The State as Serial Killer

The evil man is the child grown strong. ~ Thomas Hobbes

If one person kills another, he is a murderer. If he kills 100, he is a monster. But if he kills 10,000, he is a hero. And the only way one can become this type of "hero" is through the agency of the State.

The victims of the worst serial killer in the world are but a drop in a lake compared to the political victims of Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot, Stalin and Hitler. They are still but a drop compared to the victims of Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR. They're a drop compared to what Bush has done, and to the murders that will be committed by those who come after him. The State is the worst serial killer in the world.

How people can engage in such enormities with a clear conscience is something I understand imperfectly. But I do understand it to a degree. It has to do with our inborn narcissism, which perhaps may be a modern term for Original Sin.

To a degree, everyone is narcissistic. What psychologists call "primary narcissism" is an inescapable -- and universal -- phrase that all people go through as babies and children. We never grow out of it, a good thing in certain circumstances. But taken to an extreme, especially when politics is involved, and we have Hobbes' opening quote.

Our narcissism is what allows us to treat others as things -- to "objectify" them, to see them as objects. Perversely, the more power one person has over others, the more it is necessary to objectify them. Considering the history of the human race, power over others leading to the objectification of them appears to be inescapable. It would certainly explain the accuracy of the story of Satan, as told in the Bible, and in John Milton's Paradise Lost.

Taken far enough, this objectification is an example of the saying, "Power is the horse that evil rides." Power over others is intimately tied to doing evil to them. And power over others -- when those others can do little or nothing about it -- is the definition of political power.

"To some extent," writes Dr. Sam Vaknin, author of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited, "leaders of all sorts -- political, military, or corporate -- [objectify people]. In a range of demanding professions -- surgeons, medical doctors, judges, law enforcement agents -- objectification efficiently fends off attendant horror and anxiety."

I don't think it's possible for a surgeon to open someone up with a scalpel and root around in his insides if he always had it in his mind that it's a living human being he's working upon. It's easier for the surgeon's peace of mind (and I'm sure for the horror-free, anxiety-free exercise of his abilities) to imagine the patient is a "thing" that has to be fixed, much like a mechanic working on a car.

Unfortunately, that "objectivity" is almost always part and parcel, in varying degrees, of grandiosity, the belief one is god-like. It explainsthe popular joke: "What is the difference between God and a doctor?" Answer:"God doesn't think he's a doctor."

Healthy narcissism can turn into malignant narcissism. The Greeks called malignant narcissism hubris, and the Bible calls it pride. A one-sentence definition of it is: you're a thing, and I'm a god. It's the reason why humility is considered such a virtue.

Perhaps anyone who actively seeks political power over others is already a malignant narcissist. If that is true, then Satan is a politician, the obverse being, all politicians are Satanic. I think history backs up that observation.

Vaknin's observation is also a great argument for decentralization and small government. It might be the best argument there is. The bigger the government, the more the citizens are going to be objectified. Not "probably." Always. No one has ever found a way around this problem, except to reduce the size of the government. The State always considers itself to be the chosen of God, indeed God on earth. Has there ever been an example in the history of the world when the State did not?

Let's take George Bush as an example of someone who objectifies others. What he's doing is not unique with him. Unlike others, I don't see him as an evil man, or a conscienceless psychopath. He is in over his head, as most politicians are, and is unqualified for his position. But then again, so are most politicians.

People are appalled at his lack of concern for the tens of thousands who have died because of his decisions. But no one should be surprised. No one could remain sane after what he's done, unless there are psychological defenses erected. He can't even look at the coffins of returning soldiers.

Bush has to rationalize what he's done, to distance himself from the effects of his decisions. It's not just him: it's all politicians. It is not possible for Bush, or anyone in his position, to maintain his sanity if he truly thought about the mass murder, the torture, the mutilation, the broken minds and bodies, the lies, and the theft, that wars always bring. He has to deceive himself, to rationalize, that what he has done is right.

In his case, he has decided, for one thing, that God has chosen him to be President. That's an awful big crutch, but I understand why he has to use it. He'd collapse without it. I certainly can't read his mind, but it seems to me he is thinking, "Since God chose me to be President, I don't make mistakes [grandiosity], so the deaths of all those people are irrelevant [objectification]."

Bush is part of the problem, but any President in his position might have followed the same course he did. A bigger problem is the neocons and their plans for remaking the world in their image.

Writes Vaknin: "The narcissist's pronounced lack of empathy, off-handed exploitativeness, grandiose fantasies and uncompromising sense of entitlement make him treat all people as though they were objects . . . the narcissist regards others as either useful conduits for and sources of narcissistic supply (attention, adulation, etc.) -- or as extensions of himself."

Vaknin is speaking of clinical narcissists, but what he wrote applies to everyone in some degree. It especially applies to some people more than others. One only needs to read the writings of people such as William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz and Richard Perle to realize how Vaknin's oh-so-accurate observations applies to them. I doubt they, or any of the other Would-Be World Conquerer neocons, perceive others as fully human, only chess pieces to be moved around (even if they are destroyed) to fulfill their plans to bring "freedom" and "democracy" to the benighted wogs of the world. They're trying to make the world into an extension of their very bad ideas -- of themselves.

Vaknin's statement echoes what Thomas Sowell wrote: "Most wars, however, are started by well-fed people with time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances."

He also made the comment, "If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is -- and why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive."

Christopher Lasch, in his book, The Culture of Narcissism, had some relevant comments about narcissistic people: "He praises respect for rules and regulations in the secret belief that they do not apply to himself. Acquisitive in the sense that his cravings have no limits, he . . . demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire."

