Friday, February 8, 2013

The Killers Among Us

Ron Paul was condemned by the usual suspects when he tweeted in the aftermath of the killing of Chris Kyle:  "He who lives by the sword dies by the sword." But the words tweeted by Dr. Paul have a much deeper meaning than appreciated by those who attacked him. Indeed, they have very important meaning in the United States, where government plays such a major role.

The words, of course, were originally spoken by Jesus, but regardless of the religious views or beliefs one holds, the deep meaning of the words should not be ignored. If you go around punching people, you are likely to get punched. If you go around slashing people with a sword, there is a chance you are going to slashed.

The killer of US government sniper Chris Kelly was a killer trained by the US government.

It's not commonly understood in its simplest terms, but governments need killers, especially governments that view themselves as major players on a global scale. The US government sees itself as such a global scale player. And, thus, it needs to train many killers. It needs to rip out the civility of modern man that exists in its new soldier recruits and turn them into unquestioning killers.

The military is not successful in doing this with all. Not all brains are wired the same. Some become  so revolted by what they are asked to do that they commit suicide. It happens everyday in the military.

Others, wired in a different way, take the lessons to kill and use them in unexpected ways. The killer of sniper Kelly was the US trained Marine killer, Eddie Ray Routh. His mind twisted by the stress of learning to be a killer, and killing, snapped in some unknown fashion and killed his supposed buddy, sniper Kelly.

If you go around training people to kill, some may well try and kill you with the lessons they have learned. That appears to be what Routh did. That's a problem for governments that train killers.

As I write this, Christopher Jordan Dorner is at-large. He was trained by both the Los Angeles Police Department and the US military. He is a skilled marksman, with special abilities as a sniper and weak hand shooting. This week he turned his skill inward, against government representatives and their families. He has killed policemen and family members of police. Asked by a reporter why he should be considered extremely dangerous, the police chief of one Southern California city replied, "Because we trained him." No truer words have ever been spoken by a government official.

If you live by training killers, you may die by those trained killers. The United States is training killers.

But there's more.

The US government in its role as the nanny state, and in cahoots with big pharma, now doles out medications in an attempt to control the behavior of many young minds. Often the most energetic minds, and those least willing to sit still to listen to government propaganda all day long, are the ones pumped with drugs. But just as with government's training of killers and the way the training has different impact on different minds, the medications to force students to sit still all day, doesn't have the same impact on all the same way. The medications will turn some into killers, as witnessed by the killings at Columbine, Aurora and Newtown. Force medications on some students to make them sit still for hours, and some will find ways to break through those mental prisons, sometimes with guns blazing.

Walk into inner cities and you will find students poorly educated by government, who can't get a job because of government minimum wage laws, who are left with few alternatives but to sell drugs. Because government bans the sale of non-prescription drugs, it is a dangerous business. If you are caught selling drugs, you will do major time, and so you will kill those who might rat on you. It creates tough young kids, who don't put a high value on life and so it will result in gun battles for turf.

Yes, he who lives by the sword dies by the sword. And the government of any nation that lives by preventing youth from getting  jobs may likely see death as blowback on that nation and that government. The government of any nation that lives by attempting to drug up its youth should not be surprised when a few react with super aggressiveness against that drugging. And a government that trains many, many, many killers, should not be surprised when a few of those government trained killers turn their killing inward inside the nation.

This type killing won't stop until killers are no longer trained by government, until big pharma drugs are no longer forced upon youth and until the inner youth are free to seek jobs and apprenticeships at any any wage.

In other words, until these current government actions are shutdown, the government will create killers, in one fashion or another. These killers will roam among us and they will continue to kill.

16 comments:

  1. I am thoroughly disgusted by the so-called "libertarians" who, rather than support the only man with the guts to say it as it is, would rather be politically correct, continue to regard soldiers as either victims or heroes, or still have nationalist sentiments, and joined the statist left and right in condemning RP.

