Lo studio non ha trovato alcuna correlazione tra l’opinione pubblica e la politica. Riportata graficamente, la probabilità che una qualunque proposta venga adottata è invariabilmente del 30% a prescindere dal supporto ricevuto da parte del pubblico. D’altro canto, però, la correlazione tra le preferenze delle élite economiche e le politiche adottate fa impennare la curva del grafico di 45°: il 70% delle politiche fortemente sostenute dalle élite si trasforma in politica del governo.

Niente di sorprendente. Il governo messo su dalla costituzione americana nacque in risposta alle lamentele delle élite, secondo cui i governi dei singoli stati erano troppo democratici, troppo sensibili al sentire popolare, tanto da infastidire seriamente le élite economiche. In molti dei nuovi stati indipendenti, coalizioni radicali in rappresentanza di agricoltori e piccoli commercianti passarono leggi di riforma fondiaria e di sospensione del debito, e si opposero all’aumento delle tasse per pagare le obbligazioni emesse durante la rivoluzione per pagare l’Esercito Continentale, e che attualmente erano nelle mani dei redditieri.

Gran parte della base elettorale che stava dietro la costituzione era formata dalle élite economiche, come quella terriera e quella mercantile. La loro costituzione – creata con un colpo di stato illegale contro gli Articoli della Confederazione – mise su un governo che era un’oligarchia gestita da élite economiche, e il cui controllo popolare era quanto più possibile nominale e indiretto. Il governo che abbiamo oggi, nonostante il linguaggio della propaganda ufficiale dei libri di educazione civica lo presentino come “democratico”, è ancora, nei suoi tratti essenziali, la stessa oligarchia messa su oltre 220 anni fa.

Costituzione a parte, è la struttura generale della società, dell’economia e del sistema politico americani, che rendono inevitabile il dominio di queste élite. Quando ogni aspetto della vita nazionale è governato da un intreccio di agenzie normative governative, alcune centinaia di grosse industrie e banche, giganteschi comitati burocratici, università e fondazioni di carità, e quando le stesse minuscole élite fanno avanti e indietro tra queste istituzioni, è ovvio che a far sentire di più la sua influenza sulla politica sono quelli che gestiscono queste grosse istituzioni. Sarebbe così anche con la riforma dei finanziamenti elettorali, presentate dai liberal come una panacea, perché il fattore principale in politica non è il denaro ma la supponenza di queste Persone Molto Serie che fanno politiche (che la gente come loro prende automaticamente per consigli seri) su ciò che è normale e naturale.

È inevitabile quella che Robert Michels chiamava la Dura Legge dell’Oligarchia: il fatto che, a prescindere dalla democraticità di un’istituzione, il potere tenda ad accumularsi nelle mani degli agenti e dei rappresentanti a spese dei titolari e dei rappresentati. È difficile trovare, anche in una comunità di poco più di qualche decina di migliaia di abitanti, un’amministrazione il cui programma non sia dettato quasi interamente da imprenditori edili, camera di commercio e amministrazione scolastica pubblica. Di fatto, molte “riforme” chiave delle amministrazioni cittadine promosse dai “progressisti” un secolo fa (circoscrizioni elettorali più grandi, rappresentanze generiche, governo locale diretto da un amministratore, elezione di indipendenti) miravano espressamente a ridurre l’influenza dei lavoratori ordinari e dei piccoli imprenditori sui governi locali per consegnare il potere a professionisti “competenti” della classe medio-alta.

In poche parole, quel genere di democrazia di cui parla Barney Frank non è solo una falsa rappresentazione della realtà americana. È del tutto impossibile. Gli stati nascono come comitati esecutivi della classe di potere, sono stati creati per servire gli interessi delle élite economiche imponendo scarsità artificiale, diritti di proprietà artificiali e monopoli che servono ad estrarre rendita da tutti noi. Aspettarsi qualcosa di diverso è come aspettarsi che un maiale voli.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

The study found no correlation at all between public opinion and policy. Graphing the correlation, the chance any random policy proposal will be adopted is a flat 30% regardless of the level of public support. On the other hand the correlation between the economic elite’s policy preferences and the policies adopted shows up on the graph as a nice, neat upward-slanting line at 45 degrees, with a 70% correlation between strong elite support and policy adoption.

