Authoritarianism or Self-DeterminationRecently by Scott Lazarowitz: The ‘Right to Health Care’
Well, another "Independence" Day has come and gone. Yet, each year that goes by, we have less independence and less freedom to direct and control our own lives and destinies. Just what happened to the passion for self-determination of the Revolutionaries who seceded from the dictatorial King George’s rule? When Honest Abe Lincoln used the armed forces to punish people for separating from his rule, that reversed the independence achieved by the earlier Revolutionaries. The idea of self-determination had been stomped by the boot of federal government authority. And unlike the American Revolutionaries who questioned and challenged creepy King George’s laws, dictates and intrusions, most current Americans seem to be uncritically and unthinkingly accepting of government’s abuses. How can we reverse this trend? In fact, many Americans are calling for more laws, more bureaucracies, and more police. Worse, those who openly question or criticize government’s incompetent, corrupt or criminal actions are referred to by the authoritarian majority as "unpatriotic" or "conspiracy theorists." It is an uphill battle for those of us who want to restore our freedom and our right to self-determination.
The Authoritarian Schools It seems to me that many of these American authoritarians – left and right, liberal and conservative – are products of government schools. America’s educational ranking has dipped from #1 to the double digits. But what have dragged the schools down, in my opinion, are the federal government, teachers’ unions, political correctness, and the cultural degenerates who have taken control over the schools. The schools are authoritarian and punitive, and many of the teachers unions won’t allow competency testing of teachers. Critical thinking amongst the youths is punished, as a child’s natural expressions of curiosity get diagnosed as "hyperactive," or "oppositional defiant disorder," and many of the schools are outright prisons now. However, one method of teaching that is contrary to the statists’ authoritarian, top-down approach is the Montessori method, a program founded by Italian physician Maria Montessori. The Montessori method allows the individual child’s education to be directed from the natural impulses and interests of the child, within the framework of some set limits. The teachers respect and encourage the child’s self-direction. Within classrooms, the ages of the children are usually within about three years, but not necessarily all the same age. This concept is similar to the political concepts of individual liberty and self-determination, and "government by the consent of the governed."
Here is an in-depth article by Stephan Kinsella on the Montessori program. And, as this Montessori school notes, "classrooms are child-centered, not teacher-centered," and "emphasis is on individual learning, not group learning." Clearly, our current control freak bureaucrats and teachers unions would not accept such a program in which the natural, self-directed learning impulses of an individual child are encouraged. Now, since college my interests in psychology have been specifically in self psychology. I am very much influenced by Swiss psychologist Alice Miller, especially her book Drama of the Gifted Child. (That Scribd link is to the original 1979 version, which I recommend. In the1996 revision, however, Miller made too many changes, and for the worse.) Miller’s books, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence and Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society’s Betrayal of the Child, have also influenced me. Other theorists similar to Alice Miller include D.W. Winnicott and Heinz Kohut. One of Alice Miller’s main ideas is that of narcissistic disturbance. Regarding the Montessori child-centered education program, some readers may be concluding that such a program only encourages narcissism (and selfishness). On the contrary, as Alice Miller has noted, when the child’s own natural, individual impulses and self-direction are respected, encouraged and loved by the teachers and caretakers, then the child’s real inner self is what is being nurtured.
