(Full disclosure: These days I’m writing for The Blog of Kevin Dolgin.  Reflecting on one of his sayings, found on page 10 of The Third Tower Up From the Road, I was moved to say a few things back.)

I deplore the presence of borders and cross them whenever possible, sometimes just to spite them.
Kevin Dolgin

I grew up in Niagara Falls, New York, which is right across the river from Niagara Falls, Ontario. One of my favorite things to do, as a young teen with very limited resources and an unlimited desire to get out of the house, was to take a walk over to Canada. There were two bridges, one at the north end of town and one at the south. The one at the north end was older and more utilitarian. Cars were stopped and their business politely inquired into, but a pedestrian would go along a rustic path and through a turnstile and onto the

Because it carried only a small fraction of the tourist traffic, the old bridge at the north end of town was the kind of place where a kid could dawdle around, suspended above the Niagara River gorge, and philosophize, and dream. The bridge was bisected by a perpendicular white line of white paint, across the pavement and sidewalks. That was the international border. I could be making this up, but it seems like there were two of those white lines, with an inch or so of space in between. There’s a strong visual memory of parallel lines separated by a gap, and I can’t think where else it could have originated. And I seem to remember wondering what, exactly, was in that space between the lines, that was neither Canada nor the US.

You could stand with one foot on either side of the line (or lines) and be in two countries at the same time. You could remain there and inhabit both countries for five minutes or ten minutes, yet the two halves of your body would still be symmetrical and pretty much interchangeable. A baby born in one particular spot would be American. Born twelve inches away, it would be Canadian. If it were born in the exact middle, would it have dual citizenship, or none at all? If you committed a crime right there, straddling the line, which country would claim the privilege of arresting you? If you dropped dead, which country would pick up the body?

The whole border concept seemed weird and arbitrary. It was a mystery. The water that roared below did not restrict itself to flowing along one side of the river or the other. Still ignorant of what borders meant in such contexts as, for instance, Europe during World War II, I grew up with the notion of a border as a thoughtlessly permeable and basically inconsequential thing. It was only when the Vietnam draft kicked in, that borders started to mean something.

Yeah, sure, wouldn’t it be great to have just one big happy world, with the same set of rules for everyone, the same chances for everyone, and all that good stuff? Only, as some ornery libertarians persist in pointing out, bigger systems inevitably become worse systems for the people who live under them. If everything were uniform, planet-wide, there would be no “there.” No place to escape to, no way to get off the grid, no where to go for a fresh start. A world government is not the kind of experiment which, if it didn’t seem to be working out well, could easily be called off. About borders, I remain ambivalent.

photo courtesy of exfordy, used under this Creative Commons license

Herman Rosse's interpretation of Bill Haywood

Ben Hecht was both the most cynical and the most–well, uncynical–writer. He certainly knew about the mind’s ability to hold two different, contradictory beliefs at the same time. Hecht was all too aware of cognitive dissonance in himself and others.

The things that people say and believe in and for which they die and in behalf of which they invent laws and codes–these have nothing to do with the insides of people. Puritan, hypocrite, criminal, dolt–these are paper-thin masks.

As he relates in A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago, Hecht knew Bill Haywood. In 1918, the union leader had been convicted of espionage, and was out of prison with the case on appeal. Hecht, who had last seen him a couple of years before, ran into Haywood in 1921 and found him to have “the same crooked-lipped smile. And his one eye staring ahead of him with a mildly amused light in it. A rather striking person was Bill. I suppose it was because he always seemed so calm outside.”

Hecht was surprised to find this dedicated political activist in such a frivolous place as a theater, and said so.

Haywood replied that he’d made a list of plays, both musical comedies and dramas, and of cafés and other venues, and had spent the previous month visiting them and checking them off the list. The inference Hecht drew, was that Big Bill Haywood was storing up on some good times before going to the penitentiary to serve an inevitable 20-year sentence.

Less than a week later, Haywood disappeared, and later turned up in Russia, where he lived for the rest of his life. Hecht realized that the plan had been in place all along–no wonder the man was calm! “Yes sir,” Hecht tells us, “this Big Bill Haywood, the terror of organized society, was saying goodbye to his native land as if he were a sentimental playboy.”

RELATED:
The hero of Boxcar Bertha is supposedly based on Bill Haywood

A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago – Rosse on the illustrator

Here we have a photo of a veiled woman. Its ostensible purpose is to provide a visual means of identifying the subject, to which one can only say, “Huh?”. The paradox is almost too much to contemplate. It’s hard to say which aspect of this concept is most stupid.

First candidate: the entire women-as-property ethos. I like to respect the religious beliefs of others, but dammit, making humans cover their faces, like all the rest of the misogynist creed, wherever it is found, is just repugnant. I’m not in favor of women wearing veils unless they want to, and surprisingly few do seem to want to.

So that’s the first stupid thing. The second is: even bothering to take a picture. A principle of equal treatment? People who have no faces are afforded the same opportunity as those with faces: a means to prove or disprove their identity and their very existence. Seriously, would this picture stand up in court as a solid ID? No? Then what is it doing on this passport?

Or maybe it isn’t so stupid. “We have the technology!” was the motto of the 20th century. It won’t be the motto of the 21st century, because humans won’t be around on the planet long enough to look back on the century with nostalgia, or to identify the most characteristic slogan of that century.

So, who needs a whole face? By now we must certainly have the technology to identify an individual from a photo showing one approximate centimeter of flesh. Which many Muslim women do show. This devout lady, however, reveals nothing.

The next stupid thing is, it gives the bludg an excuse to grab more identification markers. “Yes, modest Muslim women are allowed to wear their veils to be photographed,” say the authorities. “This is why we must also have an alternate means of ID, such as fingerprints. And of course we wouldn’t want to discriminate, so that means everybody gets fingerprinted”. Still, this ID method would not capture data from bilateral amputees, so there must be retina scans… and so on, ad nauseum, ad absurdum and ad infinitum.

The fourth thing, and I won’t call it stupid because that would be offensive, but it sure does cause a person to wonder. Doesn’t Islam forbid the making of images? And specifically, images of people? But in order to move about in the modern world, the leaders of the faith apparently are willing to cut the faithful some slack. Well, why not cut them some slack in the matter of veils, infibulation and, you know, that kind of thing?

REFLECTIONS ON HIS BOOK, RESIST NOT EVIL

Most of us don’t know much about the revered attorney Clarence Darrow, and this treatise on crime and punishment will remedy the lack. The first thing that strikes the reader is the great man’s unworldliness. He seems less in touch with human nature than a cloistered nun. He asserts, for example, that “No parent ever teaches his child any other philosophy than that of love.”  He believes that schoolboys don’t pick on weaker boys. “The old, the young, the feeble, children and women, are especially exempt from violent deeds.” He feels that most unlawful deeds are committed “hastily in the heat of passion or upon what seems adequate provocation, or through sore need.” This belief must have been severely tested when he defended Leopold and Loeb, the notorious young men who killed a boy just to see if they could meet the intellectual challenge of committing the perfect crime.

Darrow appears to have been dazzlingly naive. He thought that penitentiaries are full of men who stole to feed their kids. Maybe it used to be so, but what would he say about the recent trial of the “party planner” for a large corporation who embezzled $1 million and spent it on jewelry and designer clothes? Could he convince a jury that her case was one of sore need?

He complains that prison breaks up families – “A wife and helpless babes may be left in want when the state lays its hand in wrath upon the man.” Maybe things were different back then, but these days it’s much more likely that the man has already split, and abandoned that woman and those little tykes, long before the law grabs him.

