Libertarians are Dropping the Ball on This MIAC Report

Libertarians don’t need to quote the Constitution, cling to their guns, or use other abstractions when reality and dictionaries are right in our face.

The State of Missouri Information Analysis Center’s (MIAC) report titled “The Modern Militia Movement” to aid authorities in identifying domestic terrorists was leaked. The sentence that popped out to libertarians was the one which identifies those who “display Campaign for Liberty, Constitution Party, or Libertarian material. These members are usually supporters of former Presidential candidate: Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr.”

The reaction (if you can call it that) has been outrageous from libertarians — to the point where libertarians would’ve just been better off ignoring it. The way in which those who’ve chosen to react, are reacting in a way where they should take it a step further than not reacting at all and just go to the beach — quit altogether. Because if these are your comebacks, there isn’t and never will be a relevant libertarian ‘movement’.

Campaign for Liberty, the Libertarian Party and Bob Barr have ignored the MIAC report. I was searching Google News and YouTube for reactions and the only mainstream source of commentary I found was Rush Limbaugh. Rush quotes some head of campus libertarians in Missouri — which I assume is a branch of the Libertarian Party(LP) — saying that to join the LP, one has to sign that they do not support violent means toward ends. OK, that’s a start.

I found out about this MIAC report through David Kramer’s post on The LRC Blog and re-posted Eric Garris’ post from the AntiWar.com Blog here. Kramer had a follow up:

By the way, since the Second Amendment recognizes the right of citizens to bear arms in order to form a militia to defend themselves against a tyrannical Federal Government (and you thought the Second Amendment was about personal defense–shame on you), I actually think it is a good sign that the Feds are starting to fear the sprouting up of their enemies: the Militias.

Yes, the Second Amendment recognizes the right to form militias and this recognition of a threat to the status quo can be seen as ‘progress’ by libertarians. But you dropped the ball, Mr. Kramer.

Chuck Baldwin, 2008 Constitution Party nominee for president, was endorsed by Dr. Paul in that election and released a statement:

I realize that there are people who will dismiss this kind of story as insignificant. They shouldn’t. This is very serious and should be treated as such. Anyone who knows anything at all about history knows that before a state or national government can persecute — and commit acts of violence against — a group of people, they must first marginalize the group from society’s mainstream and categorize it as dangerous.

Rome did exactly that to Christians, as did Mao’s China; Hitler’s Germany did the same thing to Jews; Stalin’s Russia did the same thing to political dissenters, etc. That a State police agency in America would actually infer that people who supported Ron Paul, Bob Barr, or myself in a political campaign are somehow indistinguishable from violence-prone “militias” is beyond insulting: it is a smear campaign, and might should even be regarded as a hate crime!

Mr. Baldwin goes on further to… demand an apology, calling on everyone “who believes in the freedom of speech and who believes that the MIAC report is an egregious miscarriage of justice to contact the appropriate Missouri police officials”. Yes, this is what empires do, Mr. Baldwin. Before persecuting and committing acts of violence against its own people, those people must be marginalized. But you, sir, have dropped the ball as well.

The reaction that seems to have pointed libertarians in the best direction is actually Rush Limbaugh’s (4:36):

Rush’s response wasn’t the liberty meme of ‘speech and guns’. Rush’s response was to display the audacity of Missouri to identify domestic terrorists among the most nonviolent political movement in America shortly after the State of Missouri was threatening the use of force against people toward the political end of electing Barack Obama. Rush doesn’t go far enough — nor would I expect him to — so I’ll just say it:

Part of the US legal definition of ‘international terrorism’ is:

activities that:

• appear to be intended to (i) intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.

The American State is a terrorist organization!

By its own legal definition, the pot is calling the kettle, ‘black’. The definition’s right there. My classification is uncontroversial. MIAC’s defeats all logic and reasonable fact. This is the audacity of the MIAC report.

