Review of the News, November 20

Here Come the Draft-Nappers

Chales Rangel is a boon companion to Fidel Castro and a self-described good friend of Sean Hannity. He could thus be considered a living synthesis of modern collectivism, and his proposal to re-instate conscription as part of a comprehensive “national service” program is the distillate of collectivist premises, both “right-wing” and
“left-wing.”

Rangel is a politician, which means that for him, lying is an autonomous reflex. For years he's been saying that his enthusiasm for building a slave army is part of a
cunning plan to deter warfare, a claim he reiterated yesterday.

"There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way," Rangel said in an interview on CBS's Face The Nation.

But – and we're talking a Rusty Humphries-sized one here -- Rangel also said that a draft is necessary in order to “win” the unnecessary war in Iraq, as well as any future unnecessary wars our ruling elites may contrive:

“If we're going to challenge Iran and challenge North Korea and then, as some people have asked, to send more troops to Iraq, we can't do that without a draft.”

Rangel's proposal, which tracks closely with several others in circulation, would be a faithful implementation of the eight plank of the Communist Manifesto, which dictates a “universal liability of all to serve” as directed by the central government.

All 18-year-olds of both sexes would be required to register for service in either the military, the Homeland Security department, or in some other appendage of the Leviathan. As Rangel puts it, "young people [would] commit themselves to a couple of years in service to this great republic, whether it's our seaports, our airports, in schools, in hospitals” as a condition of receiving various “educational” benefits.

What's really going on here, as the incomparable investigative reporter Anne Williamson points out, is the quiet implementation of a deal that would use American youngsters as human collateral for the foreign loans that fuel Washington's demented imperial foreign policy.

“In his misbegotten quest for empire, George W. Bush faces two potentially decisive shortages – money and soldiers,” wrote Williamson in early 2005. “The deficits in boots and dollars are becoming acute. Precipitously falling military enlistments for a US military stretched thin in Iraq, Afghanistan, and 128 other countries around the world, indicate Bush has about 18 months to solve the boots problem. But it is America’s Blanche DuBois economy, whose debt levels – public and private – have gone parabolic, that threatens the entire imperial enterprise. Without the ready funds normally forthcoming from the Treasury bill market ... the president would have to rely upon a highly-indebted population that simultaneously has no savings and yet retains great expectations of the public purse. Clearly such a people can not carry the imperial standard. At least, not alone they can’t.”

With the Empire going bankrupt, the liquidation sale is already quietly underway. Seizing young people to use as human “capital” -- both as imperial coffin-stuffers, and drones of the domestic redistribution machinery – is the logical next step:

“Thanks to the enterprising left, a palatable framework of `universal service' is evolving, in which all of America’s young people will be registered for national service and, drawing on personal information gleaned from the giant government data bases now being built, will be assigned to community service, combat service, or homeland defense. The kicker may be a requirement of completed service before access to higher education and government financing for it will be granted. It is not improbable to see a `deal' over Social Security reform on the horizon, i.e. in exchange for reduced benefits and an increase in the retirement age Boomer seniors will be guaranteed the services of [conscripted] `community brigades' for home care.”

By taking the lead on the issue of re-instating slavery, Rangel has given the GOP's media mouthpieces a ready-made talking point, and the Republican leadership will be happy to let the Democrat majority absorb the political liabilities of the proposal (which has been touted as a core part of the party agenda by Rahm Emmanuel).

But it was the first President Bush who made “national service” a theme of his brief but destructive presidency, and it was the retarded product of Bush the Elder's imperial loins who created the key child-napping infrastructure, the “No Child Left Behind” law.

I've made this point before, but for the sake of clarity I'll restate it as bluntly as possible:




Five children the draft-nappers won't get: (From left) Isaiah, Jefferson, William, Sophia, and Katrina.


Anyone who tries to steal your children is not a non-combatant. On the day the political class re-instates the draft, it will officially be “Claire Wolfe time.”


To Protect and Serve ... or Not

Last month, the town of Troy, Texas (population 1,400) took a huge bite out of crime – or, at least, out of official corruption: Its City Council abolished the entire police department. This remarkable step was prompted by persistent insubordination and financial mismanagement on the part of former police chief David Seward.

Granted, the entire police department consisted of Chief Seward and three officers. But we shouldn't underestimate the amount of mischief that can be wrought by an armed gang that size, particularly when they're clothed in official impunity.

