Гор Видал - Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace

2.) There shall be no standing military force during peacetime, (this) to include large bodies of federal law enforcers or coalitions of these officers that would constitute a military force, with the exception of sea-based maritime forces.

3.) The Executive Office shall hold no power to unilaterally alter Constitutional rights.

4.) No person shall be subjected to any form of direct taxation or wage withholdings by the Federal government.

5.) No person's life or liberty shall be taken without due process. Any government employee circumventing due process rights shall be punished with imprisonment. Citizens shall not be subjected to invasions of their homes or property by employees of the Federal government. Property or other assets of United States citizens shall not be subject to forfeiture to the Federal government.

6.) Personal activities that do not infringe upon the rights or property of another shall not be charged, prosecuted, or punished by the United States government. Any crime alleged will be prosecuted by the jurisdiction most local to the alleged crime, respectively. No person shall be twice tried for an offense alleged and adjudicated in another jurisdiction. No person shall be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, nor shall the Federal government hold power to execute any individual as punishment for a crime convicted, or contract to another entity for this purpose. No person shall be held to account for the actions of another, unless proven by more than one witness to be the principal figure.

7.) All currency shall be redeemable in a globally recognized material of intrinsic value, such as silver.

8.) Legislative members shall earn no more than twice the current poverty level and shall not be subject to any additional pay, bonuses, rewards, gifts, entitlements, or other such privileges, as holding such office is meant to serve the people and should not be looked upon as a capitalist career opportunity.

9.) Where non-violent checks and balances fail to remedy government abuse or tyranny, the common people reserve the right to rebellion. Inherent with this right, the common people maintain the absolute right to own and possess those weapons which are used by any level of government for domestic policing.

10.) Any rights not enumerated here belong inherently to the people or the state respectively, and shall not be assumed by omission (to be) delegated to the jurisdiction of the Federal government.

Timothy J. McVeigh

28 May 2001

The New Theocrats

June 18, 1997, proved to be yet another day that will live in infamy in the history of The Wall Street Journal , or t.w.m.i.p., "the world's most important publication," as it bills itself — blissfully unaware of just how unknown this cheery neofascist paper is to the majority of Americans, not to mention those many billions who dwell in darkness where the sulfurous flashes of Wall Street's little paper are no more than marsh gas from the distant marches of the loony empire. June 18 was the day that t.w.m.i.p. took an ad in the New York Times , the paper that prints only the news that will fit its not-dissimilar mind-set. The ad reprinted a t.w.m.i.p. editorial titled "Modern Morality," a subject I should have thought alien to the core passions of either paper. But then for Americans morality has nothing at all to do with ethics or right action or who is stealing what money — and liberties — from whom. Morality is sex. sex. sex.

The edit's lead is piping hot. "In the same week that an Army general with 147 Vietnam combat missions" (remember the Really Good War, for lots of Dow Jones listings?) "ended his career over an adulterous affair 13 years ago" (t.w.m.i.p. is on strong ground here; neither the general nor the lady nor any other warrior should be punished for adulteries not conducted while on watch during enemy attack) "the news broke" — I love that phrase in a journal of powerful opinion and so little numberless news—"that a New Jersey girl gave birth to a baby in the bathroom at her high school prom, put it in the trash and went out to ask the deejay to play a song by Metallica — for her boyfriend. The baby is dead."

Misled by the word "girl, " visualized a panicky pubescent tot. But days later, when one Melissa Drexler was indicted for murder, she was correctly identified by the Times as a "woman, 18." In a recently published photograph of her alongside her paramour at the prom, the couple look to be in their early thirties. But it suited t.w.m.i.p. to misrepresent Ms. Drexler as yet another innocent child corrupted by laissez-faire American liberal "values," so unlike laissez-faire capitalism, the great good.

All this is "moral chaos," keens the writer. I should say that all this is just plain old-fashioned American stupidity where a religion-besotted majority is cynically egged on by a ruling establishment whose most rabid voice is The Wall Street Journal .

"We have no good advice on how the country might extricate itself any time soon from a swamp of sexual confusion—" You can say that again and, of course, you will. So, rather than give bad advice, cease and desist from taking out ads to blame something called The Liberals. In a country evenly divided between political reactionaries and religious maniacs, I see hardly a liberal like a tree — or even a burning bush — walking. But the writer does make it clear that the proscribed general was treated unfairly while the "girl" with baby is a statistic to be exploited by right-wing journalists, themselves often not too far removed from the odious Metallica-listening orders who drop babies in Johns, a bad situation that might have been prevented by the use, let us say, of a rubber when "girl" and "boy" had sex.

But, no. We are assured that the moral chaos is the result of sexual education and "littering," as the ad puts it, "the swamp" with "condoms that for about the past five years have been dispensed by adults running our high schools. or by machines located in, by coincidence, the bathroom." Presumably, the confessional would be a better venue, if allowed. So, on the one hand, it is bad, as we all agree, for a woman to give birth and then abandon a baby; but then too, it's wrong, for some metaphysical reason, to help prevent such a birth from taking place. There is no sense of cause/effect when these geese start honking. Of course, t.w.m.i.p. has its own agendum: outside marriage, no sex of any kind for the lower classes and a policing of everyone, including generals and truly valuable people, thanks to the same liberals who now "forbid nothing and punish anything." This is spaceship-back-of-the-comet reasoning.

The sensible code observed by all the world (except for certain fundamentalist monotheistic Jews, Christians, and Muslims) is that "consensual" relations in sexual matters are no concern of the state. The United States has always been backward in these matters, partly because of its Puritan origins and partly because of the social arrangements arrived at during several millennia of family-intensive agrarian life, rudely challenged a mere century ago by the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the cities and, lately, by the postindustrial work-world of services in which "safe" prostitution should have been, by now, a bright jewel.

Although the "screed" (a favorite right-wing word) in the Times ad is mostly rant and not to be taken seriously, the spirit behind all this blather is interestingly hypocritical. T.w.m.i.p. is not interested in morality. In fact, any company that can increase quarterly profits through the poisoning of a river is to be treasured. But the piece does reflect a certain unease that the people at large, most visibly through sex, may be trying to free themselves from their masters, who grow ever more stern and exigent in their prohibitions — one strike and you're out is their dirty little secret. In mid-screed; the paper almost comes to the point: "Very simply [sic], what we're suggesting here is that the code of sexual behavior formerly set down by established religion in the U.S. more or less kept society healthy, unlike the current manifest catastrophe." There it is. Where is Norman Lear, creator of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman , now that we need him? Visualize on the screen gray clapboard, slate-colored sky, omni-ous (as Darryl Zanuck used to say) music. Then a woman's plaintive voice calling "Hester Prynne, Hester Prynne!" as the screen fills with a pulsing scarlet "A."