White Flag Warrior

Anti-Statism, Imperialism, Pop Culture, Reviews, War
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There’s a new anti-war rock/hip-hop song hitting the air waves lately. It is called White Flag Warrior, from the album Survival Story, by Flobots and featuring Tim McIlrath of the punk rock band Rise Against. It’s a catchy tune with good lyrics, melding both rock and hip hop elements. The song has a definite non-violent resistance ring to it. The oft repeated line that “we’d rather make our children martyrs than murderers” reminds me of the Socratic position that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it — truly libertarian sentiments.

Music video and lyrics below:

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Dishonorable

The Right, Vulgar Politics, War
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The new website, “Honor Freedom,” is an example of conservatism at its most witless. It is an attempt to organize Americans to rehabilitate the reputation of George W. Bush.

The site’s author makes much of this “war president” and his alleged contributions towards our “freedom,” but what I remember about Bush is this: Prior to 9/11/01, Bush hardly uttered the word “freedom.”

His campaign chant may have been “A new freedom,” but it was just as duplicitous as Woodrow Wilson’s so-called “New Freedom.” That is, it had little to do with freedom. Wilson defended “free enterprise” when running for office, but defined this mainly by being a trust-buster. (Dubious honor in that.) Bush was for “free enterprise” mainly by pushing for decreased tax rates, but once in office he increased regulations, subsidies and encouraged the spendthrifts in Congress. (His veto power lied dormant, for the most part; federal spending ballooned.)

It’s mere pretense to suppose that increasing foreign military involvement abroad increases our “freedom.” But Bush wrapped himself up in the word, after 9/11, pretending that terrorists could take away our freedoms easier than could the government that he himself headed. The 9/11 attack, remember, took away lives, not freedoms as such. It was the government response — his response — that managed to take away freedoms.

And thus Bush played into Osama bin Laden’s game plan. Osama had extrapolated from his work in undermining the Soviet Union that, by organizing attacks upon America, the U.S. federal government would so overreact as to jeopardize its own position, transforming imperial America into imperious America, making it truly loathsome and thus easier to raise recruits among opponents, converting them to terrorism.

George W. Bush thus served as Osama bin Laden’s Useful Idiot. His reputation deserves not rehabilitation but a more thorough and generally acknowledged destruction.

Death to tyrants. Ignominy to fools.

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Favorite wars, favorite secessions

The Basics, War
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One way of identifying a person’s ideology is by referencing that person’s “favorite war.”

If you can get your average American to admit that both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars were wars against secession, the next heady notion to contemplate is that, just perhaps, the U.S. took the wrong side on at least one of them.

I’d guess that most Americans’ favorite war is World War II. Americans fought against three obvious evil empires (Nazi, Italian fascist, and the Rising Sun), and, in the end brought them down. The worst thing most people I’ve talked to will admit of the war is that “three out of four ain’t bad” — recognizing that the U.S allied itself with the worst of the four regimes then extant, and then fought a Cold War for forty-some years because of that dangerous alliance.

But surely the Civil War has nearly as many (or more) “buffs.” And the Civil War certainly exerts a great deal of influence over our (varying) sense(s) of allegiance.

For instance, I often talk up secession, refer to it as a basic right and an obvious foundational aspect to any free federal union. It may be traumatic, but it is as necessary as divorcing an abusive spouse, or as satisfying as telling a crazy boss to “Take this job and shove it.” The usual argument against secession is a knee-jerk “but the Civil War settled that” routine. How many times have I heard this? Must be dozens.

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Was the American Revolution Really about Taxes?

Anti-Statism, War
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Albert Esplugas blogs the following magnificent quote from Niall Ferguson’s Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power:

Schoolchildren and tourists are still taught the story of the American Revolution primarily in terms of economic burdens. In London, the argument runs, the government wanted some recompense for the cost of expelling the French from North America in the Seven Years War, and of maintaining a 10.000 strong army to police the disgruntled Indians beyond the Appalachian mountains, who had tended to side with the French. The upshot was new taxes. On close inspection, however, the real story is one of taxes repealed, not taxes imposed.

(…) In January 1770 a new government in Britain, under the famously unprepossessing Lord North, lifted all the new duties except the one on tea. Still the protests in Boston continued.

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Obama Does One Decent Thing: Cuts Space Budget

Science, Taxation, Technology, War
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Obama has done one decent thing and moved to cut funds to the space program. Neil Armstrong has condemned Obama for it. There are two thoughts that immediately come to me as a result: 1. “So what?” and 2. “Who cares what Neil Armstrong thinks?”

Arguments in favor of the space program are based on two things: sentimentalism and militarism. The militaristic argument is the more sophisticated one. The space program, behind its veneer of civilian purpose, has always been a military program founded to improve rocket technology, and eventually, to provide the United States with military superiority over space itself. The sentimentalism is the rationale that most Americans subscribe to as they get misty eyed over fantasies about “the human spirit” and “destiny” and all those other concepts from Hollywood adventure films.

From a pragmatic point of view, the space program is nothing more than a massive socialist spending program with militaristic intent, but which benefits handsomely from hysterical and maudlin appeals to hope in the government’s ability to accomplish anything provided enough time and taxpayers’ loot. …

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