Don't Forget the State's Pre-911 Crimes

by Rick Gee

In Crisis and Leviathan, Robert Higgs demonstrates how the State concentrates its power, at the expense of individual liberty, during times of emergency, particularly war. When the real or imagined or contrived crisis passes, a sticky residue of state power remains. 

We are witnessing the latest example of this truism as the United States War Party wages its unwinnable War on Terrorism. Airports are now patrolled by government agents wearing fatigues, black boots and scowls, carrying guns that the Feds say you don’t need. After you wait in line for two hours – even though you have an e-ticket you purchased in August and have no luggage to check – you arrive at the gate only to be encountered by the Gestapo rifling through your small carry-on looking for your Mach III refills, the Fourth Amendment be damned.  

Some of the freedom-haters in Congress are salivating at the prospect of a National ID card – tantamount to a domestic passport – that could be used to track your every movement. With the rapid advancement in technology, it’s not implausible to imagine a GPS signal emanating from your unique card, i.e., “your papers.” If you think that’s far-fetched, remember the government’s assurance that the Social Security number would never be used for anything but tax returns. 

Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose reward for helping the Democrats regain the Senate by failing to outpoll a dead man was to be given a position that makes it easy for him to kill with impunity (remember that Janet Reno, the Wacky Waco Eradicator and Florida gubernatorial hopeful, was his predecessor), is trying to ram draconian wiretap and surveillance legislation through a united Congress. Ah, the joys of bipartisanship! 

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who formerly resisted the Feds’ attempts to shove Carnivore down their throats now have no choice. As an exercise in asserting your First Amendment rights (or just for fun), send out random emails with the subject line “Osama bin Laden Rules!” Just kidding, of course: you are either with us or you are with the terrorists. 

Besides the further intrusions on your personal liberty, your rulers are also doing everything they can to assail your economic liberty. First it was the $40 billion the Elite 535 earmarked for rebuilding New York, providing after-the-fact life insurance to the victims, and protecting us from terrorism. They failed to protect over 6000 people on 911, so why shouldn’t they confiscate billions in private wealth to try again? Everyone deserves a second chance. 

Next was a $15 billion airline bailout. Why am I being asked (asked hell; I’m being forced) to subsidize wealthy stockholders? Don’t these companies have reserves set aside for a rainy day? If a few airlines went under, so what? It’s going to be a long time, if ever, before air travel returns to pre-911 levels, so it’s likely that the market would not support them all anyway. 

How much will it cost to put an armed air marshal on every flight? You will pay for it. If the Feds take over baggage handling and security at the gates, a prospect even more frightening than the current system of private companies who lose workers to the fast food industry, up go your taxes again. 

Of course, all those cruise missiles and “smart” bombs cost money, and since the government produces nothing, it will take what it wants from you to pay for the War Machine.  

What they don’t take from you directly via taxes, they will take from you indirectly when Alan Greenspan prints more fiat currency, creating inflation and a concomitant reduction in your purchasing power. Additional regulations on the airlines will increase the cost of air travel, the inevitable result of which is that some families will choose to drive rather than fly, resulting in more additional unnecessary deaths on the highways.  

Clearly, it is important during this time of “crisis” to oppose the welfare-warfare State in any way we can. When the War on Terrorism ends (fat chance), or enough Americans begin to object to their sons and daughters returning to America in body bags (more likely), the additional powers grabbed by the jackboots will mostly remain in effect. 

We should not, however, be overly preoccupied with the current state of affairs to the extent that we forget all the pernicious things the State has already done to us, and continues to do. We must persist in our opposition to the misdeeds of the State that occurred (and continue to occur) before 911. 

Taxes on every level and of every conceivable variety are nothing but theft, legal plunder as Bastiat would say. They should be avoided whenever possible. 

Cops will still set up DUI checkpoints with a comforting wink from SCOTUS indicating that the Fourth Amendment does not mean what it clearly means. If you’re ever snared in one of these dragnets, consider pulling an Abby Newman. 

SWAT teams will continue to bust into the wrong house, based on an anonymous phone tip, and shoot innocent people in the interest of the Insane War on (Some) Drugs. The legal drugs, especially nicotine and alcohol, will always be heavily taxed. Who’s the sinner here? 

Until every state, municipality and university in the country can be successfully sued, the political elites will persist in catering to protected interest groups in the form of Affirmative Action. Private companies will continue to come under fire for not promoting women, blacks and Hispanics proportionate to their share of the population. Companies will face endless pressure, boycotts and litigation, despite the fact that, as profit-seeking enterprises, it is in their self-interest to promote the best-qualified person. 

Animals will still be more important than people. The Feds will take away the water you need to irrigate your farm in the putative interest of the suckerfish. If you have a Frisbee-size puddle in your yard that is, or might someday be, a habitat for a mosquito, forget about building that addition for Johnny’s new bedroom.  

You will continue to have your freedoms curtailed and your wallet filched so the self-appointed guardians of the planet and their corrupt representatives in Congress can “save the environment” from the evil oil companies, logging companies and various other companies whose sole raison d’être is to provide the goods and services demanded by consumers. 

The Feds will not stop snooping through your bank records, email messages, phone calls and other means of communication in order to ensure that you are toeing the line. 

Even on the local level, where government is supposedly more responsive and less intrusive, you will be taxed and harassed ad infinitum. If you want build a garage on your property, you will need a permit from the city or county. Your property will be taxed to pay for the failed government school monopoly, whether or not you have children. You will still be forced to drive on government roads that are poorly built and even more poorly maintained. To add insult to injury, you will encounter a vast sea of orange barrels, behind which you will witness a cadre of construction workers neither constructing nor working. 

Indubitably, I could continue for many more paragraphs, but I trust you ascertain my point: the assault by the State on our liberty, both personal and economic, was firmly in place long before 911. And while we must rail against the state for its disastrous foreign policy, which was undeniably a precursor to the unspeakable terror of 911, we must also continue to fight the encroachment of the State in all its various incarnations.

October 12, 2001