Posted on 09/24/2001 3:10:00 AM PDT by Ada Coddington
Unfree Republic
by Jeff Elkins
Let the stench of Middle East flesh reach Paradise reassuring them that these filth have gone to hell permanently."
The quote above is representative of many posted on the FreeRepublic.com site in the wake of the WTC attack, and unfortunately its like is not uncommon elsewhere. Americans are angry, predictably and rightly so, but just as predictable are the side effects. As always, that righteous anger will be accepted as a beloved gift by the state and molded into tools of oppression.
It’s funny how that works. Every single state-sponsored war the US has become embroiled in has resulted in an inexorable increase in the power of the state.
It’s also funny that it’s always assumed that human behavior in the past has no relation to how we behave today. Why those people were old-fashioned, we’re modern, educated, etc.
The beginning of this repeating pattern has already become public with the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. It has an ominous sound, that name, almost Germanic. (I can’t wait to see the uniforms.)
On April 13, 1917, days after our entry into World War One, President Wilson created the Committee on Public Information to promote the war domestically while publicizing American war aims abroad. Bush has replicated that step, with this new cabinet-level department.
Under the leadership of journalistic muckraker George Creel, the CPI was a propaganda apparatus unparalleled at that point in world history. The CPI functioned as a de facto public censor, vetting nearly all published material about the war and helping to draft legislation such as the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. In the months prior to our entry into the war and especially after our entry when they were nearly criminal, antiwar viewpoints were rarely heard.
The same pattern emerges now: Penn. Gov. Tom Ridge will be President Bush’s George Creel, and just as in those dim days of yesteryear, he’ll have plenty of willing civilian accomplices. And after all, there’s so much more to censor -- Ridge will need all the help he can get. In seeking warriors for the front line of Internet censorship, Ridge needs look no farther than FreeRepublic.com. The atmosphere there is now poisonous.
Again, look back to Wilson's CPI. It encouraged businesses to spy on their employees, parents to spy on their children, children to spy on their parents, neighbors to spy on neighbors, and above all to report "disloyal," pro-German sentiments. State authorities banned the teaching of German in schools and changed German street names. As the madness mounted, those regarded as pro-German were hounded from their jobs, pressured to change their German names, beaten, and in a few cases lynched. Almost all cases of violence, while incited by the state, were carried out by "civilians" in the grip of war hysteria.
Along with this anti-German hysteria, Congress passed several measures designed to rigidly suppress criticism of the war. In particular, the Espionage Act, passed in June 1917, specified a fine of $10,000 or twenty years in prison for "whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, and whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag."
The Espionage Act was very popular in its day. It was cheered on by mindless lemmings under the influence of state propaganda. Their great grandchildren now inhabit FreeRepublic.com, viciously attacking anyone who questions the wisdom of the state.
Our Congress is considering similar measures under the rubric of "anti-terrorism," and as it was at the beginning of the 20th Century, the FreeRepublic lemmings of the 21st are cheering the morally corrupt politicians along.
It’s not just message posters on the site. The management of FreeRepublic has instituted a "loose lips sink ships" campaign, with new moderators patrolling the forum to delete posts that in their opinion are detrimental to the "war effort."
The FreeRepublic mission statement claims "We're working to roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America."
Sanctimonious hogwash. Everything old is new again – the keyboard warriors of FreeRepublic would be right at home in 1917 shilling for Wilson.
September 24, 2001
Jeff Elkins is a freelance consultant and writer living in North Central Florida. His personal website is located at www.elkins.org.
No, Lysander Spooner condemned the US military for fighting the Confederacy.
I don't think so.
States built on gross and direct violations of human rights (be it totalitarianism,
communism, slavocracy or Naziism) have no "right to exist" and it is within the self-defense rights
of free men to prosecute them as they would a common criminal.
See http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39fce5ba5cc1.htm
Nope. They just wanted him gone.
88 Posted on 09/24/2001 05:53:52 PDT by Inspector Harry Callahan
This is a false statement. Knock it off.
Are you actually going to address my question?
(Actually I think you would have been more correct to say "the Union Army"; in as much as the US (note I followed your preference for no periods) had been dissolved at the time by the secession of the southern states to form the Confederacy.
Looting, flogging, and kidnapping civilians aren't terrorist tactics? John Brown was a terrorist, Lysander Spooner was his advocate.
Error? Deliberate misquotation.
Back that up!
"the slaveholders would never had dared, in the face of the world, to attempt to overthrow a government that gave freedom to all, for the sake of establishing in its place one that should make slaves of those who, by the existing constitution, were free." (pp.2-3)
By defending their own freedom, rather than slavery, Southerners gained a great psychological and moral advantage that carried them through four years of war. In agreeing that the Constitution protected slavery, and by proposing compromises in 1861 to prevent succession, Sumner and others only weakened the moral position of the North. Against the Northern politicians, generally, Spooner charged that "upon your heads, more even, if possible, than upon the slaveholders themselves, (who have acted only in accordance with their associations, interests, and avowed principles as slaveholders) rests the blood of this horrible, unnecessary, and therefore guilty, war." (Letter to Sumner, p.3)
================
Spooner did not speak against the US military for taking action to end slavery, he spoke against the North's tacit admission that slavery was Constitutional and merely needed reforming while prosecuting the war over the issue of seccession.
