The Father of Lies

I wondered why Satan was called "the Father of Lies." Surely there are much worse things than a lie? Murder, theft, destruction? Certainly, they must be. And certainly, they are.

Indeed there are things far, far worse than a simple lie. But still, lying – especially that lie to yourself known as self-deception – comes first, before those other, much worse things. Lying, self-deception, is the father of all crime.

Dante Alighieri, author of The Divine Comedy, understood, when he wrote of the two fundamental sins that existed in all levels of his Inferno: forza, violence and force, and forda, fraud. Those who committed fraud he damned to the lowest level of Hell. Did he, in a sense, think lying worse that murder? I think so, because the lie comes before the murder.

Although Dante did not clearly spell it out, he is right. Before anyone can commit a crime against anyone, the one thing he must do is dehumanize him, turn him into a thing. The first thing any criminal must do is lie to himself – rationalize, even if unconsciously – that his victim isn't fully human, and as such deserved what he got. The criminal must commit a fraud against himself before he can commit a crime against others. The first crime, the first sin, is against himself.

You cannot murder someone whom you realize is a human being. But you can kill a human when you ignore his humanity and devalue him to a thing. When a soldier presses a button to send a missile to kill not only enemy combatants, but innocent women and children, the only way he can do it is if he lies to himself, and rationalizes, that he doing the Right Thing. He has to deny the humanity of those he is about to kill. The lie comes first, the crime, second. Self-deception is the father to the crime.

Self-deception is the way we are made, part of our fallen natures. As such, it can be used against us. That is the purpose of propaganda: to make us deceive ourselves into thinking we are Noble and Pure and Good, and our enemies (who yesterday might have been, and tomorrow, might be, our allies) are Evil. And being evil, of course they are not completely human, and therefore can safely be annihilated. But they are human, and evil only in our deluded minds.

This self-deception, this fraud we commit against ourselves, can have consequences which most cannot predict. Some can, though. One who could was Dostoevski, when he wrote of the effects of lying to yourself in The Brothers Karamazov:

"...above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lies comes to such a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no self-respect he ceases to love. And in order to distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures and sinks to bestiality in his vices – all this from continually lying to other men and himself."

Dostoevski, like Dante, is right: that fraud against yourself that is self-deceit, when taken to an extreme, is a crime against yourself. Such self-deception is also a crime against others, for it ultimately devalues them into things, and in that devaluation there disappears that simple awareness of the humanity of others known as agape.

Those who truly lie to themselves become unable to tell truth from lies. Can such a person truly respect himself or others? I think not. He sees others as things, not completely human. He has no respect for them, no simple agape. His lack of respect for himself he must cover with Hubris, the false conviction that only he is right and no one else.

That simple declaration, that Satan is the Father of Lies, is a profound observation. It applies to everyone, and most especially, to those who use political power to rule others, for they, in my opinion, always give way to passions and coarse pleasures and sink to bestiality in their vices. Even if they delude themselves their passions and coarse pleasures and vices – political power and war and murder and theft and Hubris – are really virtues.

The Ten Commandmants of Lucifer

If for nothing else, George Orwell will always be known for his pithy observations about the inverted moralities that characterize all States: War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, Slavery is Freedom. If he were alive today, and 1984 unwritten, he might want to add a few more: Destruction is Creation, Murder is Life, and Stealing is Saving.

As much as I like 1984, it's not particularly concise as a playbook for tyrants. Even as slender and informative as Machiavelli's The Prince is, I want something that would fit on one page. Better yet, I want something I can write on my palm.

A perversion of the Ten Commandments would do nicely.

As ancient as they are, the Ten Commandments wouldn't have endured millennia if they weren't the basis for every peaceful and prosperous society. All societies have moral codes that embody at least some of them, even if in a secular version. Who besides a thief can argue with "Don't steal" and a psychopath with "Don't murder"? Exactly how long would any society last that celebrated death and destruction?

And being there are only ten Commandments, even a fool can memorize them. Since the human race can be pretty foolish, this is unarguably a good thing. It's probably the reason there are only ten. Even the most enstupidated of dunces can not only memorize them, but understand them.

If these ten rules are the basis of every successful society, to have an unsuccessful society all we have to do is invert them. Voil�! – the Ten Commandments of Lucifer. Would not every tyrant in history be impressed by instructions that would fit on a 3 x 5 inch notecard?

