Those Accustomed to Sucking Off the Government Teat Will Embrace the New World Order

Dependency starts at birth. The responsible will do the right thing and raise their child correctly. The irresponsible will allow the Government to raise that child -- it will learn to suck off the Government teat the rest of it's life, vote Democrat, and have a crappy life for the most part because they become functionally disabled with handouts and cannot succeed on their own… But the Dems have a bigger base that will always come back for more… Welfare has killed more lives than guns ever will. - Dustyluv, New Baby Boom Reveals Some Surprising Facts, March 19, 2009



The Economic Stimulus Plan is working, but not for America. The plan is working for Obama and his liberal cohorts to reshape America into a communist state and to accumulate total power over the American people. Obamas’s intentions are to change the free market system into a government-controlled market, and for individual freedoms and our way of life to be forfeited to the Government. Through job losses, instability in the Stock Market and financial institutions, and stoking fear into American lives, the failures to date of Obama’s so-called “Recovery Plans” will cause Americans to cry for more government intervention so that one day we will find ourselves under a total communist state. Make no mistake about it: Obama’s actions are not for the benefit of America and our way of life; it is all about Obama and his megalomania vision for Obama’s third world nation. - jamalagrinaolcom, Obama: Stimulus Bill Worked 'as Intended', Washington Times, July 12, 2009

"If one understands that socialism is not a share-the-wealth programme, but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of super-rich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead, it becomes logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniacs. Communism or, more accurately, socialism is not a movement of the downtrodden masses, but of the economic elite." - Gary Allen, None Dare Call It Conspiracy, Concord Press, 1971

Amish Power or a Conservative Anarchist's Call for Shunning

By Ned Beaumont
© 2002

Call me a conservative anarchist.
Paradox at best? Pure nonsense at worst?
Not at all. For I remain true to both terms.

I am no “anarchist” in the sense that some weedy pencil-neck who breaks from hugging trees and eating organic tofu long enough to parade for socialism and do the dramaturgical work for the television cameras at every “World Trade Conference” is so labeled by the popular press.

Rather, I am an anarchist in the old-fashioned Nockian sense of hating the State because it allows the worst to exercise its passionate intensity, that “lust toward tyranny,” the lubido dominandi such as Sallust saw as the flaw deep in human nature.

Also, I am an anarchist in the even older sense of preferring persuasion to coercion. I remain deeply suspicious of organized interference with any man's “free judgment,” that same liberum arbitrium which Augustine knew made men truly human.

I am not “conservative” in the sense of modern American politics. Never classify me with the likes of William F. Buckley or Rush Limbaugh or any other wealthy softy whom you hate enough to substitute as the type-example of one eager for war — as long as he need not raise his expansive fundament from his easy chair long enough to fight — and even more eager to protect his expanding riches.

Rather, I remain conservative in the etymological sense of preserving the goods of life, the small and sincere joys of being human, against the assaults of social engineers and reformers-for-your-own-good, whether those controllers serve the State, corporations or mass society.

A Step Back to the Amish

The conservative quality of my innate anarchism is what drives my mind back in time when attacked by every new threat to liberty. The older I grow, the more strongly I stick to my conviction that the solutions to modern problems of living a free life may most often be found among old societies.

If, for example, Cicero, Lucan, and Juvenal could live free under the original Imperium, the model of State power for every despot since, then perhaps those old Romans have something to say to us today as we confront the latest empire. If, for another example, mass murderers from the Mongols to Mao could not quite kill off the Confucian society of old China, then maybe Kung and Mentse were on to something significant. Old ways have been tried; many have proven true. Wise people abandon those ways only after careful reflection.

Not so old as Confucius and Cicero, older at least than the United States, and able to teach a lesson to those with ears to hear, are the Amish. Pacifists though they are, the Amish offer a weapon to every anarchist in his war against the State — the weapon of shunning.

The Old Order

Most Americans know no more about the Old Order Amish (to grant the sect its full name, and to thoroughly distinguish it from the Mennonites) than they can recall from a drive through Pennsylvania Dutch Country, or from the movie Witness: Amish farms offer a colorful backdrop against which Harrison Ford fights bad guys; horses and buggies get in the way of SUVs on narrow country roads; Amish men wear beards and hats like those of Orthodox Jews, and Amish women dress like characters in a Thanksgiving school play; young Kelly McGillis had great eyes and a nice rack; etc. But there is more to Amish society than all that.

Named for their founder, Jacob Amman, the Amish broke away from the Swiss Mennonites during the 1690s because the Mennonites were lax in their faith by Amish standards. Finding refuge in America in 1728 — there was, of course, no US Government, no Justice Department, no FBI, no BATF to attack religions deemed politically incorrect — the Amish settled in several future states and Canadian provinces, including Pennsylvania.

