In Praise of "Rogue" Cops

“His death was gang-involved, the way I see it,” lamented former Orange County Sheriff’s Detective Ron Thomas after viewing the mangled body of his 37-year-old son, Kelly. “A gang of rogue officers … brutally beat my son to death.” 

The description of the crime is appropriate: Kelly Thomas was murdered by a thugscrum of at least six police officers on a sidewalk in Fullerton. Kelly, who had a criminal record, was a homeless adult who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. On the evening of July 5, police were called to a street near the Fullerton bus depot by a report that someone was burglarizing parked cars. 

Kelly was identified as a suspect, and was uncooperative with the police. He was tasered at least five times and beaten until brain-dead while pleading with the officers and crying out for his father. Multiple eyewitness accounts have disclosed that the beating continued – punctuated by the familiar demand that the victim “stop resisting!” -- long after Kelly was on his back, motionless and defenseless.

That this was a gang-involved murder is indisputable. With all proper respect to Ron Thomas, however, the grieving father is desperately wrong about one detail: The murderers were not “rogue officers.” Once the gang assault on Kelly began, practically the only thing that could have saved his life would have been the timely intervention of a rogue officer.

As an institution, the police do not exist to defend life, liberty, and property. That would be the role played by peace officers -- a population that is, for all intents and purposes, extinct. Police are given the task of “enforcement” – the imposition of rules devised by, and on behalf of, the wealth-devouring class. That role includes dispensing summary punishment against people who display anything other than instant, unqualified submission to them and to the political order they embody. Any material good that is done by a police officer is a renegade act, given the nature and purposes of the institution that employs him.

In any situation blighted by the presence of a police officer, that armed functionary’s first priority is not to “serve” or to “protect” anybody. Sociologist James Q. Wilson, whose writings became somethingakin to canonical texts for Rudolph Giuliani and other politicians and policy makers of an authoritarian bent, explains that a police officer’s first priority is to “impose authority on people who are unpredictable, apprehensive, and often hostile.” 

That apprehension is an understandable reaction to the presence of an armed stranger of dubious character who demands unqualified submission. The hostility is predictable, entirely defensible, and generally commendable. Members of the Costumed Enforcer Class refer to it as “Contempt of Cop,” and regard it as an offense subject to summary punishment through the application of state-licensed violence, frequently of a lethal nature. 

Ron Thomas – who, once again, is a retired law enforcement officer himself who teaches “arrest and control” techniques – explains that the officers who murdered his son weren’t attempting to arrest him as a criminal suspect, but rather “bullying” him “under color of authority” as punishment for “contempt of cop.”

Incidents of this kind display a standard morphology:

A cop confronts a citizen and encounters brief, trivial, and often justified resistance. He summons “backup,” and a thugscrum – which is a phenomenon similar to a criminal “flash mob,” but generally more lethal – quickly coalesces and deals out hideous violence while terrified citizens look on in horror and apparent helplessness. 

Any officer who doesn’t play a hands-on role in beating the “suspect” will devote his attention to “crowd control” – that is, preventing intervention on behalf of the victim, and often confiscating any recording devices that might be used to gather incriminating video of the episode. 

Officially sanctioned gang violence depends on a chain reaction of conformity, and often a single rogue element would be sufficient to prevent it from reaching critical mass. A “rogue cop” – that is, a peace officer devoted to protecting life, liberty, and property, rather than a dutiful law enforcer determined to uphold “authority” – would interpose on behalf of the victim.

It’s difficult to know how often this happens, but we could round off that estimate to “never.” This is because “rogue” cops who commit such renegade acts of lawfulness are never treated with the union-organized solicitude displayed toward “good” cops who commit acts of criminal violence against Mundanes. 

Witness the case of former Austin Police Department Officer Ramon Perez, who joined the force as a 41-year-old rookie cop because of a sincere desire to protect people from crime. During a January 2005 domestic violence incident, Perez refused an order by a superior officer, Robert Paranich, to use his Taser on an elderly man who was not a threat to himself or anybody else. 

Owing to the fact that the subject was a frail man of advanced years, Perez was understandably concerned that the portable electro-shock torture device would kill him. Furthermore, using the Taser in that situation would have violated the explicit provisions of the Austin PD’s Taser Policy. Perez was able to resolve the situation through de-escalation, rather than by using potentially lethal force to “impose authority.”

