I thought that we had gone the way of the British parliament, in which acting politicians traditionally interrupt their colleagues as they speak. Yet there is something hallowed about Presidential speeches before Congress. They are not “routine debates.” There is an unspoken code of decorum when the President speaks during a joint meeting of government. For a brief moment, Congressmen and Senators put aside their everyday quarrels in deference to the Executive. When both parties sit and listen to the President—no matter his own party affiliation—it reinforces the notion that the government is united, even if only symbolically. To return to the British example, not even the cheekiest MP ever shouts at the Queen when she speaks.

Joe Wilson’s outburst destroyed even that fictional unity. And why? To protest President Obama’s contention that the Democratic health care reform plan would not cover illegal aliens. This man took an unprecedented step against congressional protocol to personally attack President Obama’s honesty in the very halls of government. Pundits on both sides will endlessly debate whether the President’s statement was “technically accurate.” But that is really not the point. Rhetoric is not science. It does not work when it bogs down in minuscule details. Statements do not carry as much rhetorical punch when they nitpick. Perhaps Obama did not remember every single proposed section in every single proposed bill about health care. Perhaps he even misspoke. I don’t know.

Still, misspeaking does not warrant the pejorative exclamation: “You lie.” Those are fighting words. They do not impinge upon technical knowledge. They impinge upon personal honor, integrity and decency. They are as much an insult as a critique.

In a way, Joe Wilson’s outburst does not surprise me. I have warned over and over again that Obama faces very real dangers simply because he is an African-American in a country with a longstanding tradition of intolerance toward African-Americans. I have warned that Obama’s mere presence courts danger in some parts of the country. His first months in office have borne out my warnings. Never before has dissent been so ominous as dissent on Obama’s health care push. Town hall meetings descend into shouting matches and fistfights. Republicans show up to Presidential appearances with loaded rifles. Opponents concoct absurd stories about “death panels” and suggest that President Obama is not an American citizen. Now Joe Wilson ignores traditional respect for the President’s office by calling him a liar on the floor of Congress.

These are not good omens. They show that Obama’s opponents not only do not respect him, but they are willing to put aside all civility in order to derail him. It is just a matter of time before heated words and sneering disrespect turn into violence. Worse, Joe Wilson’s outburst shows that not just private citizens adhere to these sentiments. So do elected officials. And they actually swore an oath to uphold the constitutional system.

Republicans will undoubtedly counter that Democrats showed no respect toward George W. Bush during his time in office. They will say that fiery partisanship is the order of the day in modern Washington politics. True, many private citizens paraded against Bush. They even threw eggs at his Presidential limo during his inauguration in 2001. Democratic politicians, too, reserved harsh words for Bush in public statements. But in no case did any Democratic Congressman ever interrupt President Bush while he spoke to Congress, let alone call him a liar in public. In this sense, both Democrats and Republicans are guilty of partisan politics. The difference is that Republicans willingly disrespect constitutional traditions in order to spew their bile.

I venture that Democrats had every reason to interrupt Bush for lying during his Congressional addresses. After all, Bush told Congress that African nations were supplying uranium to Saddam Hussein. He also manufactured stories to suggest that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in order to induce support for a foreign war. These were lies that led America into bloody armed conflict and bankruptcy. They were not casual misstatements about thousand-page health care legislation. If ever a congressman had reason to scream “You Lie” at the President in the Capitol Building, it was in 2002 or 2003.

Yet I applaud the Democrats for never doing so. Rather than disturb traditional respect for the President while he speaks to Congress, Democrats waited until after the speech to register their dissent. They observed protocol, if for no other reason than to maintain the fictional unity that the protocol is intended to generate.

Not so with Joe Wilson. Protocol meant nothing to him, nor did the importance of the “unity fiction in government.” What does this mean? I think it means that the national debate is flying off the handle. In recent months, rhetoric about health care has reached white-hot levels. It is as belligerent as it is unreasonable, misinformed and confused. Civility has no place in this debate. And Joe Wilson’s outburst shows that civility cannot even survive in the Capitol Building while the President speaks.

