I have long maintained that one of the big obstacles libertarians face in the achievement of a genuinely free society is the fact that most Americans honestly believe they are free. When people are convinced they are free, they have no reason to want to join up with us libertarians in our effort to establish a genuinely free society. Instead, they simply view libertarianism as a “weird” philosophy that purports to achieve what we already have — a free society.
One can only hope that the recent killings of 37-year-old Renée Good and 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, both of whom were regular American citizens, will enable at least some Americans to break through the inches-thick indoctrination that has encased their minds and that has convinced them that they live in a free society. After all, how can a society genuinely be considered free when the government wields the omnipotent power to kill anyone it wants?
And make no mistake about it: As we have seen, U.S. officials have the omnipotent power to kill any American they want. That’s a harsh reality that so many Americans still do not want to accept. They’d rather remain convinced that they live under the same governmental structure on which our nation was founded, one in which the federal government’s powers were limited and restricted by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
So many Americans do not want to face reality — that this is a very different type of government — one that is every bit as brutal and ruthless as totalitarian-like regimes throughout history and one that wields such omnipotent powers as killing, torture, and indefinite detention without due process and trial by jury.
Consider the drug war, one of the most tyrannical powers that any totalitarian-like government, even one whose officials are democratically elected, can wield against its own citizens. Look at how many people they have killed over the years with this aberrant governmental program.
Indeed, just look at those 100-plus people they’ve just killed in cold blood on the high seas using the drug war as their justification. That’s what’s called the exercise of brutal and ruthless omnipotent power. No one is ever going to be prosecuted or convicted for killing those people.
But Americans have let them get away with drug-war ruthlessness and brutality, year after year, decade after decade. Never mind that U.S. officials never get even close to “winning” their drug war. What matters is that U.S. officials be permitted to continue waging it, even if that has meant the destruction of our very own freedom at the hands of our very own government.
A dark irony in the destruction of our freedom is the fact that the federal government oftentimes creates the problem that it then uses as the excuse to further destroy our freedom. For example, take drug cartels. They don’t exist in a genuinely free society because drugs are legal in a genuinely free society. Thus, in a free society, drugs are sold by pharmacies and other reputable businesses, and drug cartels and drug gangs simply do not exist.
Seizing on drug addiction as a societal problem that the government supposedly needs to resolve (but never can do so), the government declares the sale of drugs to be illegal. Immediately, the drug cartels come into existence as part of the black-market effort to meet the demand of drug consumers. Rather than repeal the drug laws that bring this black market into existence, the government instead uses the existence of the drug cartels to expand its powers, including, as we have seen, the omnipotent power to kill people who the government suspects are violating its drug laws.
If anyone thinks that the government’s omnipotent power to kill drug-war suspects on the high seas is limited to foreigners, he is living in a world of hyper-naiveté and delusion. With those killings in cold blood on the high seas, the U.S. government, especially the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, are sending a powerful message to the American people: “We are in charge. What we are doing here on the high seas, we can do anywhere and to anyone, including Americans, and there isn’t anything anyone can do to stop us. Get used to it.”
In 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr., pointed out that the U.S. government had become the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. What so many Americans do not wish to confront is that nothing has changed and, in fact, the problem has only gotten worse and worse. Over the years, it has been foreign citizens who have borne the brunt of the ruthlessness and brutality of the U.S. regime, but what so many Americans have simply blocked out of their minds is the fact that the power to exercise that ruthlessness and brutality against Americans has always been there, like a sword ever ready to be unsheathed when necessary.
We are now witnessing this phenomenon in the war on illegal immigration. ICE agents and the Border Patrol have the power to kill any American protestor they want. No one can stop them. No one can prosecute them. No one can convict them. The killers are fully protected, even if that means lies, cover-ups, pardons, defense, and support. Just get used to it. Even if the ICE and Border Patrol killings (of both immigrants and Americans) subside, the power to kill with impunity and immunity will continue to be wielded, ready to be exercised again whenever necessary.
From time to time, the American people need to be reminded (e.g., Waco and Ruby Ridge) who is the boss. The boss is the U.S. government. The citizenry are the serfs, the servants, the subordinates. The job of the citizenry is to work and produce wealth so that there are always sufficient tax revenues to support the masters. The job of the federal government is to rule and govern. That sometimes entails ruthlessness and brutality, but that’s just the way it is. Get used to it.
The easiest thing for people who are breaking free of the “we are free” indoctrination that has encased their minds is to assume that the problem is Donald Trump, ICE, the Border Patrol, the DEA, or military or CIA “overreach.” They are mistaken. The problem is not the people running the illegitimate systems. The problem is the systems themselves, including drug prohibition and America’s socialist system of border controls, that have attached themselves to the federal government, much as a malignant cancer attaches itself to a person’s body.
To achieve a genuinely free society, it is necessary for a critical mass of Americans to come to the realization that the solution lies not in reforming these malignant systems or in getting “better” people to run them. The solution lies instead in fully and completely excising all of the wrongful, destructive, and malignant systems that have attached themselves to the federal government.
Reprinted with permission from the Future of Freedom Foundation.