That really shouldn’t be too surprising. The government set up under the U.S. Constitution was created in response to elite complaints that  state governments were too democratic, too responsive to popular sentiment, to the point of seriously inconveniencing economic elites. In many of the newly independent states, radical coalitions of farmers and small tradesmen in the legislatures passed land reforms and stays on debt and opposed tax increases to pay off the Continental war bonds held by the rentier classes.

The main political constituencies behind the Constitution were economic elites like the landed and mercantile interests. Their Constitution — created by an illegal coup against the Articles of Confederation — set up a government designed as an oligarchy run by economic elites like themselves, with popular control kept as nominal and indirect as possible. The government we have today, despite the “democratic” civics book rhetoric in official propaganda, is still in its essential features the same oligarchy they set up over 220 years ago.

Leaving the Constitution aside, the overall institutional structure of the American society, economy and political system make such elite dominance inevitable. When every aspect of national life is governed by an interlocking framework of centralized government regulatory agencies, several hundred giant corporations and banks, and giant bureaucratic think tanks, universities and charitable foundations, and the same tiny elites shuffle back and forth between these institutions, it stands to reason that the main influence on policy will be the mindset of those running such large institutions. This would be true even with the liberal panacea of public campaign financing, because the main factor in policy is not money but the unconscious assumptions of the Very Serious People making policy (and the people like themselves they automatically regard as sources of credible advice)  about what is normal and natural.

What Robert Michels called the Iron Law of Oligarchy — the tendency, regardless of how nominally democratic an institution is, for real power to accumulate in the hands of agents and representatives at the expense of principals and the represented — is inevitable. You’d be hard-pressed to find even a local government in a community of more than a few tens of thousands of residents where policies aren’t set almost entirely by real estate developers, the Chamber of Commerce and the public school administration. In fact many key “reforms” in municipal government promoted by “progressives” a century ago — larger wards, at-large representation, city manager-board government, non-partisan elections — were deliberately designed to reduce the influence of ordinary workers and small businesspeople on local government and instead hand policy-making over to “competent” upper-middle-class professionals.

Simply put, the kind of democracy Barney Frank talks about isn’t just an unrealistic description of American reality. It’s flat-out impossible. States originated as executive committees of the ruling class, created to serve the interests of economic elites by enforcing the artificial scarcities, artificial property rights and monopolies by which they extract rents from the rest of us. To expect them to do otherwise is like expecting a pig to fly.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Sul Governo Inteso Come “Ciò che Decidiamo di Fare Assieme”

Hmmm. What about the George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq after exaggerating threats from Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” and dreaming up a nonexistent operational link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks. And what about Ronald Reagan’s invasion of Grenada in 1983 to save U.S. medical students in no danger and George H.W. Bush’s invasion of Panama because its leader, Manuel Noriega, was associated with the narcotics trade?… More generally, Latin America has been a US sphere of influence and playground for US invasions since the early 1900s — Lyndon Johnson’s invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965 and Bill Clinton’s threatened invasion of Haiti in 1994 being two recent examples.

Indeed, Russia isn’t the only country that has brutally regarded its “backyard” as its sphere of influence and playground. This doesn’t make it okay for the Russian government to behave as it has, but as Adam Gopnik observes,

Russia, as ugly, provocative, and deserving of condemnation as its acts [in Crimea] may be, seems to be behaving as Russia has always behaved, even long before the Bolsheviks arrived. Indeed, Russia is behaving as every regional power in the history of human regions has always behaved, maximizing its influence over its neighbors — in this case, a neighbor with a large chunk of its ethnic countrymen.

Eland of course only scratches the surface in mentioning the U.S. government’s unceasing program to control events in its sphere of influence. Some people understand that this program preceded the 20th century; it did not begin with the Cold War. The Spanish-American War, 1898, may come to mind, but I’m thinking further back than that. How far back? Roughly 1776.

Even the government’s schools teach, or at least taught during my 12-year sentence in them, that America’s Founders had — let us say — an expansive vision for the country they were establishing. Historian William Appleman Williams’s extended essay, Empire as a Way of Life, provides many details. Clearly, these men had empire on their minds. Before he became an evangelical for independence from Great Britain, Benjamin Franklin proposed a partnership between England and the American colonists to help spread the enlightened empire throughout the Americas. His proposal was rejected as impractical, so he embraced independence — without giving up the dream of empire in the New World. George Washington spoke of the “rising American empire” and described himself as living in an “infant empire.”

