How I Spent My Sommerferien

Liebe Mutter und Vater:

This summer vacation has been the best ever! I'm so grateful to the local branch of the Heimatsicherheitsdienst for letting me attend the Junior Police Academy.

Things are looking pretty tough for the economy, and I'm sure that by the time I graduate from High School jobs that pay well will be pretty scarce.

Since I've got no particular interest in dodging IEDs in Iraq, the military doesn't seem to be a good career option. But this police gig seems pretty promising. For one thing, when the police in this country kick in a door at 3:00 a.m., the chances are pretty slim that they'll be targeted for retaliation. And when you work for the police, "officer safety" is the highest priority, even if it means that the police arrive long after the shooting has stopped.

Since a lot of departments are spending money (doesn't some of it come from Washington?) to promote Junior Police Academies and Police Explorer programs, police recruits seem to be in demand, and job security looks pretty good. In fact, one of my instructors pointed out that law enforcement opportunities will probably expand as the economy gets worse!

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet.

They let me wear a really neat uniform, and told me how it would set me apart from everybody else.

Just think: When I'm wearing the State's uniform, I'm essentially untouchable -- literally: Any common citizen who touches me in any way can be charged with "aggravated battery." I can demand to see anybody's ID at any time, and arrest those who refuse to show me their papers; in fact, I can even arrest those who cooperate, if they ask to see my ID. And if someone tape-records me during the performance of my duties, I can arrest him and charge him with a felony! How kewl is that?

Police work is said to be dangerous, but don't worry, Mutter und Vater. There are some really bad criminals out there, and some of the older police officers still have the idea that our main job is to protect the public from people like that. Pffft. Those guys will retire pretty soon. And under the new Schlag und awe approach, the police will use military tactics against anyone who resists their commands -- ordinary citizens in most instances, not hardened street criminals. Once again, "officer safety" is the prime directive.

If I injure or even kill someone who isn't qualified to wear the uniform, I'll get the benefit of every doubt, and a panel of my co-workers will probably determine that I acted according to established policies.

Heck, as a policeman, if I gun down some unarmed guy who was mentally incapable of following my instructions -- or even if he was following my orders, and I was the one who goofed up -- chances are I'll either be completely exonerated, or suffer a wrist-slap faint enough to be all but undetectable.

As a cop, I can put a lethal chokehold on a small adolescent girl, or kill a guy with an 84-second Taser blast, or even be caught on video shooting some guy in the head for no reason -- and not have to worry all that much about the consequences.

After all, I'd be part of the Thin Blue Line, the living barricade protecting civilization from barbarism -- so the rules wouldn't apply. All that matters is "professionalism."

Some of my friends got to practice "dynamic entry" tactics with people from the local SWAT team. Others were given tours of the latest military hardware the department received through the Pentagon's LESO program. I got to take a ride in a Peacekeeper vehicle, which just totally pwns! A group of my friends got to help the regular police conduct checkpoints for seatbelt and DUI enforcement.


From what I've heard, there's a lot of funding available for this kind of thing, and checkpoint duty is choice: You just set it up and watch the money roll in. I'm surprised that this kind of thing is legal -- and that people will put up with it. But it must be all right, or else the government wouldn't do it ... right? I'm sure that my life will never be the same after spending a summer as part of the Heimat Youth.


I heard all kinds of interesting things about how the war on terror will mean some really important changes in how we live, and how the police will play an important role in these changes.


This is not to say that everybody understands what's happening. There is this one kid who seemed to think it was wrong for local police to get money from Washington, as if that were somehow important. And when somebody pointed out that fighting terrorists sometimes means using their methods, this kid said: "Wasn't the credo of the German S.A. `Terror must be broken by terror?'"


"Hey, that sounds about right," our instructor replied.


Whoa -- did he own that kid, or what?


But what does that dweeb know -- he's home-schooled (weird!) and I hear his parents support that Ron Paul guy. I don't know what somebody like that guy was doing in the program to begin with; I think his parents were brought up believing that citizens should "support your local police," which is good, but they apparently don't understand that the police are part of a national homeland security effort now. People like that seem all right at first, but they always end up undermining our efforts in the end.


I'm pretty sure that by the time I'm ready to work in law enforcement full-time, we'll be able to take care of people like them.


All hail the Heimat!

Ihr geliebter Sohn,

Franz


Update


My sincere thanks to all who have offered prayers and concern on behalf of my wife Korrin. Your kindness and generosity have been an immense blessing to our family.

Korrin is in the hospital again. Her condition began to deteriorate severely about two weeks ago, and she reached a point of crisis on Tuesday. She was a little better yesterday, which gave me some transient hope that hospitalization wouldn't be necessary, but now we're looking down the barrel of what may be a long and trying ordeal -- for Korrin most of all, of course, but for our five kids as well.

Thanks again for your love and concern, and your many acts of generosity. Just as I will never be worthy of the wonderful wife God gave me, I'll never accomplish anything to merit the friendship and kindness I've received from you. God bless you all.

Make sure to check out The Right Source, as well

as the Liberty Minute archive.

Patriotism vs. Nationalism

“That's what they, they start when you're young, y'know. When you're little they, at school they, they Baden-Powell all the boys and they Betty Crocker all the girls and they, then they air condition ya' and put ya' in the Heat N' Bake Oven and ya' can't breathe any more.”

Jerry Fletcher, describing collectivist social conditioning, in Conspiracy Theory.

To understand the critical difference between the commendable impulse called patriotism, and the murderous group psychosis called nationalism, it's useful to think of the contrast between the organic reality called family ties and the silly fiction called “school spirit.”