And so, pending the City Council's decision to hire a new Chief and staff a new department, the town is relying on the Bell County Sheriff's Department – which is to say, they've embraced, however inadvertently, the Anglo-Saxon Common Law scheme in which the Sheriff, not a “police” force, enforces the law.

And the funny thing is that, despite the city's decision to erase the “thin blue line,” the community has somehow not come under siege by the forces of crime.

“I'm happy to say I really haven't noticed much of a change," commented Neil Jeter, assistant superintendent of the Troy Independent School District. "So far, knock on wood, it's been pretty much business as usual.”


When Cops become Robbers, Continued

Tracy, California (population 78,000) provides an illustration of the kind of indispensable “service” that is rendered by “local” affiliates of the Homeland Security State:

“Police set up a checkpoint on Holly Drive on Wednesday to check motorists with invalid driver's licenses and to see if they were wearing seat belts, stopping a few hundred vehicles. The sting paid off, as police called in tow trucks to impound 15 cars for 30 days, an expensively painful mistake that could cost the owner of each car nearly $1,500.”

As in most operations of this sort, the police are colluding with local contractors, turning an “enforcement” program into a very lucrative joint venture in racketeering:

“For a 30-day hold, the towing company holds the car for a mandatory 30 days, and companies like Ace charge up to $40 per day. That’s $1,200 in storage fees alone, on top of a $250 towing charge. Factor in the city’s charge of $435, and unlicensed drivers face a hefty penalty to get their cars back. That’s not all. If the owner fails to pick up their car within 30 days, they’re notified by mail that the car will be auctioned or sold for scrap. But auction sales rarely cover the $1,500 cost, said Doug Borges, manager of Borges Auto Service Inc. Liens are often placed on the owner, and the owner of the car then becomes liable for the legal costs.”

A total of 350 drivers were illegally detained (stopped and interrogated without probable cause), and the police netted a haul of $30,000. So it's not surprising to hear from Tracy PD Sgt. Mike Vierira that “we're going to try to do them [roadblock operations] more regularly.”




As abroad, so at home: The Regime's traffic checkpoints in Iraq (left) and the U.S. (right)

Criminalizing Generosity

When Stanley Yaffe saw a “Vehicle Control Agent” -- that is, a meter maid (of whichever sex), or a Parking Nazi – trolling a street in search of expired meters, the Denver resident plugged a few quarters into a meter, seeking to help some random stranger avoid a ticket.

One would assume this gesture would be perceived by the VCA as civic-minded and generous; after all, one would think that compliance with city parking ordinances is the entire point of the exercise.

One would be reasonable to think as much. One would also be wrong.

The VCA accused Mr. Yaffe of “interfering with the collection of city revenue” and threatened to summon the police.

“I could have you arrested,” fulminated the tax-fattened parasite. “You are interfering with the collection of city revenue. I could call the police right now.”

“You're joking,” replied Yaffe, casually promising not to commit that supposed offense again and moving to leave.

“What makes you think I'm letting you go?” sneered the revenue collection drone.
At this point, Yaffe should have said: “What makes you think you could keep me here?”
In any case, the businessman politely reiterated his unnecessary apology and dismissed himself.

It should surprise nobody to learn that the Denver Municipal Code doesn't list “interfering with the collection of city revenue” as a crime.

What it means to be a “Hero”

In January 2005, Baltimore resident Cheryl Lynn Noel, whose son had been assaulted by gang-bangers on the way home from school and whose step-daughter had been murdered several years earlier, was startled awake by an armed assault on her home. Lying in bed with her husband Charles, Cheryl – who ran Bible studies in her home – reached for her legal, registered handgun. When armed intruders violated the sanctity of her bedroom, Cheryl was armed, but according to Charles, she didn't point the gun directly at the intruders.

The marauders were, of course, SWAT operators representing Baltimore's “finest.”
Tactical Officer Carlos Artson – protected with a helmet, mask, ballistic shield, and bullet-resistant body armor – shot Cheryl twice. She was clad in a nightgown.



In memoriam: A cross erected by the family of the late Cheryl Lynn Noel, who was murdered by the Regime in her bed.

Cheryl's grasp on her handgun slackened – not surprisingly, since she was probably dead already. Artson continued his approach, yelling at Cheryl to move further away from the gun; not surprisingly, his victim couldn't comply. So this paladin of the public weal capped her a third time, administering the coup de grace from point-blank range.