Lasch's quote about praising respect for rules they don't believe apply to themselves explains the Chickenhawk ("You fight and die; I'll yell directions from the sidelines") that all neocons are. And that desire for immediate gratification and "restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire" does not bode well for the US and the world, since they plan on using the former to conquer the latter.

Some people can handle political power. The ones who don't want it. But those who seek out this power are the ones who shouldn't be allowed near it. They are invariably more childish and narcissistic than more healthy, normal people. They are the child grown strong, doing evil to others.

"In malignant narcissism," writes Vaknin, "the true self of the narcissist is replaced by a false construct, imbued with omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. The narcissist's thinking is magical and infantile. He feels immune to the consequences of his own actions . . . the narcissist cannot afford to be rejected, spurned, insulted, hurt, resisted, criticized, or disagreed with."

Magical, infantile thinking. Is that not the thinking of anyone who truly believes the US can invade, conquer and remake entire countries in its image? "Resisted, criticized, disagreed with"? The behavior the neocons exhibit when people point out what they really are is something I need not repeat.

Ultimately, the State is childish, narcissistic, and murderous. I can't see any way around that, except to get rid of it. It's astonishing so many people see the State as a good thing. It's almost a form of insanity, if insanity is defined by that old joke: "Trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."

Accursed Deodands!

I never ceased to be amused by how little the human race has changed in probably the last 30,000 or so years. We still believe in idols (like the State), talismans (like the Constitution) and spells (which we now call propaganda). And we still believe in curses and deodands.

The first time I read the word "deodand" was in Jack Vance's book, The Dying Earth. He used it to describe a totally black, man-shaped cannibalistic monster with red eyes. His vivid description of this creature, coupled with the almost poetic sound of the word, imprinted it on my mind.

At first I thought Vance had created the word (he also referred in his writings to tossing someone in a lake as "subaquation"). Years later, I found that he hadn't. But his use of it – an evil object – was accurate.

A deodand is a medieval superstition that actually made its way into the law in those days. It's based on the concept of "the guilty object." If an object, say a weapon or cart, killed or injured a human, it was declared a deodand and forfeited to the king.

It wasn't uncommon during that time for an animal that had been involved in injury to a person to be condemned, dressed in clothing, then burned at the stake or hanged. The last time this happened was in Switzerland in 1906.

The word deodand is from the Latin "deo dandum," which means "given to God." Its origin is often attributed to the passage in Exodus that reads, "[i]f an ox gore a man or woman, that they die, then the ox shall surely be stoned and its flesh not eaten..."

It's an ancient and silly superstition, yet since people today still believe in spells, talismans and idols, there is no reason whatsoever for them to not believe in deodands and curses.

I suspect the origin of the deodand lies in our inherent tendency to scapegoat, or project our problems onto something outside of us. I once caught my three-year-old nephew stealing change out of my car. When I caught him, he ran, fell on his face, then jumped up and cried, "You made me fall!" He even pointed his finger at me, as if he had a magic wand ("I curse you, Uncle Deodand!").

Apparently, destroying a deodand is revenge, although I don't think I would get any satisfaction out of hanging a cow. But then, during the '70’s, I do remember seeing autoworkers smash Japanese cars with sledgehammers.

The concept of the deodand partly explains the destruction of the World Trade Center. Bring down these symbolic "evil objects," get some revenge, and then people in foreign countries dance in the streets to express their glee and satisfaction. Until, of course, we deodandize their cities.

Currently, in the US, guns and tobacco are cursed as deodands. Those who oppose them consider them to be inherently evil objects, even though a pistol or a cigarette will just quietly lie there forever without hurting anyone.

Tobacco has already legally been declared a deodand; hence, all the money tobacco companies have to forfeit to the State – that modern idol and false god. Opponents of firearms are trying to do the same with them, although so far, fortunately, they haven't had much luck.

Deodands were especially popular during the '80s, when the State was trying to steal peoples' property on the flimsiest of excuses. In one case, an innocent woman lost a $600, eleven-year-old Pontiac because her husband was caught with a prostitute while in it. The court ignored the fact this taking of her property without compensation was a violation of her rights under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. In fact it commented, "cases authorizing actions of the kind at issue are too firmly fixed in the punitive and remedial jurisprudence of the country to be now displaced." This court's comments reminds me of what Paul Newman said in the movie, Cool Hand Luke: "Calling it your job don't make it right, boss."

The rationale behind a deodand was that all property "derived from society," and if people violated the law they forfeited any right they had to it. Supposedly, returning the property to the king (or the State) somehow removed the curse from the property. How taking property from the rightful owner and giving it to someone else removed the curse has never been explained. The reason, I believe it is obvious, is because it doesn't. It's just a money-grab by greedy people working for the State. This is what Thomas Hobbes meant when he wrote, "Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money."

The gun "buy-back" programs so popular several years ago were a case of the State buying "cursed" deodands and then punishing them by destroying them. Looked at this way, it isn't that much less silly than executing a horse. Since many more people are killed a year in carwrecks than by guns, perhaps it really isn't such a bad idea to bash cars with sledgehammers.

The idea of the deodand didn't make much headway in the US until the War Between the States, when the Confiscation Act of 1862 authorized seizing the properties of rebels who owned property in the North. After that, it escalated to ridiculous levels.

In one case in 1926 a man lost his automobile because he lent it to the dealer from whom he had bought it, who then lent it to someone else, who used it to illegally transport liquor – all without the owner's knowledge.