A narcissistic disturbance occurs, however, when the child’s true self and self-direction are not tolerated by the adults in the child’s world, and, as a reaction, the child takes on a false self identity, becomes conforming to the group at the expense of one’s individuality, or can become anti-social or abusive. It is this "disturbance" that characterizes our authoritarian government schools. Government school teachers and bureaucrats seem to be very demanding that their students follow meaningless rules and regulations to satisfy the teachers’ and bureaucrats’ insatiable need for control. And that kind of narcissistic disturbance is how I view our current top-down, authoritarian political system. Members of the "false-self," power-craving ruling class climb over others and spend millions to get to the highest positions of power. And their agendas are to expand the power of the State and enrich themselves at the expense of others, and at the expense of our freedom. They do not want people to have more freedom, only less, and they want themselves to have more power. Sadly, that is the Soviet, authoritarian Amerika in which we now suffer. Such a banana republic has been officially confirmed by the Chief Banana Republican of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, in his vote-switching, Orwellian judicial contortionist ObamaCare acrobatics. Thanks to the bug-bitten Roberts, the Supreme Court has empowered the federal government to enslave all Americans even further by calling a mandate a "tax." The Authoritarian News Media
The modern authoritarian worship of the State has also been brought to us by professional journalists, the Press, those whose role it was supposed to be to challenge the rulers, and expose their corruption, incompetence and criminality. Unfortunately, mainstream news media reporters, editors, commentators and pundits are by and large propagandists and shills for the State now. The State stenographer mainstreamers have enmeshed themselves and their false identities with the collective and with the State and power, and they now view the ideas of self-determination, self-direction, individualism and independence with suspicion and contempt. With Chief Bureaucrat Roberts’s judicial acrobatics were "conservative" pundits Charles Krauthammer and George Will as further self-contorting State apologists. The so-called conservatives seemed to join Roberts’s attempt to save the "legitimacy, reputation and stature" of the high court (but not saving our liberty!). Sorry, statists, this ObamaCare decision has further reduced the court’s "legitimacy and stature." People with actual common sense can now see how absurd the Supreme Court’s rulings have been. Each one of the Justices (sic) is clearly just another government bureaucrat, and nothing more. The State-power apologists amongst the Press have increasingly become more appendages of the State than its watchdogs. That correlates, in my view, with how Americans in general have grown more in deference to authority, especially governmental authority. One particularly depressing recent showing of such authoritarianism was a column by David Brooks of the New York Times (which I haven’t gotten since 1987, by the way). Brooks believes that America does not have a "leadership problem," but a "follower problem." To Brooks, people who "reject hierarchies and leaders" believe that the "whole world should be like the Internet – a disbursed semianarchy in which authority is suspect and each individual is king." (Doh!)
"Vast majorities of Americans don’t trust their institutions," says Brooks. But he says it’s because of vanity, because we pretend that we are better than everyone else around us. Are these statists too caught up in their emotional enmeshment with the State to understand that it is they who think they’re better than everyone else? And could our "distrust of our institutions" possibly be because of the wars that our "leaders" have started for no good reason? And all the anti-American retaliation they have caused? Or because of the Bush-Obama police state that is turning America into Nazi Germany right before our very eyes? Or Congress spending like drunken sailors and forcing our grandchildren to have to pay for their selfishness? No, there aren’t enough blind, obedient followers of authority who should get on their knees for the State, according to Brooks, apparently. Americans’ choices for "leaders" include incompetents such as Premier Obama and Premier-Wannabe Romney, and other warmongers and moonbats, but it’s not enough for Brooks, it seems. But from the alternative media such as the Internet, there are real journalists who not only point out how authoritarian America has become, but just how subservient to the State today’s so-called journalists have become.
Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, for example, has recently pointed out how the New York Times acted as a State-propagandist sheet in helping the Obama Administration whitewash its murders of innocent civilians overseas. And Greenwald has also highlighted a Newsweek/Daily Beast video that glorified President Obama’s drone bombing of innocents overseas, and Hollywood producer Davis Guggenheim’s "documentary" of Obama the great leader with great accomplishments that shouldn’t be questioned. (David Boaz recently detailed those great accomplishments.) And let’s not forget those ghastly "JournoLists" from a few years ago, those "left-leaning" news reporters who intentionally omitted certain things about Barack Obama in their news stories, in an attempt to sway the 2008 election. And more recently a smilingly biased George Snuffleupagus celebrated the Roberts Mandate-Tax ruling with Vicki Reggie Kennedy, widow of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Those "false selfs," artificial elites and false intellectuals obediently defend the State’s further expansion. Hans-Hermann Hoppe explains here how the natural elites and intellectuals of the past became replaced by these current artificial elites. And the artificial elites and false intellectuals do their best to suppress the speech of those who oppose the State. (Here is Jon Stewart’s exposé of "journalists" Chris Wallace et al. and their very unprofessionally ignoring of Ron Paul last year.) Authoritarian Propagandists for Unnecessary Wars And the one main way of the authoritarians – left and right – to further propagandize for further State power and control, and further encroachments and usurpation of our liberty and right of self-determination, has been through war and war propaganda (more here).