Two days later, Perez was given what could only be considered a punitive transfer to the night shift. Two months later, following a second incident in which Perez chose de-escalation over armed compulsion, he was invited to what he was told would be a “counseling” session with the APD’s staff psychologist, Carol Logan. The purpose of that meeting, Perez was told, was to help him develop better “communication skills” with his fellow officers. In fact, it was a disguised “fit-for-duty review” convened to find a pretext to purge the probationary officer from the force before the “rogue cop” could infect others with his respect for individual rights.

 As the Austin Chronicle reported, Ms. Logan’s four-page report focused “entirely on Perez's moral and religious beliefs, which Logan concludes are so strong they are an `impairment' to his ability to be a police officer.” 

Perez, a self-described non-denominational fundamentalist Christian, an ordained minister, and home-schooling parent, was not as morally ductile as the typical police recruit. He saw protection of civil liberties as the paramount duty of a police officer, an obligation he viewed as a literal religious vocation. For this reason Perez was seen as unsuitable for a ministry in the State’s punitive priesthood. 

Perez was given an ultimatum by his superiors: He could resign and retain his peace officer’s license, or be terminated and lose it. This was done, once again, as punishment for Perez’s “rogue” conduct – which consisted of his refusal to break the law and violate department policy. 

If a “rogue” cop had intervened on behalf of Barron Bowling on July 10, 2003, the one-time cement worker from Kansas City, Kansas wouldn’t be a functional invalid at the age of 37. It was Bowling’s life-changing misfortune that day to be involved in a minor non-injury crash with an automobile carrying three undercover DEA agents.  In a fit of juvenile impatience, the driver, DEA agent Timothy McCue, attempted to pass Bowling’s car illegally on the right side of a single lane.

After the vehicles pulled over, agent McCue came boiling out of his car with a drawn gun. With help from one of his fellow heroes, McCue forced Bowling lie face-down on the pavement, despite the fact that the 98 degree heat had turned it into a frying pan. When Bowling attempted to push himself up, McCue began to punch and pistol-whip him while taunting his victim for supposedly being an “inbred hillbilly” and “system-dodging white trash.” One witness to the crime reported that McCue threatened to murder Bowling. With the help of his comrades, McCue handcuffed the victim and continued to beat and kick him after he was shackled and completely helpless.

In keeping with standard procedure, the assailants accused the victim of assaulting them, which would explain why the unarmed and outnumbered “aggressor” was left with severe brain damage, persistent tinnitus, incapacitating migraines, chronic dizziness, nausea, and lingering emotional trauma that led to at least one suicide attempt. 

While in police custody, Bowling was told by Officer Robert Lane that the facts of the case didn’t matter; he was the one going to prison because federal agents “do pretty much what they want.” Bowling’s only hope to avoid prison was Detective Max Seifert, who was assigned to investigate the case – which, in practice, meant to fill out whatever paperwork was necessary to ratify McCune’s perjury. 

For reasons that mystified his colleagues, Seifert actually conducted an investigation. His first question was: What happened to the witness reports collected at the scene? Officer Lane told him that those documents had been “lost,” because they served only to make the DEA agents “look bad.” 

 Seifert’s persistence led Deputy Chief Steven Culp chief to take him aside and order the detective to drop the matter. At the time, Seifert – who had been respected by both his fellow cops and the public at large – was less than a year from being “fully vested,” meaning that he could retire with his full pension. The leverage provided by that fact provided the tacit but unmistakable “or else” that hovered above the conversation between Seifert and Culp.

To his considerable credit, Seifert continued with his investigation. After Seifert filed his report, the district attorney announced that he was dropping the charges against Bowling. Deputy Chief Culp, however, pressured the prosecutor into reinstating the case. Seifert went on the testify on behalf of the defense in Bowling’s criminal trial – which resulted in an acquittal on the spurious assault-related charges – and on behalf of the victim in his federal civil rights lawsuit. 

For his insistence on telling the truth, Seifert was subjected to a campaign of ridicule and abuse from his colleagues on the police force. As U.S. District Judge Julie A. Robinson pointed out in a ruling that awarded Bowling more than $833,000 in damages, "Seifert was shunned, subjected to gossip and defamation by his police colleagues, and treated as a pariah.” More importantly, he was punished for insubordination by being forced into early retirement, thereby losing his pension. 