The “justification” for this 4:30 a.m. Paramiltary raid was this: Someone found marijuana seeds in the family trash.

Which means that someone was looking for a pretext to conduct a raid of the type that has become alarmingly common in the American Reich.

On October 2, Officer Carlos Artson, who murdered Cheryl Lynn Noel, was awarded the Silver Star, the department's second-highest award for valor. The citation claims that Artson “saved himself and his fellow officers from being shot” after being “confronted by a woman pointing a loaded handgun at him, during the service of a high risk, `no knock' search warrant for an ongoing narcotics investigation.”

Artson was “confronted” by Mrs. Noel in exactly the same sense that any other armed robber could make that claim. Of course, armed robbers don't give each other puerile little baubles to celebrate their “valor.”

When the State's agents can violate our homes at will, gun down women without consequence, and -- pay attention, please! -- give each other combat citations after such engagements, only one rational interpretation is possible: The Regime is literally at war with the American people.


Video Pick of the Week: Busted – The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters

It shouldn't be necessary to stipulate that I have little use for the ACLU, and no use at all for narcotics of any kind. None of the youngsters depicted in the dramatizations contained in this documentary represent the kind of people with whom I would spend my leisure time.

That being said, this must be said as well: Irrespective of its view of drug use, or the affiliations of its narrator, “Busted” is timely and indispensable. Watch it and take notes.

Opening the Gates of the Gulag (Pt. III): One Little Victory

"I am a man": Chief Standing Bear of the Poncas seeks vindication of his rights in an Omaha courtroom; behind and to his right is his niece and translator, Susette "Bright Eyes" LaFlesche.


Among those who served in the U.S. Army during the decades-long war to subdue the Indians, few comported themselves more honorably than George S. Crook.

Granted, he didn't face much competition for that distinction, since there was nothing honorable in the dispossession, often through wanton slaughter, of entire communities in the service of simple greed. Crook, like Kit Carson, was a decent man caught up in a monumental indecency. (Also like Carson, his preferred mount was a mule, rather than a horse.) Having bled and bloodied others on the battlefield, both in the War Between the States and in the campaign against the Sioux, Crook was adamant that – to the extent he had anything to say about it – the Government honor its promises to the Indians.

“He never lied to us,” said Chief Red Cloud of Crook. “His words gave us hope.”

As a government employee who kept his word, Crook was an anomaly, even in his era.



A man of honor: General George S. Crook


Most of those who managed the Federal Government's Indian policies had no scruples about lying. Among the lies they told were those written in an 1825 treaty with the Ponca Indians, whose Nebraska homeland was a fertile delta between the Niobrara and Missouri rivers.

In exchange for acknowledging the “supremacy” of the Government in Washington, and its territorial jurisdiction over their homeland, the Poncas were promised that Washington would “receive [them]... into their friendship and under their protection, and ... extend to them from time to time such benefits and acts of kindness as may be convenient and seem just and proper to the President of the United States.”

Anyone who reads that provision as all such promises issued by the Government should be read – namely, in terms of what it permits the Government to do to you, rather than for you – will understand that it was designed to nullify the rights of the Poncas: It referred to “benefits” and “acts of kindness” to be extended as deemed “convenient” by the Chief Executive, rather than “rights” the Government would be required to recognize and protect.

The lives, liberty, and property of all Poncas, therefore, were contingent on the gracious indulgence of the president. He had complete discretion over how the Poncas were to be treated, and could dispose of them in any way he deemed convenient.

Accordingly, when Anglo-American settlers, drawn westward by the irresistible tug of gold, began to plant homesteads on the Poncas' homeland in the late 1850s, nothing was done to enforce the Indians' rights, as they had none – and President James Buchanan, as historian John Upton Terrell puts it, “apparently found it inconvenient to extend any benefits or perform any acts of kindness” on behalf of the Poncas.

In 1858, another treaty was signed between the Poncas and Washington. This was done, in the words of an Indian Bureau report, “for the purpose of extinguishing their title to all the lands occupied and claimed by them, except small portions on which to colonize and domesticate them. This proceeding was deemed necessary in order to obtain such control over the Indians as to prevent their interference with out settlements, which are rapidly extending in that direction.”

