WHO BELLS THE CAT?

By Claire Wolfe

For weeks, I've struggled to find the right words.

On May 14, when Judge Edward Lodge decreed open season upon Americans, I said, "That's it. We can't stand for this and still call ourselves human. It's time to act." And I hastily promised to write about ideas for intelligent action.

In the intervening weeks, we've learned of the FBI's bloodless coup - -- an illegal national registration system for all firearms buyers. We've seen draft federal regulations ending medical privacy forever (a land mine buried in a "moderate" 1996 bill, now about to explode under our feet). The U.S. Department of Transportation has issued its proposed rule, making our drivers licenses our internal passport - one more 1996 congressional land-mine, now exploding. In his most recent Executive Diktat, called "Federalism," Clinton has proclaimed his government to have arbitrary power over and within the states.

With each new shock we reel -- and do nothing. Because, after all, what can we do?

With each new shock I remember I promised to come up with helpful thoughts for stopping injustice. And I don't do it. Because, after all, what can I write? The dirty little truth is that anyone who dared advocate effective actions now could be arrested merely for speaking the words. I can't do that. I won't. But someone has to.

Let me discard any attempt at eloquence, brilliance or clever word-dancing and state one obvious fact:

When somebody hurts you and gets away with it, he'll hurt you some more. Not only that, he'll up the frequency of his attacks and the level of his brutality. If you want him to stop, you have to make it clear that someone will hurt him every, single time he hurts you. Government supremacists are hurting us and our freedom. Nobody is stopping them. Somebody has to.

Even bureaucrats have enough brains to grasp that, if no one's going to punish them, they can do anything they want. The FBI knows neither it nor its agents will be punished for building an illegal database of gun buyers. Even if the Supreme Court ordered the data destroyed, the FBI wouldn't so much as consider destroying it. Why should they? There's no pain, no consequence in continuing to disregard the law.

Same with Judge Lodge, Lon Horiuchi, and oathbreaking congresspeople. Why should they change their ways -- as long as they're getting away with it? As long as they're getting away with it, in fact, why not do more of the same?

Bullies and other unprincipled cowards respond to simple stimuli: A figurative cattle prod in the figurative buttocks. The courts were intended to deliver this warning prod, but they won't -- not when the bully is a fellow member of the federal club. Neither will any citizen oversight board, congressional subcommittee or internal agency review system.

The simple fact is we must stop the injustices being committed against us or suffer worse than we already have. However, we are in the position of the mice who decided that the best way to stop feline attacks was to tie a warning bell around the cat's neck. Great idea.

BUT WHO BELLS THE CAT?

I don't know what should be done or who should do it. But I can guess many things that will be done in the next few years, for good or ill. Some might be relatively peaceable:

• The gentlest of us might hold freedom courts, doing so in secret, and making explicit written declarations that the judgments are purely symbolic. (The declaration is important; If you don't know why, look up Emilio Ippolito using an Internet search engine and see why that old man and others are now serving long prison sentences for making "threats" against officials.) Of course, no one would ever be encouraged to carry out these sentences.
  
  
• The ace investigators among us will keep extensive (and encrypted!) records on the identities, locations and habits of official evildoers. Thousands of people, in hundreds of isolated groups, could compile this information as they went about their daily lives. In due time, the records could be made widely, rapidly available via Internet and Samizdat.
  
  
• Some brave (perhaps foolhardy) souls might attempt citizens arrests. In most cases, this will not be a good idea. Those who survive the attempt are likely to be charged with assault or kidnapping. Still, if a freedom lover had the tacit support of a sheriff, tired of feds operating illegally in his county, it could be interesting. Picture a fed sitting in the Cactus Needle, New Mexico jail while some little ole local sheriff or prosecutor ponders what to do with his hide.
  
  
• Discreet souls might take advantage of Y2Kaos and slip underground and out of the databases. They can return to operate from a position of strength and invisibility.
  
  
• Shunning is another technique for the discreet. It involves no physical attacks or threats; it simply shuts the victim out from human discourse. The pain of being made a pariah can sometimes be worse than prison. It might, at least, encourage thousands of low-level bureaucrats to quit their jobs, which could render some agencies unable to function.
  