The Ordnung (“rules”) of the Amish suggest several strategies for dealing with the invasive modern State. Strict separation from society, for example, strikes me as sound every autumn as the latest propaganda farces premier on TV (I mean the “news” more than sitcoms), and as political campaigns proceed. Likewise, the Amish refusal to go to war, swear oaths, or hold public offices makes sense. The dirt and manure of farm life, and all that churchgoing, however, would never do for a boozy urban anarchist. Besides, a wide-brimmed hat would never go with my silk ties and Italian loafers.

Shunning, though, is a part of the Old Order I take up and apply with glee. Shunning, it seems to me, remains the smartest way to strike at the State.

The Plight

The State nowadays invades the lives and murders the liberties of every American in more ways than the Romans or the Mongols or even the Communists of fifty years ago would have thought possible.

Technology facilitates the invasion. Computers number, sort, classify and catch those whom the State labels “criminal.” “Carnivore” reads email; “Echelon” intercepts phone conversations. Cameras at stop signs and on street corners snoop with unblinking eyes and keep us “safe.” What would Stalin or Genghis Khan or Domitian have given for such tools of surveillance?

Those technologies ought to trouble us only a little, though. After all, they are operated by bureaucrats and cops — both of whom tend to have the brains of turtles. When cops and bureaucrats succeed in oppressing free people, they usually do so by accident, or by sheer weight of numbers, or by sheer weight (for fatness is one characteristic of those who derive their nutrition from the tax teat).

No — it is that tax teat itself; it is the State's power to tax, that remains the most severe threat to human freedom in the modern world. Tyrants always have sought the power to tax. Once they have the power, tyrants take more and more in taxes, until formerly free people become slaves of the State: either accomplices to theft-through-taxation as welfare wards or government “workers;” or productive workers compelled to give up to the government an ever larger part of the results of their labor.

Or both.

For you must understand that the real innovation of the modern State — that combination of capitalist corporations cooperating with the grasping government, business for the State and the State for business, Feel-Good Fascism — has been to turn most Americans into bee-busy drones who simultaneously depend on the State and work harder and longer to pay the taxes which fund the “programs” on which they depend.

The populus Americanus wants it all: military “defense” (that doesn't defend), police “protection” (that doesn't protect), Social Security, Medicaid, FDIC-insured bank accounts, student loans, et alia ad infinitum. As much as many Americans claim to mistrust the US Government, they know deep down to their fatty hearts that they in fact depend on all those “programs” to maintain their respectable, comfortable, bourgeois ways of life.

Who among us is really willing to “shoot the bastards” — not only now, but ever? Taking up arms, then, is not only unlikely, but also foolish and wrong. Two of those ancient virtues — prudence and justice — that would have been important either to Cicero or to Confucius, argue against violence and in favor of shunning.

Begin with justice. As much as any anarchist's visceral reaction to agents of the State is liable to be double-ought buckshot, shooting is the just response only in extreme cases. Self-defense, of course, is always justified. Otherwise, as much as we hate them, police and bureaucrats rarely threaten our lives; instead, they frequently attack both property and dignity in petty ways, and they do so out of ignorance.

Creatures who suck off the tax teat surrender their self-respect along with at least a portion of their humanity. They turn from individuals into mass-men of the lowest order. Decades ago, Albert Jay Nock realized that such mass-men are not “psychically human:” They lack both reason and knowledge. We can no more justly hold them responsible for their actions than we can hold responsible animals or retards. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — mass-men if there ever were ones — may take pride in presiding over the executions of the retarded, but honest people ought not.

Examine your conscience. Reform your life. Refuse to nurse in any way at the tax teat offered by the State. Then shun those who do. That can be great fun.

Now, prudence. Start with an understanding of the ancient idea that just wars are ones you have a realistic chance of winning: Since the State invariably outguns any individual anarchist, he cannot win a shooting war, and therefore should not fight one. Despite a certain Romantic charm to the picture of falling while fighting against an overwhelming enemy, such a fight can never be prudent. Next, appreciate that to fire upon every piglet at the tax teat is to shoot some of those close to us — and, perhaps, to shoot ourselves. Internecine wars also are never prudent. Finally, fighting is, by nature, chaotic and costly, Clausewitz's “province of uncertainty.” The wars that we seem certain to win can still be lost; even winners pay a price in blood and treasure, and in pleasure. Every anarchist is in part a hedonist and wants to enjoy his freedom. Fighting is too likely to interfere with that enjoyment.

Even if you are not as pacific as the Amish, then, it always makes less sense to shoot those at the tax teat than to shun them.

THE PRICE

Shunning, however, comes with a price.

The Amish only shun a true excommunicate. Before the entire community, including family members, cease working with, talking to, and noticing another Amish person, the shunned one must not only be a baptized member of the church, but must also be an adult who has made a public commitment to follow the regulations of the church — and then reneged. Those who live among the Amish, but never formally joined the church and stray from its teachings, are never shunned.

The lesson for the anarchist, then, is not to shun those who cannot understand the enmity between human freedom and the State. Before one can shun, one must at least try to educate.