At the top of the list of the Commandments is the one about not worshipping "strange gods." I've always liked those two words, which bring to my mind monsters oozing out of an H.P. Lovecraft story. And why would people in their right minds worship Dark Forces like Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, or Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat with a Thousand Young? If they were, they wouldn't.

Unfortunately, we aren't, so we do. We believe in Strange Gods, only in the most non-fictional of forms – the State. In the 20th century it was the strangest, most seductive and most monstrous of Strange Gods, one that while literally non-existent (as all ghosts are), turned out to be such a horror that 177 million people disappeared into its maw. It might be as many as 200 million. But who keeps records on peasants?

The clearest and easiest-to-understand definition of the State I've run across is that it is the Political Means. So simple, yet so few understand it. Sometimes, even those who understand it don't believe it. A monster stands before them, all grinning fangs and blood-soaked claws, and to them it's as invisible as the Krell's Monster from the Id in Forbidden Planet.

The Political Means are threats, coercion, theft and killing. All States are based upon them. Indeed, they are them. When it comes to those things, all States are not only Strange Gods, but Jealous Gods. They reserve those things to itself and call it the Law. Sometimes these Strange Gods try to speak softly, but the claw is always curled inside the glove, ready to unsheath itself.

Eternally opposed to the Political Means of the State are the Economic Means of Society. It's the difference between stealing and peaceable trade, between coercion and persuasion. General Motors cannot start a war and draft people to fight it, yet the State believes it has those rights.

I am forbidden from murdering even one person, but the State believes it can murder millions. The first I cannot do, because I have a conscience, but ultimately, the State, for all its lies to the contrary, has neither conscience nor morality. What monster does?

This eternal fight between the State and Society, between coercion and persuasion, between stealing and trading, between destruction and creation, fits the archetype of the horror story: the Chaos of the State always attempting to intrude of the natural Order of Society. Every time the State enlarges, Blob-like, Society always suffers.

The inversion of the First Commandment – "You shall worship Strange Gods" – always leads to the horrors that come from being unable to tell that a monster is just that, a monster. Evil always disguises itself as Good. These days, Satan wears a three-piece suit.

Some argue one of those Strange Gods is the Nation, but I counter it is the State. Nations are organized around the Economic Means, unlike the Political Means of all States. Unfortunately it's a truism that rulers of States always try to convince citizens the State and the Nation are the same thing. When people believe it, they always fall prey to what is included in some versions of the First Commandment: "You will not bow down to them, or serve them, for I am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation."

Either a Jealous God, or a Jealous Monster. The first, it appears, is to prevent the second.

Translated into something a little less orotund, what we have are some simple yet profound observations about history: Believe in Strange Gods – in the idols that are always monsters – and they will kill you and your children and your children's children. In the 20th century alone, the belief in the idol of the State led to World War I, which lead to World War II, which led to Korea and Vietnam and the First Gulf War and now the Second, which in reality is World War III.

If Orwell were alive, he might write that in the world of 1984 the First Commandment could be altered to, "God is Satan."

If the truth will set you free, lies will kill you.

The Second Commandment is usually mistranslated as "You will not take the name of God in vain." It has nothing to do with cursing. The correct translation is, "You will not use God's name for vain causes." Because if you do, the bit about the "inequity of the fathers" and the "children to the third and fourth generation" goes into effect.

The vainest of causes, again in the 20th century, has been – again – the belief in the State. Believe in the State, believe that God supports it – whether you call it "God and Country" or "Gott mit uns" or "Holy Mother Russia" or whatever other delusion you can come up with – and you'll end up murdered every time. Think Stalingrad, in which "Gott mit uns" went up against "Holy Mother Russia" and more people were killed than in all of America's wars combined.

The Orwellian inversion of "You will not murder" could be "Murder is Life." People are prohibited from murder, yet States exempt themselves from that commandment, always claiming that war is ultimately about peace and life. If that was true, then we wouldn't have war after war after war.

"You will not steal," when inverted, could be "Stealing is saving." An individual thief will almost always deceive himself and rationalize his theft. States do the same thing. Taxes, they claim, are the burden we pay for "a civilized society." Hardly. In reality they create poor people. Or "inflation creates job." Only a monster can, with a straight face, say that stealing the value of money saves jobs and increases employment.

One wag commented that "Honor your father and mother" does not require that you love them. At the very least, respect them because they raised you. But there is nothing in that Commandment about honoring your rulers. It doesn't read, "Honor the King and the President."