  
• Groups requiring confidentiality will politely ask informants to leave. They will discover the identity of snitches using new methods, such as the lie-detecting voice stress analysis offered by Mike Kemp of the Gadsden Minutemen. These methods can also clear the wrongly accused and replace destructive bickering with purposeful action.
  
  
• Possibly, as the confrontation between freedom lovers and power lovers heats up, it will actually appear to cool down for a time. This will happen as more people aggressively keep their mouths shut while keeping their eyes and options open. (Some heretofore noisy writers will shut their word processors or turn their hands to speculative fiction.) This will be the proverbial calm before the storm.
  
  
• Some PR-oriented freedom lovers might, on the other hand, vocally publicize the activities of particularly pernicious wrongdoers. Informants and undercover agents are a perfect example. To make this a real public service, these PR mavens would publish enough personal information, and enough rigorous proof of wrongdoing, to ensure that potential victims could identify and protect themselves against unscrupulous marauders.

That latter tactic could be dangerous. Drug agencies and the like have been known to go after newspapers or Web sites that published photos of their undercover agents.

Worse, I fear that some sincere-but-desperate freedom lovers might be driven by frustration to even harsher tactics. Thus, I'm afraid we'll also see things like these in the next few years:

• Relentless destruction of government property, random or purposeful.
  
  
• Extensive hacking and destruction of centralized databases.
  
  
• A shocking increase in the number of thefts from National Guard armories and police equipment stocks -- many of which will be carried out by fed-up guardsmen and police officers.
  
  
• Vigilante justice. The modern equivalent of tar and feathering. Attacks against the homes and property of the worst rights-abusers.
  
  
• It may even happen that some agents of abuse will be so unbalanced by fear of retribution that they'll commit suicide, as many associates of Bill and Hillary Clinton have recently done.

Such things would be regrettable. No decent person could possibly endorse violence and destructiveness, except in the gravest extremity. Never, until all other avenues to justice had been barricaded by thugs in black jackboots, backed by thugs in black robes.

Yet these are desperate times. How desperate, only you can judge.

After the Horiuchi/Lodge decision, I heard several people declare, in effect, "I won't kill Horiuchi myself because I have a wife and kids to worry about. But I wouldn't waste any tears if I heard somebody had done it." The only comment I can make on that is to add Lodge's name beside Horiuchi's.

There's a very sharply defined line between wishing tyrants dead and being prepared to kill them. Thank heaven we have not crossed it, and pray we never have to. But our toes are right up against that line now. And with each new blow to freedom -- coming so fast! -- we are pushed and pushed and pushed. Our happiest course is simply to try to live free in spite of the government. We must continue to try to do just that. But government must also stop placing barriers in the path to freedom, and must stop trying to push us toward tyranny.

And this it is not going to do. Unless we find ways to force it.

When Unintended Consequences was published several years ago, I considered it a male romance novel, without substance. But I'm coming closer to believing that the Unintended scenario -- fed up Americans delivering ad hoc justice to federal freedom violators -- may be inevitable, however much we wish to avoid it.

Whether such desperate actions will do us any good -- individually or as a movement for freedom -- is another question. They certainly wouldn't lead to any pat, happy endings. But, one way or another, we have reached a point where we must take care of our own justice.

If we can't make it painful for tyrants, they'll inevitably make it more painful for us. Fact. It's time to stop talking and be free.

(c) 1998 Claire Wolfe. This article may be reprinted for non-commercial purposes, as long as it is reprinted in full with no content changes whatsoever, and is accompanied by this credit line. The article may not be re-titled, edited or excerpted (beyond the limits of the fair use doctrine) without the written permission of the author. For-profit publications will be expected to pay a nominal reprint fee. Unprincipled people have tampered with articles. If you have any doubts about the integrity of the copy you have received, please check the original at http://www.oocities.org/CapitolHill/1797/essay.html before posting the article to a Web site or reprinting it.

RETURN TO INDEX OF CLAIRE WOLFE WRITINGS

RETURN TO LIBERTY ACTIVIST HOME PAGE