The Day I Spoke With the Devil

06:00

Wakeup to the standard wakeup kick to the head, from my daughter Chloe (two). I reached over to check the time and as usual, her wakeup kick was right on time. Picking my body up out of bed, I went out to the living room and turned on my laptop. I was about to start the first part of my daily reading ritual.

08:00

Breakfast with my wife and kids, shower and shave, then back to the laptop until noon.

12:00

Take a taxi to a lunch meeting. My taxi driver looks across the road at the local school whose playing field is covered with fire engines, ambulances and security personal. They have blockaded the road leading up to the Shangri La Hotel here in Singapore.

"Must be for all the VIPs," he said.

"You mean for all the jokers," I replied.

He looks over at me not knowing whether to laugh or raise his guard.

"No, a bunch of world leaders, I mean," he said.

"Exactly, jokers," I replied.

12:30

I am surprised at the amount of foot traffic making its way through the Intercontinental Hotel where I was having lunch. Lunch begins and I comment on the foot traffic. My acquaintance mentions that perhaps it is for the big convention in town. As a Paleolibertarian, I had given up on the mainstream press; thus, I was unaware of such an event.

"Donald Rumsfeld is in town," he says.

"Probably getting ready to attack Korea," my other acquaintance says.

"Well they (the Empire) did recently deploy some stealth bombers there," I said.

"Maybe they are going to bomb Pyongyang?" one of them says.

"I hope not. I own shares in Korea Electric Power," I said.

14:00

I return home and begin reading essays from Antiwar.com and LewRockwell.com. I immediately click onto the Casualties of War link on the Antiwar.com site, to see how many more people were killed overnight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well another three US service members were killed bringing the total as of 2 June 2005 up to 1,669 in Iraq. This figure does not include the wounded, the coalition forces casualties, the casualties in Afghanistan and most of all the Iraqi and Afghan casualties.

This is a personal issue with me as in 1990 I had recently joined the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets. Rumor at the time was that in the event "Iraq I" was a prolonged conflict instead of four years our military training would be completed in two years and instead of having an option to sign a contract with the military we would be drafted. At the time, I was an advocate of enlightened dictatorships (democracy obviously was not working), an oxymoron, by the way, and was fully prepared to do my duty if called upon.

About eight years later I experienced the economic melt down in the supposedly enlightened dictatorships of Asia. Hey wait a minute; I thought these were enlightened dictatorships, if that assumption is correct then why are all of us experiencing the current stresses of the meltdown? This led me to question all my other values and assumptions. Along my journey for the truth I came across Hayek's classic The Road to Serfdom, which led me to Mises' classic Liberalism: The Classical Tradition, which led me to "The Mises Institute," etc. Today I am a completely converted Paleolibertarian.

Well I am one of those types of people which hate being wrong and I felt ashamed that I had bought into all the propaganda which had been pumped into my life since day one by the politicized media, the entertainment industry, the school system, the government and finally all the other brainwashed people I came into contact with. Here I was willing to kill other people and give my life for the Empire so that it could pad the pockets of the political elite and their political-capitalist friends. Boy was I upset.

16:15

Off to the American Club with my daughter Lauren (three and a half) for her tap dance lesson. We put on her tap dance shoes and wait for her instructor to show up. In the mean time, I tell her my version of the Disney's rendition of Aladdin. Her instructor shows up and off they go together into the studio next to the squash courts for her lesson that lasts forty-five minutes.

Quick no time to waste, I pulled out Christian Economics In One Lesson by Gary North and started to read away. I had recently converted to Christianity and was pleasantly surprised at the parallels between its religious teachings and the Paleolibertarian philosophy. The most obvious amongst these is that God gave us life and that men should not murder other men but in self-defense. Furthermore, this life would be meaningless unless we could choose between right and wrong and deal with the consequences of our decisions; thus, he gave us liberty. Finally, this liberty would in turn be meaningless unless we were able to improve our life and that of others. In order to do this he gave us stewardship over his assets for the improvement of humankind, i.e. property. There you have it, Life, Liberty & Property, the cornerstone tenets of Classical Liberalism. Oh yeah, before I forget, God's intended structuring of society was to be based on decentralized institutions starting with the family. We were only answerable to God and to man, if we broke the law. Then along came some do-good Israelites (I am convinced that at heart they were parasites of the state, can anyone say Neocons?) who demanded they have a king. God warned them thus:

“This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.  And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.  And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.  And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.  And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.  And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.  He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.  And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day." (1 Samuel 8:11–18)

The Israelites were not interested and God gave them their king and now we are all suffering for it.