The Senate didn't bother to ratify that treaty for a year. Ingenuously believing that they were dealing with honorable men – neither term applied, of course – the Poncas resettled in their tiny new “homeland,” where they were left without crops or game. By the time the Senate ratified the treaty, hunger and sickness had already taken a terrible toll. Ratification did little to mitigate the Poncas' plight, since Washington – now in possession of nearly everything it had coveted – had no reason to provide the promised monetary and material support, at least in a timely fashion.

For more than a decade, the Poncas eked out a marginal living. Many of them learned English; more than a few – including Chief Standing Bear, the most respected of the several Ponca Chiefs – became earnest Christians. They were making decent progress when, once again, the political class decided to alter the bargain that had been struck with the Poncas.

In 1876 a despicable little “man” named James Lawrence materialized on the Ponca Reservation. Describing himself as an emissary from the President, Lawrence informed the Poncas that they were to sell their land and relocate to “Indian Territory” -- a blighted stretch of Oklahoma that was a 19th-century Siberia for many Indian tribes.

The Poncas quite sensibly withheld their consent until they had seen the land, and spoken with the President. Lawrence was willing to promise the ten Ponca chiefs anything – promises, to creatures of his sort, are just verbal flatulence – in order to get them away from the land and down to Oklahoma.

Once the chiefs were in Oklahoma, Lawrence told them that there would be no payment for the Poncas' land in Nebraska, and that they had no choice but to re-settle in Indian Country on three infertile plots of land.

“If you do not accept these [plots of land], I will leave you here alone,” Lawrence told the chiefs. “You are one thousand miles from home. You have no money. You have no interpreter, and you cannot speak the language.”

Lawrence left the chiefs without so much as a safe-conduct pass.

The following morning, after Lawrence had left for Washington, the Ponca chiefs set out, on foot, in the dead of winter, for home. Fifty days later they arrived at the Reservation of the friendly Otoe Indians. On their arrival, the Indian Agent told them he had received an official telegram alerting him that the Ponca chiefs were to be considered renegades, and that they should receive no food, shelter, or assistance of any kind.

This particular Agent was several cuts above the degenerates who generally filled such posts. He asked the Ponca chiefs to tell their side of the story, which they did. He permitted them to stay for ten days, allowing them to rest and eat and otherwise recruit the necessary strength to finish their trek. He later recalled that when Standing Bear and the other nine chiefs fist entered his office, they left bloody footprints on his floor.

A week after they left, the Poncas arrived at the Omaha Reservation. They dispatched a telegram to Washington, seeking to inform the President of what had happened to them. Receiving no reply, they headed home. Four days later they arrived, to find Lawrence there waiting with a detachment of troops.

“Tomorrow, you must be ready to move,” the hell-bound (and now hell-dwelling) Lawrence told the Poncas. “If you are not ready you will be shot.”

Even in their emaciated and weary condition, the Ten Ponca Chiefs were willing to resist Lawrence.

“This land is ours,” Standing Bear and his associates informed him. “It belongs to us. You have no right to take it from us. The land is crowded with people, and only this is left to us. Let us alone. Go away from us.”

Lawrence sent for reinforcements, and a few days later the Poncas were evicted from what remained of their homeland at bayonet point. Their homes, barns, school and church were destroyed. The entire community -- several hundred people -- was driven like cattle down to Oklahoma.


(Thanks to Scott Horton)

“Many died on the road,” Standing Bear later recalled. “Two of my children died. The winter was very bad. All our cattle died; not one was left.” The three-month forced migration became a death march, claiming 158 Poncas, most of them elderly and children.

At every stop along the trail, settlers – most of them organized by local churches – went out to minister to the Poncas, offering what they had by way of food, blankets, and other necessities. Similar acts of charity had been offered to the “renegade” Ponca chiefs during their trip from Oklahoma.

These defiant acts of Christian decency rank very high on the list of reasons why I'm proud to be an American.

Shortly after the Poncas arrived at their new “home,” Chief Standing Bear's only son took seriously ill. The youngster – whose most precious possession was a Bible – knew he was going to die. Shortly before he expired, he asked his father to take his body back to the Ponca homeland on the Niobrara, where it could await the resurrection near the mortal remains of his family. Standing Bear made that promise – and kept it.

In the company of thirty others, Standing Bear began the long walk back to the Niobrara. Once again he was designated a “renegade,” and orders were cut in Washington to arrest him and his party. On arriving in Omaha, Standing Bear was given a small plot of land to grow wheat, which his tiny band desperately needed. He was working in the fields when soldiers arrived to arrest him for deportation back to Indian Country.