In a more recent case, a yacht-leasing company lost a yacht because the lessor, or a visitor, left a marijuana cigarette butt on the ship.

The '70s and '80s saw legislation really get out of hand (but then, those last five words describes what always happens to the government). Here's some of the laws passed: the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO); the Continuing Criminal Enterprise Act (CCE); the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970; the Psychotropic Substances Act of 1978; the Comprehensive Forfeiture Act of 1982; the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984; the Comprehensive Drug Penalty Act of 1984; and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986: the Comprehensive Anti-Ugliness and Anti-Stupidity Act of 1989 (okay, I made the last one up). Altogether, more than 200 federal forfeiture laws have been passed.

None had the slightest effect on crime, which is understandable when it is realized these "laws" do nothing more than lay curses on objects and then try to remove them by stealing them from the owners. I suppose this means politicians are actually witches. Thieving witches. Although I suspect that in their minds they somehow see themselves as priest-kings.

Fortunately, after an almost decade-long effort an unlikely coalition of organizations (the ACLU and the National Rifle Association among others) headed by Representative Henry Hyde, pushed through the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act (CAFRA), which was signed by President Clinton in April 2000. It helped to stop some of the abuses. What should be done is that the legal concept of the deodand should be gotten rid of completely.

What actually is evil is not the deodand, but the State. Consider this case: Donald Scott, a 61-year-old millionaire wrongly suspected of growing marijuana on his 200-acre ranch in Malibu, California, was shot and killed in front of his wife when 30 local, state, and federal agents burst into their house to serve them with a search warrant.

Awakened by the commotion and his wife's screams, Scott grabbed his handgun and was descending the stairs when he was murdered. After a five-month investigation, the Ventura County attorney concluded that the evidence of Scott's "drug cultivation" submitted to obtain the warrant was non-existent. Testimony also revealed that Scott was "fanatically anti-drug."

Ominously, Scott had refused to sell his ranch to the U.S. National Park Service. His refusal made especially frightening the district attorney's finding that U.S. National Park Service police were present during the raid, that at the final police briefing before the raid, the possible government seizure of Scott's ranch was discussed; and that documents reviewed at an earlier meeting included a property-appraisal statement. In other words, the State's curse on marijuana was used to "bear false witness" against Scott so his property could be declared a deodand and stolen from him.

If the saying, "the love of money is the root of all evil" applies to everyone, then even those who try to use the State as a magic amulet to protect themselves are not exempt from it, no matter how much they pretend they are. And while this is no such thing as a cursed object, I have no doubts at all that there are cursed people.

Gun Control Equals Murder

Exactly once in my life have I felt like I was two inches tall. It was about eleven years ago, when I was in a secretary's office. While she was out of the room I looked around and saw, on her shelf, two pictures with a teen-age girl in each one. I knew them, but couldn't remember anything about them. Even stranger, they appeared to be twins. How could I completely forget two twin girls?

When the secretary returned, I commented, "I know those girls from someplace, but I can't remember where."

To this she replied, "You've seen those pictures in the newspaper. Those are my daughters, the ones who were killed on the old Chain of Rocks bridge."

"Oh," I said. Then, "I'm sorry; I didn't make the connection."

"That's okay," she said. "Don't worry about it."

I felt like I could have crawled in a mouse hole. When I told a friend about this, he put his hand over his eyes and said, "Oh, God."

The old Chain of Rocks bridge, which in far north St. Louis, was closed down sometime in the '60s. We used to party on it in high school, hundreds, sometimes a thousand of us. These days it is a bike and walk-way from Illinois to Missouri. In between the end of the parties and the start of the bikes, it was known for one thing: two 19-year-old girls (who weren't twins, but just looked a lot like each other) who were murdered on it.

They were, like their mother, less than five-feet-tall, and less than one-hundred pounds. Tiny little girls. I've worked out with weights that weigh more then they did.

They had taken their visiting cousin, a teenage boy, to show him their poetry they had written on the bridge. I don't remember exactly what it was about, but I believe it was the sort of idealistic "We can all get along" poetry than teen-age girls sometimes write.

While they were on it, four teen-age boys found the girls on the bridge, raped them, then threw them over the side. The drop to the Mississippi is about 60 feet. I have been on that bridge many times, and I wouldn't want to jump off of it. I'd live, because I could make it to the shore. . .but two tiny girls wouldn't be able to.

Only one body was ever found. Their cousin was made to jump over the side, but he was able to swim to the shore.

The police found all four boys rapidly. Like all criminals, they were stupid. One left his flashlight with his name on it on the bridge. All of those over the age of sixteen were convicted and given the death penalty; the 15-year-old got 30 years.

When people tell me they are for gun control this is the case I always bring up.

If those girls had had even a two-shot .22 derringer on them, they would be alive today. Criminals are not only stupid, they also cowards. Even if they had shot the leader – who almost always has the biggest mouth – the rest would have run.

Even if they would have had a knife with a big enough blade – maybe three, three-and-one-half inches – they'd probably still be alive.

I sometimes have this fantasy I run across this scene, and just happen to have my .357 Sig Sauer on me. The one I load with Magsafes, frangible ammo that are like little shotgun shells. I think I would make all four of those boys jump off the bridge. And if they didn't, I'd shoot them in their both their feet and then their knees. I'd have to reload, but that's okay. And then I'd disappear, and nobody ever finds out who I am.

In the last ten years I have yet to find anyone who can come up with a reason for gun control.

I'm still waiting.