“Men would not explore their neighbors’ houses at dead of night, if their own were filled,” is Darrow’s claim. What planet was he from? On earth, the sense of entitlement experienced by some members of society is so acute that they never feel they have enough. When the house fills up with goodies, they get another house and fill up that one too.

“Give them a chance to live and prosper, and violent acts will be unknown.” Sorry, Clarence. Not when they’re making up their own definitions of prosperity. We got folks who aren’t content with receiving welfare, but sign up under fifty fraudulent names to scam the system. We got folks who already have eight or eighty million dollars and think they need additional millions. Only a very small percentage of people have some decent concept of what is enough. Most people want more than they can use, and many enjoy, more than the thing itself, the knowledge that someone else doesn’t have it. And this is not a new kink in the psyche of homo sapiens. Since we hit the ground, a lot of us have lived by the creed More is More. And the easiest way to get more is to take it from others….same as it ever was.

Some of Darrow’s beliefs had already been disproved by history long before this book was written. He voices his doubts about the deterrent effect of the death penalty, and suggests that if we intend for it to be a deterrent at all, then let it be a powerful one: a horrible gruesome death with a maximum-capacity audience. Well, governments used to do exactly that, and discovered that the public became more, not less, violent in the immediate aftermath of such events as a hanging in the town square.

Resist Not Evil abounds with examples of Darrow’s touching, indeed astonishing, faith in people. “Given a child falling into a river, an old person in a burning building, a woman fainting in the street, and a band of convicts would risk their lives to give aid as quickly at least as a band of millionaires.”  Personally, I doubt that either the average convict or the average millionaire would get involved, unless there was something in it for him. A woman fainting in the street would be greatly at risk of rape from either of them.  It’s not that the convicts wouldn’t act as well as the millionaires. We’re coming at it from a different conceptual angle: the millionaires would act as badly as the convicts. After all, that is, in many cases, how they got to be millionaires in the first place. It’s just that they, unlike the convicts, didn’t get caught.

TO UNDERSTAND ALL IS TO FORGIVE ALL

“No honest judgment of the worth of any soul can be measured except with full knowledge of every circumstance that made his life, ” wrote Darrow, laying the groundwork for today’s widespread habit of acquitting just about any accused who can claim some kind of victimhood. (Remember the Jets in West Side Story? “Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke, ya gotta understand, it’s just our bringing-upke, that gets us outta hand.”)

He laments the fate of the stand-up guy, who would rather defy the court than turn stool pigeon. “A judge can see no character or virtue in an accused man, who would rather suffer imprisonment or death than to betray his fellows.” Does Darrow really believe it is noble altruism that prevents crooks from ratting on their associates? Did the more likely explanation never occur to him, that it might simply be stark, craven fear of payback?

Darrow’s insistence on romanticizing criminals and low-lifes would fit right in with the prevailing ethos in urban barrios and ghettos. “Women,” he says, “would not sell their bodies if society left them any other fairly decent and pleasant way to live.” Nonsense. There were alternatives in Darrow’s day, and there are a hundred or a thousand times more alternatives now, at least for women in the developed countries. Yet there is no shortage of hookers anywhere, and for a large percentage, it is their career of choice. Fine, if that’s what they want to do. It’s too bad that our society can’t see the good sense of decriminalizing prostitution. But let’s not get all dewy-eyed about some imaginary lack of other choices.

Just when you’ve got him figured for a bleeding-heart liberal, Darrow comes out with a pure libertarian statement: “Every government on earth is the personification of violence and force….”  He points out, as many libertarians do today, that no matter how much we fancy it up with civilized trimmings and rhetoric, coercion is eternally the bottom line. “The ancient knight who, with battle-ax and coat of mail, enforced his rule upon the weak, was only the forerunner of the tax-gatherer and tax-devourer of today.”

Yes, we have courts and codes and police and lawyers and legislators and all kinds of architectural splendor and ceremonial rituals to emphasize the majesty of the Law, “but back of these, to enforce each decree, is the power of armed men with all the modern implements of death.”  Practically everywhere on the planet and in most times, it seems to have been taken for granted that this was the only possible way to operate. Darrow recognizes that the State does not protect the weak and the meek, but aids the strong in exploiting them. He is fully aware of the true nature of temporal power. The mystery is how he manages to reconcile that knowledge with his optimistic faith in the basic goodness of human nature, since the State is made up of nothing but humans wearing uniforms or suits.

Darrow accuses governments everywhere of fundamental, pervasive and vicious hypocrisy: There is always a pretended concern for the welfare of the people. The government  encourages marriage and reproduction, punishes infanticide and abortion, criminalizes birth control, sanitizes the water supply, and cares for the sick – all with the ostensible purpose of keeping people alive and creating more of them. Yet when the government wishes to wage a war, or after a war has decimated the population, the stunned survivors are told that the loss was for the greater good.

As Darrow puts it,  “To excuse the wholesale butcheries of men by the governing powers, learned apologists have taught that without the havoc and cruel devastation of war the human race would overrun the earth.”  In other words, when they want cannon fodder they use a twisted Malthusian argument. It reminds me of that other favorite cop-out of the warmongers: the marvelous way in which war advances technology. Look how much we learn about skin grafts with a few thousand burned soldiers to practice on!

Even in wartime the primary goal of a government is not to defeat the enemy but to keep its own citizens in line. “In reality the prime reason for all the armies of the world is that soldiers and militia may turn their guns upon their unfortunate countrymen when the owners of the earth shall speak the word.” Orwell expressed the same truth in 1984: if a real enemy doesn’t exist, a government has to create one in order to justify keeping tight control over its people.

Darrow reminds us how rulers used to think that the greatest thing was to own individuals. Over the centuries they learned it is more expedient to own the land instead – “for to own the earth is to fix the terms on which all must live.” Any libertarian will tell you that land ownership is a good thing – but when it gets to where, as in South America, one per cent of the people own ninety percent of the land, the concept of ownership has gotten out of hand.

He spotlights another characteristic shared by the ruling class of every nation: they invariably show up at each others’ funerals. Millions of their own peasants can die unmourned, but the illustrious leaders are on the scene to shed a tear and escort the coffin in honor of one of their brother dictators, presidents, chancellors or kings.

THERE’S NO GOVERNMENT LIKE NO GOVERNMENT

Some of Darrow’s views stretch to anarchy. He has a gut feeling that an accused person stands a better chance of justice from a mob than from a courtroom. In many cases, he was right and would be today. On the other hand, it all depends (and always did). Mobs have, without benefit of jurisprudence, done away with a lot of alleged witches and sex offenders and other unpopular characters. who might very well have been innocent.

He makes a very strong anarchist claim: “The disorganized vicious would be far less powerful than the organized vicious, and would soon disappear.” Many present-day libertarians say the same thing: if the government vanished, people would behave decently. Those of the voluntaryist persuasion are convinced that if only the government will stop taking all their money and stop usurping the human help functions, people will joyously co-operate and take responsibility for one another’s needs.

I surely would like to believe it. But most of the time it simply doesn’t work that way! The first thing the vicious do is organize. One of the freshest examples is what’s happened behind the former Iron Curtain: more mobsters per square mile than Miami. Compared with the new geographic-area-formerly-known-as-the-USSR, old Chicago looks like a Rainbow Gathering

What would Darrow make of a n’er-do-well like Gary Gilmore, who as an ex-convict was given generous help and support by loving relatives, then killed two people in order to get the state to kill him? What would Darrow make of the Menendez brothers, the Bobbitt case, the Waco massacre, Susan Smith, or the O.J. Simpson trial?