Fortunately, in 1878, there was something akin to a free – which is necessarily to say anti-government – press in this country. The editor of the Omaha World-Herald, a one-time circuit-riding preacher named Thomas Tibbles,* wrote a detailed and passionate story describing the manifold injustices suffered by Standing Bear and his people. Conveyed by the telegraph wire (the 19th century equivalent of the Internet), Tibbles' account was widely republished, and a healthy outrage seized the public.

To the immense good fortune of Standing Bear, General George S. Crook was dispatched to Omaha to take the Poncas into custody and take them back to Oklahoma.

Crook had no appetite for the assignment, and wasn't in a hurry to carry it out. So Crook permitted the Poncas a decent interval to rest. In the meantime, the General put his time to good use, first by indulging in his favorite hobby, weightlifting, and secondly by getting a detailed briefing on the case from Thomas Tibbles.

At some point, according to Stephen Dano-Collins' wonderful book Standing Bear is a Person, Crook agreed to be party to a lawsuit involving Standing Bear. Crook, it should be noted, agreed to be the defendant in the suit, which was filed under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Standing Bear's attorneys, John Webster and A.J. Poppleton, also filed a habeas corpus motion in order to bring the chief, who was in military custody, before a judge.

Here's where things take a familiar turn.

The attorney representing the criminal syndicate called the federal government, G.M. Lambertson, insisted to Judge Elmer Dundy that neither the Fourteenth Amendment, nor the habeas corpus guarantee, applied to Standing Bear, or to any other Indian, because they were not “persons” for the purposes of the law.

Judge Dundy, like several other individuals involved in this affair, was an exceptional man. He granted the habeas corpus motion filed on behalf of this “non-person” -- a renegade Indian, which is to say an “unlawful enemy combatant” -- and permitted the trial to proceed. Standing Bear followed the courtroom proceedings with the translation help of his niece Bright Eyes, also named Susette LaFlesche, a schoolteacher who would go on to marry Thomas Tibbles.

At the end of the trial, Judge Dundy permitted Standing Bear to address the court.

Clad in the quiet dignity that had never deserted him, Standing Bear arose and, for nearly an entire minute, held out his hand for the judge and gallery to see.

“That hand is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it, I shall feel pain,” the chief told his audience, who sat in chastened silence. “If you pierce your hand, you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be the same color as yours. I am a man. The same God made us both.”

Nothing was said by anyone for several long, airless moments after Standing Bear resumed his seat. Tears were cascading from the eyes of many witnesses, male and female alike. General Crook's eyes, which had seen spectacles of blood and horror most people couldn't imagine, were shielded by one of his large, callused hands as he averted his face from the crowd.

Judge Dundy ruled in favor of Standing Bear. Which is to say that the judge ratified the obvious facts of nature: As a human being made in God's image, Standing Bear was a person, even though the positivist “law” insisted that he was not. As a person, he was entitled to the protection of the law, including the habeas corpus guarantee and the immunities recognized by the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Yes, that Amendment was never properly ratified, and yes, it has been the instrument of incalculable mayhem. Its application in the case of Standing Bear is the only instance of which I'm aware in which it was used correctly – to beat back the tyrannical impulses of the central government.

Of course, Leviathan – even in the relatively immature stage of growth it had reached by April 1879, when Judge Dundy issued his ruling – wasn't about to concede. An appeal was immediately filed; bills to circumvent the decision were drafted in Congress; the government-aligned press blackened editorial pages with dire warnings about the tumult and terror that would ensue if every Indian consigned to a reservation suddenly discovered he had standing in civilian courts, and the legal means to challenge his detention.

The contemporary parallels are so patent and plentiful I feel embarrassed even to draw specific attention to the fact.

Knowing that money would have to be raised to continue the legal struggle, and that Chief Standing Bear was the best advocate for the cause, Tibbles went on a fund-raising and speaking trip along the eastern seaboard with the Chief and Bright Eyes. They were in Boston on October 31 of 1879 when they were informed that Chief Big Snake, Standing Bear's brother, had been murdered by federal thugs in Oklahoma.

Eventually, with the help of General Crook (who – in addition to arranging Geronimo's March 1886 surrender in Sonora, Mexico's Canon de los Embudos – became a passionate advocate for Indian rights), the Poncas were permitted to resettle in their Nebraska homeland. But this outcome was very much the exception.