The Lust for War

"People who have no individual stature whatsoever are willing to accept this poisonous nonsense because it gives them a sense of importance without the trouble of any personal effort." - Felix Morley

Back in the '80s I was watching an episode of The New Twilight Zone, in which Tony Franciosa, who was playing a demon, made the comment, "Ennui fills my days." Hmm, I thought, that's interesting, because ennui (or accidia) is a sin. It means a life of boredom, without meaning or purpose. It's not surprising, I thought, that a demon's life would be filled with ennui. And some other bad things, too, like envy, and sloth, and cowardice, and murder, and the lust for destruction. . .hmm I could swear C.S. Lewis noticed this in The Screwtape Letters.

I suppose the aforementioned traits are the reason why some men lust after war. I don't mean the kind of men who are born warriors, like the mythical Hercules (who, like all mythical characters, is based on real traits that people have). There are never many of these natural-born warriors in every generation. I mean Chickenhawks, who lust for war as long as they don't have to go. In fact, the last thing on their minds is going. They not only don't want to be at the front, they don't want to be at the rear, peeling potatoes. But they certainly will cheer for war, as long as they are several thousand miles away from it.

There always seems to be a lot of Chickenhawks in nearly every country. I guess there always has been, throughout history. Are there any Chickenhawks in the Bible? I should look. There is certainly a lot of other practical information in that book about human nature.

God knows there's enough Chickenhawks in the United States. There's a popular one on the radio, who always seems to avoid answering if he really skipped out on military service during Vietnam because of a cyst on his heinie. Or was it because he he hurt his knee playing football in high school? Personally, I'd rather say I hurt my knee rather than I had something wrong with my butt.

I suppose having a nice, peaceful life isn't good enough for Chickenhawks. Well, actually it is. They want peace for themselves. They just don't want it for other people, on the other side of the world. They want the vicarious thrill of war, while they sit like Pug-like inert lumps safely watching the TV.

Sheesh, talk about the imperfections of humanity. Better yet, the imperfectability. There's certainly something wrong with some people when peace isn't good enough for them, and it takes a war to get them revved up and make them feel there's a meaning to their lives. Otherwise, like my friendly TV demon, ennui fills their days.

I don't think the phrase "the lust for war" means much of anything by itself. It comprises a multitude of sins. It only makes sense when it's analyzed. If you want to understand something, the first step is to name it, and then take it apart. Things are much more dangerous otherwise.

The first sin of Chickenhawks, obviously, is cowardice. Chickenhawks are composed of the greatest cheerleaders for war you will ever see, as long as they are completely insulated from fighting it themselves. Observing Chickenhawks is how I finally decided on the definition of a true coward: you fight while I stay on the sidelines and give directions. Of course, I will simultaneously proclaim my bravery and curse everyone who mentions they're hearing a "buk buk buk" come from my direction.

The second sin of Chickenhawks is the ennui of which I just wrote. This one is pretty scary. Apparently there are some people out there whose lives are so lacking in any kind of purpose that they only feel fulfilled when there is a war. A war giving meaning to life? If there's a Satan out there somewhere, isn't that exactly what he would say? On the other hand, there certainly is a devil inside all of us, and that is all we need.

How in the world can war give meaning to some people's lives? Maybe Erich Fromm, author of such books as Escape from Freedom, and the political scientist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, who wrote Leftism Revisited, were on to something when they suggested people want to be part of a group, so they can merge themselves in it to lose their anxiety and loneliness. They can lose their ego, their "self," in a group.

Chris Hedges, in his book, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, writes this: "The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become apparent. Trivia dominates our conversations and increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble."

People are social creatures, and very few can live as disconnected atoms wandering around by themselves. But there are problems with mobs. When people suffer from ennui, merging themselves into a group lessens it. When there is a war, the energizing effects of it gives a meaning to those ennui-filled lives. Watch Triumph of the Will, where a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people part to let Hitler walk through, and you'll see the Dionysian frenzy of a mob of people. There's no ennui or lack of meaning there. It's a destructive meaning, but a destructive meaning is better than no meaning at all.

Robert Nisbet, in his The Quest for Community, also suggested people like to be in a group because it allows them to exalt themselves. It allows them to become part of something they consider greater than they are, even if it isn't, even if it is something very dangerous. The sin of ennui can lead people to become part of a group which exalts itself and finds a meaning in war. Watching war and planning it is ambroia to the Chickenhawk. I suppose it's just like a little kid playing video games on the TV.

There's ennui and cowardice. What else? Well, now, there's sloth, specifically intellectual sloth. Those who lose themselves in a group often don't think things through. Maybe, most of the time. Why they heck should they? There's that warm herd feeling. Why spoil it with analyzing it and coming to the conclusion that maybe it's not such a good thing? Did any member of the Borg ever say, "You know, maybe I don't want to be a Borg anymore"?

Chickenhawks tend to idolize their leaders, sometimes following them right over a cliff. If you're going to be part of a group, you have to have a head, someone who's the leader. These groupthink people are the ones I've heard say, "My President." They would of course be outraged if anyone suggested that 65 years ago in another part of the world, someone just like them was saying, "Mein Fuhrer." (By the way, I'm not comparing Bush to Hitler. I'm comparing the one who says "My President" to the one who says, "Mein Fuhrer." I knew I'd have to repeat that.)

That word, "idolize," is an important one. It's related to the word, "ideal," which is the opposite of "devalue." Human nature makes those words opposite sides of the same coin. To some people, things are either idealized or devalued, good or bad with nothing in-between. To devalue someone is to dehumanize them, which is the first step to murdering them.