You might also want to take a look at the warnings in 1 Samuel 8, in which the Israelites decided to go with a King instead of their God. Samuel warns them the King will take their sons and daughters, and their property (which he will give to his advisors), and tax them, and make "instruments of war." And when they cry out, neither the King nor God will listen.

It brings a smile when I think of "You will not bear false witness against your neighbor." That Commandment doesn't say you can't lie. If we couldn't there wouldn't be a Tooth Fairy or an Easter Bunny. Or a Santa Claus, either. It just says you cannot lie about your neighbor, something that States are masters at when they want to start wars. Examples? Hitler claiming Poland was going to attack Germany, and a na�ve if sincere President insisting the dictator of a Third World cesspool was going to fly Drones of Death across the ocean.

"Remember the Sabbath Day; keep it holy." Personally, I'd rather work one day and loaf the other six, for I am truly heroically lazy. But States, believing the citizens belong to them, subscribe to what Mussolini said about Fascism: everything inside the State, nothing outside. If the State had its way, we'd be on duty 24/7, ready to sacrifice our lives for its Satanic glory. This might be more tolerable if I got some of the swag from whatever wars I had to fight, but I never will. The rulers always stuff their pockets full of booty, though. It sounds more like a organized crime racket than anything else, with me with my nose pressed up against the window like Tiny Tim, on the outside looking in at all the boodle.

"You will not commit adultery." Although it concerns cheating on one's spouse, there can be another meaning. The word "adultery" means to join together two things that shouldn't be joined together. The joining of Nation and State is adultery. For a person to join himself to the State, even if he thinks it's his nation that he's joining, is adultery.

Not coveting your neighbor's house, wife, manservant, maidservant, ass or anything else is an injunction against envy. As Helmet Schoek has pointed out in his magisterial Envy, that emotion has been the cause of more trouble than anything else in history. The whole State is essentially based on envy: take, by force, from those who have more and give to those who have less. Whether or not those who have less actually work is irrelevant.

Procrustes, the legendary Greek robber, is an amusing if horrific example of "giving" and "taking." Anybody who entered his house was "adjusted" to fit the bed. Those too long had their legs chopped off; those too short were stretched. Everyone became equal, although at a cost none of the victims wanted. Complete equality always has a price. It's not a good one. It never is.

The story of the Garden of Eden is a short tale about the destruction that envy can wreak. The Serpent, a symbol of envy, wants to bring down Adam and Eve because they are the most favored of God. The lesson is that envy is what brings evil into the world.

Let's run through all this again and put it in short form. If you want to have a Hell on Earth, do this:

Believe in the State. Murder, steal and lie for it. Devote your life to it. Covet whatever goods belong to what the State defines as its enemy.

Those aren't even a devilish Ten Commandments. They're four. I wouldn't need my palm to write them on; I could use my thumb.

Of course, the true meaning will be softened through the corruption of words. True meanings always are. That's what propaganda is: always being told we should "Support our country and defend it from enemies." What is almost always defended, though, is not the country, but the State. I'll defend my country; I won't defend the State. And I do know the difference, unlike your typical armchair-warrior chickenhawk.

The list above is generally defined as "patriotism," a word which I have decided is not the last refuge of scoundrels, but the first. I happen to like the flag, but I'll never trust anyone who wraps himself in it.

All religions agree that people are asleep. I believe it. If they weren't, they wouldn't be blindly following Strange Gods, heading not into ditches but instead knitting great big handbaskets and topping over cliffs straight into Hell.

King Tries-to-do-Right

Many people ask me, "What is the answer to all the troubles of the world?" I reply, "Fear not, and cheer up; the answers are all around." Then I direct them to (among other things) the movie, The Princess Bride. Because one of those answers is to smile, and sometimes the first step to an answer is to ridicule those who caused the problem.

Here we have a tale of art reflecting life, only as a satire, so we can laugh at it. And humor, to steal a phrase from Ray Bradbury, is a Medicine for Melancholy (although in his story the Medicine for Melancholy didn't have anything to do with laughing, although once you find out what it is, it will make you laugh. So it does have something to do with laughing. Or at least sniggering.).

But I digress, which I do a lot. Most of the time, actually.

In the movie, which is based on the novel of the same name by William Goldman, we have a King who is good-hearted and sincere, but senile. Ha ha! I know what you're thinking! You're thinking I'm going to compare him to Dubya! And you know what? You'd be right!