This is the state of our national debate. It does not bode well. Democracy only works when the losing party accepts the winning party’s rule. It fails when the losing party revolts and refuses to cooperate on anything. In ancient Rome, civil wars broke out whenever an Emperor died because there was no protocol for succession. In the United States, we peacefully transition power to winning Presidents, even though millions and millions of people voted against them. The losers do not rebel against the winner. They grin and bear their loss for the good of the Nation as a whole. They continue to dissent, but they accept some things as sacred. They know when and where to dissent. Even MPs in England know that.

Joe Wilson’s outburst seems to show that the losers don’t really think that way anymore. On health care, nothing is sacred. Civility is dead. Not even age-old congressional traditions and unspoken deference to the President during an official address constrain those determined to undermine ideas with which they disagree.

I have many objections about the American constitutional system. I do not shy away from expressing them. To use a hackneyed phrase, criticism is patriotic. Nonetheless, I would never get up and yell at the President, especially if I were an elected official who took an oath to serve our constitutional system. For all my sneering irony and sarcasm, I know my place. Not only that, criticism works best in private.

I do not believe that Joe Wilson is an isolated case. He spoke for a very real constituency when he yelled at the President. There are others just like him. They have even less respect for democratic traditions than Joe Wilson. They are regular guys with guns; and they do a lot more than call people liars.

This is what happens when reform-minded Presidents try to shake things up in the United States. And they weren’t even black.

BEATING ROBBERS : HOW TO KEEP YOURSELF AND YOUR PROPERTY SAFE FROM VIOLENT CRIME

CRIME WATCH

By : Mr. G. Chadwick Klauenberg, Esq., J.D. (University of Pennsylvania Law School 1980), Former Chief of Police, East Orange, New Jersey (1985-2005); Published Author, Can’t Thug This : Hoodlum Management in 21st Century Urban America (New York Times Bestseller List), a Best-Selling Self-Defense Handbook; Amateur Chef; Property Owner (residence and beachfront properties).

We live in a violent society. For those who inhabit cities in the United States, crime is a very real danger. Murderous gangs roam the streets. Discharged and undiagnosed psychiatric patients threaten to push innocent commuters before onrushing subway trains. Con artists defraud hard-working men and women with fanciful yarns. And thousands of petty thieves mill through the streets every day, picking pockets, stealing, looting, robbing and swindling.

It is essential to know how to deal with crime. But today I do not write to call for greater enforcement against criminals. I leave that to legislators and executive officials in State government. Rather, today I write in order to inform the public about an important skill: How to keep yourself and your property safe from violent crime. Today, we are not talking about theories and abstractions. We are talking about real-life, practical skills that will prevent you from being the next police statistic.

Let’s face it: Many criminals want your property. They want your wallet, your watch, your Gucci handbag, your billfold, your cash, your family amulet, your car and even your furniture. Criminals are not like you or me. They do not work, make money, pay taxes and buy things at Wal-Mart®. No, they have separated themselves from society. Unlike us, they acquire money and property by violence, scheme and coercion. Everybody wants property in our society. Yet there is a legal way to do it. Criminals don’t follow the legal way.

It is illegal to steal and rob. As law-abiding citizens, we find it appalling that some people commit violence in order to obtain property. But that does not alter the fact that many people do it. For that reason, we must be prepared to deal with robbers and thieves. They are out there. They see our property. They want it. And they are ready to hurt us to take it from us. Put simply, we must be on our guard.

I have written many articles about self-defense and practical crime prevention. I always take a practical approach. I do not try to explain social trends and the reasons “why” criminals become criminals. I do not rationalize criminal behavior, nor do I make excuses for criminals, like blaming bad schools, bad parenting and poverty. Rather, I try to keep law-abiding citizens—like you—safe from hooligans. It does not help a robbery victim to understand why her assailant is a hooligan; it helps to prevent the hooligan from attacking in the first place. Hooligans are hooligans. In my book, that fact doesn’t change. And it makes no sense to debate it.