He illuminates many of the ways in which we customarily fool ourselves. “The laws and regulations of a democracy tend no more to equality than those of a monarchy.” He notes how a net of laws is in place so securely that nobody can avoid breaking some of them at one time or another. Yet the rich and powerful escape the consequences, while any luckless citizen can easily be ensnared by some ill-wisher who is motivated to do so. Moreover, the rich don’t need to break the law. When they want to do something, they just get their lawyers to figure out another way. “When the law forbids extortion and swindling,” says Darrow,  “it simply forbids certain forms and methods of these acts, and these forms and methods are the ones not practiced by the ruling class.”

He makes a sort of Darwinian argument for Natural Law that could be the basis for extended discussion. He also makes a firm commitment to non-violence, and demonstrates that in his day as now, the one goal the penal system accomplished with spectacular efficiency was the manufacture of criminals. He is very much against fines as punishment: “The taking of money by the state in payment of crime is infinitely more damnable than private theft.” Darrow always stakes out a claim on the moral high ground, far above the tidemarks of contemporary mores. Look at some of the things which are and have been against the law. Most religions have been illegal in various times and places, yet believers risked death to worship as they felt necessary.  Trade unions have been illegal, and their adherents jailed or killed. Every political bias has been proscribed and punishable. “To violate law is often the highest, most sacred duty that can devolve upon the citizen,” he says, and reminds the self-righteous that America was partly founded by criminals transported here from England as punishment.

The more abstractly philosophical the discussion becomes, the more elevated the moral tone. He makes a case that having the hubris to judge a criminal is a worse crime than whatever the criminal did. Is this guy a flaming idealist, or what? Or possibly a bodhisattva who walked unrecognized among us?

Unrealistic as Darrow is, I think it is possible for people to become more like his vision of them. My determination to believe that, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, is one of the factors that cause me to be labeled a “mystical libertarian”. We both think people can improve, but we differ greatly on how it might happen. He thinks he knows, and I think he’s mistaken (as has been shown in the years of increasingly rapacious socialism in America since Darrow wrote.)

For instance, according to this book, “the expenditure of public money to relieve suffering, to furnish remunerative employment, to rationally prevent crime by leaving men with something else to do…” will fix things. Social service agencies have assiduously followed this plan since the Thirties, and with a vengeance since the Sixties, and have obtained worse results each year. Darrow wants to have his cake and eat it too: he wants to use the instrument of socialism to remove dire poverty from the society. At the same time he wants to ignore the fact that the redistribution of wealth is necessarily accomplished through force or threat of force against those from whom the wealth is taken. Was he unaware of the contradiction, or did he think he had somehow reconciled it?

I heard a child ask his mother this not long ago. It’s a good question. The answer is, an upside-down flag is a distress signal. It’s a serious thing, a cry for help. It means somebody is in trouble, often a whole lot of somebodys. It means something is wrong and needs to be fixed. It means the ship is sinking, the fort is burning. This is not a frivolous gesture, and should never be used as such. Nobody anywhere should ever, ever display a flag upside down unless they really mean it! Below is another example of an upside down flag. It’s here so you remember what not to do. Not unless you are absolutely certain that a situation fully qualifies as an imminent disaster! Not unless something is definitely circling the drain!

Here are some places where you can learn more about this revered symbol:

PrisonPlanet

“Upside Down, Torn, and Tattered”

Threat of Death Should Cause Distress Signal, Not the Other Way Around

More of The Hippest Things Anybody Ever Said About Politics

The people in Berkeley and in New York don’t need my pictures. That’s not where the battle’s going to be won. Tom Laughlin (of the Billy Jack movies)

The U.S. is putting together a constitution for Iraq. Why don’t we just give them ours? Think about it – it was written by very smart people, it’s served us well for over two hundred years, and besides, we’re not using it anymore. Jay Leno

Just because something works doesn’t mean it is desirable. Sy Leon

A piece of blank paper is the only thing in the world I have a serious ambition to control. Peter Levi

When Dick Nixon was going like this and smiling, what do you think he was telling you? ‘Fuck you four times.’ Swami X

Isn’t it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That’s how we get things done. Any opposition … is represented as a Left racket in the Right papers and a Right racket in the Left papers. … Of course we’re nonpolitical. The real power always is. C.S. Lewis in That Hideous Strength, 1945

The government can’t give out more than it takes in, and since the process of taking and redistributing costs something, the government actually gives out less than it takes in. This is why all “share the wealth” programs are actually “share the poverty” scams. Jim Lewis

Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind, it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate – and quickly. Lazarus Long

In my grandparents’ generation, they felt enlightened to know multiple languages and have lived in several lands. Now today, there are dummies who can’t even spell or speak in English properly but they feel threatened by Spanish or Korean. Everything is a threat to some people. Marc Madow

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies. Groucho Marx

From time to time, writers have engaged in politics. Its effect on them as writers has been injurious. W. Somerset Maugham

Being in politics is like being a football coach; you have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it’s important. Eugene McCarthy

Autonomy and cooperation make government irrelevant. Luke McGuff

Think like a free man and you will not be a slave. Menander

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. H.L. Mencken

I’d be perfectly fine with all the rules and red tape if we didn’t have to wait in line for so long that the people in the line eventually develop their own regional dialect. Dennis Miller

I regard politics as a thoroughly foul, rotten world. We get nowhere through politics. It debases everything. Henry Miller

Government is the only agency that can take a useful commodity like paper, slap some ink on it, and make it totally worthless. Ludwig von Mises

Revolutionaries’ love is not something isolated from their activities, but rather is related to their political ideals. Tina Modotti

The one must be sacrificed for the good of the many, until the many are all sacrificed, one by one. Ward Moore and Avram Davidson

Conservativism used to be defined by a fear, if not a loathing, of government. Now conservatives pay deference to the state. Bill Moyers

The enemy is not conservatism. The enemy is not liberalism. The enemy is bullshit. Lars Erik Nelson

I don’t believe democracy should have a totally professional military force. I believe the military should be in large number made up of people who don’t want to be there and will help make the generals honest. Willie Nelson

I would be willing to get along with less information about this or that officeholder’s tax return or bedroom activities if I could get him or her to speak more clearly about maters of public policy. Edwin H. Newman

To have a career you need a society to have it in. You go off and you make works of art and you present them here. You’re glad to be making a contribution. America doesn’t provide that society any more. Phil Ochs

We conservatives don’t have gulags because they aren’t tax deductible. You can’t leverage gulag assets, and gulag merchandising rights are worth zilch. P.J. O’Rourke

People took politics seriously in those days. They used to start storing up rotten eggs weeks before an election. George Orwell

History is a bloody testament that sincerity can achieve atrocities which cynicism could never conceive. Jack Parsons

With my own weapons, design and color, I have wanted to conquer the conscience of mankind, so that this knowledge can lead us each day a step ahead on the road of liberty. Pablo Picasso

I’m more comfortable allowing individuals to be stupid, than requiring they not be. Brick Pillow

Prisons and schools are baby-sitting institutions so that we don’t glut the labor market. Baba Ram Dass

It is not self-sacrifice to die protecting that which you value: If the value is great enough, you do not care to exist without it. This applies to any alleged sacrifice for those one loves. Ayn Rand

