On The Recent Glance Directly At Me, From The Death-Star

Latest from Billy Beck

Yes: of course I am aware that I was paraphrased in a speech given last week by an ex-United States president. The e-mail notes have been furious, and still trail in almost a week later. You can read the speech here. That's a .PDF, and the passage at hand is in the first paragraph of page eleven. Everyone who has paid attention to me knows that he mangled my line, but that it is without question my line.

Here are some facts: the speech refers to "...these 'hatriot' groups, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, the others..." (Bottom of page ten.)

Mike Vanderboegh has run the line that I wrote on his weblog almost since the day that I wrote it.

Here is my conjecture: the ex-president either briefly eyeballed that blog himself, or accepted a memo from one of his flunkies which included the line that I wrote.

I have made up my mind that I would be no more interested in hearing his apology than I am offended by his presumption. It is simply a matter of note that The Lying Bastard of The Ozark Long March knows nothing of which he speaks, amid his insinuations that I advocate violence in this poor country's current straits.

Here is a word for that despicable person: I am "a Southerner", too, you strutting ignoramus. I was born in Little Rock, and my mother graduated Central High School six years before Eisenhower finally saw fit to roll out the National Guard. Don't even try to hand me your threadbare sanctimony about "paying" for the Civil War. For many reasons which I will not attempt to relate to you, I am quite beyond your ex cathedra pose in the matter. You have nothing to say to me. Sit down and shut your insipid mouth.

To the rest of you reading this, let me try to explain something to you. Pay close attention:

"If we discard morality and substitute for it the Collectivist doctrine of unlimited majority rule, if we accept the idea that a majority may do anything it pleases, and that anything done by the majority is right because it is done by the majority (this being the only standard of right and wrong) -- how are men to apply this in practice to their actual lives? In relation to each particular man, all other men are potential members of that majority which may destroy him at its pleasure at any moment. Then each man and all men become enemies: each has to fear and suspect all; each must try to rob and murder first, before he is robbed and murdered."

Now, I am not going to attribute that quote for you. I have good reasons for that. I will point out to you that the basic principles on display in that passage are now a matter of the public consciousness: it is an accepted maxim now that, in politics, "either you are at the table or you are on the menu". I will point out to you that America has never before sounded more like a bar-fight than it does now. All of this is because of what Frederick Bastiat put his finger on, one hundred sixty-two years ago, when he wrote: "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

We now live under The Sucker State. There will be no voting our way out of this, and that is as it should be, in at least one aspect: free people do not supplicate to government. They become manifest in their actions. In any case, however, whole generations have gone down under the rampant delusion that the sources of life spring from everything but individual human productivity: they believe that government can steal for them forever.

The hideous noise that you hear all around you in this culture, now, is only the beginning intimation of how wrong they are. It is the sound of savages scrambling around the lip of the government cannibal-pot, into which all values must eventually be collected by force and from which they will be dispensed under heavy guard. If you are capable of one moment's sense and are not a goddamned deliberate liar -- like an ex-president -- then you can see where this is all going.

There is only one more thing to say, here: every sane person had better hope and pray against violence. This goes for you, Mike, and everyone like you. I understand your efforts and I know why you prepare. This thing could blow-out at any seam, at any moment, and it is only prudent to be ready if that happens.

I, for one, would have far, far greater esteem for anyone ready -- like me -- to present themselves for imprisonment in order to demonstrate to the whole world just what this regime appears to be ready to destroy. No honest person could ever mistake the moral probity of a move like that, and even if it failed, the issue would be unmistakably clear to all -- this battle with a force dedicated to destroying freedom (the word that fell from The Lying Bastard's lips, last Friday) -- and the final and terrible resort to violence would yet be available.

I beg you all to keep cool in this matter.

Just in case you don't already know, the quote is from Ayn Rand. Textbook of Americanism (PDF)