Let’s talk robbery. We must always fear robbers. They lurk everywhere. At this very moment, some thug may be sitting in a car outside your townhouse, observing your daily routine. He may be looking at your clothes, your briefcase and even the grocery bags you carry on the way home from work every night at 9 PM. He may be looking at your house and guessing that you have quite a lot of property. He may be plotting the right moment to ambush you and take your wallet. Put simply, robbers are everywhere. As long as you have property, robbers will try to take it from you.

I was a police chief for 20 years. Before that, I went to law school. From both a legal and law enforcement perspective, I know a thing or two about robbers. My knowledge can help you avert robbery. Robbery has a legal definition. In the law, behavior either fits the definition or it doesn’t. You can legally avoid robbery if you know what robbery actually means. When you understand what robbery actually is, you can take steps to make it impossible for a criminal to rob you.

At common law and in most State law, robbery is “the taking of personal property from a person by force or fear.” That means a person can rob you with a toy gun because he creates “fear” in order to take your personal property. It also means no one can rob your house, or your tree, or even apples from your tree, because those things are “real property,” not “personal property.” “Personal property” is “anything that is movable,” like a watch, a wallet, a pocket-knife, a painting or a jar. Apples are movable, too, but they are an exception to the rule because they come from trees, which are not “personal property.” There has also been some debate whether a mobile home is “personal property.” But let’s not get too philosophical; in most cases, a robber doesn’t want your trailer or your apple orchard.

No matter the circumstances, robbery cannot occur without “property.” A criminal cannot legally commit robbery without “taking property.” From a practical perspective, this means you can completely avoid robbery by refusing to carry, own or otherwise lay claim to property. Consider this: If you own nothing and go about naked on the street, you cannot be robbed. Legally, no criminal can rob you if you are naked, penniless and possess nothing. Now, if you were naked and had a rope around your neck, a criminal could rob you by threatening to kill you unless you gave him the rope. But again, you can avoid that situation by simply owning or possessing nothing at all, not even a rope. Property is the key to robbery. Without property, you cannot be robbed. Thus, refusing to own or possess anything is the best defense against robbery.

Other crime prevention advocates recommend lesser measures to prevent robbery. They offer advice such as “don’t go out by yourself;” “watch your belongings;” “stay away from bad neighborhoods;” and “don’t show off expensive goods.” Yet these are half-measures. They do not make it legally impossible to suffer robbery. Rather, they still allow robbers an opportunity to commit robbery. If you “don’t go out by yourself,” yet still own property, a criminal can rob you because there is property available to “take by force or fear.” Similarly, even if you don’t “show off expensive goods,” a criminal can still rob you because you have “expensive goods” (which are “personal property”) to take “by force or fear.” It doesn’t matter whether you conceal it; if you have it, someone can take it. In sum, then, these measures may reduce the chance that you will suffer robbery. But they do not render robbery legally impossible.

Wouldn’t you rather make it impossible for a criminal to rob you? A 0% chance of robbery is preferable to a 10% chance. The only sure way to make robbery legally impossible is to stop owning or possessing property. No matter how much you conceal or protect your property, a determined robber always has something to “take by force or fear.” But if you are naked, broke and destitute, you have nothing that can be robbed. The minute you obtain property you are subject to robbery. Why increase your risk? Just don’t own anything; it will render robbery a hollow threat.

Law teaches us many things. Many people think that the law does not provide practical solutions to real problems. But here we see that the law allows us to effectively prevent crime. By understanding what robbery actually means, we can stop robbers before they even obtain the legal opportunity to violate our property rights. Let robbers try to rob you. If you are naked and own nothing, you are completely safe.

Now, a would-be robber might get angry when he discovers you have nothing to “take by force or fear.” In that case, he might attack you with a weapon or his fists. If you are a woman, he might try to sexually assault you. In fact, these chances increase if you are naked on the street. Nonetheless, none of these criminal acts would be robbery. They might be rape, or murder, or attempted rape, or attempted murder, or assault, or sexual assault or battery. But they would not be robbery because the criminal has no “personal property to take.”

