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What They're Thinking Now... R.A.
Hawkins Click here for columnist bios Lady
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A Family
Of Spies I was a little bored this weekend and noticed something in the Wal-Mart dump bin that looked interesting to me (the movies that cost too much before… how about now? Please? Pretty please?). It was the old miniseries called ‘A Family of Spies’. The moment I saw it I remembered the story and bought it. For those of you who don’t remember it I’ll give you a quick run down. It is the tale of one of the most devastating spy networks we ever experienced, which was run by John Walker. Our encryption technology was sold to the Russians by a man who like just about every other spy had the same kind of problems Clinton did. He just had those urges that he needed to feed all of the time. Like Machiavelli once said “All acts of treason are usually preceded by acts of adultery.” It came close to time for his security clearance to be renewed and he suddenly decided it was time to retire. The KGB isn’t too terribly happy with him because he didn’t discuss it with them before he did it. He does manage to get an old friend to take his place though. He convinces him that the information is going to an ally - ‘Israel’. He tells his friend that they are only concerned as to what our strategic plans are regarding other countries. After he has managed to snare him and has gotten information from him, the poor guy decides to quit and gets a really big pile of bad news. John Walker has ‘just discovered’ that the information has actually been going to the Russians. John tells him that he just found out too. “But we have no way of getting out of this now. We will both go to jail so we will just have to keep going. Besides both sides are always spying on each other and there probably aren’t any real secrets and maybe that’s the way it should be. Maybe it’s safer this way. For some strange reason John Walker’s friend is a little upset with him. In the course of the movie John Walker even manages to get his son on board knowingly selling secrets to the Russians. Towards the end of the movie the ex-wife of John Walker gets up the nerve to tell on her estranged husband. The only reason she decided to do this was to keep her son from becoming corrupted by her ex-husband. She wasn’t going to do anything until she realized that John might try to get him involved. You can tell that everyone involved knew that if she hadn't been aware her son had also been recruited, she wouldn’t have said a thing about it. There is a darker side to the movie that reminds me of that horror tale ‘The Ring’ You’re safe as long as you are willing to ruin someone else to save your own behind. I’m certain some of you are wondering how this can possibly be related to politics in any way. I really felt like I was watching the powerbrokers of the DNC in action. They even received honorable mention when they talked about Kennedy’s daddy being a bootlegger who managed to get his son into the White House. I hate to admit it but I thought of Kerry and his view regarding the war on terror that he now seems to be against, even if he did vote in favor of it in the first place. Like John Walker, the truth becomes whatever you need it to be. As long as you get what you want everything is okay. It is the same mentality that allows the media to talk about welfare and always show a black family, in spite of the fact that most of the people on welfare are white. It is the same thing that allows the media to bring race into the picture when a black reporter gets his rear end in a sling, and remain dead silent when a white guy does the exact same thing. It’s the same as saying Bush is against protecting our air traffic when the real issue was that he didn’t want to create a new collection of impossible to fire liberal voters with a union. It is the same unthinking process that allows the liberals to say they aren’t racist when they block minorities for judicial positions, but when the conservatives do the same thing, even if the guy is white, it is still racism. This all leads me to the best darn television I have ever seen in my life. I was home sick one day and it was on that wonderful day when Clarence Thomas said the liberals were playing up to the image of the black man with the out of control libido. Teddy (drunk’em and drink’em) Kennedy looked like Clarence Thomas had just kneed his personal jewels. He looked like he had been hit in the back of the head with a tennis racket and squirmed like a little kid. It was delicious to say the least. I was rolling on the floor and was cheering as if some guy on crutches had scored a touchdown without getting touched by the other side. I’m enjoying watching Kerry these days when the Hanoi Jane connection is brought up. Oh the webs we weave, when we at first learn to deceive… R.A. Hawkins Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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Lady Liberty's "Their View" Contributors: R.A.
