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Posts Tagged ‘subversion’

Normalizing Ugliness and Subversion

Posted by M. C. on November 3, 2023

New fountain in Vienna expresses contempt for the city and its inhabitants.

Note the revolting distortion of what appears to be a vaguely female figure wearing a mask. This is an expression of pure hatred and contempt for humanity. The poor people of Favoriten who walk past it every day will eventually grow accustomed to the dread and unease they will feel when they see it.

https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/normalizing-ugliness-and-subversion

I’ve often wondered what someone who grew up in Vienna would think if he were suddenly transported to once beautiful San Francisco and confronted with the spectacle of thousands of homeless people living on sidewalks and using them as latrines.

I believe he would be so shocked by the squalor, ruin, and indignity of it that he would scarcely believe it possible in a country that considers itself civilized. He would literally say to himself, “This can’t be real.”

For a while in the 1990s, the City of Vienna tolerated drug addicts loitering around the Karlsplatz subway station, but eventually changed the policy because the city’s inhabitants objected to it. By longstanding tradition going back to the Vienna’s rapid growth in the 19th century—guided by very talented and civic-minded urban planners—the inhabitants of Vienna have come to regard their city a beautiful, clean, and orderly place, celebrated in the popular folksong “Wien, Wien, nur du allein” (Vienna, Vienna, only you alone).

Those who now run the City of Vienna seem to understand that the spectacle of dehumanization, expressed by actual humans living in abject squalor on the streets, would not be tolerated. Another approach to normalizing ugliness and the subversion of dignity is to express it in a public monument.

This morning I saw the news that the City of Vienna recently unveiled a new fountain in the Favoriten district near the West Train Station on which it spent 1.8 million Euros of taxpayer money.

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The West in Crisis: Subversion From Within – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on December 12, 2020

It is revealing that hundreds of millions of members of minority groups born into societies outside the Western domain are eager to leave their own countries and come to live among us. So much so that if we did not have barriers to hold them back, we would be overrun and that in short order. If we were such an unjust and oppressive civilization as it is claimed, this situation would surely not have arisen

Their allegations, however, are not borne out by facts. As it happens, the West was the first civilization that accorded equal rights to all those within its realms and is the only one that does so consistently. Not only does the West take special care to protect its minorities, it affords them special rights and privileges.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/12/vasko-kohlmayer/the-west-in-crisis-subversion-from-within/

By Vasko Kohlmayer

It was in the 1960s that the left convinced itself that there is something fascistic about patriotism and something perversely “patriotic” about running down America. Anti-Americanism – a stand-in for hatred of Western civilization – became the stuff of sophisticates and intellectuals as never before.

— Jonah Goldberg

I am among those who believe that our Western civilization is on its way to perishing. It has many commendable qualities, most of which it has borrowed from the Christian ethic, but it lacks the element of moral wisdom that would give it permanence. Future historians will record that we of the twentieth century had intelligence enough to create a great civilization but not the moral wisdom to preserve it.

— Aiden Wilson Tozer

What is called Western Civilization is in an advanced state of decomposition, and another Dark Ages will soon be upon us, if, indeed, it has not already begun. With the Media, especially television, governing all our lives, as they indubitably do, it is easily imaginable that this might happen without our noticing… by accustoming us to the gradual deterioration of our values.

— Malcom Muggeridge

There is no question that by nearly any metric the West is by far the most successful civilization in history. Among its many spectacular accomplishments, the West has attained affluence and material prosperity that were previously unimaginable. Its scientific advancements and technological progress seem like the stuff of science fiction. Its military power and strength are without equal. But not only do Westerners enjoy unprecedented degree of wealth, health and security, they are also guaranteed unequalled personal liberties and political rights. In short, the West has achieved what those who lived in other civilizations could only dream of. The affluence, freedoms and safety available to Westerners are by any historical measure beyond extraordinary. One clear present-day indicator of the West’s staggering success is the countless people from all over the globe willing to take great risks and pay almost any price to come and live here.

