Eric Blair

Activist Post

I’ve gotten to the point where I cringe whenever I hear the word ‘war’. Even when it’s used to seemingly combat something noble sounding such as the war on poverty or the war on hunger. It’s become apparent that all wars cause damage no matter if it’s a figurative war or an actual war. It’s also obvious that when a war is declared on a social problem, the State is announcing a power grab which is going to result in less freedom.

War creates an enemy that must be extinguished by government force. The more broadly defined the enemy is, the bigger the government’s role becomes in eradicating it. And when the government wages war against anything, it’s a cycle that’s nearly impossible to stop. The government creates new agencies, and staffs them with union jobs that depend on never actually winning the wars, but rather only perpetuating them.

When poverty rates climb, there’s a crew of government workers secretly high-fiving that their job is safe. When marijuana legalization measures fail, the police and prison unions celebrate. When America is attacked, the weapons manufacturers rejoice. When all Americans are considered terror suspects, surveillance industry stocks soar. And we pay for it all in treasure and freedom.

This self-fueling cycle is destructive and must end for peace and freedom to expand. That begins with realizing that there is no real enemy, but rather the inflated or imagined creations of the government/corporate power structures that benefit most from war. Never lacking in genuine empathy, most who support funding these social wars also rail against the corporate interests that control Washington, while never realizing they’re one and the same. They feed each other. When one grows fat, so does the other, while the citizen grows skinny and weak.

Here are five wars that must end for peace and freedom to prevail:

Overseas Wars: The imperialistic wars in the oil-rich Arab world are clearly a failure in ideas, morality, and resource allocation. Even if the lies that led us there, and the lies that keep us there, were true, they’d still be flimsy reasons to excuse the countless tragedies involved, not least being the cost in American blood and treasure. The Orwellian nature of perpetual war is a technique that is used by global managers to ensure that even countries like the U.S. that are not experiencing direct confrontation are under a continued threat of economic destabilization and the spread of physical conflict onto their soil. This permits new legislation like the NDAA that declares every location a battlefield even when there is actually no physical war at all. As the establishment continues to push for more foreign wars, perhaps leading to WWIII, we must oppose all military action everywhere if we expect peace anywhere.

War on Terror: The War on Terror has been nothing more than a War on Freedom. Americans have lost precious rights to the war on terror, most notably from the USA PATRIOT Act and the recently-passed NDAA.

The idea that anyone bought into a “war” against a tactic is a testament to how powerful the war propaganda machine is. One can never defeat a tactic, or even the idea behind it, with violence; only peace and tolerance can do that. But, again, the war on terror is not about defeating anything; it’s about controlling a once-free society. It must end for liberty to be restored.

War on Drugs: The war on drugs benefits a load of special interests but accomplishes nothing; it only damages society. First, the government has no responsibility or authority to govern the private property of our bodies and minds. So, the war itself is an affront to everyone’s natural rights, especially noticeable now as the war on drugs expands to food and natural health. Second, when there is demand for something, there will always be a supply no matter how many walls are built and guns are pointed. Thus, it’s simply impossible to stop by force. Third, the war on drugs causes the violence in the drug trade. And, arguably, if these drugs were legal it would be easier to suppress illicit drug use by children. Next, it’s a massive drain on the taxpayer to maintain various agencies, increasingly advanced military equipment, court system, prisons etc. To cage fellow humans for victimless crimes can no longer be acceptable if we desire a peaceful community. It’s no longer logical or moral to continue to wage this war. It’s been far more harmful to society than the so-called harm to ourselves that they aim to protect us from.

Cyber War: The cyber war is really an information war (which we clearly engage in). There is no real threat in the cyber war except from those that benefit from the consolidation of power. Potential hackers are not worth a bloated budget for an army of cyber spies and soldiers when those resources could clearly be used to firewall any sensitive networks against attack. And why is it the Department of Homeland Security’s responsibility to guard corporate infrastructure? Corporations should have their own firewalls in place against hackers. The propaganda which states that attacks on corporate infrastructure could radiate outward to critical public infrastructure has been proven false; it is nothing more than a ruse to justify seizing the Internet.

The same is true for the new battlefront of content protection against potential copyright violators. It is a fabrication to suggest that we need more government power to arbitrarily shut down websites. No cyber attack, no matter how potentially devastating, is worth giving the government the authority to censor or shut down websites. Nor should anyone be arrested and caged for victimless file sharing, let alone linking to information.

Again, it’s another false war that will result in lost freedom and privacy for average citizens. Incidentally, the Internet’s level economic playing field and its quasi-anonymity provide the last free domain on earth for average people to compete. Hence, the only enemy in the peaceful information war are those who push for censorship, draconian copyright laws to weed out competition, and mandatory Internet IDs to remove privacy. They lose the war of ideas immediately. Everyone should oppose this war if we expect to preserve freedom of speech and the right to information.

Class War: A class war has been unofficially waged for over a century. It is a war that has taken away an individual’s ability to provide a comfortable living for himself through price inflation of goods and services combined with stagnating wages, stiff regulations as barriers to starting a business, and penalizing production with heavy taxes that pay for this war against us. Price inflation is caused by our debt-based monetary system run by a private monopoly cartel of big multinational banks. We must ‘End the Fed’ for peace and justice to prevail in the class war. Ask yourself why expensive regulations cripple small businesses, but large corporations violate those very same regulations and get bailed out? The only regulation should be a do-no-harm law with harsh penalties if corporations leave a trail of victims. Have any of these well-funded regulators ever “protected” the public? It’s time to defund them and let the free market and property rights regulate quality and pollution. Finally, taking more of people’s hard-earned money is the last thing to do in the hope that it will even out the class war. Again, government power must be reduced in order to achieve peace and freedom, not bolstered with more mafia protection money. The money must go back to the people and the entrepreneurs who earned it, but we can only afford to do that if we end wars of every type.

It has become abundantly clear that none of the so-called wars has achieved anything close to their stated goals, making them abject failures. In fact, society is demonstrably far worse off having waged these wars. The only way to overturn great injustices by cartel corporations and government intrusions on our liberties is to demand less power for the government — which includes reducing power for the government to “control” evil corporations. Remember, one feeds off the other’s strength. The most effective way to begin this is to demand an end to every war.

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