The Conscience of Abe’s Turn freedom of speech, defense, and life

This is a great link with which to kick off new posts, after a long hiatus. Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst for Human Rights Watch, recently responded to smears— er, I mean, accusations that he fosters Nazi sympathies.

The basis of these smear— accusations? That he collects World War II memorabilia. Marc Garlasco explains:

I’ve achieved some blogosphere fame, not for the hours I’ve spent sifting through the detritus of war, visiting hospitals, interviewing victims and witnesses and soldiers, but for my hobby (unusual and disturbing to some, I realize) of collecting Second World War memorabilia associated with my German grandfather and my American great-uncle.

The Second World War turned my grandfather, who was conscripted and served on an anti-aircraft battery, into a staunch pacifist… It wasn’t until he died that I really took his lessons to heart…

Precisely because it’s so obvious that the Nazis were evil, I never realized that other people, including friends and colleagues, might wonder why I care about these things [that I collect]. Thousands of military history buffs collect war paraphernalia because we want to learn from the past.

(Click here to read Marc Garlasco’s entire post.)

This is a story repeated from ancient times. Rather than preserving the literature and artifacts of that which we hate, we wish to destroy them, because we wish to destroy that which we hate. But literature and artifacts are just words and things, not the past itself but painful reminders of the past. And those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it.

Richard Silverstein has been following the Marc-Garlasco–Nazi-Sympathizer (WTF?!) story on his blog תקון עולם (Tikun Olam, which he translates “Make the World a Better Place”; literally, “World Emendation”). According to Richard, the furor— er, that is, the hubbub started when Israeli Foreign-Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman brought up the subject, after Human Rights Watch “published a scathing report criticizing Israel’s attack on Gaza and its human rights record in general.” (Note, as Richard does, that HRW also criticized Palestinian attacks, in a separate report.)

He adroitly notes:

The Israeli-Palestinian issue can be a confusing mess. You can’t reduce it to a sound byte. Human rights work on this issue is also incredibly complex. Rather than addressing complicated issues or refuting claims which are rock-solid, Israel chooses to slime the messenger. Then it doesn’t have to do any heavy lifting in addressing the substance of HRW’s claims. This is a tried and true tactic of bigots and demagogues… [emphasis added]

(Click here to read Richard Silverstein’s entire post.)

This of course is a scenario with which we libertarians are well familiar. The politician loves to prick people’s hearts, sending them into an emotional frenzy, because that’s how you motivate people to action without letting them think too much about what they are doing. This emotional frenzy is a well-understood psychological phenomenon. If you are prone to angry rages, for example, then when you get angry, the first thing you need to do is to calm yourself, because then your anger will quell, and then you can think clearly to deal with the situation that made you angry.

But the politician doesn’t want people to calm down or to think, because then they’d see how counter-productive their rage is and how much they’re endangering their own lives and well-being through it. Instead, he wants them to become ever more hurt and angry and fearful, and then he can say, “Don’t worry. Just give the problem to me, and I’ll make it all better.” As though he were some sort of a god. No matter what the situation is. I could be talking about drug prohibition or pornography or taxes or the economy or prostitution or homosexuality or health care or war or crime or immigration or government schools. It’s always the same story. “Look at how terrible and dangerous is the world in which we live!” Even though, in reality, our world continues to grow more beautiful and safe.

But if we stopped worrying long enough, we might calm down, and then maybe we’d notice that:

• Drug prohibition doesn’t stop people from selling or using drugs, nor does it help drug users, but it does increase violent crime.

• The most vociferous objections against pornography come from those who don’t actually know anything about it. In fact, we fear porn on the Internet because we are uncomfortable talking with our kids about it, not because it would actually harm them.

• High taxes are merely a symptom of out-of-control government spending. And if the government buys up everything we produce, it wouldn’t matter if you had zero taxes and millions of dollars in your pocket, because you still wouldn’t be able to buy anything.

• Every economic crisis in American history has come on the heels of a government attempt to “fix” the economy.

• Prostitution is commonplace even in countries that outlaw it under penalty of death, because both parties to the act have decided to go through with it.

• In most European countries, government marriage is an administrative procedure and nothing more. That is, governments do not sanction marriages. And churches and other religious institutions there have more of a say in marriage than churches do here in the US, because rather than being forced into one religious view or another, people actually care about what their church thinks.

• If you correct for non-healthcare factors, like homicides and accidents, life expectancy is better in the US than in any other country in the world; and if you’ve been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness (like cancer), your chances of surviving are better in the US than anywhere else in the world; and the WHO downgrades the US healthcare system for political reasons, not quality-of-health reasons. In fact, our troubles with health insurance first began when the federal government wrote employer-sponsored health insurance into the tax code during WWII, because this move removed some control over paying for health care from those who consume it.

• We wage war because we’re scared, not because we’re powerful, because the truly powerful don’t need to wage war in order to prove themselves. There is no way we could possibly gain honor or respect (or peace) by behaving like the terrified little bully on the playground, beating up the geeky kid with glasses and stealing his lunch money.

• Crime has been going down, and we are safer now than at any time since the war on drugs began. (Think of how low crime would be without the war on drugs!)

• No government border-control program to date has been able to keep immigrants out, legal or otherwise, which is just fine, because we are a country of immigrants. (Just as the American native peoples.)

• The biggest problem with government schools is that they spend more money than they need to, and in exchange they don’t even educate our kids. And no amount of creationism or prayer in the classroom is going to fix that.

The most fundamental civil right is the right for you to control your own life and to direct your own destiny, no matter what anyone else thinks of it, whether you’re speaking the unpopular, whether you’re having sex with the unloved, whether you’re making money hand over fist, or whether you’re sacrificing yourself for the greater good. You have defrauded no one and have dealt peaceably and consensually with others, and you have a right to the fruits and consequences of your own choices, no matter whether anyone else agrees or disagrees with those choices.

But this fundamental civil right, as it has always been throughout history, is under attack by fear, anxiety, and politicians with power.

Always Watching!
-TimK