All of this notwithstanding, there is an ominous feeling, however, that we are a civilization whose days are numbered. Despite our immense wealth, technological capabilities and military power, there is a growing sense that the West is under an attack it may not be able to withstand.

This attack has not been unleashed by some powerful external enemy. Nor could it have been since no external foe is strong enough to take on this civilization. The attack has come from within. Neither was it launched suddenly. Rather it has been a progressive operation. Low level and barely perceivable in the beginning, it has been gathering in strength over a period of decades. Its initial phase could be compared to a partisan campaign with a shot taken here and there. Emboldened by a lack of proper response on the part of those it sought to subvert, the enemy expanded its field of hostilities and achieved surprising victories. Invigorated and encouraged by the gains, the foe has recently thrown away all of its disguises and has come out into the open in full force. It has shown itself stronger than most would have imagined with the result that we are now locked in an all-out battle for survival. It is an indication of our malaise that many people are still not fully aware of this.

The enemy ranks are made up of those who harbor an aversion toward their own culture and society. Of those there are many, their numbers stoked up by decades of systematic anti-western indoctrination by the schools and the media. Charging Western civilization with oppression and racism, they claim that our socio-economic system is inherently unjust. Western style liberal democracies, they allege, discriminate and exploit racial minorities, women, homosexuals, transexuals, non-binary people, multi-gender persons, cross-genders and – apart from the select elite chosen from white males – everyone else who happens to abide in the west.

Their allegations, however, are not borne out by facts. As it happens, the West was the first civilization that accorded equal rights to all those within its realms and is the only one that does so consistently. Not only does the West take special care to protect its minorities, it affords them special rights and privileges. This applies to minorities across the spectrum and encompasses race, gender, sexual orientation and whatever other minority criterion exists or may yet be discovered by the progressive illuminati. It is revealing that hundreds of millions of members of minority groups born into societies outside the Western domain are eager to leave their own countries and come to live among us. So much so that if we did not have barriers to hold them back, we would be overrun and that in short order. If we were such an unjust and oppressive civilization as it is claimed, this situation would surely not have arisen

But facts do not seem to make much difference to these civilizational malcontents. Driven by frustration and anger that are out of kilter with reality, they do not confine themselves to mere verbal critiques but seek to translate their feelings into action. They do this by maligning and undermining the values, beliefs and institutions that have made this civilization what it is. The decades of their persistent efforts have borne fruit. Having been subjected to years of denigration and criticism, Westerners have lost confidence in the fundamental probity of their own culture. Wholesome qualities that once propelled the west to greatness – such as self-denial, deferred gratification, thrift, independence, faithfulness, devotion, etc. – are now commonly ridiculed and despised. They have been increasingly supplanted by such insalubrious tendencies as self-indulgence, pleasure seeking, victim-playing, promiscuity, vulgarity and profligacy. Because the West’s cultural and moral foundation have been undermined, the institutions they support cannot but malfunction. Schools, for instance, now routinely teach young people destructive and immoral ideas. Most importantly, they have been for years inculcating students with abhorrence for their own cultural heritage. At the same time the unceasing barrage of decadent propaganda has loosened the bonds of the nuclear family with the result that co-habitation, divorce and out of wedlock births have increased at alarming rates. Because of the general acceptance of profligacy and lack of restraint, western currencies have been steadily losing their purchasing power due to unsustainable levels of debt incurred throughout all layers of our financial system. We could go on but let us say for now that nearly all Western institutions have been – to one degree or another – impaired and marked by decline.

As a consequence of this – and because the West has lost faith in itself – we now stand as a fragile and weakened civilization. This situation has been brought about two complementary courses of action: the long-term efforts of civilizational saboteurs and the failure of the rest to protect their culture, institutions and heritage.