Except I don't consider Dubya to be senile, just an uneducated and incurious Ivy League bumpkin, one who, somehow, became President. I suspect even he's puzzled how it happened. No, I take that back. He's not puzzled. Like the Kings of old, he thinks God chose him.

But in the movie, the King, being senile, doesn't have a clue that the Evil Prince is plotting both war and the overthrow of the King. Yikes! That sure sounds familiar, doesn't it? Here we have a President who apparently has little clue what the Prince Wannabees around him are doing. (Incidentally, in the movie it's not the King who can't talk straight – it's Peter Cook as the Impressive Clergyman.)

Okay, you caught me. The Evil Princes are the neocons. But it was pretty obvious, wasn't it? But it is still a little scary (and a little funny, too) that what is going on in the administration can be discerned from a satire about a King and a Prince and a Princess and a Hero and a Villain! (Aesop and the Brothers Grimm were right: the whole world is just a fable and a fairy tale. Figure them out, and you have the Key.)

The Main Villain in the movie, one Prince Humperdinck (Christopher Sarandon), wants to rule his home country of Florin, which is currently ruled by the senile geezer King Lotharon. I'll make it easy here: Humperdinck = neocons, Florin = US, and King Lotharon = Dubya.

Prince Neocon, oops, I mean Humperdinck, tells his subjects, um, I mean citizens, that the neighboring Kingdom of Guilder is evil. (Of course, Guilder = Afghanistan and Iraq.) His sheeple, I mean citizens, believe this, as they always do.

I have a theory about sheeple, which I got from cartoons (honestly, I did). Cartoon Villains, who always want to conquer the world, always have an amiable but stupid sidekick, who does their bidding. These sidekicks represent Mass Man, because the more people you get together, the less the intelligence. Worse, mobs don't operate by the same rules as individuals. They're more demonic than human (I am always reminded of the quote, "My name is Legion, for there are many of us.").

Humperdinck hires a Minor Villain named Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) to kidnap Princess Buttercup (Robin Wright) and blame it on Guilder. Now, let's see, who could Vizzini represent? Arrogant and stupid, overconfident and incompetent, interfering in the affairs of foreign Kingdoms . . .the CIA, maybe?

Vizzini hires two men to help him: the drunken Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patikin), who is bent on revenge, and the hulking but good-natured brute Fezzik (Andre the Giant) who really doesn't want to hurt anyone. The most important thing about them is that they switch sides in an instant, thereby turning against their former employers. That's wisdom the CIA should have listened to before unloading oodles of cash on those Afghan warlords! And for that matter – heh heh heh – before they created Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Humperdinck plans on marrying Princess Buttercup and strangling her on their wedding night. He believes these two outrages, which he will blame on Guilder, will incite the sheeple to war against Guilder. And, you know, he's right. Tell the sheeple some Evil Kingdom has done terrible something to them, and they'll go to war every time.

One of Humperdinck's Evil Advisors is the cruel, heartless Dr. Mengeleish Count Rugen (Christopher Guest), who is all brains and no compassion. And in the long run, no guts, either. I suppose you could say he's an example of how those in thrall to power and the State see others as guinea pigs on which to experiment.

The parallels of the part of the movie dealing with the machinations of the attack with today's situation are not exact. But they're pretty darn close. Past (and the present) administrations didn't purposely goad other Kingdoms into attacking us. What they did, Vizzini/CIA-like, is interfere in the affairs of other lands until some of the people got upset enough to send a little blowback our way.

The parallels, however, are more precise in the past, as when Woodrow Wilson loaded munitions onto passenger ships until the Germans sank one, and even worse, when Roosevelt goaded the Japanese into attacking us by cutting off their oil and sending the Flying Tigers against them in China. So the satire holds up, as all good satires do.

Something exists in the movie that rarely exists in real life. That's a Hero. In the movie, it's Westley (Cary Elwes), a lowly farmboy turned Hero. Now what can that mean? A lowly farmboy becomes a Hero . . . not someone from Harvard or Yale . . . not any of the "Best and Brightest" who got us into World War I, and World War II, and Vietnam. Dang, that sure sounds like a smack at egghead academics who spell out all three of their names.