Thomas Jefferson — “the most expansion-minded president in American history” (writes Gordon S. Wood) — set out a vision of an “Empire of Liberty,” later revised as an “Empire forLiberty,” and left the presidency believing that “no constitution was ever before as well calculated as ours for extensive empire and self-government.” As Jefferson wrote James Monroe in 1801, Jefferson’s first year as president,

However our present interests may restrain us within our own limits, it is impossible not to look forward to distant times, when our rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits, & cover the whole northern, if not the southern continent, with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar forms, & by similar laws.

Indeed, in the eyes of the Founders, the American Revolution was largely a war between a mature empire and a nascent one. (Many — but assuredly not all — Americans of the time would have cheerily agreed.) Their goal was to bring civilization (which was still identified with England and many of its institutions) to the New World’s benighted.

As Jefferson indicated, this vision was more than continental, because South America was never regarded as permanently off limits. If expansion required conflict with the French and Spanish also, so be it.

The Indian Wars were among the first steps in empire building. The unspeakable brutality and duplicity — the acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide, as we say today — were crimes, not merely against individuals, but also against whole societies and nations. “Imperialism” was not yet a word in use, but that’s what this was, as were the designs and moves on Canada (one of the objects of James Madison’s War of 1812), Mexico, Cuba, Florida, the Mississippi and New Orleans, Louisiana, the Northwest, and the Pacific coast (the gateway to Asia). The wishes of the inhabitants — who were “as yet incapable of self-government as children,” as Jefferson said of Louisiana’s residents — didn’t count. (Lincoln’s war is thus understood as an exercise in empire preservation.)

A good deal of this program was tied up with trade. For libertarians, trade far and wide is a good thing, but one must keep in mind that the expansion of trade in those days (as in these) depended on how strong the government was. By hook and crook, a constitution that denied the national government the powers to regulate trade and to tax — the Articles of Confederation — had been exchanged for one — the U.S. Constitution — that authorized both powers. (The libertarian Albert Jay Nock called the federal convention in Philadelphia a coup d’état. See my video lecture.) Trade meant trade policy, and that meant government activism, which included selective embargoes, such as those imposed by Jefferson’s program of “peaceful coercion.”

The Articles of Confederation were a poor platform for empire building; not so the Constitution. “Both in the mind of Madison and in its nature,” Williams wrote, “the Constitution was an instrument of imperial government at home and abroad.” (See my “That Mercantilist Commerce Clause.”)

I don’t mean to say that the liberty of Americans was of no concern to their rulers. I do mean, however, that liberty was to be subordinated (only to the extent necessary, of course) to national greatness, which was America’s destiny. (I first heard the words “Manifest Destiny” in a government school. Do kids hear it today?)

Americans sensed that something exceptional was happening. And indeed it was, as Gordon Wood explains in his masterful The Radicalism of the American Revolution. To the dismay of the dominant Federalists, average Americans, exemplified by those whom Wood calls “plebeian Anti-Federalists,” saw the revolution as having overturned hierarchical and aristocratic colonial society in favor of a democracy that facilitated personal and commercial self-interest. (This did not sit well with those who wanted America to be, per Wood, “either a hierarchy of ranks or a homogeneous republican whole.”)

But even well-grounded exceptionalism can quickly turn dark by the perceived duty to enlighten — or , if necessary, exterminate — the benighted. And that’s what happened. The Indian Wars were popular; so were the other imperial exploits. (This is not to say there were no dissenters.)

Williams notes that exceptionalism came with a feeling of aloneness. Thus, the quest for security and tranquility for the new nation — invoked in precisely those words — fueled these imperial exploits. The national-security state is nothing new; only the technology has changed.

Some American figures glimpsed that empire and liberty might not so easily fit together. (The unabashed empire builders were convinced that freedom at home required empire.) The problem was that even many who opposed empire, sometimes quite eloquently, wanted ends that only an empire could procure. Williams puts John Quincy Adams in this small camp. Secretary of State Adams’s July 4, 1821, speech, declaring that America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” was “thoughtful, powerful, and subversive,” Williams writes. “But for the time Adams remained enfolded in the spirit of empire and was unable to control the urge to extend America’s power and influence.” (As secretary of state, he supported Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson’s seizure of Florida from the Spanish.)