Emboldened by their societies’ weakness and apathy, these saboteurs feel that their final goal may be in sight. We have seen a dramatic eruption of their destructive enthusiasm in the late spring and summer of this year when they came out in force under the guise of anti-racism protests. The term saboteur does not, of course, only encompass the vandals wreaking havoc in the streets but also their enablers and protectors in the media, government, transnational organizations, academia and other institutions. In the course of this year, we watched as these players spewed a steady stream of fiery condemnations of western societies as being irredeemably racist, discriminatory and otherwise oppressive. This was naturally accompanied by calls for a radical remaking of our socio-economic model communicated through the catch phrases such as the “The Great Reset,” “The New World Order” and “The Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

Even as it has attained unprecedented levels of wealth, technological advancement and power, Western civilization finds itself today in an existential crisis and at a point of mortal danger. It is a great irony that the civilization that has provided its people with more affluence, comfort, security, freedom and rights than any other is in danger of being destroyed from within by malcontents that it itself nurtured.

“Know your enemy” said Sun Tzu in his Art of War. The great question, then, is this: what motivates these domestic subversives to act in this way? What is the source of the psychological impulses that make them hate and strike against their own societies which – although far from perfect – nevertheless belong to the most equitable and humane civilizational stream that has emerged from the currents of history?

This is the question we need to find the answer to if we hope to hold back and repulse the insidious forces that threaten the survival of what is left of Western civilization.

The Best of Vasko Kohlmayer Vasko Kohlmayer [send him mail] is a naturalized citizen.

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The Left’s Final Objective Is Subversion of Western Civilization – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on December 5, 2020

As was the case with the churches, their behavior may seem irrational, but only until we remind ourselves of the left’s ideological purpose. The structures and statues they vandalized commemorated the efforts of people who in one way or another advanced the cause of western civilization. It is the protestors’ deep-seated antipathy toward the west that explains why they acted the way they did.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/12/vasko-kohlmayer/the-lefts-final-objective-is-subversion-of-western-civilization-part-2/

By Vasko Kohlmayer

In the previous piece we showed that ending (non-existent) racism could not have been the real goal of the riots that convulsed the United States this year. Rather we argued that the riots represented a dramatic eruption of the left’s anti-western animus which is the psychological disposition that frames the left’s mindset and actions.

We will see what the riots’ real purpose was when we consider what the so-called anti-racist “protestors” targeted for destruction. In the weeks following the death of George Floyd hundreds of attacks against Catholic churches were reported across America. This may seem strange, given that America’s woke commissars of social justice never really charged the Catholic Church with complicity in this country’s current “racist” regime or the death of George Floyd. If anything, in recent years the Church has been a notable abettor of the progressive movement, having incorporated parts of the woke agenda into its own teachings. This has been especially true during the pontificate of Francis who in many ways sounds like a secular progressive clad in papal robes.

The protestors’ raids on Catholic churches, therefore, bewildered many people. But if you remember what the left’s driving impulse is, these acts will make perfect sense. Despite its recent dabbling in wokeness, the Catholic Church – along with our classical Greco-Roman heritage – has been a foundational pillar of Western civilization. This is the real reason why the churches became a target of the left’s destructive urge. To make their motivation completely clear, in some instances the protestors even inscribed sickle and hammer on the walls of the sacred structures they vandalized. Sickle and hammer stand, of course, for the Soviet Union and its communist revolution which condemned the western model and established a new system based on ideas that were antithetical to occidental tradition.

The attacks on churches, however, were not the only clue exposing the hidden agenda behind the faux anti-racist protests. The war on statues was just as revealing. They initially began with monuments of those who had at least some connection – however remote or tenuous – to slavery. Very quickly, however, no statue was safe from the mob’s wrath. So much so that they targeted even those who had done much for the advancement and liberation of black people. Abraham Lincoln would be one of them. This despite the fact that Lincoln is generally considered to be the man who effectually ended slavery in the United States. The widely-held view of Lincoln as the emancipator of black people was well expressed by the journalist Edward Achorn who wrote recently that in most Americans’ eyes Lincoln stands as “a symbol of wisdom, decency, sacrifice, and perseverance in defeating slavery and liberating millions of black Americans.”