None of the law enforcement officers involved in the assault on Bowling and subsequent cover-up was disciplined in any way. The only one who was punished was the “rogue” officer who had acted in defense of the truth, and of the victim's individual rights. Steven Culp, the official who ordered Seifert to participate in the cover-up and then purged him when he refused to do so, is now the Executive Director of the Kansas Commission on Peace Officers’ Standards and Training. Without so much as a faint whisper of irony, Culp claims that his new job is “to provide the citizens with qualified, trained, ethical, and professional peace officers” who act “in a manner consistent with the law while being considerate of the citizens….”

Residents of the Sunflower State can be confident that Steven Culp -- like those in charge of recruiting and indoctrinating police officers elsewhere in the Soyuz -- will do his formidable best to protect them from “rogue cops” like Max Seifert.

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 Dum spiro, pugno!

The Missing Lesson from Norway: Never Trust a Man in Uniform

 Roughly a decade ago, Al Pacino starred in a movie entitled S1m0ne, a cyber-era updating of the Pygmalion myth in which a film director creates an uncannily realistic digital actress. Despite the fact that “Simone” was a computer-rendered composite fantasy, the lustrous blond enchantress becomes a global pop culture sensation – a profitable illusion sustained through increasingly desperate acts of misdirection on the part of the director. 

It’s tempting to think that accused Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik is a S1m0ne-style digital fantasy drawn to specifications provided by Morris Dees’ so-called Southern Poverty Law Center. Breivik used social networking sites to create a cyber-persona seemingly made to order for left-leaning “watchdog” groups. Available photographs depict the blond, stereotypically Nordic Breivik as if he were a dress-up doll, his face oddly unmarked and expressionless as he poses in a variety of guises – including Freemason garb and a scuba outfit. 

In similar fashion, his recorded ideological pronouncements – the quotes attributed to him in the aftermath of the killing spree in Oslo and Utoya, and his bloated “manifesto” – could be the work of someone determined to embody every detail of the familiar caricature of the right-wing “hate criminal.” 

Breivik may be exactly what he appears to be – a murderous nationalist ideologue determined to precipitate a European culture war that would end with the expulsion of Muslims from the continent and the mass liquidation of “cultural Marxists.” Breivik’s uncredited borrowings from the “Unabomber” manifesto underscore the possibility – however distant – that he, like Ted Kaczynski, could be a product of a CIA-style “behavior modification” program, or a pawn in a false-flag operation. 

Whatever we eventually learn about Breivik’s background and motivations, one detail of the killing spree he allegedly perpetrated offers a timely and critical lesson practically everybody has missed: We should never trust an armed man wearing the costume of a police officer. 

According to the narrative provided by Norwegian investigators, Breivik detonated a remote-controlled bomb in downtown Oslo before traveling to Utoya, site of an annual summer retreat for young activists affiliated with the Labour Party, many of whom had parents or relatives who had been employed at the government offices targeted in the bombing. 

When he arrived a few hours after the blast, Breivik was disguised as a policeman. This allowed him to gain access to the facility, and the confidence of his victims: Trained to defer reflexively to someone wearing the insignia of “authority,” the young campers were psychologically disarmed when the assassin told them he had been sent to check on their “security.”

By the time a SWAT team managed to arrive an hour and a half later, Breivik had mowed down at least 86 scores of innocent youngsters. “It was a slaughter of young children,” one witness said following the massacre. They were sheep who had fallen prey to a wolf wearing what the victims had been taught to perceive as the attire of a “sheepdog.”

The uncomfortable but unavoidable fact is that every state-employed “sheepdog” is a potential murderer, and should be treated as such. We have this on the unimpeachable authority of “Jack Dunphy,” an active-duty officer in the employ of the Los Angeles Police Department. 

 In every encounter between a police officer and a “civilian,” Dunphy writes, the officer is “concerned with protecting his mortal hide from having holes placed in it where God did not intend. And you, if in asserting your constitutional right to be free from unlawful search and seizure fail to do as the officer asks, run the risk of having such holes placed in your own.” 

What this means is that a Mundane who displays anything other than abject servility is perceived as a threat to “officer safety” – and, by Dunphy’s calculation, is a suitable subject for immediate termination.

As is demonstrated by the actions of Patrolman Daniel Harless of the Canton, Ohio Police Department, that assessment is not hyperbole.