I've never heard it specifically listed as a sin, but to dehumanize someone is one of the greatest sins there is. It's the reason innocent people killed in war get called "collateral damage." Dehumanization is the basis of all propaganda. You tell people the enemy spits babies on bayonets, and some of them will believe it. When the enemy is devalued like that, the prohibition, "You will not murder" (the closest to a specific sin describing dehumanization), becomes much easier to break.

Almost as bad as devaluing is idealizing. As opponents are devalued, allied soldiers are idealized. They are praised for "making the ultimate sacrifice," then forgotten when they come back permanently maimed. It's hard for Chickenhawks to idealize someone in a wheelchair. Such a sight will always burst the fantasy bubble in which they live.

People will idealize their ethnic group, their country, and their cause. They will claim God supports them, in every way. That is the sin of idealization, or making something into an idol. It's worshiping false gods. And worshiping your country, and your government, and your leaders, is certainly worshiping idols. All of which have feet of clay (and feet of clay comes from a a Biblical story about an idol).

It is the same thing, over and over, throughout history: people make themselves and their own into false idols, then worship them and don't know it. And don't believe it if it is pointed out. Then they always make their opponents into a devil. And all the while, the enemy is doing the same thing to them.

Cowardice, ennui, sloth, dehumanization and murder, the worshiping of the idols of self and State. . .those are the sins of the Chickenhawks who lust for war. And one of the strangest things about it is to them, those vices, in some kind of Bizarro World upending, are instead patriotic virtues.

Legitmate and Ilegimate Authority

"Power is the ability to force compliance with one's demands; authority is the ability to command voluntary obedience."

-- Hannah Arendt

There is a curious scene in the Bible (among many curious scenes) that goes like this:

"The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, 'I will give you all their authority and splendor, it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours.'

"Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.'"

This scene, in Luke 4:5-8, makes it as clear as can be that politics belongs to the Devil. The history of the world certainly backs up that observation, especially since 177 to 200 million people were murdered during State-sponsored wars during the 20th century.

Clearly, politics, and the State, being of the Devil, are illegitimate authorities. Yet, when Jesus came down from that mountain, he established himself as an authority.

What we're dealing with here are two kinds of "authority." The first, political, is based on force and coercion. It's illegitimate unless one is a real criminal and that means murder, theft and similar offenses, not not wearing a seatbelt, drinking a glass of wine when you're 14, or smoking a cigarette outside.

That illegitimate political force is the kind Jesus rejected. The second kind of authority is voluntary and based on persuasion. That's legitimate.

Try as I might, I find nothing in the Bible where Jesus tried to force anyone to do anything. Basically he said, "Choose what you want to do...you have to change your hearts and minds willingly."

It's the difference between "I will try to change you, by force, from the outside in" [which never works] as compared to, "You choose to change yourself, from the inside out."

There was a pop psychologist/sociologist, the late Erich Fromm, who got so many things wrong (he thought Freud and Marx made sense) that it verges on pitiful. Yet even though he got a lot of the answers wrong, he asked the right questions, about "the human aspect for freedom, the longing for submission, and the lust for power."

Fromm nailed it, right on the mark, with those three things: freedom, submission, the lust for power.

Freedom is not something given to us by politics and the State; their essence is to make people submit. Liberty is freedom from the State.

Whence lies the "lust for power" of which Fromm wrote? Let's try this again: "I will give you all their authority and splendor, it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours."

Ever see the movie, 300? All that Xerxes wanted, really, was people to bow at his feet and worship him.

The lust for power, obviously, is Satanic. Those with the lust for power (or what Nietzsche called "the will to power") gravitate straight toward the State. You don't have to look any further than Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Hitler. All these little Satans went straight to the State, in hopes of controlling it.

There is another problem, though: the desire people have for submission. People have two paradoxical impulses: on one hand they want to be free, and on the other hand they want to submit to authority.

Fromm had an answer to this desire to submit, as did Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, and Dostoevsky.

Fromm wrote this, in his book Escape from Freedom: "The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self."

Kuehnelt-Leddihn believed the same thing. In Leftism Revisited he wrote: "viewed from a certain angle, we are all subject to two basic drives: identity and diversity." Identity he calls "a herd instinct, a strong feeling of community that regards another group with hostility." He said "identity and its drives tend to efface self, tend towards an 'usness' in which the ego becomes submerged."

In the famous "Grand Inquisitor" scene in The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky has the Inquisitor say, "For centuries...we have been wrestling with...freedom, but now it is ended and over for good." He was commenting on the fact that many people want to give up their freedom to "authority." The Inquisitor goes so far as to claim, "they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly at our feet."

It's also the basis for fascism, or Communism, or Nazism, or any other form of leftism. It's what Mussolini meant when he wrote, "everything is in the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value, outside the State. In this sense Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State, the synthesis and unity of all values, interprets, develops and gives strength to the whole life of the people."

The Borg, anyone?

There is something in people that wants to submit, to give up their freedom, in hopes of giving up anxiety, in giving up fear. They want to be "safe," to be a cog, to return to the Garden of Eden, to have someone else take care of them and tell them what good and evil are. Take a look at a televised political convention, for an example. They could fit into Leni Riefenstahl's film, Triumph of the Will -- thousands of people, cogs all, lost in the delirium of a crowd.

Unfortunately, many today look to the State for that safety. The problem is that the State, being Satanic, isn't going to bring them safety. Ultimately it will bring them death and destruction. The opposite side of the welfare state at home is the warfare state abroad, in an ultimately hopeless attempt for "homeland security."

Lord Acton wrote that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." I think a better saying is, "Power intoxicates, and immunity corrupts." Try reading...let's see...The Gulag Archipelago.