And yet the allegedly “anti-racism” protesters repeatedly attacked Lincoln’s statues across America. The attacks were so flagrant that even CNN had to take note. In its October 12 dispatch, CNN reported that “protesters in Portland, Oregon, pulled down statues of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt…”

The protesters did not stop there, however. As part of their statue rampage, they also attacked edifices associated with our national heritage. In a piece headlined “The Mob Goes After Abraham Lincoln,” the Daily Signal reported that they “trashed the Oregon Historical Society, which preserves treasures of the past so that people of succeeding generations may understand their culture and history.”

The next morning CNN quoted Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell who made this observation:

“These events late at night, they purport to have a racial justice nexus. But they’re not that. They’re about violence and criminal destruction.”

Chuck Lovell is absolutely correct. The rioters’ actions had nothing to do with race – they were all about destruction. As was the case with the churches, their behavior may seem irrational, but only until we remind ourselves of the left’s ideological purpose. The structures and statues they vandalized commemorated the efforts of people who in one way or another advanced the cause of western civilization. It is the protestors’ deep-seated antipathy toward the west that explains why they acted the way they did.

Since the leftist mindset is transnational in nature, we could expect that a powerful eruption of its anti-western animus in one country would trigger corresponding disruptions in other countries belonging to the western stream. And this was, in fact, what happened. Within two weeks of the start of the George Floyd riots in the United States, similar events began taking place in other western nations. The protests waxed especially strong in leading European countries such as the United Kingdom, France and Germany where hundreds of thousands took part. On June 6th a British newspaper ran a  report which opened as follows:

“Furious Europeans have taken to the street this week to protest against police brutality and racism, following the death of George Floyd in the US, as major capitals across the EU were shut down by the protesters. Europeans have defied official bans against mass gatherings across the continent, as protests continue to erupt across major capitals from Paris to Berlin.”

The piece continued by listing some of the European nations where the “protests” took place.

“Thousands have taken to the streets in Europe to protest racism and police brutality, following the tragic US police killing of George Floyd, which has first triggered a wave of protests in America. Thousands poured in the streets in countries including France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland, Slovakia, Greece, Ireland, Poland, Sweden and others.”

It is deeply significant that the protests in Europe were organized by chapters of BLM. This should make us pause, given that BLM is an American organization which came into existence in 2013 in response to a shooting death of a black American teenager in Florida. Why, then, is this outfit organizing mass demonstrations across Europe? And even more importantly, why is Black Lives Matter trying to incite protests in countries that have virtually no black populations? In nations such Finland, Poland, Ireland or Slovakia – which are for the most part ethnically homogenous – racism has never been a significant problem.

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The Best of Vasko Kohlmayer Vasko Kohlmayer [send him mail] is a naturalized citizen.

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The Aim of the Social Justice Movement Is the Subversion of Core Western Values – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on August 31, 2020

Consider this politically correct lie: Western societies are oppressive toward women. This is about as obviously absurd a statement as the claim that the Soviet Union was a free country. To everyone with the eyes to see it is quite plain that women are not oppressed in Western democracies. On the other hand, women are almost invariably oppressed in non-Western societies. This truth, however, is not allowed to be articulated and most attempts to do so are met with severe consequences, especially for those involved in public institutions such as media, universities, government and even many corporations.

Here is another politically correct lie: In Western democracies minorities are oppressed. To every reasonable person the falsity of this is immediately evident. Rather than being oppressed, racial minorities in the United States and most western countries enjoy more protections and privileges than the majority. This is exactly the reason why minorities from non-western societies are so eager to come and live in western societies. So much so that we have to expand considerable efforts and resources to keep them out for fear of being overrun. Conversely, we do not see minorities living in Western democracies running away from their oppression to live in those wonderful non-Western cultures and societies of which multiculturalists are so fond. Why do you think this is? The reality of the situation and the behavior of people themselves completely disprove the official PC narrative. Any intimations of the obvious, however, immediately draws the ire of the politically correct organs and can result in prompt cancellation.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/08/vasko-kohlmayer/the-aim-of-social-justice-movement-is-subversion-of-core-western-values/

By

We have spoken previously about what the attacks on statues and churches that have been taking place as part of the so-called “anti-racism” protests reveal about the true nature of this movement. They show that these protests are not actuated by a desire to bring about racial justice, but by an aversion toward Western culture. It is not the elimination of non-existent racism that is the objective of this crusade. Its real goal is the destruction of liberal democracy.