In a June 8 traffic stop that was captured on video, Harless repeatedly threatened to murder the driver, William E. Bartlett, for carrying a concealed handgun for which he had obtained a the appropriate permit. At the time, Bartlett was attempting to comply with the state ordinance by notifying Harless that he was carrying a weapon, and displaying his concealed carry license. Bartlett was composed and deferential; Harless’s behavior was that of a borderline psychotic eagerly seeking an excuse to kill somebody.

“As soon as I felt your gun I should have took [sic] two steps back, pulled my Glock 40 and just put 10 bullets in your ass and let you drop,” snarled Harless. “And I wouldn’t have lost any sleep.” Thus did Harless slay the diligently propagated fiction that police officers are burdened with a bone-deep dread of pulling their firearms.

After threatening to “put lumps on” a witness to the incident, Harless told Bartlett, “I’m so close to caving in your f*****g head…. You’re just a stupid human being…. F*****g talking to me with a f*****g gun. You want me to pull mine and stick it to your head?” He later threatened to stop Bartlett every time he saw him, towing – that is, stealing – his car and taking him to jail. 

After the video was made public by the civil liberties group Ohioans for Concealed Carry, Harless was put on paid vacation. 

“Obviously, whatever transpired on that video was an isolated incident,” sniffed Bill Adams, commissar of the local police union. The “whatever” Adams blithely dismissed was aggravated assault with a deadly weapon: Rather than continuing to receive a paycheck for sitting at home swilling beer and consuming internet porn, Harless should be in jail awaiting trial. 

Furthermore, this incident was an “isolated” one only as that term applies to those individuals and that particular location; it is anything but atypical of the behavior of the State’s thuggish enforcer caste. 

Harless merely threatened to pull his gun and stick it to William Bartlett’s head. According to the eyewitness testimony of his former partner, Officer Sergio Vergillo, that’s what Phoenix Police Officer Richard Chrisman did to 29-year-old Danny Rodriguez just seconds before he gunned down the family’s dog and murdered the unarmed man.

 Chrisman and Vergillo responded to a call from Rodriguez’s mother, who was upset with her son’s behavior. Rodriguez demanded that Chrisman present a warrant. Drawing on the same lexicon of public service used by Patrolman Harless, Chrisman shoved a gun against Rodriguez’s temple and sneered, “I don’t need no warrant, mother****r.”

Within seconds Chrisman had shot the dog, which – according to his partner – exhibited no threatening behavior. This left Rodriguez understandably upset.

“Hey, why did you shoot my dog?” Rodriguez bellowed at the intruder. Five seconds later, he was dead – thereby validating Officer “Jack Dunphy”’s warning that summary execution is considered condign punishment for any Mundane who annoys a member of the Exalted Brotherhood of Coercion by asserting his rights. 

Chrisman, who had previously been captured on video plantingdrug paraphernalia on a homeless woman, was fired and charged with second-degree murder. Significantly, the local police union, the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association (PLEA), held a barbecue at its headquarters to raise money on behalf of Chrisman. Following Chrisman’s arrest, PLEA commissar Mark Spencer commissioned a fishing expedition into Vergillo’s background in the hope of impeaching his credibility as a witness. Even after the net came up empty, Spencer publicly denigrated the character of Officer Vergillo, who had violated the most important canon of police conduct by telling the truth about a fellow officer’s criminal conduct – in this case, aggravated murder. 

In New Orleans, the trial continues of five police officers accused of murdering two people, and grievously injuring four others at the Danziger Bridge in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The victims were unarmed refugees seeking to flee to higher ground. The police officers responsible for this atrocity concocted a cover story – complete with planted weapons and fabricated “witnesses” – in which the victims supposedly opened fire on the police and were killed in self-defense.  

One of the victims, a 40-year-old disabled man named Ronald Madison, received a shotgun blast to the back of his head, and then was shot at least three more times while he was face-down on the ground. Lance Madison, an eyewitness to the murder of his brother by the police, was arrested and charged with “attempted murder of police officers” – a charge that was eventually dismissed. 

While the murders at Danziger Bridge differed in scale from the bloodletting in Norway, it was also a fatal ambush in which the perpetrators were attired in a costume signifying “authority” -- and they behaved with the same pathological ruthlessness displayed the perpetrator of massacre on Utoya. 

Whenever an innocent person is confronted by an armed stranger in what appears to be a government-issued costume, one danger is that he is an imposter. An even more dangerous possibility is that he isn’t. 