(re: NATO, IMF, World Bank, GATT, WTO)
One of the oddities of the political situation in the United States since [WWII] has been the persistent belief on some sections of the right that the creation of these and similar international institutions are threats to America; when it is these institutions – backed up by force, over and covert, which have enabled the United States to consume substantially more than its share of the world’s energy and minerals. Robin Ramsey

I don’t wave a flag for anything. I’m a musician. Keith Richards

Of course, like the cliché’ moth courting the trite candle, the lit-up libertarian runs a constant risk. Is it not finer, however, to sizzle whole in the flame of freedom than to slowly stew to pieces in one’s own diminishing juices? Tom Robbins

I don’t make jokes, I just watch the government and report the facts. Will Rogers

Liberal – one whose heart is in the right place, but whose head is not. L.A. Rollins

Events are only real in the present tense – before they happen they’re hype, and after they happen they’re spin. Douglas Rushkoff

The criminal law can be used to prevent anti-social action on the part of those who do not belong to the government. Bertrand Russell

Much of the difficulty in attempting to restructure American and other societies arises from this resistance by groups with vested interests in the status quo. Significant change might require those who are now high in the hierarchy to move downward many steps. This seems to them undesirable and is resisted. Carl Sagan

Politicians fuck with people. That’s what they do. That’s their job. Every day they get up and wonder who they’re gonna fuck with that day. They they go and do it. John Sandford

I have a friend who’s collecting unemployment insurance. This guy has never worked so hard in his life as he has to to keep this thing going. He’s down there every week, waiting in the line and getting interviews and making up all these lies about looking for jobs. If they had any idea of the effort and energy that he is expending to avoid work, I’m sure they’d give him a raise. Jerry Seinfeld

I have no country – and the more I see of countries the better I like the idea. line from film The Shanghai Gesture

From Nixon on, every paranoid suspicion about the dirty tricks of government had proved an underestimate. Samuel Shem

I suggest that we resist apparent solutions that require victims to surrender their freedom, and freedom of expression, as a means of survival. Mary Simmerling

Many hackers tend to be reflexive liars….at least the ones found in newspaper and TV news stories – [they] can be counted on to perform for the listener, telling the gullible just about anything he or she wishes to hear. The result has been that almost any claim, no matter how nonsensical, has been published. George Smith

It is part of the sordid reality of our times that Hollywood is about the only institution left in our country big and powerful enough to challenge the influence of state propaganda that controls our lives with hardly a murmur from the same journalists so incensed by Stone. (re the JFK film) Sam Smith

When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion. C. P. Snow

The simple truth of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world. Alexander Solzhenitsyn

It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites. Thomas Sowell

As estimated by the Bureau of National Affairs, the dollar cost of corporate crime in America is over ten times greater than the combined larcenies, thefts, robberies and burglaries committed by individuals. Gerry Spence

I used to believe that a real unitary world government would be a good idea but I changed my mind because of something Lenny Bruce said about the Soviet Union- if you want to imagine what it’s like in the Soviet Union, imagine an entire country run by the phone company. Norman Spinrad

A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years. Lysander Spooner

The average fifth-grader these days doesn’t know whether Japan is a state or a city; wonders what happens when you get to the “edge” of the United states on a map; doesn’t know, and can’t understand what a glacier is, and even believes that the government is there to protect him! Rev. Ivan Stang (The Church of the Subgenius)

Let my own life go on undisturbed, and my private affairs prosper – and I don’t give a continental whether the government is being run by a Communist, or a Seventh-Day Adventist, or a Hottentot. Gertrude Stein

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small space. Gloria Steinem

That’s how the government is. It was invented to do stuff that private enterprise doesn’t bother with, which means that there is probably no reason for it. Neal Stephenson

Good health turns out to be a positive by-product of the pursuit of other things. Edward Tenner

Any country which displays more than one statue of a living politician is a country which is headed for trouble. Paul Theroux

What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman that practically I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all. Henry David Thoreau

Anyone who puts his own conscience above the state is an anarchist. Allen Thornton

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then–we elected them. Lily Tomlin

Washington is like Calcutta, full of beggars, only they wear $1500 suits and don’t say please or thank you. Traffic

Liberalism, free-thinking and open inquiry will never object to appear in company with their opposites, because they have the conceit to think that they can quell those opposites; but the opposites will not appear in conjunction with liberalism, free-thinking and open inquiry. Anthony Trollope

You may be willing to give up your rights, but I won’t let you give up MY rights. Hal Turner

The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic villainy. Mark Twain

Q. What’s the difference between God and the Government?
A. The lord giveth and the lord taketh away; the government taketh and giveth away. Unknown

A policeman’s job is easy only in a police state. Unknown

It’s dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. Unknown

No bird flies too high when he flies with his own wings. Unknown

You can always find free cheese in a mousetrap. Unknown

Sometimes the majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. Unknown

When the government tells me not to do something I feel that it’s my patriotic duty to immediately go out and do it. Rico Vaselino

The American Revolution was over in 1781; Washington wasn’t elected our first president until 1789, and he was not elected by the people in a free election but by the select, male-only Federal Constitutional Convention. Michael Ventura

There is only one party, which is People with Money. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Third World rebels are great at exposing and overthrowing corrupt hypocritical regimes, but they seem noticeably less great at the mundane, non-negative task of then establishing a superior governing alternative. Victorious rebels, in fact, seem best at using their tough, cynical rebel-skills to avoid being rebelled against themselves – in other words, they just become better tyrants. David Foster Wallace

I am so weary about having been consistently right in all my political predictions for ten years. It is so boring seeing it all happen for the second time after one has gone through it in imagination. For you and Duff and Randolph life must be all one lovely surprise after another. Evelyn Waugh

Mom and Dad are biology, but you’re most like sick
if you get your kicks from politics.
Wean yourself now. Clean your own diapers.
Watch out for shoe tiers and nose wipers.
William Wharton in Scumbler

Fraudulence has become a national virtue and is well thought of in many circles. E. B. White

Since this is my first official government rapport I have chosen to write it by hand, because my favorite government documents are handwritten and they seem to work okay. Mason Williams

The Academy…Nobody seriously thought they’d rally behind the Branch Davidians and give the documentary Oscar to Waco: Rules of Engagement, perhaps the most chilling, revealing documentary about our present police-state mentality….Why recognize a new, present villain like the ATF….when you can trot those photogenic Nazis out, year after year?…You’d think impending murders would have some clout over ones committed fifty years ago, but nooooooooooo, not to the guys who cut the checks in Emerald City. Cintra Wilson

All governments are evil in one way or another. Leonard Woolf

In my Utopia, people would more or less give up on politics. Steve Wozniak

A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well. Stephen Wright

When you’ve seen one stifling transnational media conglomerate, you’re seen them all. Jamie Zawinski

I wouldn’t call it fascism exactly, but a political system nominally controlled by an irresponsible, dumbed down electorate who are manipulated by dishonest, cynical, controlled mass media that dispense the propaganda of a corrupt political establishment can hardly be described as democracy either. Edward Zehr

The Hippest Things Anybody Ever Said About Politics

Big Brother is like the Uncertainty Principle. You can’t tell where he is and how fast he’s moving at the same moment. Dr. Agon

Apathy, lack of caring, isn’t the problem. The problem is caring too much about the wrong things. Anne Alexander

We weren’t put on this earth to be politicians. Jeff Ament

Once people have learned how to disengage their souls when being abused by the powers that be, the powers that be lose traction rapidly. Kirsten Anderberg

Don’t make the mistake of equating anarchy with liberty. Anarchy is liberty only for the strongest and cruelest. Real liberty is when people respect each other’s liberty, and are willing to voluntarily restrain themselves from doing things that impinge on the liberty of others. Carl Aron

So far, I’ve concluded that politics is all bullshit, but I haven’t worked up any political ideology much more sophisticated than that. Ace Backwords

This is a country with 250 million people who don’t want any news from Washington and, even if they did, wouldn’t expect any news from Washington because they don’t think Washington could pour stale beer out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel.