Beneath the crass attacks on the physical artifacts of Western tradition, however, a less obvious but far more destructive assault is being launched: It is an assault on the core values and principles of Western civilization. It is an onslaught on the very values that have made its accomplishments possible. The Western miracle came about because certain ideas and principles gained hold in the occidental psyche, and it was these ideas and principles that enabled the Western mind to create a civilization that has advanced, flourished and excelled in ways unmatched by any other.

One of the quintessential, and arguably the most important, among these values is freedom of expression. The Western achievement could not have taken place without it. Conversely, it is the lack of this freedom that is the main reason for why other civilizations lag behind in almost every metric. It is not difficult to see why, since it is through an open exchange of ideas and sympathetic consideration of differing points of view that true learning and progress take place. Similarly, by giving room to creative individuals to express the innermost stirrings of their souls, great works of art are created.

It is freedom of expression that lies behind the West’s spectacular attainments in the arts, architecture, literature, science, music, technology and nearly every other area of human endeavor. Freedom of expression – particularly in its manifestation as free speech – is the essential prerequisite for one of the West’s crowning achievements: the liberal democracy. Western democracy, as some may know, is the only form of societal organization that grants and guarantees equal rights to all people living within it. It is also the only form of government capable of generating freedom and prosperity for the common man. Needless to say, like the marbles of Michelangelo, the symphonies of Beethoven or the paintings of Rembrandt, liberal democracy is a singularly Western achievement.

Freedom of expression has had a long tradition in Western culture. It can be traced more than 2,500 years back to ancient Greece. It is clearly seen at work, for example, in the great dialogues of Plato where participants openly and freely exchange their views and ideas. And even though its scope of permissiveness has fluctuated through the centuries, it has always run like a continuous thread through western history. We can get a sense of the value of this freedom and the kind of wide-ranging beneficial dialogue it engenders from an observation made by the late Sir Roger Scruton:

“All of the great scientists of our time, when you look back at Einstein and Freud and Piaget, and all those people, they were highly cultivated… And for them the intellectual development could have never been confined to something like a laboratory. It was a form of dialogue with civilization as a whole.”

Given that the current protests are being actuated by an anti-Western animus, it would only be natural to expect that those who take part in them would turn against this foundational western value. This they, in fact, do, and they do it with great enthusiasm and fervor. We have seen a startling manifestation of it recently in the rapid rise of the cancel culture which has taken over many of our important public institutions with astonishing speed. And we also see it in the extreme forms of political correctness which is being practiced and advocated by the social warriors of today.

Political correctness is the instrument of choice for those on the political Left in their drive to do away with freedom of expression. What political correctness does is to prevent the articulation of facts that are plainly obvious but inconvenient to those who seek power by illicit and undemocratic means. As most people have noticed by now, in an environment ruled by political correctness truth must not be spoken. Instead one must either stay silent or say the opposite of the truth. Those who cross the bounds of acceptable discourse are condemned and penalized.

Every oppressive society in history without exception has had its own form of political correctness. In every such society you were not allowed to state the obvious about the nature of that society and the relations within it. If you did, you would be promptly punished. In dictatorial societies political correctness is enforced directly by the State, and it is called censorship.

In the socialist society I grew up in, we had our own strain of strict political correctness. Although its language may have superficially differed on some points from the language of today’s western progressives, the principle was exactly the same: We were not allowed to say the truth; we were only allowed to say the opposite of the truth. In our case the truth was that we were an economically backward country and a vasal of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union itself was a deeply impoverished nation held together by a brutal police state operating under the banner of a convoluted kind of collectivist ideology which officially called Marxism-Leninism.