Westly is humble, competent and brave, unlike Humperdinck and Vizzini, who are various combinations of Hubris, cowardice, incompetence and stupidity. To this I say: uh oh, because the point is that those who want to conquer the world (like our necons) are arrogant, incompetent, stupid, and cowardly.

Westly, being a Hero, defends the weak against the strong (who in this case, just also happen to be evil, which is an example of that saying, "Power is the horse that evil rides."). And the reason that Westly rescues the Princess Bride is because of Love, something that none of the Villains have the slightest clue about.

Along the way Westly unfortunately falls into the claws of Count Rugen, who turns him into "mostly dead." He is resurrected by the magic of Miracle Max (Billy Crystal), a gnome of a wizard who brings him back to life with a bellows in the mouth and a gooey pill twice the size of a golfball. ("Hey, you in there," Max asks Westly's mostly corpse, "What you got to live for?" "True Love," Westly replies. And what Wesley said is one of the answers to one of the problems.)

Okay, so if Dubya = King, Florin = US, Guilder = Afghanistan and Iraq, neocons = Humperdinck and Rugen, Vizzini = CIA, Inigo and Fezzik = CIA turncoats, then who exactly is the Hero today?

Since Humperdinck and Rugen want control of the State, and to conquer their little section of the world, then the modern day Heroes are those who oppose the State. They're the ones who see through the war. But that's what Heroes always do, though.

Heroes will always be underdogs (like Underdog) because they always have to contend with Mass Man, who in their enstupidiment generally fall for the spells of the Villains. It's not that the Children of Darkness are more clever than the Children of Light. It's that the mass of people can't tell one from the other. Get enough people together, and they couldn't find their collective butt with all their hands.

The Heroes will always have problems before them – scaling the Cliffs of Insanity, battling Rodents of Unusual Size, and facing torture in the Pit of Despair. Not to mention the Shrieking Eels. But, like Westly, they always say, "I can take it." That's what the Hero on a Quest always encounters, and what he always says.

Because, in the long run, the Villains are always defeated. They will, like Humperdinck, give up, or like Count Rugen, run away.

There's no such myth as "the Villain on a Quest." They've got no place to go, even though they don't know it, and certainly won't believe it. They're always at a dead-end. It's always "the Hero on a Quest."

The Westlys of the world understand this. The Humperdincks and the Rugens, never.

Measure for Measure

I am a believer in Natural Law: law is discovered, not created. My jumping out of an airplane without a parachute is the immediate application of the Natural Law about the intersection of gravity and stupidity. My beliefs about floating like a soap bubble, except in my dreams, are irrelevant.

Some laws, like the above one, are immediate. Others, unfortunately, take a while, sometimes years or even decades, to manifest themselves. Let's take the example of the mass killing of innocents in war. Some – sometimes many – support this as an unpleasant necessity during wartime. It's not.

These supporters of mass murder forget this saying: "In the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you" (Matthew 7:2). Quickly following that comment is this one: "First take the log out of your own eye, and you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye" (Matthew 7:5).

What we do to people will be done to us. It might take years, but as is said, "What goes around, comes around." The cause-and-effect isn't hard to trace, but unfortunately, what goes around often comes back around to the innocent. It was applied to the innocent in the first place.

Let's look at just one thing the US government has done in the not-so-distant past. It dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, when the Japanese were trying to surrender, but not unconditionally, as the US demanded. The bomb at Nagasaki, unknown to many, wiped out one-seventh of Japan's Christians.

Not allowing the Japanese to negotiate a more dignified surrender extended the war by a few unnecessary weeks, leading to the deaths of many thousands more. That's not the point, though.

The point is that these days, those who are attacking the US use those two bombs to justify what they have done. They say, "You see the mass murder you have done to others? Who are you to complain about the mass murder done to you?"

One of the defendants in the first WTC bombing (when the towers didn't fall) stood before the judge and specifically mentioned the US dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He essentially said, "Who are you to complain about your innocent people being killed when your country has done the same to far more innocent people in the past?" The measure by which the US has judged others in the past now returns to us.

Killing innocent people, whether one or many, is a violation of the Commandment, "You will not murder." Those four words are why it's easy to trace cause-and-effect. "Murder will out," a phrase first used in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales but noticed as far back as the ancient Greeks, is as true now as then; the crime always shows itself, and it always comes back. It comes back far worse when it's mass murder in war.