Governments exist to limit freedom. That’s their job. And to the extent that utterly unbridled liberty seems to favor the reptile in us, a little government is not such a bad thing. But it never knows when to quit. John Perry Barlow

For them, the question is always, “What kind of government intervention should we impose on the world?” They never think that maybe we shouldn’t. Dave Barry

To remain distinct within the mass we must be branded with a series of numbers and must recite them to be known and served and allowed to pursue our lives. Jacques Barzun

A reminder from history: the American Revolution was not financed with matching grants from the Crown.
David Bayles and Ted Orland

Every anarchist is in part a hedonist and wants to enjoy his freedom. Fighting is too likely to interfere with that enjoyment. Ned Beaumont

Because I don’t have a job, because I don’t have children, I can get up and say something at a public hearing other blacks can’t say. I can’t be threatened about my job or my children. MaVynee Betsch

Today, problems aren’t solved, they’re attacked. Like the War on Poverty. Remember that? I’m happy to report that it’s finally over. The poor people have all surrendered. Swami Beyondananda

Conspiracy Theory, Unofficial Definition: Anything which, were it true, we couldn’t handle. Steve Bhaerman

We can probably do more for peace and freedom in the world right here, on our own turf, than by exporting ideology to the rest of the world which has perhaps had its fill of our imperial outreach offerings. Bob Black

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purpose is beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. Supreme Court Justice Brandeis

Capitalism with its appeal to greed was not on the face of it an attractive system, but it provided a counterweight to the power of the state, besides quickening the life of society by providing competition. Socialism, or rule by bureaucracy, meant, I thought, the dead hand on everything, the life-destroying tyranny of the anonymous. Gerald Brenan

Give government the weapons to fight your enemy and it will use them against you. Harry Browne

One’s got to be against the government, any government, because the people in it are bad people or else they wouldn’t have got in. Anthony Burgess

Public work should be avoided by men who care for their own peace of mind. Daniel Hudson Burnham

Drug control is a thin pretext, and getting thinner, to increase police powers and to brand dissent as criminal…. I now suggest to all competent young people that they emigrate to Canada, before they get busted. If you have a record, it is much more difficult. William S. Burroughs

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we. George W. Bush

Christianity may be a powerful tonic, but Hislam remains the one true faith of the Republican party. John Calderazzo

Nothing could be more inaccurate than the lazy assumption of the policy elites that groups such as the Freemen and the various militia movements represent anarchistic ‘anti-government’ tendencies. If anything, the so-called anti-government forces of the radical right are among the most fanatical devotees of legal authority among us. Paul F. Campos

Politics is so corrupt even the dishonest people get fucked. George Carlin

It seems what is most feared by a lot of people is somebody else’s ability to act in an organized manner. Casale

Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. Douglas Casey

Some people are cursed with personalities that disqualify them for anything except strident movements and, when one comes along, they tune up and howl. Dick Cavett

The way to move society on its axis is not to play politics. It is to persuade teachable people to think as you do. And the best way to do this is to be a good personal living example of the philosophy you hope to spread. John Chamberlain

The privileged people who actually run the country, they don’t want the state to have power to go after people like them. So they’ll actually protect the civil rights of people they hate if they come from the right class. Noam Chomsky

We seem to think having everyone vote works when it comes to running a country that can start wars, appropriate property, and execute malefactors, yet we assume it’s a bad way to run a business. The Cluetrain Manifesto (four authors)

A mixed herd of both sexes and all ages is the easiest kind to manage. Cowboy saying

Politics means nothing more than the ability to make the inevitable appear to be a matter of wise human choice. Quentin Crisp

As soon as you talk about social or political responsibility, you’ve amputated the best limbs you’ve got as an artist. You are plugging into a very restrictive system that is going to push and pull and mold you and is going to make your art totally useless and ineffective. David Cronenberg

The only way the Bill of Rights will protect you from much of anything nowadays is if you hold it over your head when it rains. Samantha Crouse

Legislative interference with the habits of the people produces the sneak, the spy, the fanatic, and the artful dodger. Aleister Crowley

Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in. Robertson Davies

The sad truth is that individuals will always be under-equipped. We’re always going to have smaller engines. The CIA or whoever is always going to have the bigger infrastructure. Mark Dippe’

Dissent is seen as a form of betrayal. Free speech is seen as being most appropriately exercised when it is not exercised at all. Democracy is maintained by not thinking democratically. E. L. Doctorow

Neither charm nor patience nor endurance has ever wrested power from those who hold it. Frederick Douglass

Politics is an indigenous art form cultivated primarily by lawyers. Politics is about the only way for lawyers to get a little excitement. Peter Drucker

If one were to bring together all customs considered sacred by some group, and were then to take away all customs considered immoral by some group, nothing would remain. Will Durant

The significant problems we face can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. Albert Einstein

I didn’t even know those people out there had gotten shoes yet, much less learned to read! I mean, if they could read, then they must have seen there were other names on the ballot than Reagan or Nixon. Harlan Ellison

It isn’t just propaganda any more, it’s ‘prop-agenda’. It’s not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about. Brian Eno

By the time anybody gets around to saying “leadership”, it’s all over. Werner Erhard

The Bill of Rights and the First Amendment in particular are monuments to the right to doubt, and to the right of one person to doubt the rightness of 200 million. Steve Erickson

(about Russia) There has been a dictatorship there for so long, with so little real resistance, you must ask yourself how much sympathy you can have. Orianna Fallaci

There are these 12 guys running the country, and they all went to the right schools and they’re all trained for their jobs and they all have drawers full of classified information and they all have direct lines to the White House. So they resent it terribly when outsiders, like the American people, try to butt into their foreign policy. Jules Feiffer

Free your ass and your mind will follow. Gerry Fialka

It is the most opulent, most gorgeous land on earth, a land whose wisest are but little wiser than its dullest, where the rulers have minds like little children and the lawgivers believe in Santa Claus. F. Scott Fitzgerald

(On Hitler, 1936) He has a fine library of six thousand volumes, yet he never reads; books would do him no good – his mind is made up. Janet Flanner

I think Nixon did this country a great favor when he reinstilled in the American people a mistrust of government. Carol Fondiller

I don’t say this is a bad country – I say countries are bad. FrancEye

Gentlemen, you see we have been living under anarchy, yet the business of living has gone on as usual. Be careful; if our debates go on too much longer, people may come to see that they can get along very well without us. Ben Franklin

The liberal views of Robert Montgomery, professor of economics at the University of Texas, made him unpopular with the Texas legislature. An investigation was set in motion. When he was asked if he favored private property, Montgomery replied “I do – so strongly that I want everyone in Texas to have some.” John Kenneth Galbraith

The truth, as always, will set you free, but first it will make you sound dangerous. Kaye Gibbons

How small of all that human hearts endure/ That part which laws or kings can cause or cure. Oliver Goldsmith

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away. Barry Goldwater

It is hard to give understanding to someone with no will, and more difficult to give will to someone with no understanding. Baltasar Gracian