By the way....

...  here's a link to the second hour of last week's Pro Libertate Radio program, which features a discussion of the demented Daniel Harless and other distinguished defenders of public order.

My thanks, once again...

... to everyone who has donated to Pro Libertate, and for the patience many of you have displayed in awaiting your copies of Global Gun Grab, which will be arriving within the week. Thank you once more, and God bless!

 

Dum spiro, pugno!

Imperial Priorities: Obedience First – Character Last

We want to live pure, we want to live clean -- We want to do our best;

Sweetly submitting to authority, leaving to God the rest....

“The Obedience Song,” as sung every week in American Sunday School classes

It is with pride that we see that one man is kept above all criticism -- the Fuhrer. The reason is that everyone feels and knows he was always right and will always be right. The National Socialism of us all is anchored in the uncritical loyalty, in the devotion to the Fuhrer that does not ask for the wherefore in the individual case. We believe that the Fuhrer is fulfilling a divine mission to the German destiny! This belief is beyond all challenge.

Rudolf Hess, June 25, 1934, as cited in an appendix to the official transcripts of the Nuremberg Tribunal

In preparation for the Iraq war, the Pentagon’s war planners devised acomputer modeling program called “Bugsplat” to estimate the percentage of civilian casualties that would result in a given bombing raid. Just before the “Shock and Awe” assault on Baghdad began, Gen. Tommy Franks was informed of twenty-two proposed bombing attacks that would result in what was described as “heavy bugsplat.” He approved all twenty-two raids. 

The term “bugsplat” has become commonplace now that missile-equipped remote-controlled drones have become the Regime’s weapon of choice for prosecuting wars in at least a half-dozen countries. That’s assuming that the term “war” applies to a campaign of state terrorism in which thousands of helpless and entirely innocent people have been slaughtered in unexpected aerial bombardments waged by “warriors” who manipulate drones from the safety of climate-controlled offices in Nevada. The only combat-related risks those valiant cushion-crushers confront is the possibility of chronic diseases attendant to a sedentary lifestyle. 

"Predator Porn": Future "Bugsplat" victims....

 The same lexicon of long-distance mass murder that gave us the term “bugsplat” offers another newly minted term to describe the terrified civilians who can be seen frantically running for cover: “Squirters.” The vaguely pornographic overtones of that expression are appropriate, given the ubiqtuity of what Dr. P.W. Singer of the Brookings Institution calls “predator porn” – footage of drone attacks proudly circulated by the purported heroes responsible for the carnage. 

In a 2009 U.S. Naval Academy lecture, Singer described how “the ability to download a video clip of combat is turning war into a form of entertainment.” This repellent new genre includes a modern variety of snuff film: “A Hellfire missile drops, goes in, and hits the target, followed by an explosion and bodies tossed into the air.” Singer described one clip of that kind, sent to him by a joystick-wielding assassin, that “was set to music, the pop song `I Just Want to Fly’ by the band Sugar Ray.” 

Singer recalls asking a drone pilot “what it was like to fight insurgents in Iraq while based in Nevada. He said, `You are going to war for 12 hours, shooting weapons at targets, directing kills on enemy combatants, and then you get in the car and you drive home. And within 20 minutes, you’re sitting at the dinner table talking to your kids about their homework.” Meanwhile, somewhere in Iraq (or Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, or another country yet to be identified), families are picking through the rubble of their homes in the rapidly evaporating hope that their own children have somehow survived this most recent act of imperial generosity. 

The Money Shot: Note the "squirter" fleeing in terror.

Do such keyboard bombardiers ever experience misgivings about what they do? Perhaps – but the perverse fun is simply irresistible. 

“It’s like a videogame,” one cyber-samurai told Singer. “It can get a little bloodthirsty. But it’s f****g cool.”

Oh. Well, alrighty then. 

But what happens when the novelty wears off, and conscience starts to press its claims? When “coolness” loses its allure, conformity – displayed by obedience to “authority” -- will fill the void. “If his cause be wrong,” insisted one of Henry V’s soldiers in Shakespeare’s rendering, “our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us” – even if this means waging aggressive war, murdering disarmed prisoners, and using the threat of mass rape and the slaughter of children to compel cities to surrender. 