Most Americans were as shocked as could be when the WTC was attacked. Some weren't. I wasn't, not particularly, although I never expected another attack on the twin towers. I suspected some kind of blowback was coming because of the US's interference in the rest of the world, with its supporting "friendly" dictators and their programs of the oppression, torture, and murder of their own people.

Even those in the administration were shocked, and they shouldn't have been. They failed miserably at their job, even with all the billions of dollars at their disposal. Why did they fail? For one thing, they forgot about the log in their own eye. "We attacked Iraq a decade ago when it didn't attack us, we attacked Panama, we attacked Serbia, we have made a history of supporting some of the worst dictators in the world . . . I don't understand why they attacked us. It must be because we are good and they are evil." Hardly.

And all because these foolish, puzzled people forgot four simple words: "You will not murder." That Natural Law applies not only to individuals, but also to governments. Governments always think they can exempt themselves from that law, even though none can. I suppose those in government pride themselves on realpolitik and their understanding of the world. In reality they're crackpots; they understand nothing. They learn nothing, otherwise they won't keep making the same mistakes over and over, for decades. Are they clueless about human nature? Without a doubt.

It certainly appears one of the inherent characteristics of government is that those under its spell all have permanent logs in their eyes. Both. As a result, none ever understand that what they deal to other people, sooner or later will be dealt back to them. Unfortunately, overwhelmingly, it's the innocent citizens who get the payback.

Killer Ants From Space

The Greeks had a myth about what the State considered the perfect soldier – an ant. These ant soldiers were called Myrmidons. They didn't question orders, they didn't think, they just fought and died.

Every portrayal of soldiers I have read in all those dystopian science-fiction novels I read all the time are just updated versions of that old myth. Portrayals of the military didn't used to be this way.

We can use as an example Robert Heinlein's novel, Starship Troopers, which was made into a movie that, although it has the same name, has little in common with the novel. In fact, it is a degenerated version of the book.

The late Heinlein was strongly libertarian in his writings, although his support of the military has caused some to label him fascist. They're wrong. Heinlein was far from a pure libertarian, but he was in no way a fascist.

In his novel he supported a purely voluntary military, easy to get out of, but very hard to stay in. Why? He only wanted the most motivated soldiers. The book supports the old military virtues of honor, pride, loyalty and patriotism.

In some ways it is a silly book, with depictions of terribly wounded soldiers who aren't supposed to make a sound, but overall, Heinlein's world is one in which I could live.

Then there's the movie. It shows the difference between Heinlein's 1950's idealized view of the military, and Paul Verhoeven's mocking, satirical 1990's one. The society in the movie is what I call "soft" fascist – the world is starting to become politicized and militarized. As a result, the military has started to degenerate.

I suspect the more politicized and militarized a society, the more fascistic it becomes, and the more its military will degenerate, because of the loss of the true military virtues, which are contrary to fascism. Heinlein's strongly libertarian novel was some 40 years later turned into a fascistic movie. Such is the change in the view of artists toward the military, in a short time.

Most artists are, in a way, prophets. They have a sensitivity, and an imagination, that oftentimes allows them to predict the future, not specifically, but in a general way. Science fiction is specifically about predicting the future. In its history it's done a pretty good job. It's usually about 50 years ahead of society.

I think another reason is that most writers, and especially science fiction writers, are somewhat anarchistic. The imagination, the sensitivity, and the anarchism together gives them a leg up on everyone else, because they have a pretty clear view of the State and the damage it causes to whatever it gets its tentacles into.

Currently, science fiction's depiction of the military is very disturbing. There are three trends in modern science fiction that all should pay attention to: nanotechnology, designer drugs, and genetic engineering. Especially when the military-industrial complex gets its paws on them, because it will try to use them to produce Myrmidon supersoldiers – killer ants from space.

The first example that comes to my mind is the movie Blade Runner, which was about artificial, genetically engineered humans called replicants. The movie, which is very subtle in many ways, suggests the replicants have animal DNA inserted into them. One is part turtle, one raccoon, one wolf, one snake, and one fish, probably shark.

Could such DNA insertions be done? I have no idea. I do know that unholy mutant that is the marriage of Big Business and the State will try, in order to create supersoldiers. You can take that one to the bank.

What comes after Verhoeven's view? The Borg, a futuristic group of Myrmidons that use genetic engineering, nanotechnology and probably designer drugs. I consider them to be the scariest soldiers ever.