While the terms patriotism and nationalism can refer to the same thing – the love of one's native country – in practice they have acquired very different meanings. Nationalism, in practice, describes not to the love of a country but rather the veneration of its central government.

Patriotism is not built on zero-sum assumptions: It is quite possible to love one's country ardently, while recognizing and respecting the love that patriots of other countries display for their homelands. I am convinced that one result of a global pandemic of genuine patriotism would be a general abatement of warfare, since people who really love their country would spare it the horrors of war in all but the most exigent of circumstances.

Authentic patriots thrust into combat against each other would be likely to seek the earliest possible end to conflict, as well as to pursue a just and sustainable peace. The objective, after all, would be to preserve what's best for one's own country, not to impose the will of one's government on another country.

As historian John J. Dwyer notes, nationalism is a degenerate impostor of patriotism. “The patriot says, `I love my country,' works for its good, and defends it if necessary – against enemies within and without,” writes Dwyer. “He strives and prays not primarily that God will bless his country, but that his country will bless God. The nationalist, meanwhile, says, `My country is better than yours.' `My country is the greatest there has ever been.' `The greatest nation on God’s green earth.' `They hate my country because it is so good.'”

Nationalism focuses on the State, rather than the community. It is unambiguously based on zero-sum assumptions about power, and nationalists define victory in terms of imposing their will on others.

It takes relatively little prompting to teach an individual to love his country. It requires a considerable investment of time and effort to indoctrinate him into the love of the State that rules him. The former can be taught in the home by parents who have a decent grasp of their country's history and culture. The latter, however, requires the efforts of the state's paid clergy..

Typically, an individual doesn't need prompting to love his family, even if there are some within it he doesn't like very much. Familial affection is not the product of ritualized peer pressure, like pep rallies and similar liturgies.

“School spirit,” by way of contrast, is an entirely synthetic pseudo-emotion. Public schools are about as organic as polystyrene, and the “communities” they create are the product of geographic accidents and arbitrary government decisions. They have those traits in common with the “nations” brought into being by the Power Elite after World War I.

Like those artificial “nations,” public schools compensate for their lack of community authenticity through the cynical propagation of convenient myths and the state-managed manufacture of ersatz enthusiasm.

Last fall (for reasons I'll explain below), my wife and I found it necessary to put our three oldest children into the local government school, whose mascot is the Pirate (an appropriate choice for a government-run institution). As a result we became aware of the school district's incessant efforts to instill “school spirit” in them – through competitions involving the sale of Pirate t-shirts, or classroom participation in “Pirate Fridays” by wearing the school colors.

None of this has anything to do with athletic competition; we're discussing an elementary school here. So why is there such an effort underway to confect “school spirit”?

I suspect that teaching students to revere their school is the first stage of indoctrinating them in the state-worship called nationalism. “Be true to your school” is the first line of a catechism that concludes with some variation on the theme of der staat uber alles.

As Gary North observes, this is nothing new: “Throughout the West after the rise of Napoleon, nationalism became the State's substitute for organized religion. The public schools universally inculcated some form of State-deifying nationalism.” What North describes is Rousseau's Civil Religion, in which the State -- as the instrument of collective human power -- is treated as "God."

Since the State is an abstraction, it is the most visible representative of the central government – in our case, the president – who is deified as the State Incarnate. As in the early Roman empire, our presidents are generally deified after death: Witness, for example, the revoltingly blasphemous depiction of Washington' apotheosis (literally, “ascent to godhood”) in the national Capitol, or the routine depiction of Lincoln as “the martyred Christ in democracy's passion play,” as neocon Walter Berns puts it.

In this, as in so much else having to do with executive despotism, the beady-eyed, slack-jawed, bloody-handed, illiterate little troll in the Oval Office has turned over new ground: He claims to commune with the Shekinah, or divine presence.

Recounting a recent White House lunch with Bush, British commentator Irwin Steltzer reports:

“The president divulged with convincing calm that when it comes to pressure, `I just don’t feel any.' Why? His constituency, he feels, is the divine presence, to whom he must answer. Don’t misunderstand: God didn’t tell him to put troops in harm’s way in Iraq; his belief only goes so far as to inform him that there is good and evil. It is the president who must figure out how to promote the former and destroy the latter. And he is confident that his policies are doing just that.”

How much of this is narcissism, and how much is a serious psychological disorder (I do not say that flippantly), it is difficult to say. The truly terrifying thing is that the purpose of government schools is to catechize the young in an official religion that would make them accept such grandiose claims without so much as a tremor of critical thought.

Postscript

So the question must be asked: Given what I describe above, why are my children in government schools?

The answer is this: My wife Korrin is seriously and chronically ill. She has been hospitalized four times since last April, and – my soul is grieved to report – she appears to be headed there again. Her condition makes it necessary for me to work at home, in order to care for both her and our children; this severely limits my career options.

"Fairest of form was this queen, glinting and grey of eye; No man could say he had seen A lovelier, but with a lie": Korrin and I on our wedding day, January 10, 1997.

There are other schooling opportunities available, but they were cost-prohibitive, even before I was fired by the, ahem, heroes currently running the John Birch Society for no defensible reason (thereby losing both a steady income and our family's health insurance coverage).

We don't plan on keeping our boys in school for any longer than necessary. I have no idea how long that will be, but – God willing – it won't be much longer.

Please forgive me for bringing up personal matters of this sort. Out of a desire to avoid being a hypocrite, I'd largely avoided writing about the government school system until now.

Be sure to visit The Right Source for news, commentary, and -- coming soon -- Will Grigg's Liberty Minute.