The Monstrous Hypocrisy of Nancy Pelosi
Posted by Alex R. Knight III on Sep 21, 2009 in Commentary • 2 commentsOn September 17th, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave an astonishingly hypocritical speech at a press conference. What’s sad, if predictable, is that not one among those reporters saw it for what it was – or if they did – actually brought it forward in the media. In essence, what Pelosi said was that she feared much of the heated opposition to Obamacare health policy reform had the potential to become violent. In her own words, here’s what was reportedly said, according to the Huffington Post:
“I think we all have to take responsibility for our actions and our words. We are a free country and this balance between freedom and safety is one that we have to carefully balance,” she said. “I saw,” she added, choking up, “I saw this myself in the late seventies in San Francisco. This kind of rhetoric was very frightening and it gave–it created a climate in which violence took place.”
This statement, so blind and arrogant as to defy the very essence of reason, can be pulled apart at numerous points: Since when do politicians and the bureaucrats who do their dirty work ever take responsibility for anything? “We” are not a country (such a thing is a fictitious construct at best), much less is anyone in it free, as evidenced by the very fact that a government dominates it. Safety can only be a matter of personal choice based on logic and experience – not a one-size-fits-all-for-your-own-good government mandate. The real flaw here, however – the big kahuna that stands out like King Kong atop the Empire State Building – is Pelosi’s last sentence. Here it is again:
“This kind of rhetoric was very frightening and it gave – it created a climate in which violence took place.”
Whereas the existence of government creates the opposite? On what basis does Nancy Pelosi think that government functions to begin with? You’re actually going to stand there and try telling me that every last agency, department, and wing of government is not fundamentally predicated on force and violence? About the only thing I can think of, in fact, that American government leaves as a pure matter of choice to the public is registering to vote, and voting itself. Everything else is imposed on the basis of lethal violence. And Pelosi is concerned about a few people blowing off some verbal steam over Obamacare?
It clearly demonstrates the numbness of the bureaucratic mindset. No longer able to see the woods for the trees – if they ever could – politicos and their gun-toting minions mindlessly carry out directives in pursuit of even more senseless objectives…where and when clear objectives can even be said to exist anymore. Government is a massive grist mill of violent force, designed only to exploit, enslave, imprison, and entirely control populations. It has as its objective not safety, or justice, or peace, or prosperity, or even happiness. Its deliberate design since it reared its ugly head millenia ago has never changed: To take from the productive by force so that a non-productive elite may enjoy the spoils. Any who would seek to end this are thus, by the political elite, considered “frightening” and dangerous. This is why, for Nancy Pelosi and those like her, dissenters must be demonized. They can never acknowledge that they themselves, and the institution they so ardently support, are the real monsters.
C4SS News Analyst Alex R. Knight III is an author of horror, science fiction, and fantasy tales, living and writing in rural southern Vermont. He is the author of Victoria's Place and Other Tales of Terror (BareBones Publishing, 2008), and numerous other works, including non-fiction and poetry. He is also a regular contributor to the libertarian journal Strike The Root.
Some years ago, former vice president Dan Quayle was asked about talk radio hosts and the Oklahoma bombing. He was asked who was responsible. Quayle said, “The murderers are responsible for the murders.” Or words to that effect. And he was roundly castigated for sounding like an idiot.
But the truth is, he was correct. At least insofar as blaming the deaths in OKC on those who set the bombs off. The talk radio hosts were not to blame. Violence is violent, and talk is talk.
We used to say that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” But that was in a more sensible era when people were expected to dust themselves off, pick themselves up, and go on with life after being “psychologically battered” by “bullying talk.” These days, one can be accused of standing up for oneself too vociferously, and cast out of statist groups like Free State Wyoming, I’ve discovered. lol
Another aspect of this Pelosi nonsense is that violence did important work in the 1960s and 1970s. People of my generation burned the ROTC barracks on several campuses. We rioted. They sent the national guard, with orders to shoot to kill, and kill they did, at Kent State, and elsewhere. We demonstrated and rioted some more.
These violent demonstrations ended the Vietnam war, LBJ’s chances at re-election in ’68, ended the Nixon administration, ended CIA and military recruiting on many campuses and stopped them for some years on others, and ended the military draft. Now you might suppose that violent demonstrations stiffened the resolve of the pigs, the pig-lovers, the statists. And maybe violence was not the only way forward.
But it worked. And by God if burning a few buildings and throwing bags of feces at pigs and running riotously around campuses would bring an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bring American troops home from hundreds of military bases in scores of countries, end the police state and surveillance state, if burning our identity papers would end the identity state, who wouldn’t think seriously on it? What would it take to bring about a more stateless society?
Government does monopolize violence, which is better than allowing it to run amok (which is what happens when law and order breaks down in places like Simple City in DC).
What Nancy was referring to was the killing of Harvey Milk and Frank Mosconi by fellow council member White, largely because Milk’s advocacy for his own and his constituents right to be left alone by fundamentalist fools who believe homosexuality is a sin and should be illegal.
In other words, Milk and Mosconi were standing up for liberty and were killed for it. That is what brought a tear to Pelosi’s eye.
As to the war, that was ended by Nixon and Kissinger, with Nixon ordering the bombing and Kissinger bluffing the Vietnamese into believing that there was a nuclear option. If Nixon had seen any chance of victory in that quagmire, the war would have continued regardless of what happenned in the streets. By the way, I would not say that liberty triumphed in the end, as the Vietnamese government is not exactly a shining example of libertarianism.
The way out of state violence is not to shoot or provoke elected officials, soliders or bureaucrats but to create a bigger middle class throughout the world. While industrialization has started that, the task won’t be finished until the newly industrialized workers are also owners of these factories with democratic rights to hire their supervisors.