The Borg comprises humans (and aliens) who are kidnapped and, through nanotechnology and genetic engineering (and I suspect drugs), turned into Borg soldiers. The soldiers are true Myrmidons – they are without fear of anything (including death), without anxiety, without mercy or conscience, indeed without self-consciousness. They follow orders without questions and die without hesitation. They have no honor, no pride, no dignity. They don't even really have loyalty or patriotism, because they have no choice in the matter, no more than an ant does.

Any degenerated military in the world would love them. They'll all trying to create them. And the essence of a degenerated military culture is to treat soldiers as expendable things – although the upper echelons are always taken care of.

As a personal example, my last year in college a smirking Army officer tried to get us to join, telling the class we would be made officers and "taken care of." The enlisted men, on the hand other, he said, "We don't care about." I didn't join.

I also received offers through the mail from every branch. All of them, except the Marines, were interested in certain degrees such as computer science or engineering. Every other degree was listed as "other," except for the Marines, which only wanted to know if I had a degree. And from what I've been able to gather, it is only the Marines that still have some understanding of a true military culture. The other branches, obviously, are starting to degenerate.

The Borg also show something rare in fiction, but which always exists in the real world – the welfare/warfare state. Writers in general are very good at protraying warfare. Few understand the other side of that coin is welfare. One never exists, in the long run, without the other.

The Borg are on perfect welfare. They're literally babies in the Borg cube. Every need is taken care of. Unfortunately, to protect that welfare, they are always at war with whatever comes their way. Welfare at home, warfare abroad. It's a law of fascism, no matter what name fascism is called.

The Borg are also always trying to absorb whatever race they encounter. Obviously, they consider themselves so superior to all other races they believe it gives them the right to "civilize" them by force. They certainly do sound familiar.

Good fiction is always a cautionary tale, usually jammed right up the reader's nose. It says, "This is what can happen unless you stop it." Currently it's saying, "A fascist society can be recognized by the attempts of its degenerated military, along with State-supported degenerated Big Business, to use science and technology to create expendable Myrmidon supersoldiers, even if it costs them their humanity."

The Elephant and the Ants

I can't find a fable about this, so I'll make one up.

"Once there was an elephant bitten by a few ants. In his rage he crushed all the ants, innocent and guilty, and tore up the forest, until in his frenzy he toppled over a cliff."

I have no idea how many members "al Qaeda" (or whatever it's called now) has. I've read, maybe 1000. Not many. Yet the United States, the most powerful country in history, with going on 300 million people, has tried to get other nations to join us in declaring "war". . .on 1000 people.

It'd be funny if it wasn't a tragedy.

Instead, these 1000 people should have been treated as the murderous criminals they are – hunted, captured and tried, or killed if they resisted.

Instead, we've conquered two countries, although neither is conquered, and never will be, not unless we act like ancient amoral pagans and put everything to the sword – men, women, children, babies, goats. And we're not going to do that. Societies that have done such things aren't around anymore. They've collapsed from the inside, from moral degradation.

I am reminded of the saying, "You can conquer a country on horseback, but you have to dismount to rule it." We're not going to dismount.

Personally, I think Osama bin Laden is a bunch of crushed bones under several thousand tons of rock. I'll bet he's laughing from the grave, though. The US is doing exactly what he wanted – attacking and conquering foreign countries that did not attack us, getting over 600 Americans killed, wasting hundreds of billions of dollars, deluding itself it can remake societies millennia older than ours, murdering innocent foreigners by the tens of thousands, and making enemies out of people who weren't our enemies.

And all of it to crush an ant. It's like using a stick of dynamite to kill an amoeba.

The US has gotten itself into a 1400-year-old religious war, one I suspect will take us up to a decade to extricate ourselves from. Mostly I think it's to save face, whatever that means.

I've had people tell me, "We've got to do this! These Islamo-fascists hate us! They want to conquer the world!" I always respond, "How are a thousand people going to conquer the world, even if they do hate us? With what are they going to conquer us? They're about a thousand years behind us. They have to use our weapons against us, because they have no armies, navies or air forces."

They've never been able to tell me how these people are going to conquer the world. Some mumble about "atomic bombs" being set off in the US, as if we'd roll over and surrender, like kicked puppies. Even if nuclear weapons could be detonated in the US (and I don't think they can), our response would probably be to make Mecca and Medina uninhabitable for 1000 years. Our opponents know this.

