Tom Tancredo is a five-term former U.S. congressman from Colorado. In some ways, he’s the right wing’s answer to former Democratic governor Dick Lamm, offering swift, unconventional, unexpected, solutions to socio-economic, and political problems. Following 9/11, he proposed threatening the Muslem world — should there ever be another such attack — to reduce Mecca to a sheet of glass.
Like all conservatives, his notions are often what libertarians would consider unethical, but they are often thought-provoking, as well. Tancredo’s latest idea seems reasonable, at first, but it has some serious problems that he either doesn’t foresee or doesn’t care about.
His suggestion, reported in the December 4th edition of Breitbart online, is to organize “citizen militias” across the country, trained and armed against events like those that just happened in Paris and San Bernardino. What could possibly be wrong with that? Isn’t it what the Constitution’s Bill of Rights’ Second Amendment was written to encourage?
Well, yes it is, if the British Army (or any other army) were coming at us over the hill. The fact is, Islamic terrorism (or any other terrorism) is not an army coming at us over the hill kind of problem. On the contrary, it is a W.A.S.P. kind of problem, and you can find out exactly what that means by reading Eric Frank Russell’s prophetic novel about asymmetrical warfare of the same name. If you haven’t read it, until you do, allow me to explain that terrorism is a diffuse threat, a tactical will-o-the-wisp, that flits off when you bat at it with a big, heavy, rolled-up army. The government is unable to deal with it, because it’s like exterminating mosquitos with hand grenades.
The way to counter a diffuse threat is with a diffuse defense. We all know (at least we do if you’re reading this) that central planning is an utter failure in the marketplace; mistakes get magnified, bad guesses punish millions, People end up homeless, naked, and starving. That, despite what Republicans and Democrats claim to the contrary, is why the Soviets collapsed and why Vlad Putin won’t be able to restore them.
And yet, if each of us just pays attention to his own little part of the market, free of any interference from others, especially government, the vast, destructive waves of central planning settle into millions of tiny, survivable ripples. Society becomes peaceful, prosperous, and productive. That’s the great, “mysterious” secret of American wealth and success, of “American exceptionalism”, and to the extent it becomes compromised, people and civilization will suffer accordingly.
L. Neil Smith, “Remember Who Was First”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2015-11-06.
December 17, 2015
QotD: American exceptionalism
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