Life in American altered twenty years back after the 9/11 attacks. Lots of Americans ended up being infuriated at anybody who did not swear loyalty to President George W. Bush’s antiterrorism crusade. Anybody who rejected “they hate us for our freedoms” automatically became an enemy of flexibility.
Lots of stalwart defenders of liberty rapidly discovered themselves banished from respectful business. At the time of the 9/11 attacks, I had been slamming federal government policies for twenty years. Conservatives enjoyed my battering of the Clinton administration in books such as Feeling Your Pain (St. Martin’s, 2000). But past writing supplied no indemnity for subsequent sins.
Regardless, nothing occurred on 9/11 to make the federal government more credible. 2 years after the 9/11 attacks, St. Martin’s Press published my Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Liberty, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil, assaulting the war on terror throughout the board. I scoffed, “The Patriot Act treats every citizen like a presumed terrorist and every federal agent like a tested angel.” When the Justice Department launched a PATRIOT Act propaganda website, lifeandliberty.gov, it consisted of an attack on my writing. As one book press agent informed me, I was in “the untouchable part of the intellectual caste system.” Luckily, some outlets did not go to the dark side, consisting of the Mises Institute, the Future of Liberty Structure, and websites like Antiwar.com and Counterpunch.
I quickly recognized that the feds had more fans than I recognized, particularly amongst self-proclaimed pals of freedom. In February 2004, I spoke with a hundred folks at the best-known libertarian forum in New york city City. Some of the guests had followed my work for years, while others may have shown up merely to groan at a heretic.
Three minutes into the speech, a paunchy middle-aged guy leaped to his feet and denounced me: “You seem like an isolationist– and that implies you are anti-Israel!”
What the hell?
I started to suspect that only people with unmedicated ADHD were allowed in the audience and I ‘d be lucky to speak three sentences in a row. Guests were ruled out to be hecklers unless they threw physical objects at the speaker. The scene rapidly became comparable to a political convention, with random individuals jumping up to make speeches, the majority of them bad. It is tricky to argue with self-evident realities that were established exclusively by echo chambers. Lots of participants had never recovered from their own high SAT ratings.
As the evening advanced, I was implicated of everything except advocating infanticide. Possibly the most significant surprise that night was that lots of people objected to teasing the government. A tall, elderly gentleman stated that humorous pratfalls by the Transportation Security Administration and the FBI were unimportant to the “broad view.”
“What’s the ‘broad view?'” I asked.
“The fact that there haven’t been any horror attacks considering that 9/11 proves the feds are doing a good job,” he stated, spurring loud assents from the audience. He insisted that numerous Muslim sleeper cells in the United States were waiting for the signal to sow mass death and turmoil. I was chagrined to see folks more afraid of alleged undetectable Muslim perils than of rampaging federal agencies. I have always thought about mocking the government as a hallmark of a free person. And, as H.L. Mencken composed, “One horse laugh is worth 10 thousand syllogisms.” At the end of two hours’ sparring, the host provided me a check that was bigger than I expected, so all’s well that ends well (or a minimum of beneficially).
That brawl was a bellwether on how the flexibility motion had altered. A couple of months later, the Abu Ghraib photos and memos from the Justice Department authorizing abuse dripped out. A leading Justice Department official had actually assured the White House that the president was entitled to violate criminal laws (such as the Anti-torture Act) throughout wartime. That preemptive “get out of prison free” card let loose interrogation techniques such as waterboarding (simulated drowning), pummeling, and long-lasting sleep deprivation.
There was no other way to reject the wickedness of Bush’s war on horror after that, right? No such luck. When I spoke at the biggest nationwide gathering of liberty activists in Las Vegas and at the national Libertarian Party conference in 2004, I was booed for my criticisms of Bush’s warring and torturing. I was also later on booed for opposing torture at the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington, New York. Lots of libertarians were no longer in favor of liberty– unless it included the liberty to torture terrorists. And how do we understand who is a terrorist? That’s simple– due to the fact that somebody someplace claims to believe them of something.
A few months before the 2004 election, St. Martin’s Press released my book entitled The Bush Betrayal, which flogged Bush’s secret arrests, “Total Details Awareness” surveillance schemes, and cult of presidential supremacy. The blog site the publisher produced for the book consisted of an email link so readers might send me their thoughts unobstructed by spellcheckers. Here’s a tasting of the fan mail which was reposted on LewRockwell.com in a piece headlined “Bush Supporters Vindicate the President“:
- “You are a communist bastard! … So don’t forget that there are those out here who put there survives on the line for assholes like you to have the flexibility of speech– to state what you will– therefore can I!”
- “Are you dilusional or simply attempting to make a buck?”
- “I believe we should be torturing these SOB’s … Your concern over the so called ‘abuse’ of the detainees is ridiculous when one looks at how barbaric they are to start with. What you are caling ‘abuse,’ most people would call callege hazing.”
- “You are a really little guy. Those of you who do not appriciate the liberty our children and daughters paid for make a mockery of their sacrifice. May God have grace on your soul, you ignorate little individual.”
