The following was in my “In Box” this morning, in an email from “The Sovereign Life Report” . . .

Blowing Away The Illusion

What do 9/11, the London bombings and Hurricane Katrina have in
common? They all demonstrate the failure of the state to do what
it claims is its two primary responsibilities – the preservation
of domestic law and order and defence against foreign aggression.

Most people who support minimalist government place a heavy
emphasis on the state’s monopoly role of policing, system of
justice and national defence. While leftists and liberals demand
the state take care of a much greater range of issues – the
general social welfare being on top of the list. Between them,
rightists and leftists agree, the state is our great hope and
saviour of last resort. All praise the state.

But just stop and think for a moment. If the job of domestic
security and national defence was carried out by non-government
agencies, i.e. private defence companies, don’t you think people
would have been calling for the CEOs’ heads by now? You bet!

When it comes to private companies, we expect accountability. And
if we don’t get it, we demand it. But when it comes to the state,
it seems we are under a strange hypnotic spell, which blinds us
to its colossal failures – in every realm.

Where is the accountability? Where is the outrage? Where is the
demand for heads to roll? Nothing, nada, zip – barely a whisper
of discontent.

If George Bush or Tony Blair were the CEOs of large corporations,
charged with providing such law and order and defence, they would
have been history long ago.

I often ponder the question as to why someone like Martha Stewart
was jailed (for what, to me, was a non-crime), while people like
Bush and Blair walk the earth with cheesy grins on their faces –
immune and apparently teflon-coated as far as taking the blame
for anything they have initiated or are responsible for.

However, you don’t need to contemplate big issues like 9/11 or
Hurricane Katrina to realise all this. Just ask yourself a much
more personal and pertinent question. Does the machinery of the
state make you feel more personally secure in your home? Will the
state protect you from muggers, rapists and murderers? Of course
not!

What it provides is an abysmal sort of “rearguard” action. It
cannot prevent you or your property from being violated, and
at best can only follow up on such abuses by attempting to catch
the perpetrators – after the fact. And even that is done badly.
What’s worse, the state makes it practically impossible for you
to defend yourself!

We are used to such everyday, small time failure. We don’t even
consider it extraordinary. But when some BIG event comes along,
and blows everyone away, and where the state appears to be the
obvious means of dealing with such, its failure is larger than
life – wide out in the open, where everyone can see it. Or can
they?

The “war on terror” is perhaps the most obvious example of the
failure of the state – and quite likely a terminal failure. There
it stands, as our accepted last line of defence against barbarity
and lawlessness – and yet the state fails this most important
litmus test of its viability and competency – and dare I say,
legitimacy.

We are told the “war on terror” must be waged to destroy the
enemies of our freedoms – those same freedoms the state is
determined to obliterate in order to fight the war. Tell me, what
will be the justification for fighting the “enemies of freedom”
when we no longer have any freedoms left to defend?

The state has failed at its self-declared most important job. And
it is using all its powers of propaganda and spin to convince us
otherwise.

Think of it this way. There is the USA, with the most powerful
military in the history of the world, and yet it cannot find
Osama bin Laden. It cannot stop a handful of people from flying
planes into buildings. It cannot control any more than the
“Green Zone” in Iraq. Its client regime in Afghanistan is in
reality only controlling Kabul. Its firepower cannot crush a
few thousand insurgents.

Failure, failure, failure.

What this brings out into broad daylight is the absolute limit
of state power under present conditions of social acceptance. Oh
sure, there are state-worshipers who say the USA is simply not
“tough” enough – and could easily stop terror in its tracks by
nuking the entire Middle East. And that’s true. If the whole of
Islam was taken out, then one could reasonably conclude there
would be no more Islamic suicide bombers.

So there’s the choice. We can have the state as it is, in all its
abysmal failure. Or, we can have the TOTAL state, unrestrained
by moral considerations, which can obliterate its enemies (and
its citizens) by unlimited military power and force of arms. Your
choice. But remember, the total state kills innocents – and
increasingly so.

It’s fascinating to read history, and to realise that in the
“old” days, the various kingdoms would wage war under quite
restrictive conditions – often in the space of a large open field
of grass, and according to very strict rules of engagement. The
civilian population was largely unaffected by such squabbles – as
they were fought, won and lost by just the soldiers themselves,
with the King safely in the rear.

All that changed in the 20th century – with the arrival of
“world” wars. It’s no secret that states employed mass civilian
bombing as a matter of military policy. London, Dresden,
Hiroshima. No scruples then, about the state’s role in targeting
civilians. “It’s worth killing 100,000, to save a million”, they
said. State terrorism.

The total state was showing its true colours. And this is just
how it should be. After all, the state is nothing more than brute
force, the power of the gun. It has no other tools at its
disposal.

The problem is, we’re a much more sensitive lot now. Most of us
don’t like the idea of mass bombing of civilians – at least not
if it’s an openly declared military objective. Why, hell, that
would make us as bad as the terrorists we are fighting!