Let the law work for you. The law is not just a post hoc remedy intended to deter future criminals from violating your rights. It is a proactive tool. You must merely understand what the law requires before setting off on your daily routine. I have dedicated my life to preventing crime. We can prevent crime by understanding legal definitions. That is why I say to you: If you know what robbery actually means, you can make it impossible for anyone to rob you. Just refuse to own or possess anything.

This is not an absurd recommendation. How can we call a solution absurd if it completely prevents a potential problem? In my opinion, a solution that completely removes the possibility of a problem is a winning solution, not an absurd one. To that extent, heed my advice. If you wish to forever free yourself from robbers, simply give up all your property and live penniless—and naked—on the street. If you do that, you will literally have no “personal property” to “take by force or fear,” not even tattered old rags.

Just imagine how good you’ll feel knowing you can’t be robbed. If someone puts a gun in your face while you’re naked and broke, let him say: “This is a robbery.” You can confidently say: “No it isn’t. I cannot legally be robbed.”

THE POLITICAL ASSOCIATION UNITED FOR THE MURDER OF ALL PEOPLE WITH WHOM THEY DISAGREE

POLITICAL PARTIES FOR A CHANGING WORLD

By : Mr. Martin F. Buckley, Esq., Chairman and Political Analyst; J.D. (Harvard Law School 1983); Free Speech Advocate (with exceptions for appropriateness).

We live in a great country because everyone can speak their mind. The United States became powerful because we tolerate many different viewpoints and we profit from an exchange in ideas. Even our legal traditions embody this tolerant approach to intellectual discourse. Unlike many so-called “progressive” European governments, the United States does not ban speech because it disagrees with its content. In Germany, for example, the government bans any speech that glorifies Nazism. Yet here in America, we tolerate such speech. We trust that the American people will listen to every idea and reject the bad ones. In other words, our law doesn’t make martyrs. We let every idea compete for attention in the “marketplace of ideas.” Nazism can’t compete, so Nazis can yack all they want. They have a right to.

But law only tells half the story about free speech in the United States. Just because our law tolerates all viewpoints does not mean we agree with every viewpoint. I, for instance, cannot bear speech about free health care, single-payer systems or “a woman’s right to choose.” I disagree profoundly with all these ideas. Although I acknowledge that our law gives everyone in this country the right to express their views on important issues, that does not mean I do not wish to kill people who disagree with me.

We, the The Political Association United for the Murder of All People With Whom They Disagree, stand for a simple premise: Some ideas are inappropriate. We have particular views about life, property, employment, immigration, child-rearing, health care, military affairs, foreign policy and politics. We have appropriate ideas. We firmly believe that our ideas are the best. If we do not follow them, we are convinced that America will disintegrate into anarchy, socialism or worse. That is why we are committed to defending appropriate ideas. We do not stop with rhetoric. When we lose verbal arguments, we jump over podiums and beat our opponents with iron bars. Free speech is wonderful. But there is only one guaranteed way to defend appropriateness against inappropriate speakers: Murder.

We advocate murder whenever we reach an impasse with people with whom we disagree. Yet we are reasonable people; we only kill our opponents when lesser measures fail. For example, we buy as much airtime as we can to convince our opponents that they are wrong. We show up at their meetings to shout them down or throw trash on their stages. We send targeted newsletters containing false and skewed information about the opposing viewpoint. We even get on national news television shows to make our case before the American people. Yet when these measures fail to convince inappropriate speakers to change their minds, we have no choice. We have to kill them. True, everyone has a right to speak their mind in America. But we also have a duty to ensure that America is safe from inappropriate speech and behavior. The only way to fulfill that duty—while maintaining a healthy respect for free speech rights—is to murder people who disagree with us.

On the whole, murder is a much more effective rhetorical tool than either language or logic. On hot button issues like the environment or race, it is not enough to speak eloquently or convincingly. When a person disagrees with you about race or the environment, you can proffer the most beautiful, logically-airtight arguments in the world, but you still will not sway him. In such cases, murder is the only way to solve the disagreement. It is more fun, too. After all, it is frustrating to debate with a person who stubbornly refuses to change his mind. After a hot verbal exchange, there is nothing more satisfying than to pull out a pistol and shoot the opposing speaker in the head. BANG! That’ll teach you to advocate clean-air technology and affirmative action! In such circumstances, logic only goes so far: Only firearms can firmly settle deadlocked debates.