- “You are one ill mom fucker. Why not just support the troops rather of criminilizing them. does history not teach you anything? Like John Kerry is a fucking liar/traitor.”
MIDDLE SEAT ILLUMINATION
However perhaps not everybody thought like that? Perhaps folks would simmer down after Bush was reelected? Alas, as Shakespeare observed, “Hope is a cut canine in some affairs.”
A few months later, I was flying from Washington to Dallas, 2 days after Bush’s 2nd inaugural speech. The flight was overstocked with Texans returning after participating in events for their previous governor. One frumpy girl loudly gushed to an acquaintance in the next row: “Laura looked so terrific with that designer dress at the ball.” I had no regrets about not being invited to that function.
I was stuck in a middle seat in between a chubby little fourteen-year-old kid and a tripwire-tense employed Flying force guy who invested the entire flight seeing reruns of bad scenario funnies on his laptop. The kid devoted himself to paging through a school textbook and highlighting nearly every paragraph with a yellow marker.
As the airplane taxied cab to its launch position, the kid asked me, “Did you go to the inauguration Thursday?”
I smiled and said no, and asked if he had gone.
His eyes illuminated, his face unexpectedly appeared cognizant, and he declared, “Yes!” He told me he was from Bush’s home town, Midland, Texas.
“What did you consider the speech?” I asked.
“I liked every word of it!”
“So you believe it is a great concept for the US to be spreading flexibility?”
“Oh yes. We need to do that.”
“Are you worried about going to war to spread out flexibility?” I asked nonchalantly.
The Flying force guy appeared: “DON’T LISTEN TO HIM! This person dislikes America! This man dislikes our president! Do not listen to a single thing he says!” Perhaps he didn’t like my beard.
This man– mid-thirtyish with a semijarhead haircut– swore that the Bush administration never made any incorrect declarations on the road to war with Iraq.
I shrugged. “Cheney stated Saddam had a reconstituted nuclear weapon.”
“HE NEVER EVER SAID THAT! HE STATED NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM!! THAT’S WHAT HE STATED!!!”
“Really, it was on March 17, 2003– on Meet the Press— and …”
“THAT’S A LIE! THAT’S A LIE! REVEAL ME THE EVIDENCE!!!”
“Well, if I had my book with me, I might show you.”
“THAT’S A LIE!” He was definitely encouraged that I was figured out to smear the nation, the military, and Bush– of whom he proudly stated: “He’s my LEADER!”
“You people are going to be proven all wrong next week!” he declaimed really fervently, for somebody virtually sitting on my elbow.
“Who is ‘you individuals?'” I asked.
“People like you that hate America and oppose the Iraq War!” Pounding his fist on the armrest, he stated that I was “one of those individuals who thinks that Arabs do not want to be totally free– you don’t care about liberating the Iraqi people. Next week, when the Iraqis go out and vote and end up being a democracy, you and your kind will be proven totally wrong!”
At that time, the Bush administration was claiming that upcoming parliamentary elections would prove that Iraqis authorized of the US invasion. On Election Day, US military convoys rolled through Iraqi communities soon after daybreak with loudspeakers blasting orders in Arabic for people to go vote. The Bush administration also privately and unlawfully delivered countless dollars in cash to boost the political projects of its preferred candidates.
As the flight crossed over the state of Mississippi, the boy proudly informed me that he was president of his school class in Midland.
After I congratulated him, he declared that he planned to enter into politics.
I asked: “Who is your congressman?”
He offered me a blank look. “I don’t understand,” he stated, followed by a short-term grimace. This kid was absolutely not in the league of Lyndon Johnson, another enthusiastic Texan popular for concerning Washington as a youth and making use of every human contact he ever made to optimize his future clout.
During the flight, I was hand modifying printed chapters of an upcoming book. As we neared landing, the kid asked a question or more about my political views. I stated I admired the Constitution and favored leashing all politicians and federal companies.
He squinted and said warily: “You seem like you dislike the government.”
I chuckled. “No. I do not hate the federal government. I simply believe its power should be restricted.”
My response did nothing to pacify his suspicions.
“What do you believe the federal government should be doing? What is its primary function?” I asked.
The kid paused, struggled quickly, and after that replied, “Keep people under control?”
Because that was the new American vision of freedom Bush looked for to enforce in the house and abroad, that boy was backing the best politician. Unfortunately, tens of countless Americans likewise revered their ruler’s iron fist.
WHACKED AND STACKED?
I participated in most of the significant antiwar demonstrations from 2002 onward. With each passing year, the authorities ended up being more heavily armored and more aggressive.
In September 2005, hundreds of thousands of marchers opposed the Bush administration’s Iraq war. The well-organized occasion included bunches of activist attorneys stationed along the main path with camera to record any police cruelty versus demonstrators. I strolled my bike with the marchers as they passed the Treasury building on the east side of the White Home, where I snapped my all-time preferred photo of an overfed, stupefied police officer.
After hoofing for a mile with the crowd, I rode off to reconnoiter. There were metal sawhorses scattered all over the nearby streets, making it challenging to recognize what roads were open and which were limited.