Adams was the main author of the Monroe Doctrine, which announced not only that the United States would stand aloof from Europe’s quarrels, but also that the Western Hemisphere was exclusively the U.S. government’s sphere of influence: “The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers,” for any such extension would be taken as “dangerous to our peace and safety [i.e., our national security].”

So keep out of our backyard, Europe, and we’ll keep out of yours. Except, Williams adds, that President Monroe “then asserted the right of the United States to support Greek revolutionaries.”

This history doesn’t excuse Russia, but it does put Putin’s actions in perspective. It also accounts for the less-than-awed reception for President Obama’s and Secretary Kerry’s sanctimonious utterances. To the extent that Obama and Kerry imply that Russia threatens our “peace and safety,” they look like fools. “The worst pretense of empire,” Adam Gopnik writes, “is that every rattle on the edges is a death knell to the center.”

The discussion which occurred between Mr. Burleigh and Rev. Mr. Kimball, at the recent meeting at Framingham, though brief, was quite interesting and suggestive, and I had hoped to see the subject more particularly alluded to in THELIBERATOR. A doubt as to the correctness of Mr. Burleigh’s position occurred to me, which perhaps will need only to be presented to be removed. With your permission, I will present it.

Mr. Kimball gave it as his opinion, that the exercise of the elective franchise was one proper channel for anti-slavery action. Mr. Burleigh dissented, for the reason that in voting, the man acts not merely as an individual, giving expression to his opinions in political affairs, but as a sovereign, participating in and sustaining the government; and if the government is guilty of any crime or wickedness, he is guilty to the extent of his participancy. Therefore, voting under the American government, which upholds the great crime of slavery, is wrong.

Granting the argument to be sound, does it not hold good as to any government which tolerates any evil, small or great? And as no immaculate government is likely to arise at present, how can a conscientious man act as a citizen under any circumstances? Human government, for some purpose, is admitted to be necessary; shall we leave it to be conducted wholly by men not troubled with a conscience? Is the no-government theory a cardinal doctrine with Garrisonians?

Again, Mr. Burleigh is reported as saying, that ‘by the act of suffrage, a virtual promise is given that obedience shall be rendered to all the acts which the representative shall help to enact.’ Perhaps not, if we recognise that ‘higher law which is above the Constitution.’ So far as the enactments are right and proper, we agree to obey; but if they are morally wrong, we are bound by a higher covenant to disobey.

I would like to suggest another thing, quite distinct from the above. In arguing the question of anti-slavery, I am sometimes met with this reply: ‘Yes, slavery is wrong; I agree with all you say against it; but there are greater evils than slavery; war is a greater evil;’ – and a vivid imagination may picture the horrors of war so that one is almost persuaded that it is so. I would like to see the question considered in your columns, whether slavery or war is the greater evil; and if war is the greater, and a dissolution of the Union, or an attempt to abolish slavery, is likely or certain, so far as human foresight can determine, to result in war – in which course lies the path of duty?

REMARKS. [by Garrison]

1. We think Mr. Burleigh was unquestionably correct in his statement, that the voter at the polls ‘acts not merely as an individual giving expression to his opinions in political affairs, but as a sovereign, participating in and sustaining the government,’ according to its organic character; and to this extent he is to be held responsible for whatever of criminality or sin is involved in any of its requirements. The interrogation of the apostle (Rom. vi. 16) is exactly to the point: ‘Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?’ Every voter virtually inscribes on his ballot the Constitution of the United States – he votes for a candidate whom he empowers and expects to take the oath of allegiance to that Constitution, in all fidelity, and without any mental reservation whatever – and, consequently, he is to be held answerable for all that is embodied in that instrument, even though he may not only dislike some of its provisions, but may be endeavoring to effect a modification of it, so as to make it conform to his ideas of moral rectitude; for he agrees to sustain it as it is, in spite of his objections, until it be amended by a constitutional process, and so consents to wrong-doing for the time-being, rather than to lose his vote.