We were, however, not allowed to say what a bad situation this was. Instead we had to say that we lived in a very prosperous and free country and that the Soviet Union was our great benefactor. As for the Soviet Union itself, we had to agree that it was the freest and most affluent country in the world. All people in the Soviet Union were supremely happy individuals because of the abundant prosperity and the freedoms they enjoyed. There was no place on earth or in heaven more excellent than the Soviet Union. Thanks to the great work of Marx, Lenin and Stalin, mankind’s long dream of Paradise had at last come true in the great country of the USSR. And guess what was the worst place on earth? It was the United States of America, which was, so were we told, a land of tyranny where people had no real freedoms and where everyone was poor, miserable, oppressed and depressed. As an aside, it is remarkable to observe on how many points the views and rhetoric of the former communists and today’s progressives are virtually identical.

The communist politically correct rhetoric ran in complete contravention of reality, but we all had to pretend that it was true. Most people did not believe it, but there were some who did or wanted to. That something like this could take place in real life may seem unbelievable to reasonable people now, but lies of similar depth and magnitude are quite commonplace in many Western circles today.

Consider this politically correct lie: Western societies are oppressive toward women. This is about as obviously absurd a statement as the claim that the Soviet Union was a free country. To everyone with the eyes to see it is quite plain that women are not oppressed in Western democracies. On the other hand, women are almost invariably oppressed in non-Western societies. This truth, however, is not allowed to be articulated and most attempts to do so are met with severe consequences, especially for those involved in public institutions such as media, universities, government and even many corporations.

Here is another politically correct lie: In Western democracies minorities are oppressed. To every reasonable person the falsity of this is immediately evident. Rather than being oppressed, racial minorities in the United States and most western countries enjoy more protections and privileges than the majority. This is exactly the reason why minorities from non-western societies are so eager to come and live in western societies. So much so that we have to expand considerable efforts and resources to keep them out for fear of being overrun. Conversely, we do not see minorities living in Western democracies running away from their oppression to live in those wonderful non-Western cultures and societies of which multiculturalists are so fond. Why do you think this is? The reality of the situation and the behavior of people themselves completely disprove the official PC narrative. Any intimations of the obvious, however, immediately draws the ire of the politically correct organs and can result in prompt cancellation.

The cancel culture is the executory arm of political correctness. Things have become so extreme in recent months that people are now being cancelled for making even the most innocuous comments. The forms that cancellation can take at this time range from being publicly shamed through removal from platforms of public discourse and having one’s reputation destroyed to being dismissed from employment. Because of its nature, today’s social justice movement must inevitably position itself as an irreconcilable enemy of free speech. The social warriors’ position has its roots in a deep illiberal impulse that goes directly against the best principles of Western culture.

Suppression of free expression has been invariably practiced by totalitarians and tyrants of all ranks and species, whether they emerged from the West or from other civilizational streams. Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Mao Tse-tung, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Un were all sworn enemies of free speech exactly as are today’s anti-racism activists. All these tyrants instituted their own kind of political correctness and cancel culture. Today’s social justice warriors are thus firmly rooted in the tradition of those Leaders. The politically-correct, cancel-happy progressives who march through the streets of Western cities and lord it over the social medial platforms are the true heirs of these Leaders’ intolerant, illiberal impulse, which is deeply anti-Western in nature. Needless to say, all the Great Leaders mentioned above have thoroughly ruined their societies and left a deep trail of misery and corpses in their wake.

Free expression and free speech are, of course, not the only core Western values that have come under attack from the progressives. Others include the concept of private property, the idea of equal rights and equality before the law among others. Like their tyrannical predecessors, social justice warriors of today are not interested in constructively addressing the real problems in the society in which they live. Carried along by a destructive instinct, they want to bring down their society. Most of them have no clear conception of what should replace it. What they know, however, is that they want nothing to do with the principles of free speech, tolerance of dissent, respect for private property, etc., on which free and affluent societies are built. The main problem with this approach is that societies not based on these values are not good places to live. Just ask the people of Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Kim’s North Korea, Castro’s Cuba or Pol Pot’s Cambodia.

Vasko Kohlmayer [send him mail] is a naturalized citizen.