These are not new ideas. Throughout history, appropriate speakers have won debates by eliminating their ideological opponents. Roman emperors killed those who advocated inappropriate solutions to problems. So did medieval kings. Put simply, only those willing to kill for their ideas have truly left a mark on history. No one ever prevailed in a substantial social debate by outwitting his ideological opponents with florid speeches. No, only murder can put real disagreements to rest. When people make up their minds to think inappropriately, nothing you say will shake them from it. You have to kill them to shut them up.

We proudly follow this tradition. As The Political Association United for the Murder of All People With Whom They Disagree, we are committed to speaking our minds. We have not only a constitutional right, but also a moral obligation to lead America in the appropriate direction on contemporary policy questions. Inappropriate ideas are more dangerous to America than any foreign dictator or Muslim bomber. That is why we stand united to debate and—if necessary, shoot—anyone who refuses to see things our way. We promise always to first use logic and reason to convince others that they are wrong. But when it is clear that we have reached an ideological impasse, we promise to murder our opponents. America deserves to speak with one voice: When disagreements exist, we cannot speak with one voice. That is why we are unafraid to murder those who disagree.

This does not mean that we gainsay the right to free speech under the First Amendment. To the contrary, we believe in the Constitution and liberty. Every American is free to speak, think and believe as his conscience directs. But anyone who disagrees with us does so at his peril. If someone thinks differently than we do, we admonish him to keep a lid on it, because if he debates us, we will kill him. In this way, we maintain a proper balance between our respect for constitutional liberty and our duty to lead America in an appropriate direction. In a word, you are free to think and say what you want; just don’t you dare disagree with us or we’ll put a bullet in your brain.

Never before has our Nation needed our party as much as it needs us now. Never before has our Nation faced so many burning policy questions. For the first time in our Nation’s history, lawmakers seriously debate dismantling the free market system. For the first time in our Nation’s history, a black President is calling for national health care reform. And for the first time in our Nation’s history, we face unprecedented threats from Muslim enemies bent on our destruction.

Yet we are not moving forward. Debates on these issues degenerate into shouting matches and finger-pointing competitions. Both sides tender arguments. Both sides think they know what to do. Nothing gets done because there are too many disagreements.

This is where we come in. Only we can resolve the paralyzing impasse in the national debate. Only we have the courage and fortitude to resolve disagreements in the only way they truly can be resolved: By murder. We will not avert health care collapse until we kill everyone who advocates single-payer systems and Soviet-style “Canada” medicine. We will not achieve domestic security until we kill everyone who advocates closing down Guantanamo Prison and withdrawing from Afghanistan. And we will not rescue the economy until we kill everyone who advocates greater government control over private contracting. At the moment, we cannot move forward on these issues because no one is communicating. People are just jumping up and down, screaming and accusing the other side of “being wrong.” But we promise progress. We promise to solve the disagreements. History is our guide: Disagreements go away as soon as you kill the people who disagree with you.

Aren’t you tired of ineffective government? Aren’t you tired of shrill debates and inappropriate arguments? Don’t you want to start moving forward as Nation? Don’t you feel that we’ve been stuck in the mud for too long? Haven’t you had enough recriminations, backbiting and angry arguments?

If you have, do something about it. Put a party in power that will put an end to all these verbal altercations. Put a party in power with the courage not only to scream and yell at opposing speakers, but kill them, too. We are the Political Association United for the Murder of All People With Whom They Disagree. We are committed to America. We are committed to making the right choices. We do not get bogged down in debates and feuds over abortion and parenting. We just kill people who refuse to see things the way we do.

It’s time to stop the disagreements. Let us be one Nation. Let us speak with one voice. At this challenging time in our Nation’s history, we need unity more than ever. Let us unite—and kill everyone who refuses to join us.