It is true, of course, that war not only arouses suppressed forces slumbering in us, but also really does librate some people, be it from a hated environment, the slavery of daily work, or the burden of one’s own personality. That is one of the mysteries that will perpetuate wars forever. George Grosz

You are strangling freedom but the soul of the people knows no bondage. Graffiti in Moscow in the 70s

Coming back into this country is more horrifying than leaving. Graffiti

Politicians are like polkas – they have different names, but they all sound alike. Graffiti

Politicians are like diapers. They both should be changed often, and for the same reason. Graffiti

The word ‘politics’ is derived from the words ‘poly’ meaning many, and the word ‘tics’ meaning blood-sucking parasites. Larry Hardiman

The truth is that we are not fighting a “war on terror.” We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise. Sam Harris

A lot of people who say they want a smaller government really do – it’s just that they want to be it. Dale Hartman

Freedom is doing what you want, when you please, and not being made to do anything. Freedom is not having to spend time with people in whose company you don’t want to spend time. Pat Hartman

What experience and history teach is this: that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. George Hegel

Politicians are required to be full of shit because they have to thread their ways to the top through the hordes of amibitious, narcissistic, amoral, back-stabbing dickheads who run things in Washington. Cynthia Heimel

Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything — you can’t conquer a free man, the most you can do is kill him. Robert Heinlein

The notion of making the government behave as if it were really around to help people is radical in itself, and will cause tremors in the community that you cannot tell where it will lead. Karl Hess

The nonconformist is a more stable type than the conforming individual. It is the average man of today who shows the most striking differences from people of other ages and other civilizations. The rebel of today is twin brother of rebels in all ages and climes. Eric Hoffer

Identity politics, based on racial and gender categories, and on nihilistic assumptions that power is all, culminate in a posture in which the rules of civility and democratic process, not to mention the principles of academic freedom, are dismissed as so much social mystification. David Horowitz

The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds, I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
A.E. Housman

If you don’t have a flag sticking out of your ass, you must be a communist. Chrissie Hynde

Medical bureaucracy creates ill-health by increasing stress, by multiplying disabling dependence, by generating new painful needs, by lowering the levels of tolerance for discomfort or pain, by reducing the leeway that people are wont to concede to an individual when he suffers, and by abolishing even the right to self-care. Ivan Illich

Everyone who has ever lost someone he or she loved in a war has an obligation to talk back to these chest-thumping jackasses who are so anxious to get other people’s sons killed. Molly Ivins

People ought to be free and the way to keep people free is to keep people in charge of politicians rather than the other way around. Paul Jacob

Generosity is a virtue for individuals, not governments. When governments are generous it is with other people’s money, other people’s safety, other people’s future. P. D. James (character)

The idea of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. Thomas Jefferson

It’s one thing to sacrifice truth for fairness. It’s another thing to sacrifice truth for success. You can only sacrifice an ethical principle for another ethical principle. Michael Josephson

To believe in conspiracies, one must assume that the government is organized. That is a leap of faith I am unwilling to make. PM Kellermann

I have discovered what previously I didn’t believe possible – that politicians behave in private life and say exactly the same things as they do in public. Their stupidity is inhuman. John Maynard Keynes

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. Martin Luther King

To vanish, to take a powder, to cut and run – from an army one can’t fight for, a community one can’t live with, or a directive one can’t obey – can be a legitimate political act, and sometimes the consummate political act. Walter Kirn

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation. Henry Kissinger

The War on Terror was never a war in the traditional sense. It is, instead, a kind of brand, an idea that can be easily franchised by any government in the market for an all-purpose opposition cleanser. Naomi Klein

The game that our politicians play with us is one of constraining political decisions to one of two equally worthless alternatives and portraying them as “the only game in town.” Thomas L. Knapp

Pseudo-patriots will employ their perverted nationalistic views of Americanism to work for their own freedom but to deprive others of theirs. Joe Knight

This is what we wanted, back in the Sixties. And now we have it. It used to be that only people with pigmented skin would get beat up by the cops. Now, anybody can get beat up be the cops. White grannies, Girl Scouts, nuns, anybody. Equality. Will Knott

(Originally published April 9, 2003)

Ten years ago this month more than 80 people were shot or incinerated at Mt. Carmel, Texas. The multi-racial community, led by David Koresh, was made up of Christians who played music, worked on their cars, conducted a legal arms business, and loved their children – or who were children. The body count for the kids under 16 was 21 corpses. The events of February through April 1993 – the first raid, the siege, and finally the orgy of brutal slaughter – became known to our collective consciousness as “Waco.”

Some years later, a renewal of public interest came about because of the persistent and obstinate questions asked by several determined investigators, chiefly Mike McNulty of Fort Collins. They have done brilliant work on all the details of the attack, FLIR technology, “overlooked” and mishandled evidence, missing pages, military secretiveness, delays in carrying out orders, lies about use of tear gas and snipers, a heinously altered crime scene, a power failure in a morgue that rendered the bodies useless for further study…..and on and on.

Waco: The Rules of Engagement drew nearly 800 people to screenings held in Fort Collins. Subsequently the film was nominated for an Academy Award, captured an Emmy in the investigative journalism category, and won a major international prize. A sequel garnered more attention, and the government finally had to hold hearings.

Amongst all the thousands of items of evidence and the fascinating mass of information uncovered and exposed, we might forget something important. The big picture is, no government agents should have ever interfered with those people in the first place, period.

The word “compound” has been extensively used for the Branch Davidians’ home and place of worship. Call a thing a compound, and there’s nothing else to do but attack it. This is spin doctoring at its finest – whereas ranch, settlement, community or other neutral term at least pays lip service to fairness. The destruction of this community, and the events leading up to it, are precisely the sort of activities the word “infamy” was coined for.

Remember what Martin Neimoller said about the Nazis? “They first came for the Communists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was Protestant. Then they came for me…. and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

“I could be next” is a selfish reason for caring, but a reason those of us who are not saints can relate to. “Waco” makes us ask who will be the next to fall. Hippie communes, Amish farms, artist colonies, ashrams, convents, summer camps, extended families – nobody is safe. When the Nazification quotient of a society reaches the level displayed at Waco, anybody could be next. It’s no longer a matter of whether they will come for you, only when.

Government Paperwork

The affidavit that started the whole thing was authored by a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent. This document, on the strength of which warrants were obtained, was full of third-hand hearsay “evidence” of wrongdoing, plenty of irrelevant material for padding, and a number of flat out lies.

The most inflammatory statement attributed to Koresh in the affidavit was a conversation with a social worker in which he supposedly said his activities would make the riots in Los Angeles pale by comparison. The woman’s last visit to Mt. Carmel was three weeks before the L.A. riots, making either Koresh a true prophet, or the social worker a true bullshit artist.

There is also the matter of a legal detail called “timeliness.” In the affidavit, designed to establish probable cause to search for evidence of the illegal conversion of weapons to automatic, the freshest information was eight months old. Even Marc Breault, a former Davidian and an enemy of Koresh, a man who could be expected to blow the whistle on the most tenuous grounds, claimed no knowledge of illegal firepower at Mt. Carmel.

Don’t Know Much About a Science Book

What else was in the affidavit? Well, it seems that an informant had once seen a Davidian designing a weapon on a computer screen. There were copies of magazines like Shotgun News. And Koresh made his people watch shoot-em-ups like Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Hamburger Hill.