The rule was better defined by the December 29, 1890 U.S. Army massacre of up to 300 Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee, which was the last and defining atrocity of the federal Indian War. Between 20 and 30 soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor for their involvement in America's Babi Yar, which – as Major S. Leon Felkins, U.S. Army (ret.) points out, followed the familiar morphology of genocide. The Sioux were disarmed, deprived of legal status as individual persons, physically concentrated under military rule, and then demonized in the public mind as a deranged, terroristic menace to the public.





One of these images depicts Wounded Knee, South Dakota, December 1890; the other, Babi Yar, Ukraine, September 1941. Can you tell which one is which?


Again, it would seem gratuitous to elaborate on the relevant parallels and continuities between that episode of our national history and the one we see unspooling before our eyes.

Suffice it to say, once again, that when the Government that rules us asserts that individuals or groups living under its jurisdiction can be designated non-persons for the purposes of law by the president, and detained for such time, and in such way, as meets with presidential approval, it is laying the foundation for a gulag. We've been there; we've done that. We must not let it happen again.

*Tibbles, candor compels me to acknowledge, was not altogether commendable. As a young man with a taste for violent idealism, he rode briefly with the Ayatollah John Brown, but apparently wasn't involved in any of Brown's most repellent acts. Every man is entitled to a Persian flaw, I suppose, and this youthful indiscretion could be considered the Trouble with Tibbles, as it were.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of self-indulgent allusions, the subtitle of today's installment does indeed refer to this. (Sorry the sound is so poor.)

It's a Droog's World, After All

(Note: This essay represents a brief detour from the ongoing series "Opening the Gates of the Gulag," which I intend to conclude tomorrow.)




I was sure I had met these millicents some mesto before. The one who had hold of me, going: “There, there, there,” just by the front door of the Public Biblio, him I did not know at all.... But the other two had backs that I was sure I had viddied before. They were lashing into these starry old vecks with great bolshy glee and joy, swishing away with malenky whips, creeching: “There, you naughty boys. That should teach you to stop rioting and breaking the State's Peace, you wicked villains, you.” So they drove these panting and wheezing and near dying starry avengers back into the reading-room, then they turned round, smecking with the fun they'd had, to viddy me. The older one of the two said: “Well well well well well well well. If it isn't little Alex. Very long time no viddy, droog. How goes?”

F. Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

After spending much of their shared adolescence indulging in “a little of the old ultra-violence,” Alex and his erstwhile “droog” comrades took very different paths.

Imprisoned after a bungled attempt to rob an old woman who proves to be more than he can handle, Alex is eventually chosen for an experiment in Pavlovian conditioning that deprives him of any capacity for violence, even in self-defense or suicide.

Despairing of life and eager to end it, Alex repairs to a local library in search of a suitably non-violent method of self-slaughter. The librarian, as it happens, is one of his former victims, and – learning that his one-time tormentor is helpless - the elderly man falls on Alex with a fury, aided by several other bystanders.

When the police arrive to break up the melee, Alex is astonished to see that the two who take visible and obvious pleasure in beating the rioters in the name of restoring “the State's Peace” were two former gang-bangers – his erstwhile droog companion Dim, and Billyboy, former leader of a rival gang. As a gang member, Dim had long resented Alex's leadership role, and it was his betrayal during the robbery – he blind-sided Alex with a length of chain, then left him behind for the police – that led to Alex's incarceration and reprogramming.

Not surprisingly, after being “rescued” from the mob in the library, Alex is taken to the outskirts of town and beaten into a lumpy mess by the police. He eventually wanders into the home of a novelist who had been another of his victims: Alex and his droogs, years earlier, had invaded the home, assaulted the writer, then raped and beaten his wife in front of him. In due course the woman died.

Burgess was inspired to write A Clockwork Orange, in part, by a similarly senseless attack on his own wife, Lynne: While pregnant with the couple's child, Mrs. Burgess was beaten by a gang of four deserting U.S. GIs on a London street in 1943. The mother survived; the child did not. Had the child been born, he would have been the same age at the time the novel was published that its central figure was when the story ends – nineteen years old.

In addition to depriving the couple of their child, the attack on Lynne left her with permanent gynecological damage. Incredible as it seems, Burgess used his novel as a way of empathizing with the young, morally uprooted criminals who committed that atrocity. In what has to be considered an exercise in meta-narrative, the novelist in A Clockwork Orange, F. Alexander, is writing a novel entitled A Clockwork Orange, which the author intends to be a broadside against the rise of the totalitarian state.