Hawkins Jonathan
David Morris SARTRE |
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Pictures of young men adorn the masthead on the Selective Service website. A surfer dude with his arms outstretched. A black man in a shirt and tie. A guitarist. A cowboy. A pensive wigger with a backwards cap. They're an All-American lot, or at least represent all Americans. Some wear the straight-faced scowls of men who mean business. The rest are smiling wide. "Register Online," it says beneath them in bright yellow letters, as if 18-year-old boys have a choice in the matter. I've never been to the NAMBLA website, but I can't imagine their masthead differs much. Further below, a "Notice" informs us: "Notwithstanding recent stories..., Selective Service is not getting ready to conduct a draft for the U.S. Armed Forces... Rather, the Agency remains prepared to manage a draft if and when the President and the Congress so direct. This responsibility has been ongoing since 1980 and is nothing new." Fair enough. But still, in 1980, we weren't rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2004, we are. That's a point not lost on Nebraskan Sen. Chuck Hagel, who last week suggested we should reinstate the draft after all. "Why shouldn't we ask all of our citizens to bear some responsibility and pay some price?" Hagel wanted to know. Why "shouldn't we" ask our surfer dudes, our black men in shirts and ties -- our guitarists, our cowboys, our pensive wiggers -- to leave behind their hopes and dreams, to risk their lives, to "pay some price" on behalf of people living halfway around the world? It's no secret things are rough right now in Iraq. More American soldiers died in the month of April than in any other month since the start of the war. Some say things are better than they seem on the evening news, and that may be true, but the numbers tell their own story. And again: More American soldiers died in the month of April than in any other month since the start of the war. So even if we're willing to live with the death toll, shouldn't we take a step back -- before starting a draft -- to ask what, exactly, these soldiers are dying for? Is that not the least we can do? It's often said our soldiers are in Iraq "defending our freedoms." Yet our freedoms aren't quite on the line there. And that's not a knock on the soldiers themselves -- their intentions are by and large genuine. But it's a knock on the policy they're executing. The doctrine of preemption's self-defensive qualities have fallen apart. Saddam Hussein didn't have the weapons the world's foremost intelligence agencies claimed. And furthermore, we found him hiding in a goddam hole. The thought of this hobo opening up mushroom clouds over American cities makes Liechtenstein look frightening by comparison. Still, some say, we must stay the course in Iraq. We've got to do what we've got to do. We didn't ask for this war on terror. It was thrust upon us by the "enemies of freedom." That's what we've said all along, isn't it? By 8:30 on the night of September 11, 2001, George Bush had defined the war on terror as a battle between good and evil for the future of all things free. "America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world," he said. But he didn't have to say this for us to believe it. It was obvious to us. The hijackers "hated freedom." That's "why" we were hit. As Americans, we see America and freedom as essentially one in the same. And we sometimes define freedom by our actions instead of the other way around. This hinders our judgment, though. It leads us to justify unjustifiable things. In Iraq last month, we shut down a paper accused of inciting anti-occupation violence. And what did this lead to? Anti-occupation violence, actually. And lots of it. But those who oppose our actions are enemies of freedom and democracy, we say. If they don't like what we're doing, they must be. After all, we've got a First Amendment. By this measure, we also complain about Syrians and Iranians coming into Iraq. We dismiss them as terrorists. Case closed. End of story. But wouldn't we want Georgians and Floridians to join the fight if someone attacked Louisiana? And speaking of which, in Louisiana right now, lawmakers are looking to protect people from -- get this -- lowrider jeans. "I'm sick of seeing it," says State Rep. Derrick Shepherd. And so he's proposing, in American Taliban fashion, fines and jail time for those who show skin. As long as men like Shepherd are running this country, we should lose the "enemies of freedom" shtick. Look: Hijacking planes, bringing down buildings, and killing civilians is never justified. But to say our enemies are necessarily enemies of freedom suggests we, alone, are synonymous with it. It also ignores the fact that our enemies are human beings with human emotions and grievances. Men aren't perfect. They make mistakes and act terribly towards each other. We shouldn't call these people evil. We should call them people, and concentrate, then, on what makes them do evil things. September 11th didn't happen because Bush ignored an intelligence memo, or because Bill Clinton "did nothing" for eight years. As Congressman Ron Paul puts it, "our foreign policy of interventionism," "practiced by both major parties for over a hundred years," is largely to blame. If anything, our government did too much. Indeed, "America's version of the colony is the military base," says Chalmers Johnson. "If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases" in more than 130 countries. I don't know about you, but I'm thinking that sounds like a lot of bases and a lot of countries. And to that end, writes Sheldon Richman, "the claim that the Islamists hate us because 'we love freedom'" doesn't hold up. "If they did, they would say so. Instead, whenever they explain their hatred, they specify U.S. intervention in their societies." So why "shouldn't we" reinstate the draft? The real question is, why should we? Under a post-9/11 microscope, the Iraqi threat -- compounded by 12 years of U.N. resolutions -- looked large. But if our goal is to root out gathering dangers before they, too, come home to roost, we should stop addressing our problems and start attacking their causes. We don't need the U.N. to begin with. Nor do we need a thousand foreign entanglements. They threaten the sovereignty of every country involved -- ours included. And let's not forget we reap what we sow: Saddam and Usama bin Laden were both once CIA goons. We're not the world's policemen. We should stop pretending otherwise. This isn't about "blaming America." It isn't about appeasement. It's about moving forward and leaving this current mess behind. Inasmuch as the war on terror means we're defending our homes from thugs who'd remake us in their image, yes, we should put up a fight. But with our talk of "democratizing" the Middle