I didn't forget them. It's just that Jeff wouldn't have got the point. He probably considers them to be reliable sources of information as most sheeple do. Yikes! I just heard there is a tornado 15 minutes away and headed for my area. Time to unass this floor and head for the basement. See you later.
A failure to capitalize? That takes state-worshiper paranoi to new heights.
Sinkspur made an accusation which is corroborated by demidog's own words. Do you deny he said what I quoted him as saying? Click on the links. He speaks for himself. As I said, demidog's views are not representative of libertarianism as a whole. He did not personally favor child porn, of course, but he did specifically oppose laws prohibiting possession of it. You can deny it all you want, but the facts are the facts.
You attempted to give it credibility by jumping in on an attack on a person who is not here to defend themselves.
His words are on the record. What, I'm not supposed to QUOTE HIM DIRECTLY just because he is not here?
I will assume that you personally never criticize anyone who is not present to defend themselves. No one. Not a politician, not another freeper. No one.
You are beneath contempt.
Yawn.
Good thing I could care less what you think, or my feelings might be hurt. I quote someone's words, with links to the original, and you respond by personally attacking me? Go read Storm Orphan's #290 for a lesson in how to disagree without being disagreeable.
In a broadside printed in 1858, Spooner spelled out how such a right could be exercised. First, groups should form in the North to send arms, aid, and even to fight in the South. Groups of Black citizens in the South should also "form themselves into bands, build forts in the forests, and there collect arms, stores, horses, everything that will enable them to sustain themselves, and carry on their warfare upon the Slaveholders." Such guerrilla forces could (until the anti-slavery forces were strong enough for outright war) capture, strip and flog individual slaveowners, in front of their slaves in order to undermine the master’s authority. These forces, North as well as South could live by robbing the slaveowners.
"The state of slavery is a state of was, in this case it is a just war, on the part of the negroes - a war for liberty, and recompense of injuries; and necessity justifies them in carrying it on by the only means their oppressors have left them. In was, the plunder of enemies is as legitimate as the killing of them; and stratagem is as legitimate as open force."
It's 1938. If independent elements in the U.S. had advocated and supplied material and
ordnance to Jewish guerillas in Nazi Germany to conduct guerilla operations that
included a plot to kidnap or kill Hitler (a civilian), would that have been "terrorism?"
Government officials are considered hard targets in wartime.
On the night of May 24, 1856, John Brown and his company of Free State volunteers murdered five men settled along the Pottawatomie Creek in southeastern Kansas. The victims were prominently associated with the pro-slavery Law and Order Party, but were not themselves slave owners. This assault occurred three days after Border Ruffians from Missouri burned and pillaged the anti-slavery haven of Lawrence, and two days after Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner was severely beaten by Senator Preston Brooks of South Carolina.At the Doyle farm, James and two of his sons, William and Drury, were dragged outside and hacked up with short, heavy sabres donated to Brown in Akron, Ohio.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/CONTEXTS/Kansas/jbrown.html
1858 [Lysander Spooner] Writes "A Plan for The Abolition of Slavery (and) To The Non-Slaveholders of the South," a plan to abolish slavery through the use of guerilla forces from both the North and the South. It is not carried out because John Brown fears it would alert the South to his plan of attack.
http://members.aol.com/Dreom/spbio.html
John Brown was certainly familiar with Spooner’s work. Gerrit Smith, Spooner’s benefactor, had been very close to Brown, supplying funds for his stays in Kansas and for the Harper’s Ferry raid. Smith made a point of sending his friends copies of Spooner’s Unconstitutionality of Slavery. John Brown and Spooner met in Boston shortly before Harper’s Ferry. And although he was told little about the details of the raid beforehand, Spooner had confidence in its success and, after the raid, admired Brown as a model of just action.
http://www.lysanderspooner.org/BIOch5.htm
When John Brown failed and was imprisoned, Lysander Spooner made another proposal for a guerilla action. He suggested the capture of Governor Henry Wise of Virginia, who could be held hostage for Brown’s release. Spooner planned an attack by sea through the Chesapeake Bay and James River; this area was already a haven for runaway slaves, smugglers, and others outside the law. A group could reach Richmond, the state capital, and kidnap the governor on his evening walk; once out to sea, they would be relatively safe. John LeBarnes wrote Thomas Wentworth Higginson, November 15, 1859, "LS [Lysander Spooner] called upon me yesterday. His idea has certainly the merit of audacity."
http://www.lysanderspooner.org/BIOch5.htm
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