“The Government's big boast, you see, is the way it has dealt with crime these last months,” Alexander tells Alex, whom the writer recognizes as a victim of the State's “Ludovico Technique.” “Recruiting brutal young roughs for the police,” continues Alexander. “Proposing debilitating and will-sapping techniques of conditioning.... We've seen it all before in other countries. The thin end of the wedge. Before we know where we are we shall have the full apparatus of totalitarianism.”




“You ... are a living witness to these diabolical proposals,” the writer tells Alex. “The people, the common people, must know, must see.... Would they like their sons to become what you, poor victim, have become? Will not the Government itself now decide what is and what is not crime and pump out the life and guts and will of whoever sees fit to displease the Government?”

In his foreword to the 1986 edition of his novel (containing the final chapter, which had been deleted from previous editions published in the U.S.), Burgess reiterates, and explicitly identifies with, that sentiment.

“[B]y definition, a human being is endowed with free will,” Burgess contends. “He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange – meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with color and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State.”

Even those not in accord with what appears to be Burgess's theology should find his critique of the Almighty State to be unassailable.

Under our present system, which has been defined as “soft totalitarianism,” nothing is either good or bad, save as the State defines. This is made very obvious from the morally contradictory conditioning to which youngsters are subjected.

Is drug use (the practice that gave the droogs their name) evil? That depends. Public school children are run through DARE indoctrination one week, and then forced to take Ritalin the next.

Should parents and school officials take alarm when a youngster displays an interest in firearms, edged weapons, and military gear? Certainly they should, insist enforcers of “Zero Tolerance” policies that punish students for bringing such items as pocketknives to school. But the same officials (with a few exceptions) see nothing amiss in permitting the military to canvass for recruits, often with appeals to droog-like appetites for unrestricted lethal violence.

Here's a case in point: Several children in our neighborhood have had items like pocketknives confiscated for violating Elementary School "Zero Tolerance" guidelines. One such instance occurred during "Red Ribbon Week," which was sponsored by the local affiliate of the Homeland Security Directorate as a way of glorifying the "war on drugs," an exercise that has done nothing to abate narcotics use, but a great deal to liberate and magnify the State's capacity for murderous violence.

The theme of the local "Red Ribbon Week" was to say "no" to both drugs and violence. Yet the activities at the local Elementary School included a tribute to local soldiers stationed in Iraq as part of the gang-rape (no other description is adequate) of that country.

All of this follows the dynamics described in Burgess's novel: Suppression of all violent impulses except those channeled into the service of the "State's Peace."

With that backstory in mind, scenes like this make perfect, albeit chilling, sense.

The same is true of this, and this, and this, and -- especially -- this....

A brief but important postscript:


"Be careful about letting your blood boil with that [first] video," advises a good friend, an aspiring constitutional lawyer who was briefly a law enforcement officer (and whose libertarian instincts are well-honed). "First off, that kid isn't supposed to be there. It's a relatively private library where only ID carrying patrons are allowed in. Secondly, he was told to leave repeatedly, and he did not. The only option left here is use of force - dragging the kid out, which is violent and dangerous to everyone involved, or using coercive tactics to make him get out. The tazer is a useful tool that usually leaves no permanent damage (unlike being tackled and dragged out). From all evidence shown, the tazering seems justified. However, much evidence is not shown. You don't see how much of an ass the kid is being before he's kicked out. You don't see how hard he's resisting leaving a place that he has no right to be in. You don't see how many times he's told to leave. So on and so forth. I was pissed when I first saw it too, but the circumstances of the situation don't place fault, in my opinion, and in this single instance, on the thugs in blue."

These caveats are appropriate and well-presented. From what I understand, the eyewitness testimony confirms that the student was uncooperative, in large measure because he considered himself the target of ethnic profiling. But according to eyewitness accounts, the taser attack occurred while the student was leaving -- after he had demanded that the cops remove their hands from him. And when cops are dealing with a passively non-compliant individual, as this guy appears to be, "tackling" and "dragging" aren't necessary; picking him up and carrying him bodily from a restricted area need not involve any risk either to the officers, the subject, or to spectators.

The most ominous element of this video, however, is not the arguably gratuitous taser attack, but the threat to taser student witnesses who were pressing their demands for information about the police. The student in question may have behaved like an "ass," but most of those who witnessed this incident seemed to have little difficulty recognizing who the real offenders were.