Greenwald recently focused on Scott Pelley’s 60 Minutes profile of Defense Sec. Leon Panetta, described as "13 uninterrupted minutes of drooling propaganda." Greenwald has also written about NBC’s Brian Williams and Jim Miklaszewski, CNN’s Erin Burnett and ABC’s Diane Sawyer and Brian Ross as fear-mongers and State-propagandists for war with Iran. And, as Alice Miller noted (via Arthur Silber) in her book, The Untouched Key, "In the fact of mobilization for war … the questions of the younger generation are silenced. To doubt the wisdom of the state is regarded as treason. Any discussion or consideration of alternative possibilities is eliminated at a single stroke." Miller has written on the origins of dictators’ evil and the dynamics of cruelty (with further elaboration by Arthur Silber). With people whose real self was suppressed in their earliest days, and having internalized the cruelty, humiliations, neglectfulness, abuse or violence of their early primary caretakers, their denial of the suffering of others is easier. They are more prone to believing the lies and propaganda of their "authorities," more accepting of the criminality of those in charge, such as the warmongering Bush and Obama Administrations, and more accepting of the State’s intrusions against them, such as due process-destroying Patriot Act and NDAA, and TSA groping, molesting and cancer-scanners. Some people refer to such unquestioning support and blind obedience to the criminal State as a form of "Stockholm Syndrome." A further example: When WikiLeaks revealed how incompetent, corrupt or criminal our government "leaders" really are, many Americans including journalists were more upset with WikiLeaks than about how corrupt and incompetent the government criminals are. More recently, CNN contributor LZ Granderson suggested that Americans and the Press should stop being so "nosy" about what the government is up to. Stop investigating, stop exposing government and military corruption and crimes, stop challenging government bureaucrats’ actions and assertions. And don’t question the State’s intrusive and illegal surveillance of innocent people either! Let the State intrude into our lives, but how dare we know what they’re up to!
And the zeal with which U.S. military hacks have persecuted alleged whistleblower soldier Bradley Manning would make the bureaucrats of SAVAK and the current Iranian Regime proud. The authoritarians in charge who hate individual liberty and self-determination – and the authoritarian Americans who support them – are the ones who support the U.S. government’s provoking of foreigners overseas, but "boo" someone who advocates peace, personal responsibility and the Golden Rule. Many Americans just don’t seem to understand how much of a police state the U.S. has become. There’s something in the news every day, but people don’t want to see it, because it’s so horrifying a thought, even though it’s a reality now. How Do We Restore Our Right to Self-Determination? How can we restore our right to self-determination when control-freak bureaucrat regulators send police after those who wish to remain independent, or "off the grid"? How do we stop the Gestapo-like tactics that government agents are using against homeowners? When people try to exercise their right to self-determination, they are punished. Obama and his ilk are going right along with the UN’s campaign to disarm innocent, law-abiding civilians, which coincides with the apparent true gun control intentions of his administration’s Fast and Furious criminal scheme. And U.S. Army manuals are training the troops to confiscate Americans’ guns. Again, how are we to protect ourselves against government-police encroachments? That very kind of self-protection was the very reason for the 2nd Amendment! Just as a child has the God-given right to gouge the eyes out of or kick in the balls any bigger person who abuses, molests, or threatens to harm, abduct or kill him. Premier Obama is clearly preparing for some kind of military law to rule American streets, and his latest Executive Order among many now gives himself the power to seize control over all communications networks including our phones and the Internet. Obama has given himself the power to have innocent civilians detained indefinitely or killed by military soldiers, without due process, without Obama or his minions being required to present evidence against the accused. With his murder of Anwar al-Awlaki, Obama has shown that he will use this power against people whose only crime was being critical of Obama and the U.S. government.
Obama’s Department of Homeland Security has ordered 400 million rounds of ammunition, and new weaponry as well, and is clearly preparing for something. So, as the Republican Conventioneers prepare to replace the current socialist-fascist-communist with another authoritarian puppet (and NATO troops prepare for a possible false flag op), it seems to be an uphill battle to convince people to question and challenge government bureaucrats’ lies and disbelieve their propaganda. (Unless Ron Paul abandons the GOP and runs for President as a third-party candidate, of course.) Conclusion People need to let go of their faith in an inherently failed system of central planning. Hans-Hermann Hoppe explained in his book, Democracy, The God That Failed, just how the structures of central planning, publicly-owned government, a government with a monopoly in territorial protection, and the abandonment of private property and contract rights could very well lead to our current situation. Our current system inherently breeds the authoritarianism under which we are suffering. Some solutions that need to be considered (and soon) include: 1. Our dissolving the U.S. government even more decisively than the Soviet Union was dissolved. (More here, here, here, and here.) 2. States seceding and restoring independence and freedom from authoritarian federal dictatorial rule. (More here, here, here, here, and here.) 3. Nullification. Thomas Woods’s book, Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century, is helpful to understand how to unshackle ourselves from the federal Leviathan slave master. Woods responds to nullification skeptics here. (More here, here, here, here, and here.) July 20, 2012 Scott Lazarowitz [send him mail] is a commentator and cartoonist, visit his blog. Copyright © 2012 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
|