So, the dilemma is this: the USA, with the most powerful military
on earth, cannot unleash the full force of its might, precisely
because of public sensibility. It has to cloak its military
strategies in the talk of “compassion”. That it doesn’t
deliberately target civilians. That it doesn’t really condone
torture. That it is doing all this for the highest moral reasons.

This is hogwash of course. What is the moral difference between
bombing a town full of civilians, to kill 50 insurgents, when you
KNOW there will be civilian casualties – and a “terrorist” who
blows himself up outside an Iraqi army recruiting centre, and
KNOWS there are children playing outside?

Just “collateral damage”, they all say.

The “war on terror” has brought into sharp relief the true nature
of state power, and more importantly, the state’s inability to
fulfil its stated purpose of defending you and me against
“terrorists”. It’s terrified we may discover the Emperor has no
clothes, so is throwing all it has into the military and
propaganda end game.

What’s more, the “war on terror” cannot be won. It cannot be won
because it is a war fought by states against non-states – using
the old methods of state-to-state warfare.

Previously, wars have always been between states, or kingdoms –
using the agreed principles and strategies of warfare. A sort of
“Gentleman’s Agreement”. But now, states are fighting a war
against individuals who are not aligned with any states as such,
just a belief, an ideology, and certainly no agreement as to how
such a war should be waged.

So you have the phenomena of the mighty state, with all its
military power – warships, guns, tanks, nukes, jet fighters,
drones, surveillance, intelligence – being taken on by individual
fighters for a cause. Individual fighters with home-made bombs,
second-hand guns, and improvised rocket launchers. And still the
state cannot win.

By declaring a “war on terror” the modern state has bitten off
more than it can chew. It has declared a war on individuals who
are motivated by belief – the belief that they have been wronged
in some way or other. And as long as there are people who believe
this, then there will be no shortage of recruits to their cause.

When Tony Blair declares his disgust at the bombings in London,
or the British press talks of the “chilling” message of the
suicide bomber – that they are soldiers fighting a war – does it
not strike you as incredulous that our leaders can claim to see
no connection between their actions and the actions of these
terrorists? Surely, if we are at WAR – then we can expect the
enemy to strike us at home? Why are we shocked when they kill
innocents – when we do the same?

And so the fantasy of the state is unravelling before our eyes.
We are witnessing the gradual erosion of belief in the state as
the all-powerful solution to all our problems. We are being
forced to face up to the fact that the means of social
organisation we have grown up with, is in fact failing on so many
fronts. We are confronted with the choice of either accepting
and welcoming the TOTAL state, or watching the state wither away
into irrelevance.

Already, the fellow-travellers of the state – the leftists, the
liberals, the marxists, the warmongering right-wingers and the
welfare-statist looters – are all braying that these “disasters”
only go to prove the state is not nearly powerful enough. Just
read what some of them said after the Katrina/New Orleans debacle
– that this represents the failure of market ideology. Sheesh!
Some people just never get it. It’s not the failure of the
market, it’s the abject failure of the state.

Meanwhile, in the “other” world of private enterprise and
voluntary social interaction, life goes on. Goods are being
produced and sold. Services are being delivered. All that we take
for granted as being necessary for the good life is being created
by science, technology and business. The state, on the other
hand, creates absolutely nothing, and yet has a mystic grip on
our misplaced loyalty.

Just look around you: Your home; your car; your business; your
job; your iPod; your mobile phone; your computer; your annual
holiday; your retirement fund, your health; your favourite
restaurant, your entertainment; your local supermarket; your
community; your family; your life.

Everything of value to you is created by individuals, going about
their own business – voluntarily trading value for value on the
open market. The state is but a parasite on this process, and on
civilisation itself, which is a creation of civilised people –
i.e. free people who take responsibility for their own lives and
decisions.

The state has nothing to offer such people. Nothing that could
not be done far better by private companies and voluntary
organisations.

We have reached a point in history where a monumental decision
needs to be made. Either we continue to believe in the myth of
the state, and grant it ever more power over our lives, in order
that it may fulfil its avowed purpose – or we discard this
outmoded method of organising society in favour of one based on
mutual recognition of property rights and personal sovereignty,
where free individuals deal with one another on the basis of
voluntary agreements and contracts.

The choice is a stark one. Either we move forward to a genuine
freedom and consequent peace, or we march “backwards” to an
Orwellian future of totalitarianism and perpetual war.

But don’t count on this choice being decided at the ballot box.
No, the democratic process is thoroughly corrupt and incapable
of delivering any meaningful change. The choice must be made by
individuals, and where possible by individuals acting in
co-operation with other, like-minded, individuals – to create
alternatives to state power and organisation.

Real change begins at “home”. You can begin by making the state
irrelevant to your own life. I can tell you, if you are prepared
to take 100% responsibility for your own life, you don’t need any
state to manage, control and own it. At that point you’ll realise
the state is just a cunning moocher, conning you out of a large
proportion or your life’s energy (like all parasites). And just
as you’d feel a lot better for having some dreadful tapeworm
removed from your intestines, so you will feel decidedly better
for removing the state (as much as possible) from your life.

Why not take the first step now?

http://www.sovereignlife.com/kickstart.html

Yours in Freedom

David MacGregor

It’s worth looking into.