People also tell me our opponents will immigrate into other countries and take them over that way. In that case, the threat is internal, not external, and easily solved through deportation.

The idea of our opponents conquering us is exactly the same as an ant conquering an elephant. The only way it can do it is if the elephant overreacts, thrashes around and crashes over a cliff. Instead, the elephant should step only on the ants biting it, and leave the rest alone.

It seems to be too late for that, now.

A War on Everything

If the saying, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called Children of God" is true, then what is the opposite saying? "Damned are the warmakers, for they shall be called Children of Lucifer"? It makes sense to me, if you want to consider the sayings the difference between the Creator and the Destroyer.

I'm not talking about Dubya's deluded, destructive and mispronounced "Warren Terrism," although it is included. There are a lot of other incessant, wearying and destructive wars – "the War on Drugs," or "the War on Poverty," or whatever "the war" de jour happens to be.

But the word "war" is almost always used. And all these "wars" involve the coercion of the State, rather than the liberty and creativity of the free market. Isn't that what "war" means – the destructive involvement of the State? I never hear General Motors talk about "the war on Ford," as if two armies of workers would actually battle it out on a field somewhere, with mortars and machine-guns, over whether a Crown Victoria or a Caprice is the better car.

Let's assume, for the sake of illustration, that both sayings in the first paragraph are true, that they are Natural Law. This means any kind of "war" that involves the coercion of the State will never work and instead always destroy, whereas on the other hand anything that involves liberty and the free market will work because it creates. It's the difference between the Political Means of the State – theft, coercion and destruction – and the Economic Means of Society – liberty, creation and the free market.

Does the free market work perfectly? No, it does not. I know that. But the worst it works is a quantum leap so far above the best the State can do that the State can only be considered a danger to everything in which it gets involved.

Take the "war" on drugs as an example. The costs exceed the benefits, and always will. It's an attempt to change people from the outside in, through threats, violence, prison, destruction and death, in the manner of A Clockwork Orange. People only truly change from the inside out, when they change their hearts and minds. You can't permanently change anyone's mind for the better by beating them. If you can change it at all, it's always for the worse.

Making drugs illegal led to organized crime and a multi-billion-dollar black market that is funding terrorism against us. It has caused drugs to become smaller, more concentrated and more powerful, so they'll be easier to smuggle. It has put hundreds of thousands of people in prison for non-violent drug offenses. It has caused crime to go up, as users attempt to obtain the money for a fix. Those are some, but not all, of the results of the State's "war" on drugs.

Now imagine if we made "peace" on drugs, if they were legal. Organized crime involved with drug smuggling would disappear overnight, as would the smuggling itself. The concentrated drugs would still be around, thanks to the State. Once users have had a taste of crack, most aren't going to go back to chewing coca leaves. But at least they wouldn't be mugging people and burglarizing their houses to get the money for a fix. Crime would go down. The prisons would be half-empty. Those are some of the results of a "peace" on drugs.

Legalizing drugs wouldn't be perfect, because of imperfect human nature, but if they were legal, in just a few weeks the public would wonder why it hadn't been done decades before.

How about the "war on poverty"? It involves giving money to "poor" people. It hasn't done much good, because most of the poor have lousy characters. That's why they're poor. You could give them a million dollars, and most of them would again be poor a year later.

What the "war on poverty" has done is help break up families – or else prevent them from forming. Young unmarried women on welfare start having babies in their teens and are grandmothers by the time they are in their 30s. Boys in their teens, raised without fathers, form gangs and murder not only each other, but innocent bystanders. Those are some of the results of the "war" on poverty – generation after generation of the sins of the fathers being visited on the sons.

And if the State ceased its "war" on poverty? Without people choosing to live on welfare – because it wouldn't be there – illegitimacy would go down, as would the amount of predatory gangs and the murder rate. It's what happened in the recent past. It'll happen in the future, if we make "peace" on poverty and get the State out of the attempt to eradicate it.

For all practical purposes, every time the State touches something, it makes war on it, even if it means to make things better. The "war" on discrimination through affirmative action? It has instead set black against white, women against men, gay against straight, as each tries to use the political process to obtain power over the others. The road to Hell, obviously, is paved with good intentions.

When the personal becomes the political, you can be sure war is to follow. Making something political that should have never been political will always set people against each other. It sure won't make them get along. Instead, it makes war. Thus it always will be. It's liberty and the free market that allows people to get along, not the misguided interference of the State.