16:40

Two men in suits show up with earpieces. Obviously, no one in their right mind wears a suit outdoors in Singapore where it is about 30 degrees Centigrade (90 odd degrees Fahrenheit) in 100% humidity, so my natural conclusion was that some theoretically important joker was about to show up. I was licking my chops, perhaps Rumsfeld would show up and I could give him a piece of my mind. It was hard to concentrate on Gary North's newsletter with the suits around. One went off to buy a drink. Thank God for private property, the club would not sell him one because he was not a member. I know that I should have offered to buy him one but my conscience was not working correctly at the time. I thought, "Why should I assist a servant of the Empire?" Jesus, please forgive me this sin. The next thing I know the General Manager shows up and starts offering the suits drinks, wait a minute aren't those my assets you are giving away? The lesson here is that even in private clubs the elites will have their way regardless of the abuse. How much more the abuse must be in larger organizations like the government.

As the time passed I thought of all the things I would tell Rumsfeld if he showed up, maybe I would coin a phrase like “Hey, Hey, Rummy, how many kids did you kill today?” One thing is for sure, if Rumsfeld was going to play squash in the court in front of where I was sitting I bet the suits would ask (i.e. tell) me to leave. Well that would be my opportunity to say something smart like, “I'll move but this is private property and I am a member and you're not. Do you think that's right?” or “How does it feel to serve a government which unConstitutionally (illegally) and based on false premises, kills people?"

17:00

About seven more suits show up. Once I see past the first row of guards, there he is, the Devil himself, Donald Rumsfeld. Here is my chance to incarcerate him and charge him with crimes against humankind. That would be lawful in the Classical Liberal society, as we would be permitted to volunteer our services in order to apprehend proven criminals regardless of who they are because we are all answerable to the same law. "Move body, mouth, anything. Here's your chance do something!" I ended up doing nothing I just sat there. The suits did not even provide me an opportunity to say anything (I suppose an overweight middle-aged guy in sandals did not represent much of a threat). I sat there and watched while Rumsfeld, wearing a T-shirt saying "Navy Squash" warmed up. One of the other lapdogs wearing a T-shirt saying "Pentagon, Washington D.C." was warming up outside the squash court.

Rumsfeld won the first game and decided to take a restroom break. He wandered around aimlessly looking for signs and then looked at me, and that is when it happened, "Do you know where the bathroom is?" I gave him directions, and sunk deeply into my seat. The Devil had spoken to me and I did nothing other than submit. There was no pride left in me only disgust.

When Rumsfeld returned some propaganda hound showed up and said, "I just saw Rumsfeld in the restroom and wanted to see who the lucky guys were that got to play squash with him."

"Excuse me," I thought, "you have just put a mass murderer on a pedestal and worshipped him. What in the world are you thinking? Don't you pay attention to what is going on around you? What about the Second Commandment, u2018Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image' (Exodus 20:4)?"

I suppose we have all forgotten God's warning to the Israelites when he gave them their king,

"Only fear the LORD, and serve him in truth with all your heart: for consider how great things he hath done for you.  But if ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king.” (1 Samuel 12:24–25)

We know what happened to Israel, we know that history has a tendency to repeat itself and we know that today we have a king (government) other than God, the question is, “Do we continue to ‘fear the LORD, and serve him in truth’?”

17:15

My daughter finally finished her class and ran up to me to change her shoes. As she looked at Rumsfeld playing squash, she asked, "What are they playing?"

"A game called squash."

"Who are those men playing?"

"They are bad men."

"Why?"

"They kill people."

June 4, 2005