2. It does not follow, nor did Mr. Burleigh mean to affirm, that ‘if the government is guilty of any crime or wickedness,’ the voter is to be held responsible for it; because it may be an act of sheer ‘border ruffian’ usurpation, as in the case of Pres. Pierce, in his nefarious treatment of Kansas. But if there be any ‘crime or wickedness’ in the organic nature of the government – in its principles or measures – in any of its stipulations or exactions – then to vote to uphold it, or to elect another to take an oath to see all its provisions faithfully executed, is to be a participator in the guilt thereof – all metaphysical shuffling to the contrary notwithstanding.

3. It follows logically, and as a matter of sound morality, that if ‘the American government [constitutionally] upholds the great crime of slavery,’ voting under it is wrong; and it is wrong for this among other reasons – knowing the pro-slavery compromises contained in the Constitution – we refuse to touch the ballot, stained as it is with the blood of four millions of slaves.

4. But our correspondent inquires, ‘Granting the argument to be sound, does it not hold good as to any government which tolerates any evil, small or great?’ As we are talking about crime and sin, we understand him to mean any moral evil, and therefore answer his question in the affirmative.

5. But, says our correspondent, ‘as no immaculate government [i. e., none that is not organically unjust] is likely to arise at present, how can a conscientious man act as a citizen under any circumstances?’ We, too, ask the same question, and should like to be shown how he can so act, and keep his conscience clean. We think he cannot.

6. What, then, is to be done? ‘Human government, for some purposes,” says ‘B.,’ ‘is admitted to be necessary.” But, surely, a wicked government is not necessary; and when any one is inherently so, it forfeits its right to exist even for an hour. Indeed, properly speaking, there is but one government, – and that is not human, but divine; there is but one law, – and that is ‘the higher law’; there is but one ruler, and he is God, ‘in whom we live, and move, and have our being.’[Online editor’s note: Acts 17:28; derived in turn from Epimenides’ Hymn to Zeus (6th c. BCE). – RTL] What is called human government is usurpation, imposture, demagogueism, peculation, swindling and tyranny, more or less, according to circumstances, and to the intellectual and moral condition of the people. Unquestionably, every existing government on earth is to be overthrown by the growth of mind and a moral regeneration of the masses. Absolutism – limited monarchy – democracy – all are sustained by the sword – all are based upon the doctrine that ‘might makes right’ – all are intrinsically inhuman, selfish, clannish, and opposed to a recognition of the brotherhood of man. They are to liberty what whiskey, brandy, and gin are to temperance. They belong to ‘the kingdoms of this world,’ [Online editor’s note: John 18:36; Revelation 11:15. – RTL] and are in due time to be utterly destroyed by the brightness of the coming of Him ‘whose right it is to reign,’ [Online editor’s note: Ezekiel 21:27. – RTL] and by the erection of a kingdom which cannot be shaken. [Online editor’s note: Hebrews 12:27. – RTL] They are not for the people, but make the people their prey; they are hostile to all progress; they resist to the utmost all radical changes. All history shows that Liberty, Humanity, Justice and Right have ever been in conflict with existing governments, no matter what their theory or form.

7. But, ‘shall we leave government to be conducted wholly by men not troubled with a conscience?’ This is only to ask, ‘shall we leave the dead to bury their dead?’ [Online editor’s note: Matthew 8:22, Luke 9:60. – RTL] Or, in another form, – ‘may we not do evil that good may come?’ [Online editor’s note: Romans 3:8. – RTL] – ‘will not the end sanctify the means?’ Is it not still true, that ‘wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together’? [Online editor’s note: Matthew 24:28, Luke 17:37. – RTL] Is it not paradoxical to talk of a man who is ‘troubled with a conscience,’ swearing to be loyal to a government which he sees and admits to be essentially unrighteous? What else can he do but to ‘come out, and be separate, and not touch the unclean thing’? [Online editor’s note: Isaiah 52:11, 2 Corinthians 6:17, Revelation 18:4. – RTL] His kingdom is within. [Online editor’s note: Luke 17:21; cf. Thomas 3, 113. – RTL]