Koresh was said to have been asking around for where to get a copy of The Anarchist’s Cookbook. (This was pre-Amazon) Hell, even I knew three or four different sources for that book. If Koresh couldn’t figure out where to get it, he certainly was not the terrifying criminal mastermind the feds portray him as.

What About the Atrocities?

The most harmful allegations concerning the treatment of children at Mt. Carmel stemmed from a disgruntled parent involved in a custody case, and we all know how that goes. The worst evidence a visiting social worker could report was that one little boy said he wanted to grow up so he could have a “long gun.” Possibly, kids were disciplined by being sent to bed without supper.

The affidavit mentioned a child abuse investigation, but did not mention that the investigation was closed due to lack of evidence. Later, interviews with children who left during the 51-day siege failed to turn up any evidence of abuse.

Far from being a neglectful parent, Koresh, himself the son of a 15-year-old single mother, actually provided for the support of his progeny. He took care of not only his own children but everybody at the settlement. A Waco musician who knew some Mt. Carmel residents said, “It’s a free ride. Koresh feeds and clothes you. He was even paying off Thibodeau’s school loan. You’re free to play guitar 24 hours a day.”

What was the government supposed to do, just walk away?

That’s what some people ask. For many, the question answers itself. In the heat of debate over the later complications, we need to recall that there was no justification for the federal presence at the Branch Davidian community in the first place. And it didn’t start with the arrival of the BATF forces. Before the first paperwork had been drawn up, Special Response Teams from three cities were already at Fort Hood practicing for the raid on Mt. Carmel. Months before a single warrant was issued, the full-scale hostile invasion had been mapped out. But why?

When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail

This ancient wisdom was proved once again in Waco by the blundering and heavy-handed tactics of a law-enforcement agency armed with tons of expensive gear and a bad attitude. The BATF had blown a wad on fancy equipment whose purchase needed justification before the budget came up for review. The initial raid went down on February 28. Had it gone well, the glorious victory would have been quite fresh for the annual appropriations hearing on March 10.

To make matters worse, the BATF has a long and proud tradition of shooting first and asking questions later. It was still licking the wounds inflicted by the TV show 60 Minutes the month before. Like a bloodied and enraged bear, the BATF was in search of something to shred with its claws. The surrender of a wacky cult leader and his followers would be the media event to take everybody’s minds off all that loose talk about incompetence and corruption in the BATF. David Koresh was elected scapegoat.

Sex, Drugs, & Rock’n'Roll

The fabled “powers that be” were mightily pissed off by Koresh, representing as he did the entire unholy trinity of the Sixties. Drugs: A story about a suspected methamphetamine lab was released, but not because there was any truth in it. Problem was, the National Guard wouldn’t put their helicopters in the air unless dope was involved. So the G-men said what they needed to say.

Rock’n'roll, the Davidians were definitely guilty. Like many other charismatic figures in the news, Koresh was a musician. He is said to have owned 30 guitars, many of them custom-painted by an airbrush artist who was a member of the group. One featured a portrait of Koresh on a cross with a half-naked woman at his feet. He gave out t-shirts that said, “David Koresh – God Rocks.”

Occupationally, the Mt. Carmel community was musician-heavy, with all the equipment set up in the main parlor. The jazz-rock fusion group Messiah played occasional gigs at Cue Sticks, a club in Waco. There the band had the opportunity not only to perform but to invite people home for Bible study.

“He couldn’t be a rock star,” the local music store owner said of David Koresh, “so he decided to be Jesus.”

The Men Don’t Know, but the Little Girls Understand

And now we approach the heart of the matter: sex. Most men would love to be able to get away with what Koresh achieved effortlessly: to have simultaneous affairs with several women who know about each other and put up with it. But a person just can’t keep a harem in the U.S. of A., not even when (as the evidence suggests of Koresh) all his relations with women are consensual. One theory insists that he was a coercer, and that would be bad enough. But even worse – what if he was actually a seducer? If all those women volunteered, if every female on the premises yearned to slide between the sheets with him – the public cringes at the thought.

Koresh was, let’s face it, an attractive fellow. How many federal agents have spent years anticipating their chance to nail a guy like that? A guy to stand in for the bastard back in Junior High who scored with all the chicks, who stole their first girlfriend. Koresh was indeed the sacrificial lamb: sacrificed to the long-smoldering resentments of unpopular adolescents, victim of their atavistic, primal hatred for the alpha male.

David Died for Somebody’s Sins, but Not Mine

The embarrassing 60 Minutes expose’ had revealed the unacceptable behavior of male federal agents to their female colleagues. To divert attention from its own culture of sexual abusiveness, the bureau arranged to turn the spotlight on the much more colorful story of a backwoods preacher who was getting a lot of nookie.

The government has tried to sell the idea that some kind of hostage situation existed, justifying the massive attack. How so? The adults present at Mt. Carmel were there willingly. People came from other states and even other countries to join the community – how could they be termed hostages? And the children were no more hostages than the children of Catholics or Presbyterians. In this country religious adults control hundreds of thousands of children, most of whom manage to grow up and go their own ways. If those Mt. Carmel kids had been polled, I bet they would have said that religious instruction, even on a daily basis, beats being roasted.

Desperado, You Better Come to Your Senses

Federal spokesmen have tried to excuse the original raid by claiming that Koresh was holed up like a rat, hadn’t shown his face in weeks, so needed to be cornered and captured on his home ground. “Wrong,” say the inhabitants of Waco. Koresh was away from the ranch frequently. He could have been apprehended while out jogging. In town he could have been picked up at a gun show or the auto parts store. He stopped in at Lone Star Music once or twice a week. Even if there were justifiable reasons to arrest Koresh, everybody except the government agrees that he could have been collared any day of the week with no muss, no fuss. And no publicity for the BATF.

Once the siege started, it was so easy for the government and media to whip up public hysteria about a supposed gargantuan weapons stash. But one expert has pointed out that no matter how much noise we’ve heard about those heavily armed lunatic Davidians, the numbers say their arsenal averaged out at two guns per person. In the great state of Texas as a whole, the average is four guns per person.

Like a Burning Ring of Fire

It’s amazing how apologists will deny that the tear gas could have contributed to the conflagration. The same thing happened in the notorious attack on the MOVE community in Philadelphia several years back: law enforcement had no idea that tear gas was flammable, and were shocked when a whole block of homes went up in smoke.

When the Davidians’ flag disintegrated and fell to the ground, the BATF hoisted its own banner. Clearly they were declaring a military victory. The government’s forces also showed their true colors as deadly clowns. During the siege, federal law-enforcement agents on the outside pulled down their pants and mooned the trapped Davidians.

They Didn’t Shoot the Sheriff, but They Might as Well Have

Jack Harwell, Sheriff of McLennan County, characterized the Mt. Carmel residents as “basically good people” who had settled in his county way back in 1935. The Sheriff went on record describing Koresh as a man who had willingly complied with the requests of law enforcement personnel on several previous occasions, and who had never been convicted of any type of crime. On one occasion, when the legality of a modified weapon was questioned by a neighbor, Koresh had even brought it in to the Sheriff’s office for an opinion.

Once the BATF, FBI, etc. moved in, Sheriff Harwell was ignored. Rather than utilize his experience and expertise in dealing with the Davidians, the invaders shoved him aside. During the final apocalyptic attack on the ranch, with Koresh on the line wanting to negotiate, the sheriff’s office couldn’t even get a federal agent on the phone.