Consider the case of an anarchist I knew who was out to dinner with a friend. The friend introduced the anarchist to a fellow diner who was employed by the municipal government and was running for office. “So,” said the anarchist, “you're a double parasite?”

Rude? Perhaps. Truth is often impolite. Beyond good and bad manners, the anarchist did his duty. He seized the opportunity to enlighten: Maybe — just maybe — he got both his friend and the parasite thinking about the nature of the State. If either were offended by the anarchist's question ...well, then, who needs friends so stupid?

Shunning properly applied is a penalty reserved for those hypocrites who claim to hate the State but nonetheless continue to suck off the tax teat: the congressman who gets elected by criticizing “welfare queens,” then votes more “pork” for his district; the cop fuming at “porch monkeys” as he cashes his paycheck paid in money stolen from the same citizens he ostensibly “serves and protects;” the “conservative” career Army officer who lets the State pay for his education, support him for twenty years, then, while continuing to draw a pension, transfers his skills to “the private sector;” the “anarchist” firebrand who rats out private enemies to the “legitimate authorities.”

Physical shortcomings and Reichian inadequacies compel the cops to desire leather belts, handcuffs, a baton, and a gun, and to gain them all by sucking at the tax teat.

Shunning and the education that precedes it cut closer to the bone when they begin — as they should for every honest anarchist — with a look in the mirror. Start with yourself. Look at your own life and determine how much you may be at fault.

Do you pay for your college education with federal student loans?
Do you send your children to public schools?
Do you cash a Social Security check?
Do you visit doctors at the VA hospital?
Do you do business with an FDIC bank?

Those are only a few ways in which seemingly innocuous people participate in the crimes of the State. If any (or any like them) apply to you, then repent! Before you shun others you must shun every enticement offered by the State.

It is not easy. It demands sacrifice. Sacrifice for the sake of freedom, however, can be its own reward. The teacher who eschews the bloated paycheck from a public school may end up poorer in a monetary sense, but he will be richer in self-respect after he need never bow down to the petty satraps who plague State-sponsored schools. The contractor who refuses work on courthouses, post offices, and housing projects loses some coin in the short run, but he gains the incalculable wealth of bending to fewer bureaucrats, rules, and regulations. The man who exacts his own just penalty for wrongs done against him, instead of fleeing to courts of law, can always say that he is, in fact, a man.

Examine your conscience. Reform your life. Refuse to nurse in any way at the tax teat offered by the State. Then shun those who do.

That can be great fun.

It's Fun to Shun!
Imagine all the possibilities...

Honest Tradesman, barkeep or deli-owner, serves every customer — except for the meter-reader, alderman, and cop who stop. As far as Honest Tradesman is concerned, those flunkies for the State do not exist. He shuns them. “Hey, what am I? Invisible?” shouts cop or alderman or meter-reader, little realizing that he is.

Or, consider Honest Shopkeeper, who must dump the slop bucket he uses to clean the scum from the floor of his store every morning. Why does the filthy water splash upon the bureaucrat's car parked outside? Because, to Honest Shopkeeper's shunning eyes, the vehicle is not there. How could it be? The owner does not exist.

Likewise, Honest Waitress cannot serve — because she cannot see — the city workers who have wedged their suety frames into a booth at her restaurant. She's shunning such as suck off the tax teat, you see.

Beyond the farm and into the city, there is precedent for just such community-wide shunning of the servitors of the State. Citizens living in Mafia neighborhoods used to employ just such tactics when the FBI undertook surveillance. Feds were unwelcome because the gangsters kept their own streets free from muggings and offered outlawed services, such as gambling and cut-rate shopping for swag. As Mafiosi now rat on each other, such neighborhood solidarity, outside of a few streets in backward places like Brooklyn and Buffalo, is as dead as the old omerta. The possibilities for shunning, however, remain alive.

Let's take shunning farther — as far as our imaginations and senses of humor will go. Let's hit the State where it hurts — in the puny nads of its armed representatives.

Attractive Woman shines at the bar. Every man there speaks his line, buys her drinks, lights her cigarettes, and tries to pick her up. Secure in the power of her beauty, Attractive Woman responds as her own interests dictate; but she always lets down the losers easy — except for cops. To them she does not respond; them she never acknowledges. How can she? She's shunning — and cops do not exist in the gems of her eyes.

Thus, the same physical shortcomings and Reichian inadequacies that compelled the cops to desire leather belts, handcuffs, a baton, and a gun, and to gain them all by sucking at the tax teat, are all confirmed. Attractive Woman makes the cops know and feel deep down that those doubts about their manhood are well justified.

Is there any penalty more punishing?

Again, there's precedent for such shunning. When the Germans occupied France and Belgium and Holland and Denmark and such during World War Two, that's precisely how the patriotic women of the occupied countries treated the enemy. America 2001 is an occupied country, occupied by a predatory State, and shunning of the enemy is one way to drive him away.

Ned Beaumont is the author of The Policeman Is Your Friend and Other Lies, Everything's a Racket, and several other books.