For those on the delivering end, drone-facilitated atrocities seem utterly antiseptic. One scientist employed by the Pentagon to refine and expand the technology of remote-controlled mass murder “said that no ethical or legal issues arise from robots in war,” Singer recalls. “That is, unless the machine kills the wrong people repeatedly,” interjected the Strangelovian bureaucrat. “Then it’s just a product recall issue.”

Of course, the specific tool doesn’t kill anyone; it is an instrument employed by a morally accountable human being to accomplish that end.  We’re not discussing Colossus, or Skynet, the Cylons, or any of the other variations on the Golem legend that are common in science fiction. The Regime’s apparatus of state slaughter is proudly described by retired Lt. Col. John Nagle as “an almost industrial-scale … killing machine.” Its most important components are individual Americans who have been taught that “submitting to authority” validates any action, no matter how abhorrent, and sanctifies the indulgence of any appetite, nor matter how depraved. 

In the imperial hierarchy of values, obedience ranks much higher than moral integrity, particularly for those employed as agents of state-licensed violence. The Regime, both the federal level and through its state and local franchises at the state and municipal levels, has spent a great deal of money on subsidized “character” instruction, paying special attention to the military and law enforcement. The most influential contractor in this field is “Character First,” an Oklahoma City-based “leadership development” company. Predictably, its teachings emphasize obedience and "teamwork" at the expense of individual moral initiative.

Created in 1992, “Character First” is a spin-off from the Institute for Basic Life Principles, a Christian ministry whose founder, Bill Gothard, is regarded by many (including some very conservative,theologically orthodox Christians) as  the leader of something akin to an authoritarian cult.  

Never married himself, Gothard presents himself as something of a Rev. Sun Myung Moon-like "ideal parent," using his Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) to teach a detailed program of marriage, family, and character development based on "Seven Principles" and "49 Traits." Gothard's admirers and political allies include presidential aspirants Rick Perry and Sarah Palin. Texas Congressman Sam Johnson (R-Texas) is chairman of the IBLP's board of directors. More than a few prominent politicians (including Palin, when she was Mayor of Wasilla) have attended Gothard's International Association of Character Cities conferences.

The worldview promoted by Gothard is severely hierarchical, with all human relationships built on a "chain of command.” From his perspective, "rights" are a fiction, that refusal to submit to "authority" is akin to "witchcraft.” And, yes, Gothard  does have a “Little Red Book” outlining his teachings, but it is available only to his committed disciples. During the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of people attended mass seminars organized by Gothard, who positioned himself as a bulwark against a self-centered and subversive counterculture. Thus there's more than a little irony in the fact that the Soviets took a shine to Gothard's approach: In 1991 -- while the Hammer & Sickle were still flying over Moscow, and the CPSU was still in charge -- Gothard was invited to set up a five-acre campus in Moscow for a Russian offshoot of his Advanced Training Institute. 

When one of Gothard’s followers created “Character First” in 1992, he appropriated Gothard’s “49 Character Qualities,” repackaging them in terms that would be acceptable to secular institutions. This produced a platitude-heavy catechism that differs little from what can be found in the texts on management theory and personnel motivation that clutter the business section of any chain bookstore. 

“Character First” propagates its message through the standard array of media products – among them a monthly newsletter, illustrated with cartoons depicting various animals as embodiments of certain desirable traits. The organization also "works with government leaders and community organizations around the world who want to promote character on a local basis," boasting that its initiatives have been embraced by civic officials in six states and scores of cities in the U.S. and in more than a half-dozen countries abroad. 

Significantly, the type of principled individualism necessary to confront and expose institutional corruption isn’t found anywhere on the "Character First" list of traits deemed essential to good character (“the inward values that determine outward actions,” as defined by “Character First”). However, the list prominently mentions “obedience” – “quickly and cheerfully carrying out the direction of those who are responsible for me”; "deference" -- "limiting my freedom so I do not offend the tastes of those around me"; and "discretion" - "recognizing and avoiding words, actions, and attitudes that could bring undesirable consequences" -- among the traits identifying an individual of "character." 

A government employee whose daily routine involves annihilating people on the other side of the globe via remote-controlled drones would have no problem displaying the attitudes and attributes listed in the “Character First” inventory – assuming that he efficiently and conscientiously carried out “the direction of those who are responsible for me.” By way of contrast, “Character First” offers no support or solace for the whistle-blower or conscientious objector. 