    It goes to show just how superficial the libertarian principles of many really are, that when a scumbag killer gets his dues, they think it "inappropriate" or "offensive" to call it as it is.
    These people, of course, would never have jumped all over Ron Paul had Chris Kyle killed Americans rather than brown people on the other side of the world.

    Even to these so-called libertarians, respect for murderers is required, so long as he was wearing a soldier's uniform.

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  2. Dear Bill,

    I sympathize.

    But while your analysis of "Live by the sword, Die by the sword" is substantially correct, your analysis of killers is not.

    I speak from personal experience gained over 24 years in the Army, serving empty platitudes that then seemed full.

    It is not horror that creates murdering monsters. It is not 'training to kill'. That same training is what you do every time you take a martial arts class, perform archery, or it's modern equivalent - the gun range.

    No. What makes monsters is Acton's Axiom. They are corrupted by power.

    As children they are conditioned to believe certain things are not possible. They never seriously consider certain behaviors because they believe that punishment is certain and reward uncertain.

    A tiny percentage never accepts that conditioning. They are our permanent criminals.

    A tiny percentage (single digits) have strong principles, and require GREAT temptation to do wrong. Notably, I firmly believe that EVERYONE will do some wrong given a great enough reward. This is simply the machinery of the human mind at work to gain an individual his desires.

    The vast majority of people are only restrained in their behavior by their fear of retribution in varying degrees. When they experience actually doing things formerly considered impossible their fear evaporates. They become self-empowered, and realize their vista of choices is broader than they had previously believed.

    Training doesn't produce monsters.

    Experience simply reveals them.

    And this is the view created by experience, that friends you trusted when given little risk and some reward for wrong-doing will do the wrong thing.

    This is why power must never be concentrated.

    This is why even small 'Security' companies in a free market cannot be trusted. At some point both they and their customers will wonder whether the security firm is being paid to secure from others' misbehavior or from the security firm's misbehavior.

    This is the puzzle to be resolved between minarchists and anarchists. Because I guarantee you this: Those who would misbehave WILL BAND TOGETHER and deal with their internal betrayals when the loot is divided.

    Libertarians who FAIL to band together are vulnerable to the misbehaving gangs.

    Libertarians who DO band together are at risk of losing their way.

    I do not know how to solve the puzzle. It is a mystery of the ages.

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    1. Libertarians are perfectly comfortable with the idea of banding together, and aren't in danger of losing their (ideological) way.

      Libertarianism is not isolationism. It's the opposition to initiation of physical and/or coercive force.

      Read Rothbard's, "For a New Liberty" to get an idea of how a libertarian society could and would provide defense for itself, while still respecting this axiom.

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    2. Regards Scott,

      You are more in danger of losing your ideological way if you do not believe it can happen.

      I have seen many men, sure in the rightness of their views, later wracked and destroyed by guilt when they realize the wrong decisions they made were not only wrong, but OBVIOUSLY wrong, and hidden from no view but their own.

      Power is insidious, and colors all aspects of a person's thinking. The 'Banding Together' is itself a form of power.

      The machinery of every psyche is geared towards gaining values for the individual. This is a natural facet of humanity. This leads to rationalization, that from within very few can hope to identify.

      I defy anyone to show this view is incorrect. I've seen it too many times.

      From the young (or not so young) manager who rationalizes that the ladies who are not his wife are attracted by his personal qualities, to the young soldier, fearful of suicide bombers, who points his weapon at a street vendor only to become the unwitting recipient of all the vendor's goods. The first time was an unwitting...

      But the realization of new possibilities is visible on their faces at that moment, when you're attuned to it and aware.

      I mean no disrespect.

      BEWARE. BEWARE.

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    3. Gordo. It is a quandary, but it is influenced by the state as well as misconceptions of the state's services.