East, many Arabs think we are the society-sculpting thugs. It doesn't matter if they're right or wrong, or if our will is good. Their grievances are real and they're willing to kill for them. We should protect ourselves from fanatics when necessary, but let their countries solve their own problems -- American lives will be saved both ways. So if we're serious about staying the course in Iraq, and serious when we say we're not an imperial power, we should ditch the idea of a draft. We should pull our troops out of those 130-some-odd countries and send them to the Gulf instead. Free countries shouldn't be forcing guitarists, cowboys, and wiggers to fight if they don't want to. Or better yet, instead of saying "bring 'em on," let's say "bring 'em on home." Our country remains undefended while the men and women who signed up to defend it are kept on bases overseas. They deserve better. And so do we. If Chuck Hagel wants to escalate this war, he and his colleagues can fight it. They call themselves leaders, don't they? Let's see them lead. Jonathan David Morris Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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Most people associate the term America First with foreign policy. While the implication speaks loudly for a pro national stand, most ignore the tradition that Populism is at the core of the movement. In order to understand the heritage, one should examine the most overt aspects of this tradition. Professor Ralph Raico, states the case for an American First foreign policy in his book - The Failure of America’s Foreign Wars. He refers to the following motto used by Richard Cobden, the libertarian theorist of international relations: “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is — in extending our commercial relations — to have with them as little political connection as possible.” While the sordid history of mindless interventionism is widely available, most detractors want to rely upon the canard that isolationism from world affairs is the goal for advocates of the America First philosophy. How insincere, such a reproach is and disingenuous are these critics. Clearly those who accept the wisdom of Washington and Adams, understand that it applies today and has the same validity as when the nation embarked on its unique journey in self governance. So what is the nature of the fear within the internationalist camp, that requires them to deny our own history, distort the facts and often falsify the significance about our heritage? Their dread stems from an aversion toward LIBERTY, especially when it is practiced by individuals of integrity. The populist movement of the late nineteenth century had a strong alignment with rural interests. If Thomas Jefferson championed the populace, William Jennings Bryan spoke for the populist. When Alexander Hamilton advanced the elites, Woodrow Wilson served the masters of internationalism. This conflict in mindset and orientation is at the core of the uninterrupted political struggle. The domestic character in the America First movement, is largely unsung because the shapers of the political culture have gone to great lengths to dispel the meaning of individual sovereignty. Populism is the embodiment of rightful authority. Legitimacy of political institutions rests in the consent of citizens, and has as its only purpose, the benefit and advancement of their interests. Elites and their minions need not apply for positions of privilege. Special treatment, corporate domination and coercive compliance all promote cronyism of the few, over the prosperity of the many. While the control and creation of money was fraudulently expropriated through the Federal Reserve swindle, the convergence of people control was extended with the perpetual war for global domination strategy. For the underlying objective in all internationalism policy is not just the expansion of an empire, but ultimately is the enslavement of each individual. Individual Liberty is the preeminent archenemy of the mattoid elite. Populism represents the pro active political underpinnings that recognizes that the Statist is the supreme enemy of the Republic. Those who lust after power for no other reason than to enrich and protect their own narrow appetites, are the unfeigned problem. The reason that the people must be shielded from the common sense of Populism, is reducible to the fear that elites have, that the regular folk will wake up to the fraud of the two party, one NWO voice, political system. America First is the sensible and honest alternative to the continuous failures of the last century. The reason is simple. More of your friends, neighbors and family would become empowered to attain the fruits of the national dream, when they are able to live their lives as free and responsible citizens. Yes, an America First mindset, invokes obligations. But our mutual duty is directed towards people, not government. Only individuals possess rights. The State exists to serve the real master of government; namely the people. Don’t be confused that genuine Populism promotes any form of “collectivism”. The emphasis is always on what will enhance the interests of the individual. Society never has the authority to claim they can establish subjugation for the ‘common good’. The test of validity for domestic policies will accept the standard that government must be controlled and not be the controller. That is why the definition within the name of America First is so appropriate. The point that the government is NOT the nation, has been made repeatedly. It is time to put that theme into practice. The Corporate/State axis is the evil twin. The solution is restoring a real free enterprise economy and scale back and severely limit the role of central government. That is the goal for Populism. It is the American tradition and it deserves to be put FIRST, whenever public policy is considered. So when you hear the smears against the only sane and prudent course, ask who benefits from those cat calls and who profits from that policy? The Republic is now dead with the enactment of the Patriot Act and now the Homeland Defense Act. Nothing illustrates more animus towards the prospects of freedom than these domestic draconian dictates of the elites. Populism is the political answer, American First is the correct policy, and Liberty is its eternal reward. Laugh in the face of the toadies for the elites. Virtuous and honest citizens know better. America First is your legacy! Can you count yourself among their ranks? Will you defend it or will you continue to pay trubute to the illicit betrayers of our Constitutional Republic? Published originally at EtherZone.com; republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact. SARTRE Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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