by
Scott
Lazarowitz

Recently
by Scott Lazarowitz: Will
New Hampshire Pick the Orwellian ‘Conservative,’ Willard Mitt Romney?

At a recent
debate when Ron Paul mentioned the “Golden Rule,” that
we should treat foreigners as we should be treated, he
was booed by a number of people in the audience. This happened
at a previous
debate. At that previous debate, Paul further questioned how
we would like it if a foreign government invaded and occupied the
U.S. and set up its military bases here.

How can so
many people (and so many popular radio talk hosts and their listeners)
condemn the suggestion that everyone must be equal under the rule
of law?

The myth of
American exceptionalism is that the U.S. is an example of moral
progress, peace and prosperity for the rest of the world to
follow. But that has not been the case during most
of America’s existence.

Perhaps America
was somewhat exceptional at its founding, when the ideas of the
rights of the individual and private property were taken seriously.
But when a Constitution, which limited the rights of the
individual and empowered a centralized government, was written
and ratified, that was really
the end of such moral exceptionalism.

The Founders
had the right idea, but the statists,
centralists
and fraudsters
took control, and that was the end of that.

The societal
and moral advancement that the Founders took from the Enlightenment
has tended to regress backwards, as America’s federal government
continually expanded in size and intrusiveness, and its actions
overseas became more primitively aggressive.

The moral degeneracy
of America escalated considerably when Honest Abe Lincoln waged
a brutal and immoral war against civilians in order to compel the
population into a life of enslavement by central planners. Woodrow
Wilson unnecessarily
extended World War I, which contributed
to the rise of Hitler. FDR’s New Deal really was the final nail
in the coffin for whatever freedom there was remaining in America.

In foreign
affairs, for the past century the reality of American exceptionalism
has been this: that our government may interfere in the internal
affairs of foreign nations, may place its governmental apparatus
and military bases on other peoples’ territories, may commit acts
of aggression, murder, and property destruction, and get away with
it through rationalization and propaganda – but other governments
may not do that on our lands or do those things to
our people.

American exceptionalism
is the belief that our government need not be accountable under
the rule of law, while we hold foreigners accountable.

Regarding the
current “War on Terror,” yes, real terrorists attacked
America on September 11, 2001. But when our government then invades
and destroys whole countries that had nothing
to do with
9/11, then you should logically expect the targeted innocent
foreigners to defend their territories.

One thing that
America’s government-controlled
schools (both public and private) have accomplished over the
past century is the suppression of critical thinking skills. Instead,
because the people have allowed the almighty
State and its media stenographers and propagandists so much
influence and intrusion into the entire education system, the result
has been generations of people with an instilled unquestioned loyalty
to the State theocracy.

Because of
this, America has become increasingly authoritarian and restrictive
in its liberty to the point of the police
state and non-sustainable, bankrupting empire we currently suffer.
Those who question The Powers That Be are themselves stigmatized
and marginalized, and in some cases, punished and persecuted. Americans
have been cheering their government’s illicit aggressions overseas,
and booing those who stand for the Golden rule and the rule of law.

In fact, some
of the same people who have been supporting the U.S. government’s
immoral aggressions overseas have been those preaching the loudest
about “Christian moral values.” Sorry, but when one supports
one’s government invading other countries that were of no threat
to us, one’s preaching of Christian morality is just hypocrisy.

And when people
assert Americans’ right to defend America against invaders, yet
refer to foreigners who defend their
own lands, their lives and their families from invaders
and occupiers as “terrorists,” no wonder Christianity
and moral
values have declined in America.

The narcissism
of modern
State worship is such that, when the exceptionalists assert
that the U.S government must have a “presence” on foreign
lands, it is as though they view those lands as theirs, just
like a possessive child would do. It seems more like covetousness,
if you ask me.

No, the narcissistic
exceptionalists, who pray to the democratic god of the secular State,
seem to believe that their government may commit acts of
aggression against foreigners, but not the other way around. Praise
the almighty State, as it can
do no wrong.

