by
Fred Reed
Recently
by Fred Reed:
Sanctifying Pedro
How does one
tell whether one is living in a dictatorship, or almost? The signs
need not be so obvious as having a squat little man raving from
balconies. Methinks the following indicators serve. In a dictatorship:
(1) Sweeping
laws are made without reference to the will of the people. A few
examples follow. Whether you think these laws desirable is not the
point. Some will, others won’t. The point is that they were
simply imposed from above. Many of them would never have survived
a national vote.
Start with
Roe vs. Wade, making abortion legal, and subsequent decisions allowing
late-term abortion. Griggs versus Duke Power, forbidding employers
from using tests of intelligence, since certain groups scored poorly.
Brown versus the School Board and its offspring requiring forced
integration, forced busing, racial quotas, and so on. The decision
that Creationism cannot be mentioned in the schools. Decisions forbidding
the public expression of Christianity. The decision that citizens
can be stopped and searched without probable cause. The opening
of the borders to mass immigration.
These are major,
major laws grossly altering the social, legal, and constitutional
fabric of the country. All were simply imposed, mostly by unelected
judges against whom there is no recourse.
Note that there
is no practical distinction between a decision by the Supreme Court,
a regulation made by an executive bureaucracy, and a practice quietly
adopted by the intelligence agencies and federal police. None of
these requires public approval.
For that matter,
consider the militarization of the police, the creation of Homeland
Security’s Viper teams that randomly search cars, the vast
and growing spying on Americans by government, and the genital gropings
by TSA. Consider the endless undeclared wars that one finds out
often only after the troops have been sent. All simply imposed from
above.
In principle,
elected officials represent the desires of their electorates. In
practice Congress barely touches on most issues of concern to the
public. Overturning any of the aforementioned types of laws is virtually
impossible.
(2) Another
measure of dictatorship is the extent to which the people fear the
government. A time was when governmental official in general, and
the police in particular, had to be cautious in pushing the citizenry
around. A justified complaint to the chief of police brought consequences.
Today the police can do as they please, and you have no recourse.
The new aggressiveness applies especially to federal police. If
you object to excessive intrusion by agents of TSA, they will make
sure you miss your flight. In principle you can complain, but in
practice the effect is zero.
(3) Dictatorships
characteristically watch the citizenry very carefully, using the
secret police and encouraging people to inform on each other. Both
are now routine. Did you vote to have your email read, your telephone
calls recorded, your browsing habits on the web turned over to the
NSA or the FBI? No. And you have no recourse.
To one raised
in a freer United States, it is astonishing to hear on the subway
of Washington, DC constant admonitions to watch one’s fellow
passengers and report “suspicious behavior.”
Another source
of deliberate intimidation is the IRS. This police agency is not
dreaded because people are cheating on their taxes – few are,
and those are usually smart enough not to get caught. People fear
the IRS because it can arbitrarily wreck their lives, invade their
premises, demand endless documentation that few have, and run up
penalties and interest for crimes which weren’t committed and
which the IRS doesn’t have to prove.
You have no
recourse. You may win in the end, but tax lawyers are expensive,
as IRS well knows, and in any event the intent is not to collect
taxes owed but to punish. As has been documented, Mr. Obama’s
administration employs IRS for exactly this.
The IRS gains
its punitive leverage from the fact that it is impossible to know
what taxes you owe and simply pay them. Years back, Money
magazine sent a “moderately complex” tax return to fifty
tax preparers, from big-league to small potatoes. They produced
widely varying results, with only two in Money’s opinion getting
the right answer. If tax specialists can’t tell how much you
owe, neither can you. This means that in practice you are always
vulnerable.
(4) Lack of
constitutional government. This is not the same as lack of a constitution.
The Soviet Union had an admirable constitution. It just paid no
attention to it.
The American
constitution says that Congress must declare war in order for our
forces to be deployed. This last happened in 1941. The president
now sends American forces wherever he wants, whenever he wants.
The Fifth Amendment
forbids self-incrimination, which means confessions obtained under
torture. Obama’s administration openly tortures prisoners of
war, a de facto withdrawal of the country from the Geneva Convention.
The Fourth
Amendment provides “The right of the people to be secure
in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable
searches and seizures, shall not be violated….” If
you are a conservative strict constructionist, you can argue that
the Constitution does not mention telephones, the internet, or computers,
and that therefore the government has the right to monitor all of
these. A liberal might argue that RAM, the Internet, and computers
are the equivalent of papers etc. It doesn’t matter who argues
what. The government spies on all.
The First Amendment
guarantees freedom of the press. Again, the Obama administration
uses the intelligence apparatus of the state to monitor the communications
of reporters. This is highly intimidating, which is the intent.
The fear of being monitored has a profoundly chilling effect on
the willingness of sources to say anything to reporters that the
government might not like. This is a major step toward the controlled
press usual in dictatorships.
Officials in
the current administration have said that if you are not doing anything
wrong, the monitoring should not cause fear. Only criminals need
worry.
This is dangerous
for at least two reasons. First is the mindlessness of anonymous
and unaccountable bureaucrats. For example, as a journalist I have
run Google searches on explosives, on pathogens usable in biological
warfare, on the concealability of nuclear weapons, and on the synthesis
of nerve agents. Some computer program could kick this out as evidence
of probable terroristic intent, and FBI agents would show up with
their usual blend of pathological wholesomeness, arrogance, and
love of power.
The other reason
is that the government inevitably will abuse its knowledge. Knowing
the peculiar sexual tastes or amorous strayings of political opponents,
or their smoking of an occasional joint, provides great leverage
over them. In some circles, this is known as “blackmail.”
If this isn’t
quite dictatorship, we are rapidly getting there. Wait a few years.
June
26, 2013
Fred Reed
is author of Nekkid
in Austin: Drop Your Inner Child Down a Well, A
Brass Pole in Bangkok: A Thing I Aspire to Be, Curmudgeing
Through Paradise: Reports from a Fractal Dung Beetle, Au
Phuc Dup and Nowhere to Go: The Only Really True Book About Viet
Nam, and A
Grand Adventure: Wisdom’s Price-Along with Bits and Pieces about
Mexico. Visit his
blog.
Copyright
© 2013 Fred Reed
This article originally appeared on: Lew Rockwell