Dostoevsky had this to say about power, in his The House of the Dead, "Tyranny...finally develops into a disease. The habit can...coarsen the very best man to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate...the return to human dignity, to repentance, to regeneration, becomes almost i mpossible."

On one hand, forced submission to the illegitimate State, and the Satanic lust for power that leads to tyranny, and on the other, voluntary submission to a legitimate authority.

The desire to submit to the illegitimate authority of the State is childish. It's the desire to be "taken care of." Children submit to their parents whether or not they want to they're forced to. In their case, it is for their own good. But adults? It's certainly not good for them.

Liberty is apparently a scary thing for some people, so they try to give it up as fast as they can, even though they don't know what they're doing. But, as Benjamin Franklin wrote, "They that give up essential l iberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety."

The history of the world has not always been a fight between freedom and slavery. It has also been a fight between forced submission to an illegitimate authority, and voluntary submission to legitimate ones.

The Truth is larger than all of us. That is the legitimate authority to which all should voluntarily submit. The Truth, as the old saying goes, is that which will "set you free."

And part of that Truth is that our salvation does not lie with the State.

Rites of Passage

All "primitive" societies have forced boys, right at the age of 12, to undergo initiation rites in which they symbolically died as children and then were reborn as adults, under the direction of learned elders (I'm going to repeat that -- learned elders, not just elders).

One of the reasons for this "rebirth" is to pull away from the mother, who at her worst is represented by the motherly/destructive/seductive mythic goddess Kali (today, she's the Borg Queen), and these days by society-destroying radical feminism. This pulling away is necessary for boys to be introduced to the world of men, otherwise, under the influence under the worst aspect of the feminine, they can end up as gang members...or maybe even far, far worse.

To a much lesser extent, there have been rites of passages for girls. In both cases, it happens right at puberty, when the body and brain are changing rapidly and profoundly.

Nowadays, we're lost these rites, at least the good ones. Did we ever have good ones? I'm sure we did, but offhand, I can't think of what they were. Currently, we're got some bad ones, and the kids and society pay for it. And pay and pay and pay. The lack of them is damaging to individuals and to the culture. "Culture is the public expression of group continuity," commented one wag, and I couldn't agree more.

Many people either don't know, or don't want to admit, how fragile society is, and that one of its purposes is to repress all the badness inherent in human nature. When societies lose those myths, rituals and rites that help repress or transform the badness, worse rites will take their place. That's how we end up with kids wearing tribal tattos and acting like whiggers.

Here's an example, and it's about a woman I knew: when I was about 23, and in college, I was sitting in the room of this woman, who was about 21 years old. We were just passing time listening to her records. I even remember one of the songs -- Ten Years After's "I'd Love to Change the World." Years later I realized how appropriate that song was for our conversation.

I was casual friends with her, but had noticed she was a bit more intelligent, sensitive and creative than the other girls who lived in her house, almost all of whom, in my opinion, was callow and not-very-bright college students. The one I was talking to was an art major, the only one in her house of 11 girls. Most of the others were studying to be grade-school teachers, urp.

To this day, I have no idea why she told me the things she did. She starting telling me about her time in 7th grade, when she was pudgy and wore those kind of horn-rimmed glasses that always sit crooked on your face. She showed me a picture; personally, I thought she was rather cute.

She was certainly cute at 21, certainly much better-looking than the other girls in the house. I always wanted to jump her, but never did.

She told me that because of the way she looked, she was ostracized by the other 7th-graders. Twelve years old and an outsider and a scapegoat. Just great. No wonder Stephen King's novel Carrie was such a big hit. Public schools, blech.

Over the summer, she told me, she grew up, lost the baby fat, filled out, and got contacts. Ugly duckling to swan in less than three months. When she came back for the 8th-grade all the kids who ostracised her now wanted to be her friends. She ignored them. I thought, "Good for you."

The way she was treated in the 7th-grade affected her for the rest of her life. She told me she was never attracted to what most people would consider "good-looking" men and was instead attracted to what she called "unusual-looking guys." (It occurred to me: was why I was in her room, unlike the other guys who hung out in the house, and why was she telling me these things? Uh oh.)

I got a big laugh out of this one: she told me she liked guys who looked like Peter Noone. Peter Noone? Who's that? You know, Herman of "Herman and the Hermits." They were popular about the time she was being born!

I saw her a few years later, after we had graduated, and sure enough, she had married a guy who looked like him.

She turned out just fine, but her initiation rites in 7th-grade consisted of a bright, creative, sensitive girl being ostracised and humiliated in public school. And they were unwitting initiation rites, ones that, I repeat, affected her for the rest of her life.

She was lucky enough to make it through them, even without wise elders, just teachers instead, although in a sense she was scarred for the rest of her life. She symbolically died and was reborn courtesy of being treated like crap by a bunch of dim-witted, immature 12-year-olds tossed together helter-skelter in public schools (which I think should be burned down and the ground salted). Those were good rites of passage for her? That's a rhetorical question, by the way.

As bad as it was for her, I think this lack of initiation rites is a lot worse for boys. A lot worse, and I can't emphasize just how bad I think this lack is. We still have them, to a degree, although they're exactly the same as my friend went through: being tossed into the mish-mash that is public-school 7th-grade. It ain't working.

The fact we don't have any initiation affects us politically, I'm convinced. Politically, the leftist nanny-state is Mommy. Why do men fall for it? Because, even though raised with two parents, they're still stuck in mommy-mode, due to the lack of initiation rites that pull them away from mommy and toward daddy.