Former Senator
and current presidential candidate Rick Santorum seems to be one
of those more outspoken worshipers of the State and its aggressive
expansion overseas. Santorum even believes in the central planning
of the almighty State domestically, in the social area.

Santorum wants
to use the armed police apparatus of the State to impose his own
personal social views onto the rest of the population, much like
the Islamists that he ironically criticizes for wanting to impose
their Sharia Law onto others.

If we don’t
behave in our private lives as Santorum and his beloved almighty
State order us to do, then we are infidels, apparently.

And I heard
another American exceptionalist recently, Sean Hannity, express
total cluelessness in his pushing the anti-Iran
fear–mongering
that is being used to start yet another unnecessary, counter-productive
war. In arguing with a caller, Hannity was saying that (and I am
paraphrasing) he merely wanted to prevent mass violence and bloodshed
that could be prevented by forcibly removing Iran’s nuclear capability.
Hannity was referring primarily to protecting Israel (despite the
fact that Israel
has a few
hundred nuclear
warheads and Iran
knows this).

So regarding
the possibility of mass bloodshed, Hannity has apparently been oblivious
to the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis throughout the 1990s,
killed by U.S. government violence and sanctions, and the further
hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis since the U.S. government’s
2003 invasion.

Because of
reliance on mainstream news outlets and talk radio for their brainwashing
information, most people don’t even know recent history,
and they therefore don’t seem to understand Ron Paul’s point about
“blowback.”

When dissidents
openly criticize the State, its intrusions and its violence, the
faithful seem intensely threatened, as though they have been personally
harmed. The dissidents must be booed and ostracized, even though
here Ron Paul is the one with the sense of morality and he
is the one who believes that our government must be accountable
under the rule of law as others must be.

But as our
society gradually degenerated over the past century in its abandonment
of moral values and the rule of law, it should be of no surprise
now that the exceptionalists have no problem with their primitive
priests of the almighty State apprehending and detaining someone
without charges, without even being required to show evidence
against the accused, as agents in an advanced society would
have to do. The exceptionalists have faith in their beloved
State (until they find themselves falsely accused
and unlawfully detained, of course).

The religion
of State has shown its
ugliness with the Bradley Manning whistleblower case. Many people
have reacted emotionally to this
case, and with much ignorance, that’s for sure. It is as though
whistleblower critics have been on a medieval witch
hunt with the Manning case.

This young
soldier allegedly released “classified”
information to WikiLeaks. But, if the chat
logs are legitimate, Manning’s
motivations were not on behalf of any foreign government, financial
interest or any element hostile to America.

On the contrary,
Manning’s motive was out of love for his country, and to expose
the corruption of our government’s imbecilic bureaucrats and
expose the military’s war crimes. If anything were un-American,
it would be covering up those crimes.

And despite
the government’s hysterical propaganda, the truth is that the release
of the classified information probably could
not have caused
any harm to any U.S. soldier overseas or to any American at
home.

Some critics
of Manning and WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange have been calling for their
imprisonment or death. That is because the critics’
loyalty just doesn’t seem to be as much to their country as
it seems to be to the government, the almighty State.

That is what
our sick
culture
has become: an authoritarian theocracy with total rule over us.
The Total State seems to be what the primitive-thinking
narcissists want, and that is why so many people cheer the State,
cheer its wars and the deaths of foreigners, and that is why they
boo the ideas of freedom, personal responsibility and accountability
under the rule of law.

With our authoritarian
culture now, we
are definitely surrounded – not by Muslims, but by the almighty
criminal State, by federal, state and local government Gestapo bureaucrats.

And we are
doomed unless we reverse course – and that means chopping away at
the many, many layers of Leviathan, the bureaucracies, the foreign
bases and the domestic camps,
chopping away until we finally are able to restore the freedom the
founders envisioned when they created America.

January 30, 2012

Scott
Lazarowitz [send him
mail] is a commentator and cartoonist, visit his
blog.

Copyright
© 2012 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in
part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

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