Be Optimistic, Libertarians!
It is clear to many that the Will to Power is ever-present in the mainstream media, who go to great ends to protect the Master Class from any serious criticism being voiced without the addition of confounding misinformation or distraction. The word puppet doesn’t accurately describe the MSM, because the individuals do often think for themselves, forming arguments and believing opinion to be formed independently. The problem is political thought has been poisoned by status quo bias, tv is not a medium given to serious reflection or discussion, and the intelligence of reporters and talking heads seems to be found in ever-diminishing quantities. The truth of the matter is that watching, reading or listening to the popular media is dangerous to one’s intellectual soundness – if you tune in, you will believe things that are simply not true.
The below discussion spoke volumes to me of how the media is desperately seeking compliance – “Yes Senator Grayson, but what can I do to get you to kiss the Ring of Power? What must I tell you to make you want to launch missiles into areas populated by civilians?”
The second group of servants to worldly power are neo-conservatives, who want this war merely to display the power of the president. Neo-conservatism relies heavily on the Will to Power and legal positivism, seeking a return of executive power to that of a king. As the Bush era showed, this force is perhaps much more dangerous to the average American than the slow perversion of law into a leftist utopia. In many respects, it is leftist, but in a manner that jerks the country into large government while using the rhetoric of small government. Generally, the power sought cannot be weilded. But they still seek it:
Republicans should support some version of the authorization of force resolution. They should do so even if they think that the President’s policy will prove ineffective, do no good, waste money, or entail unforeseen risks; they should do so even if they think he has gotten the nation into this situation by blunders, fecklessness, arrogance, or naiveté; and they should so even if, and especially, if they have no confidence in his judgment. The simple fact is that the nation and our allies will be at further risk if the world sees a presidency that is weakened and that has no credibility to act. Partisans may be tempted to see such a result as condign punishment for the President’s misjudgments; they may feel that he deserves to pay the price for his hypocrisy and cheap and demagogic attacks on his predecessor. But at the end of the day, Republicans need to rise above such temptations; the stakes are too high. The weaker the president’s credibility on the world scene, the more the need to swallow and do what will not weaken it further. President Obama is the only president we have. That remains the overriding fact.
Why bomb Syria? To show power, and preserve power for the president for the time when we have a guy in the office.
The longer I live, the more I am convinced: power in itself must be tied to evil in some way. I cannot unequivocally say that it is in itself evil, but it borders this definition…
It goes without saying that the will to destroy a small country is hypocritical. A recent Casey Report does a good job of showing why:
Dear Reader,
As I write, the Mexican president and his senior military staff are finalizing plans to respond with force to the Syrian government’s purported use of chemical weapons on the United States’ Islamist allies.
“Eeets an outrage!” said President Enrique Peña Nieto in his best English.
He then went on to detail how his secretary of defense, working with allies in Bangladesh and Mozambique as a “Coalition of the Absurd,” was moving troops into place to “respond decisively” to the Syrian government’s decision to commit collective suicide by engaging in the one act sure to bring international forces into the conflict on the side of the revolutionaries determined to overthrow it.
When asked if it wouldn’t be more prudent to wait until the UN inspectors in Syria issued their findings—you know, to avoid a repeat of the mistake the US made when it ignored the UN inspectors’ report that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—Maria Harfarta, Secretario adjunto del Departamento de Estado, snapped, “We are making our own decisions on our own timeline, and we believe that the UN inspection has passed the point where it can be credible.”
At which point El Presidente Nieto raised a carbine over his head and, in a particularly deep and masculine tone, yelled, “¡A las armas! Vamos a ir a la GUERRA!!!!”
Of course, dear reader, I have purposely misled you—all in the hopes of making a point.
Namely that it makes no more sense for the United States, the United Kingdom, and France (among others) to attack Syria than it does for Mexico, Bangladesh, and Mozambique . . . .
Nonetheless, a war approaches, and the servants of power will likely have their way…