8. ‘Is the no-government theory a cardinal doctrine with Garrisonians?’ – Answer – the term ‘Garrisonians’ is applied to those who agree with us in our views of slavery and the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. These are not agreed on the question of government, per se, but entertain different views in regard to it. They are generally united in the sentiment of ‘no union with slaveholders,’ and therefore advocate a dissolution of the existing Union, as uncompromising and consistent abolitionists. Again we reply – the term ‘no-government’ is a nickname, a misnomer, a misrepresentation, a blunder, a caricature, resorted to by the enemies of peace. We neither use it, nor advocate it, nor believe in it; but exactly the reverse. Our ‘theory’ is, that what is popularly called government is either a chain of iron or a rope of sand, – either despotic or licentious, or both, – and hence, must ultimately perish; and that men are to be guided, not by brute force or penal law, but by the spirit of love, justice, mercy, and good will to the whole human race, ‘without partiality and without hypocrisy.’ [Online editor’s note: James 3:17. – RTL] We believe in the sacredness of human life, human happiness, human liberty, and in ‘ceasing from man, whose breath is in his nostrils,’ [Online editor’s note: Isaiah 2:22. – RTL] and relying for safety and protection on an infinite arm. At the same time, we are far from discarding those arrangements and regulations of society which involve no violation of the principles we have laid down, and which, in the nature of things, are necessary to the welfare and comfort of every community.

9. Politically speaking, whoever swears to maintain the U. S. Constitution is precluded from making any appeal to the ‘higher law,’ to the subversion or nullification of any portion of that instrument. His oath presupposes that he has scrupulously analyzed the Constitution, and, finding nothing in it which he regards as in violation of right and justice, he consequently, with a clean conscience, agrees to uphold it. If, however, at any time, he believes it to be, in whole or in part, contrary to the moral law, his duty is plain – to refuse to take the oath of allegiance, and, appealing to the ‘higher law,’ decline to hold office in the government. But while he consents to it, and occupies any station in virtue of it, the Constitution is to be ‘the paramount law’ of his conscience, as well as of the land which adopts it.

10. It is not the question whether War or Slavery be the greater evil. They are both the scourges of the human race, and for ever to be repudiated. Slavery is a state of war continually, and the nursery of civil and servile revolts. Its abolition is essential to the peace and repose of the land. So long as the North gives to it religious fellowship and governmental coöperation, so long will the war spirit continue to abound and increase. Her duty is peaceably to withdraw from the Union, leaving the South to assume all the responsibilities of her bloody slave system, and never doubting that a glorious result will follow.

Q and A with $5 worth of prognostication:

Though the First Amendment claims to ensure that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech,” this didn’t stop the creation of the 1917 Espionage Act used to prosecute whistleblowers. One of those prosecuted and convicted was PFC Manning, for leaking documents mostly related the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars.

After arrest, Manning was held without trial for more than 1,000 days. Eleven months of that time was spent in solitary confinement.

During solitary, Manning was stripped to wearing only underwear and flip flops. Eventually, the “privilege” of wearing even those clothes was taken away. Such is an image of the free speech protections provided by the First Amendment.

This might be part of the reason Edward Snowden has fled the United States. Snowden, the man who came forward with information revealing the National Security Administration’s illegal PRISM program, has been desperately going wherever he can to avoid extradition. First releasing the information from a hotel in Hong Kong, he then spent the last few days of June and all of July in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, before being granted asylum in Russia for one year.

The Constitution’s failure to protect free speech at a seemingly basic level points to a major defect in its design. While it may be praiseworthy in forcefully demanding that the government it authorizes respect the rights of its citizens, it has not provided the real structural support to ensure that those demands are met.

Anyone seriously interested in protecting free speech must push for a very radical “constitutional amendment.” We should work not just to change the words of the document we call “the Constitution,” but instead amend our legal system by completely changing the way it’s constituted.

We shouldn’t be in a position where our only hope is to trust political institutions to keep their promises. Hence the constitutional amendment I have in mind: Abolish the state and its monopoly on provision of law and security.

The idea is basically the same as the US Constitution’s splitting of government into three separate branches: Checks and balances. The difference is that one is a system of real checks and balances, while the other is not.

Even if Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court have divergent interests, they still share a very important interest in the fact that they’re all a part of the same over-arching organization. By contrast, dissolving the services associated with law and security into free competition between an endless array of voluntary associations creates a more dependable guarantee that your rights will actually be respected.

To emphasize this point, consider the fact that the government to grant Snowden asylum was Russia’s. That this was out of some deep, heartfelt love for human freedom seems unlikely, given that the same government recently passed a law banning the spread of “homosexual propaganda.”