The Annual Government Employees Picnic with Texas-Style Barbecue

However the children were treated (and the likelihood of ever knowing the truth grows fainter with each passing year), child welfare is definitely not under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, nor of the FBI. No matter what real or imaginary peril the minors of Mt. Carmel might have faced previously, the actions of these two federal agencies put them at infinitely greater risk and of course ultimately killed many of them.

Critics try to justify the raid and firestorm on the grounds that the Davidians were cult members, victims of brainwashing. Since when is wrong-headedness a capital offense? Did they deserve to be transformed into crispy critters because they were zealots? As we know, America was started by religious nuts (with guns.) None of the founders intended for any branch of government to be in charge of protecting people from false messiahs. The notion that the government has a duty to kill the followers of a false messiah, or even the false messiah himself, is the flimsiest defense heard since Nuremberg.

Basically, the inhabitants of Mt. Carmel were eliminated like cockroaches for belonging to a minority religion. They practiced a non-mainstream version of Christianity, therefore they were deluded fools who needed killing. Does this mean it’s okay to exterminate anyone who is deluded? For instance, is it all right to exterminate men who believe that drinking beer adds to their sex appeal? Is it okay to exterminate people who suffer from the delusion that the government is capable of solving problems? How about people who believe that one brand of laundry detergent is superior to another?

Yes: what the government was supposed to do was to walk away. Better yet, to never have been there in the first place. In the whole heinous, shameful mess, the biggest atrocity was that those people were not simply left the hell alone.

Note: For activist Mike McNulty, the event we call Waco set off alarm bells because, as a member of a minority faith, he was sensitized by the knowledge of a government massacre of Mormons in the past. Who knows what will happen when the seeds ripen that were sown by the Mt. Carmel massacre?

Mike McNulty
“I had been involved in the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints for a number of years and become familiar with the history of an incident that occurred in October of 1837. A group of Mormons had been entrapped by a group of state militiamen from Missouri, where the governor had issued an extermination order. Any Mormons found within the boundaries of the state of Missouri after such and such a date were to be killed on sight. (That order, interestingly enough, wasn’t repealed until 1978.)
“This group of people, forty or fifty of them, were rounded up by men on horseback and herded into a grist mill and the doors were closed. The men dismounted and put their muskets to the chinks in the logs of the grist mill and fired until everyone inside was wounded or dead. That was called the Haun’s Mill Massacre. That kind of conflict between government and religion has always been an interesting point of history for me. When I saw the Branch Davidians’ church being burned to the ground on April 19, it struck a resonant chord.”

Also see “Day 51 Revisited” at Earthblog.net

The holidays are over – the time of year when family is uppermost in the minds and hearts of just about everybody. During this past holiday season, my thoughts were with the Picagli family of New Haven, whose tragedy could have happened in any state, any town. The mother and children spent their first Christmas without their husband and father, because in October, Officer Dan Picagli was struck down by a vehicle. Four days later, on the 21st, he died.

We all know what happens to a cop-killer in America: unrelenting pursuit, until the day after forever, right? Around the same time, a Colorado man was sentenced to 80 years for trying to kill an officer. Not for succeeding, no – just for making the attempt. The solemn tradition of law enforcement is that nobody gets away with killing a cop.

Nobody, that is, except a federal appeals court judge, who also happens to be the cousin of former President Bush. We must take it on faith that John M. Walker Jr.’s connection to the highest office in the land has nothing to do with the fact that he walked away unscathed. Judge Walker was not required to have a breathalyzer, blood, urine, line-walking, or nose-touching test.

After the 65-year-old driver’s SUV struck Officer Picagli, the responding officers saw no “red flags” to indicate that Judge Walker might have been impaired. Excuse me? The fact that the man he mowed down was at that very moment being loaded into an ambulance, would seem to be a fairly significant red flag.

“Police have ruled out drugs and alcohol…,” the local newspaper said. Usually the term “rule out” means to eliminate a factor from consideration after performing a test that proves it should be excluded. In this case, however, the officer at the scene ruled out drugs and alcohol by eyeballing the judge and, more to the point, his Bushevik ID, and arbitrarily decided this driver was not substance-impaired.

Anyone else would have been asked to take a breathalyzer test, and hit with an automatic six-month license suspension if he refused. But Judge Walker wasn’t even asked. And this in a state where a driver can be prosecuted for operating “under the influence,” even without the evidence of any lab test!

“If you were driving and were involved in an accident which resulted in death or serious injury to a person, and the police have probable cause to believe you were under the influence, a BAC test is mandatory,” says the state’s official website. But the bleeding, unconscious body of Officer Picagli was not seen as probable cause. According to an official spokesperson, “police did not feel it was necessary to test Walker for drugs or alcohol.” And no charges were filed.

Dan Picagli was a good cop, who specialized in working with at-risk youth, dozens of whom showed up for his wake. They say he had a rare gift for seeing the potential in every child. In 1998, a White House forum on school safety focused on the school where Picagli had been the “resource officer” for three years. He appeared in training films and held workshops. In his spare time he ran the Police Athletic League, organized a toy drive at Christmas, and took youngsters to baseball games in New York City. The local kids remember his July 4th fireworks and bonfires.

A car wash donated half of a day’s profits to an education fund for the Picagli kids. See, their dad was moonlighting. He wasn’t killed on active duty, so in terms of compensation, his family probably is eligible for bupkis. Meanwhile, the “retired” judge pulls down $175,000 a year.

There’s a lovely remembrance page about “Danny Pags” on the Web, where the tributes from fellow officers have the ring of sincerity. “Maybe someday I can touch as many people as you have,” said one. “Any rookie out of the Academy should want to follow in your footsteps,” said another. By all accounts, Picagli was tough act to follow.

The memorial messages spoke of caring, commitment, understanding, patience, friendship, competence, integrity, dedication, and energy. Picagli was called mentor, brother, and inspiration; described as positive, upbeat, happy; with a smile and kind words; always thinking of others; never saying no to a task; a good and decent human being.

That’s who John M. Walker Jr., cousin of former President Bush, killed.

People have different opinions about the police. Some would say Judge Walker managed to kill the only good cop in the entire North American continent. Others would say Officer Picagli was a shining representative of thousands of cops who are equally good. That’s not the question here. When somebody dies, it’s not our job to set a value on that life. All are equal in the eyes of the law and the Lord.

And maybe Judge Walker is not an evil man. A courthouse acquaintance describes him as “warm and wonderful.” Maybe he’s a great guy, an exemplary judge, an incomparable husband and father. Maybe he wasn’t even impaired at the time of the accident – not drunk, not drugged, not speeding, not talking on a cell phone.

The fact remains that Dan Picagli is dead, and John Walker killed him. The conclusion? Perhaps it’s that someone can be a killer and a nice guy at the same time.

So: What should be done with the judge? My modest suggestion is, get him off the appeals bench and bust him back down to DUI court. Nobody should get away with hurting another person, but an awful lot of people who haven’t hurt anybody are pulled in by the law. We probably all know someone whose life has been derailed by a drunk driving checkpoint, or an accident that wasn’t really their fault.

It might be helpful to have a judge with some personal history ruling on DUI court cases. Maybe the system needs more judges with experience at the other end of the legal hierarchy. All we can hope for from this mess is that it’s made John M. Walker Jr. a more compassionate human being. If so, reassign him where that quality can do the most good.

first published as “Class Privilege is Still Alive and Thriving” in the Johnstown Breeze (Colorado) Dec. 14, 2006

“For God’s Sake, Don’t Breathalyze the Judge!” at Earthblog.net