Yes, the checklist does mention “Justice” – “Taking personal responsibility to uphold what is pure, right, and true” – but the practical application of that principle assumes that it is the prerogative of those in “authority” to define what is “pure, right, and true.” Thus “accountability,” as defined by the “Character First” program, always operates from the top down – never from the bottom up. 

Under the “Character First” formula, imprisoned whistleblower Bradley Manning – who, as it happens, is also native to Oklahoma – would have been considered an exemplary soldier if he had been content to obey his superiors and abet the cover-up of war crimes in Iraq. 

As an intelligence analyst stationed in Iraq, Manning was immersed in a steady stream of “bugsplat” videos. “At times it felt like watching nonstop snuff films,” observes a recent New York magazine profile of the prisoner of conscience. “An intel analyst sat at his work station and targeted the enemy, reducing a human being to a few salient points. Then he made a quick decision based on imperfect information: kill, capture, exploit, source.”

Overwrought with misgivings about the war before being shipped to Iraq, Manning had consoled himself with the thought that he might actually be able to discriminate between “bad guys” and innocent bystanders, but that illusion perished abruptly in combat. “At one point, he went to a superior with what he believed to be a mistake,” points out New York magazine. “The Iraqi Federal Police had rounded up innocent people, he said. Get back to work, he was told.” 

Manning’s first breach of “confidentiality” came in late 2009,  when he told a psychological counselor “about a targeting mission gone bad in Basra” in which an innocent bystander was killed, leaving Manning crippled with remorse. Shortly thereafter, he allegedly began leaking the Iraq war logs, which some day will be seen as an indispensable chronicle of a world-historic atrocity. 

The first and most potent revelation came in the form of the notorious – “bugsplat” video entitled “Collateral Murder.” That video documented the slaughter – by two U.S. Apache helicopter gunships – of twelve innocent civilians, including two employees of the Reuters news agency. Two children were among the wounded. 

 Former U.S. Army Specialist Ethan McCord, who can be seen in the video attempting to carry the wounded children to safety – has testified that this war crime was the product of a “standard operating procedure” dictating “360 degree rotational fire” in residential neighborhoods in retaliation for IED attacks on occupation troops. 

“If PFC Bradley Manning did what he is accused of, he is a hero of mine,” writes McCord, “not because he’s perfect or because he never struggled with personal or family relationships—most of us do—but because in the midst of it all he had the courage to act on his conscience.” 

But conscience has no place in the Empire’s hierarchy of values. It is sand in the gears of imperial violence, for which conformity is the optimal lubricant. 

I’m tempted to say that if the “Character First” program had been in existence in the 1930s, it could have been translated into German and marketed to the Nazi hierarchy without modification. But this isn’t strictly accurate: Nazi Germany did have its equivalent of “Character First” – a State-centered doctrine called “Positive Christianity,” in which obedience to “authority” was defined as the highest practical good and a categorical imperative.

After the National Socialists came to power, writes Eric Metaxas in his splendid biography Bonhoeffer:Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, “Some church leaders felt the church should make peace with the Nazis, who were strongly opposed to communism and `godlessness.’ They believed the church should conform to the Nazi racial laws and the Fuhrer Principle. They thought that by wedding the church to the state, they would restore the church and Germany to her former glory…. Hadn’t Hitler spoken of restoring moral order to the nation? They didn’t agree with him on everything, but they believed that if the church’s prestige were restored, they might be able to influence him in the right direction.”

The eternal refrain of temporizers, opportunists, and collaborators is that they can “do more good” by “working from within” the system, on the assumption that their sheer decency and inexhaustible virtue will have a purgative effect on even the most degenerate public institutions – and that obedience to authority will cover a multitude of sins. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose heroic resistance to the Nazi regime was a product of his unconditional commitment to God, would almost certainly admire the character and courage displayed by the atheist Bradley Manning in exposing war crimes. He would likewise see something familiar in the effort to cultivate a population of polite, punctual, dutiful, thrift, orderly collaborators in institutionalized evil.

In 1933, many of Bonhoeffer’s pious friends chided him for his insistence on opposing the Nazi regime. The Third Reich was an irresistible tide, Bonhoeffer was told;  it was better to “ride the wave” than to stand against it and be overwhelmed. 

Choosing a different metaphor, one that would acquire grim connotations within a few years, Bonhoeffer gently but firmly dismissed the idea of collaboration: “If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.” 

 

 Dum spiro, pugno!