This away-from-dominating-mommy/searching-for-daddy can be seen in gangs, most of whom were raised without fathers. They found all-male gangs, ones that denigrate women. Their initiation rites and lives are all in the bad-male mode.

Teenagers have a vague, inchoate, instinctive understanding of their need for initiation rites. That's why they act and dress as they do. I did it when I was a teenager. Almost all of us did. Almost all of us used drugs, although in those days it was booze and marijuana. Today it's Ecstasy and raves. I understand completely.

Looking back on it, I realize my friends and I were rather wild, at least compared to the other kids. There were a lot of us, creating our own initiation rites of drugs and booze and parties. We had no mentors, be it parents or teachers. There was no ritualistic adjustment from childhood to adulthood. Nothing. These days, we'd be given Ritalin.

The way I see it, in American society, the skyrocketing rise of gangs and reckless behavior dramatizes how youth seek some sort of initiation rites, made worse in the absence of anything provided by the culture (read "learned elders" for "culture"). Unfortunately, old geezers fear young people, not realizing their wildness and energy are really just an unending longing for initiation into the adult world.

Adolescents hunger for real tests, somewhat risky ordeals by which they can turn into adults, ones with a purpose in life. What ceremonies and rituals and rites do we have? High school graduation? College graduation? Meaningless. They're not tests. Nearly everyone wants to feel like the Hero on a Quest. Luke Skywalker, you know. Why do you think those movies are so popular?

True rites involve some risk, some pain, and self- discipline and self-sacrifice. Look how many boys want to join the Marines. When those things are offered, then there is community. It doesn't matter what it is -- it can be anything from gangs to religion.

That lack of serious rites is one of the reasons Christianity is in the trouble it is in. It's too soft; it doesn't challenge. Make it harder, make it challenging, make it involve self-discipline and self-sacrifice, and the softness that plagues it will disappear.

We don't have, and we certainly need, adolescent initiations that meet the needs of kids today, ones that draw on tribal rites, ones that are feasible in a modern, urban culture. Since we live in a highly technological society, we need new rituals appropriate to urban teenagers. Then, of course, the other essential ingredients are elders and mentors willing to devise and perform such rituals and a supportive community -- that "group continuity" -- into which the initiated teens are brought.

The way things are now, we're turning into a society without fathers, and in some cases without mothers. The law has, foolishly and destructively, decided fathers are optional, and when they aren't, when a couple has to work to make ends meet and give their six-week-old baby to a pre-school, that's just another way of saying we no longer have elders. The government is no substitute, pace Hillary Clinton.

When you're looking at young gang members, you're looking at people with no elders. So we either develop elders, or the amount of violence will increase year by year. This is not something that can be replaced by government programs.

Sooner or later, we'll have to figure it out. We have to. But until we do, all the Ph.D.s and government studies and programs, are in vain, just chaff flying in the whirlwind.

Belonging to an Alien Species

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

-- Thoreau

Ever since I was 12 years old I have felt like I belonged to a different species. I've always felt human... well, mostly...but with maybe, oh, I don't know -- some sort of unusual DNA, perhaps like in The Island of Dr. Moreau.. That would explain things.

I probably felt this way when little, not that I really remember, what with every day in school being exactly the same, but my report cards (which I have saved) often had comments on them about how I was daydreaming, not paying attention, and not turning in my homework. School bored me. I wasn't "a good fit." Round pegs in square holes never are, even if you pound 'em real good.

Although the diagnosis did not exist during that time (just yelling), I would have been determined to have Attention Deficit Disorder without hyperactivity (why is there no Excruciatingly Boring Teacher Disorder?). These days, that means Ritalin, a drug related to cocaine. And in the past the diagnosis was often, "Minimal Brain Dysfunction," even though reseachers couldn't open your brain and look in there. One of my college girlfriends got that one, and oddly (I'm being ironic), she homeschooled her chillun.

Ritalin! Drugs for a normal condition! Or else, hey, let's try "brain damage"! Who woulda thunk it?

By the time I was 12 my IQ was 126, which is in the 95th percentile. Later, when I took the Myers-Briggs (MBTI), and the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, I found I was an INTJ: Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging. That's about one percent of the population.

The INTJ is often called the "Rational Mastermind," which to me sounds like one of Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Barsoom" novels. It's also known as the "System Builder." In my case, both are true, and my strongest traits are imagination, followed by reason. I can put both together if I concentrate long enough, and I don't even need drugs. That leads to creativity, or if strong enough, genius, which I've read defined as "a zigzag lightning in the brain that others have not." You think and imagine long enough, concentrate long enough, and boom! -- fireball. Little, big, and everything inbetween.

Even later, when I took the Aspie-quiz, which estimates the degree of Asperger's, I scored 122 out of 200 for Aspergers, and 92 out of 200 for non-Aspergers. Mixed -- fortunately. It could have been a lot worse, like maybe institutionalized worse! Ack! No, wait, I was institutionalized -- public school!

As a kid I was imaginative, and somewhat creative and artistic and weird, although never to myself, just the Muggles. I found that my imagination, logical and rational, allowed me to start with a premise and try different paths to see where they lead. Sometimes I would get so absorbed in thought my imaginary world would be more real than the "real" world -- and I put quotes to highlight the fact that imagination is a real world.

How in the world did I end up like this?

By the way, those of you who think they are "different" or "unusual," which many people say to claim they are "special" or even better than others, generally don't know what you are talking about. To be different is not what you think it is. It has its benefits, but it is also a burden. William Blake, the artist and poet, once wrote about being born "with a different face." I know what he means.