Jason Ditz reported in his AntiWar News summary today that six years into the Iraq War:

[A] lot has happened: the nation descended into a civil war, 4,259 American soldiers were killed, over 1.3 million Iraqis are estimated to have died, and victory has been declared countless times.

Remember, why? Pres. Bush invaded Iraq to ‘affect the conduct of a government’ using the ‘mass destruction’ of over 1.3 million lives. This is terrorism.

The introduction of Justin Raimondo’s column, yesterday:

As a reward for killing 1,400 Palestinians in the Gaza blitzkrieg, ignoring U.S. demands to stop the building of “settlements” on the West Bank, and vigorous efforts to breach our security and steal highly classified information via its Washington fifth column, Tel Aviv has been reassured by President Barack Obama that $30 billion in aid will not be cut.

960 of the 1,400+ slaughtered in the 22-day Gaza Massacre were civilians. The State of Israel plans to double up on its unlawful occupation of Palestinian property in West Bank, is continuing to block international aid to Gaza while continuing to demolish people’s homes, and protects the Israeli settlers who “terrorize” Palestinians in the West Bank.

The State of Israel does this on America’s dime — first, with Pres. Obama’s overt consent to the Gaza Massacre and now, rewarding Israel with $30 billion and no sign of cutting the US subsidies to American corporations who supply Israel with Apaches and F-16’s and arms in sight. The significance of this evidence is when you ask why this is all happening. Re-read the US legal definition of terrorism, if you have to; terrorism isn’t defined solely by actions, but coupled with motive. Prof. Noam Chomsky puts it best:

The United States regards Israel as virtually a militarized offshoot, and it protects it from criticism or actions and supports passively and, in fact, overtly supports its expansion, its attacks on Palestinians, its progressive takeover of what remains of Palestinian territory, and its acts to, well, actually realize a comment that Moshe Dayan made back in the early ‘70s when he was responsible for the Occupied Territories. He said to his cabinet colleagues that we should tell the Palestinians that we have no solution for you, that you will live like dogs, and whoever will leave will leave, and we’ll see where that leads. That’s basically the policy.

“You will live like dogs, and whoever will leave will leave, and we’ll see where that leads”?!

Are you kidding me? This is terrorism. The American State, by the de facto executive orders of Pres. Obama, is funding it.

The State of Israel and Pres. Obama are using coercive tactics to ‘affect the conduct’ of Iran’s government, rationalized by false accusations. This is terrorism.

Pres. Obama is shipping 17,000 more troops to Afghainstan and will send about that many more later this year, has no intentions of recognizing the natural human rights of those locked up at Bagram Air Base (known as “The Other Guantanamo”), and is expanding the ‘covert war’ he threatened (intimidation/coercion) throughout his presidential campaign in Pakistan that he started almost immediately after his inaugu-coronation. This is terrorism.

The libertarian ‘movement’ is a joke when it’s about the Bill of Rights, guns, gold, and pot as long as we’re not active in defending the #1 natural right that is absolutely uncontroversial — the right from which we discover our rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness through reason and possess the gift to exercise these rights: the right to life. I hate to be trite, but people are dying!

They don’t have Constitutions or scripture to quote anymore. Or the liberty to speak freely. Or a life to defend with a gun, pot to smoke, taxes to be stolen from them, or sex-lives to intimately share with partners behind closed doors. They’re dead! Why? Or to better ask the question: by the hands of whom?

Libertarians are great at quoting the Constitution, Jefferson’s Axiom, Henry David Thoreau’s ‘best government governs least’, and Benjamin Tucker’s ‘government’s best when it doesn’t govern at all’ as proverbs. This isn’t the time for that. When the State wants to call libertarian dissent, ‘potential domestic terrorism’, libertarianism — not the Constitution — supplies our argument so much better.

Lew Rockwell hits the heart of libertarianism in the introduction of his latest work, The Left, The Right, and The State: “The reality of the State is that it is a looting and killing machine.”

This is our response to MIAC.