Vladimir Putin and the Russian government have granted Snowden asylum for one reason, and one reason only: There does exist a very limited kind of competition between governments, and the Russian government has interests contrary to those of the American government.

In the polycentric legal order that a stateless world would foster, the same thing would happen for a Snowden or Manning (or distributors of “homosexual propaganda,” for that matter) — except that there would be more competitors willing to protect them, and they wouldn’t have to move halfway across the globe for that protection.

Furthermore, those who didn’t support prosecuting them could immediately stop funding attempts to do so. The social dynamics of such a system would be a significantly more ironclad constitutional check than any string of words, no matter how elegant.

That said, talking about a Manning or a Snowden in a stateless society might be a bit odd. There would be no Iraq or Afghanistan wars for a Manning to tell us about, nor any invasive data-mining on the scale of the PRISM program for a Snowden to reveal. Even if an organization had the resources for such evil, they would lose customers and would face competitors willing to protect their customers or willing members from such attacks.

Some have drawn attention to the Obama administration’s removal of its old pledge to protect whistleblowers from its website. What we need is a legal environment where we don’t have to trust anyone to follow through on those kinds of promises. A system where no one is above the law.

To create such an environment, we must abolish political government.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

US President Barack Obama was a civil rights attorney and a “senior lecturer” at the University of Chicago on constitutional law. He campaigned on an anti-surveillance state platform.
Now he spends his days drone-striking children and operating secret prisons all over the world, deporting a million immigrant workers, persecuting whistleblowers at home and supporting the corporatocracy with bailouts and privileges. In recent weeks, he’s also spent a great deal of time pleading ignorance about major privacy scandals.

“I was a constitutional law professor, which means unlike the current president I actually respect the Constitution.” — Barack Obama, March 30th, 2007

The politically biased IRS tax targeting scandal came to light recently, but before we’ve had a chance to reread 1984, another, more devastating report has emerged.  The National Security Administration has been collecting everyone’s data for years, and doing so through unrestrained backdoor access to at least nine of the largest Internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Apple and Skype.

The Washington Post and the Guardian broke the story:

“Through a top-secret program authorized by federal judges working under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the U.S. intelligence community can gain access to the servers of nine Internet companies for a wide range of digital data. Documents describing the previously undisclosed program, obtained by The Washington Post, show the breadth of U.S. electronic surveillance capabilities in the wake of a widely publicized controversy over warrantless wiretapping of U.S. domestic telephone communications in 2005.”

The NSA calls this the PRISM program. Obama knew about PRISM — the NSA brags that most of his Daily Brief reports are generated with PRISM data.

These are not “oops, my neighbor saw me naked” privacy breaches, this is a predatory state tearing through every communication you make and storing it in databases like the new $2 billion National Security Administration Data Center facility in Utah. All it does is store American data, 24/7. This Orwellian monitoring began years ago, in tandem with the evolution of information technologies, with such secret spy programs as Carnivore and Echelon.

The train of civil rights abridgments which picked up steam under Bush just keeps rollin’ with the Obama administration at the throttle. Add this to the list alongside the persecution of political activists like Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and Occupy protesters  and most recently anarchist legal advocate Gerald Koch.

If you have nothing to hide, what’s the problem with a surveillance state, right?  Imagine if the British crown had this level of intelligence gathering capacity during the American Revolution, or if the government had this Panopticon technology during the early 20th century Labor Movement, or if the FBI had this much firepower during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement (indeed, the FBI already assassinated Fred Hampton and tracked and subsequently played a major role in the killing of Martin Luther King, Jr.).

Just because you don’t think the state will persecute you today, remember that Japanese Internment wasn’t so long ago, or that according to Noam Chomsky “The most civilised part of the world, with the highest cultural standards 70 years ago was Germany. No more need be said.” Just because the government appears less psychopathic or genocidal today does not mean it will be this way tomorrow. Even still, you might get thrown in jail for recreational drug use, political speech or tax “evasion” more easily than ever before.

What is to be done?

“Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.” — Edward Abbey

Whittle away state power. Use encryption methods when transmitting sensitive information. Withdraw support for the system in whatever way you can — and reinforce your own autonomy with alternative currency and the decentralized stability of your community with local forms of production and consumption.