Most kids with "ADD" are boys with blond hair and blue eyes. Such things as autism and Asperger's are concentrated among the red-haired, especially males.

This is strange, isn't it? There is a theory which explains this; whether it is true or not, I don't know.

Some think that red and blond hair -- and there are there blonds and redheads in my family, including blond, blue-eyed me -- originated with the Neanderthals. (Click here) In short, I have Alley Oop genes.

Supposedly this accounts in large part for the way I am. Or as Thom Hartmann put it, people like me are Hunters in a Farmer's World.

Even if these theories are not completely true (and I think there is much truth in all of them), I still find it instructive to the extent to which misfits will go to understand why they are misfits. I guarantee you the guy who wrote the article about Neanderthals is a misfit, and very much so.

Unfortunately, the public schools are not set up for misfits. They're set up, if anything, to produce a standardized product, like Lego blocks, or zombies, or curdled milk.

If you don't fit in, school will try to hammer you on the top of your head so you do fit. Some people don't hammer so well. I was one of them. I aways felt like they were calling down the Firestorm of Conformity on me, followed by being run over by Garbage Truck of Boredom, which then backed up and ran me over again.

One of those who also didn't hammer so well was Robert Frost, the poet, who was dropped from school for daydreaming. What was he doing? Composing poems? If so, he turned out to be pretty good at it.

Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, would get so lost in thought his uncle had to yell at him to get him back. Adam Smith, the Scottish economist and author of The Wealth of Nations, would go for walks at night and get so absorbed in thinking he once fell into a ditch. I've come close to that myself.

Nikola Tesla had such a strong imagination he could design a machine in his head and run it there to see if it worked or not. He didn't find it necessary to build it out there, in "reality."

In his autobiography My Inventions, he wrote, “Every night (and sometimes during the day), when alone, I would start out on my journeys -- see new places, cities and countries -- live there, meet people and make friendships and acquaintances and, however unbelievable, it is a fact that they were just as dear to me as those in actual life and not a bit less intense in their manifestations.

"This I did constantly until I was about seventeen when my thoughts turned seriously to invention. Then I observed to my delight that I could visualize with the greatest facility. I needed no models, drawings or experiments. I could picture them all as real in my mind.”

One of Thomas Edison's teachers told people he was "addled" and it wouldn't be worthwhile to keep him in school. Whenever I think of this great inventor I am reminded of a comment by David Yarian: "Imagination generates hope -- or more exactly, unleashes creative powers to transform reality into something beyond that which is currently visible."

Albert Einstein noted, totally correctly, "I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." This is a guy who rode a light beam, in his mind, to see what happened. How many people can do that?

Some have claimed that Einstein (and Thomas Jefferson and Isaac Newton) had Asperger's). Whether or not this is true, the fact remains that gifted children manifest symptoms of Asperger's, although there are some substantial differences that make the first "gifted" and the second "disordered." Myself, I consider "not gifted" and "disordered" to be the same thing.

In school, imaginative kids are accused -- and I repeat, "accused," as if they're guilty of something, and not even with a trial -- of daydreaming and not paying attention. That is exactly right. They're off building worlds in their heads. Pretty nifty ones, too, I can tell you.

Our schools are very good at identifying certain talented students, although they are not talents I'm interested in. Athletes especially, for one. Ambitious (but unimaginative, and excruciatingly boring) students who make good grades, for another. But kids who are imaginative? There is no place for them, except maybe in the hall or the principal's office, never mind the fact it's the imaginative ones who create, discover and invent. In fact, the first is a prerequisite for the last three. As for athletes and students who make good grades because they are good at rote memorization...like I said, I personally have no use for either of them, so go away, you bore me.

Why this animus against imagination? I've never understood it. It's not like they ever did anything to teachers except ignore them! But it exists. I suspect those who rebuke the imaginative feel they may not be able to function in the "real" world, or that being imaginative is unhealthy, that it will produce more Marquis de Sades or more serial killers or people who can't work in Dilbertized cubicles.

As long as what is imagined is positive and healthy, I guarantee them, they are wrong. And how can anyone use their imagination postively and healthily in a class full of kids, sitting in rows in desks?

The combination of reason, or thought, and imagination is what has created just about everything there is. As Francisco Goya put it, "Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels."

Education is supposed to be about identifying a student's strengths and talents and developing them. It's not about pouring knowledge into some tabula rasa empty bucket, but lighting a fire in the brain. The march/sit/march of school is not conducive to lighting any kind of fire -- especially not that zigzag lightning kind of fire.

Or, as William Marts put it, "A tremendous amount of good has manifested into this world from the positive imaginations we have that may start early in our youth."

I often wonder how many people have been lost because of the school system? Not everyone is so strong, or such a genius, that they can overcome the Harrison Bergeron handicaps placed on them at an early age.

People should go to school with their own kind, like fish with fish and fowl with fowl. You don't find fish up in the air with birds (not in this world), and you shouldn't find smart imaginative kids with dumb literal-minded ones. In real life, people associate with those they have common interests with. Forcing together kids who do not wish to be together isn't "socialization," it isn't "education": if anything, it's just plain ol' trauma.

If imaginative kids were encouraged to follow their interests, I believe we would have more polymaths, more inventions, more discoveries. Imagination strengthens your creative abilities. It is a great power that can change your life, and the world. This would not only benefit such people, but also society.

After all, imagination is the only known thing that travels faster than the speed of light -- it can zip through space and time in a flash. Let's see any -- yech, blech -- valedictorian do that!

“Deviation is necessary for progress to happen.”