      I think you can have private services, even protection services, without needing to have the state involved. In fact, I think you'll have more efficient, safer protection services, with much less potential jeopardy to our liberties. See: "But Wouldn't The Warlords Take Over?"

      http://mises.org/daily/1855

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  3. It is through childhood use of medication, and through parents who are incapable of educating their children in virtue, as well as in ethics, that is genuine right relationships with others, that many become psychopaths, before the age of 15.

    Then the military and the CIA, comes along and recruits them, and so they become trained killers.

    Once their lifespan, usually very short, is used up, they are discarded, and they come to live in the inner city, where I live. These are presented by the Claritas Prizm as Big City Blues and Low Rise Living, which is where the killers go to live when no employer will hire them, and they are granted Social Security Disability, for PTSD, or for antisocial behavior disorder.

    It is in these neighborhoods that they manifest as preeminent, continually confronting others, causing sensible people to flee from them, and live very reclusive and fearful lives hidden away in SROs and in small apartments, with a TV for friendship and companionship.

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  4. What RP said was dead-on. The cringe factor I think was due to social mores only. It's the annoying part of politics - you don't get to state the truth until a certain mourning time has passed or until you've given condolences to the family, etc. But, as usual, that context will eventually be forgotten, and RP's words will go down in history as the most accurate, succinct and comprehensive summary anyone ever gives of the event.

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  5. Bob,

    You alluded to this around the edges, but I'd like to flush it out. We, as a nation, are one of moral duplicities.

    War, legalized state murder, creates this dichotomy. Propaganda reinforces it.

    Our culture (sic) is horribly contorted due to our perpetual state of war that we are in. It is skewing our humanity, our norms of acceptable behavior across the species. I'd argue that this has a much deeper (schizophrenic) impact on the country's psyche than anyone wishes to admit.

    Ron Paul seems to be the only public figure out there that is saying, "Do unto others as you would have done to you," and actually comprehending that meaning at every level, as well as acting in such a fashion.

    This really is the gist of Libertarianism, and so many people truly don't understand how they've been programmed to understand the meaning of the words, but accept duplicity of execution.

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  6. Beautiful article Bob.

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  7. I recommend listening to Scott Horton's interview with Will Grigg on this topic:

    http://scotthorton.org/2013/02/06/2513-will-grigg/

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    1. Thanks for the link. Any interview with Grigg is always worth the time.

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  8. Agree with everyone above. Politically incorrect, but dead-on true!

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  9. I didnt know Chris Kyle. I have no desire to judge him, and I have nothing but sympathy for his family. I do however know a little bit about PTSD.

    Whether its an abuse victim internalizing thier abusers excuses via guilt trips, survivors guilt, guilt over the symptoms of PTSD, or a soldier struggling with what he did or allowed to be done, guilt and PTSD walk hand in hand.

    If someone with PTSD was struggling with guilt, someone like Chris Kyle might not of been the best person to help. Thats no value judgement on him or what happened, and Kyle might have been coping in his own way, and maybe that way works sometimes. But Kyles public personae, rightly ot wrongly, was that of a killer. A killer not burdened by guilt, byt proud of it.

    This wont explain or justify anything. But it might be a helpful part in understanding this. Im not really sure. What I do know is that it would be a mistake to oversimplify these incidents, or the causes of crime in general. Its also important to remember that these incidents are in know way indicative of the majority of veterans or PTSD sufferers, and that stigmatization will only make it harder for people who want to take charge of thier mental health proactively and productively.

    Sadly, I doubt we will ever know what happened. Kyles public face is too politicized, and guns and PTSD are too convienient a scape goat. At least we can count on Ron Paul too help broaden the conversation. Speaking of which, I recommend people look up the Lucifer Effect. No single answer, but it might be illuminating.

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  10. Let's not forget that the sniper in question made up a ridiculous story to sell books about knocking out Jesse Ventura with a punch. That is being completely forgotten in the discussion about Paul's tweet - but the guy who was killed lied to everyone in true sociopathic form that would make Obama or Romney proud.

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