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The State’s Priority Is Protecting Itself, Not You | The Libertarian Institute

Posted by M. C. on June 6, 2020

When the greater risk is of injury to the officer, and I had five injured last night – a building? A window? A door? The property that was in it can easily be replaced. But for a person who has had officers shot. And more recently than not, I will not put an officer in harm’s way to protect the property inside of a building. Because insurance is most likely going to cover that as well but that officer’s safety is of the utmost importance.

Got that? The officer’s safety is the primary concern, not the property of citizens. Agents of the state whose sole job is supposedly to protect the people and their property instead refuse to do their job at the first hint of danger.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-states-priority-is-protecting-itself-not-you/

Murray Rothbard pointed out in his book Anatomy of the State how the state is far more punitive against those that threaten the comfort and authority of government institutions and workers than they are against crimes against citizens.

This, according to Rothbard, exposed as a myth the notion that the state exists to protect its citizens.

“We may test the hypothesis that the State is largely interested in protecting itself rather than its subjects by asking: which category of crimes does the State pursue and punish most intensely—those against private citizens or those against itself?” Rothbard wrote.

“The gravest crimes in the State’s lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of private person or property, but dangers to its own contentment, for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, subversion and subversive conspiracy, assassination of rulers and such economic crimes against the State as counterfeiting its money or evasion of its income tax.”

Boy how recent events have proven Rothbard right.

For weeks, we saw police aggressively pursuing and punishing peaceful people merely violating arbitrary lockdown orders to go surfing, cut hair, or host a child’s play date.

But in the first nights of the George Floyd protests, police allowed rioters to run amok destroying property, with political leaders dismissing the damage as unimportant.

This stark contrast in police responses dramatically underscores Rothbard’s point.

Take the first nights of rioting in Minneapolis. As reported by the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, the source of the “police stand-down order that allowed his own city to burn,” merely “shrugged off responsibility and minimized the damage.” Moreover, according to the report, “Frey kept repeating that the destruction was ‘just brick and mortar.’”

And consider the example of Raleigh, North Carolina Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown, who said:

When the greater risk is of injury to the officer, and I had five injured last night – a building? A window? A door? The property that was in it can easily be replaced. But for a person who has had officers shot. And more recently than not, I will not put an officer in harm’s way to protect the property inside of a building. Because insurance is most likely going to cover that as well but that officer’s safety is of the utmost importance.

Got that? The officer’s safety is the primary concern, not the property of citizens. Agents of the state whose sole job is supposedly to protect the people and their property instead refuse to do their job at the first hint of danger.

Worse still, as Ryan McMaken pointed out in a recent article at Mises.org, “A failure to protect taxpaying citizens from violence and crime in a wide variety of situations is standard operating procedure for police departments that are under no legal obligation to protect anyone, and where ‘officer safety’ is the number one priority.”

McMaken further notes that it is “now a well-established legal principle in the United States that police officers and police departments are not legally responsible for refusing to intervene in cases where private citizens are in imminent danger or even in the process of being victimized.”

Police absence during riots is nothing new. As McMaken wrote: “During the 2014 riots that followed the police killing of Michael Brown, for example, shopkeepers were forced to hire private security, and many had to rely on armed volunteers for protection from looters. ‘There’s no police,’ one Ferguson shopkeeper told Fox News at the time. ‘We trusted the police to keep it peaceful; they didn’t do their job.”’

As the violence of the riots intensified, mayors instructed police forces in cities across the nation to step up their presence.

But their initial reactions are the most telling.

The contrast between police actions against peaceful lockdown “violators” and the rioters is striking. The instincts of the political class was to haul mothers in parks and hair stylists away in handcuffs, while standing down and allowing private property owned by citizens to burn.

The former involved disobeying a government order, an act which would threaten the perceived authority, no matter how arbitrary, of the state. The latter involved violation and destruction of citizens’ property.

As Rothbard would have predicted, the state was far more interested in preserving the illusion of its authority than the property of its citizens.

Putting a tragic, but fine, point to Rothbard’s point: George Floyd was choked to death by a police officer sent to detain him for the “crime” of using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes.

The state is not us. It does not exist to protect our person or property. It exists first and foremost for its own benefit and to exert power and control over its subjects.

Events of the past several weeks should make this crystal clear.

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