I zipped down the street between Lafayette Park and the White Home and then swung down Seventeenth Street on the west side of the White House, heading toward the National Shopping center. That road was deserted other than for two cops standing in the middle, twenty-five yards ahead of me. As I got closer to them, a fat police unexpectedly raised his four-foot wooden pole over his head and began lumbering straight into my course.
I was puzzled until I heard the other police officer mumble about how I wasn’t enabled on that street. His partner was getting ready to bust his stick over my head.
I accelerated, drifted left, and made fun of the G-man over my shoulder. The street closing was not marked, but police officers were still entitled to assail any lawbreakers– as long as there was nobody around to film the beating. Actually, if that police officer had smashed me with that pole, I may have been jailed on ginned-up charges for attacking a policeman. In the very same method that cops consistently justify shooting drivers by claiming the chauffeur was attempting to run them down, so the pole guy may have declared I was trying to run him over. Or perhaps I would have been reserved on “conspiracy to damage a federal pole” that he wished to break over my bike helmet.
This struck me as a microcosm of what American society is becoming– increasingly more government representatives waiting to whack anyone who does not obey the current secret guidelines.
After leaving those chumps behind, I swung down a side road far from the primary action. However then I heard loudspeakers in the distance, maybe originating from the Ellipse, in front of the White House. Was another presentation busting out? Like a moth attracted to a flame, I bustled down a primarily empty street back in the instructions of the White Home. As I got here within sight of the President’s Palace, a gnarly authorities leader with a burning cigar butt clenched in between his teeth screamed at me: “How did you get here !?!”
“I rode down the street,” I replied.
“You’re not permitted to come down on this street!”
“I didn’t see any signs or anything forbiding it,” I said.
“I had 2 police officers at the entrance of the street,” he raged. “How did you sneak by them?”
I stated I hadn’t seen anybody.
The police officer boss was tottering on the edge of detaining me. Another cop, dressed in civvies, recommended to this stogie chomper that he just let me go through the opening of the metal sawhorses.
Not a chance. In charge police officer firmly insisted that I reverse course and trip pull back that street. I did so and, at the end of that block, I saw four DC police officers lounging in the shade, maybe yammering about the Washington Redskins’ newest loss. Regardless of his subordinates’ lethargy, that cops commander took excellent complete satisfaction in engaging one bicyclist to reverse course. Maybe he even promoted it as a “potential terrorist incident averted” in his main report on the day’s action.
NEW PRESIDENT, SAME VITRIOL
After Obama was elected, I thought folks might simmer down. Incorrect, guy. While Obama unleashed plenty of policies that sensible Americans could justifiably condemn, a few of his loudest foes were hellbent on reviving Bush’s worst practices. After going to a Tea ceremony rally in Rockville, Maryland, in 2010, I composed, “Numerous ‘tea party’ activists staunchly oppose big federal government, except when it is warring, wiretapping, or waterboarding.” Speakers bitterly grumbled that Obama gave orders to stop using “boosted interrogation” abuse methods on detainees. I was not charmed by folks clamoring for war with Iran and knocking the president for finding his “inner Muslim.” That piece, published by the Christian Science Screen, concluded: “America needs genuine champions of flexibility– not inadequately informed Republican accomplices.”
My ringside report was not generally appreciated. Tea ceremony zealots required to Yahoo.com with verbal pitchforks and torches:
Buzz: “Libs are traitors and should be treated as such. Traitors have very couple of rights. I can only think of 2, and they are more of a courtesy then rights. (blindfold, smoke).”
RAGNAR: “Simply another dihonest bit of editorializing nothing brand-new to see here just proceed everyone”
RJ: “The first Liberal because the beginning of time, a Lier, a Thief and a Murder, satan.”
JH: “What make him a Nazi and not simply a Liberal? Why a Nazi, as Nazi need to safeguard and promote a position with lies and not stand on truths.”
Scott: “Its amusing how WE defend our RIGHTS and BELIEFS and get assaulted and informed to stop talking. However we go through your apathetic ideas by force of Gov’t. HOW REALLY COMMUNIST OF YOU … “
The Obama White House quickly ended up being as power crazed as the Bush administration. In May 2011, the Christian Science Display published another piece of mine, “Assassination Nation: Are There Any Limitations on President Obama’s License to Kill?” I derided the Obama administration’s claim that the president possessed a “right to eliminate Americans without a trial, without notification, and without any possibility for targets to legally object … Killings based solely on presidential commands drastically transform the relation of the government to the citizenry.”
Testy online responses verified the sea change in how outright power was viewed. My short article pointed out an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit pressuring the Obama administration “to divulge the legal standard it uses to place United States people on government kill lists.” “Will R.” was upset: “We need to send out Bovard and the ACLU to Iran. You shoot traders and the ACLU are a bunch of traders.” (I was quite sure the ACLU was not participated in global commerce). “Jeff” took the high ground: “Ideally there will quickly be enough to add James Bovard to the [targeted killing] list.” Another commenter– self-labeled as “Idiot Sage”– saw a grand opportunity: “Now if we can just encourage [Obama] to use this [assassination] authority on the media, who have actually done more harm than any single terror target might ever dream of … “
What the heck– they have not taken me out yet.;-RRB-