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An Open Letter by Punkerslut to
Information: IndiaFNFAlumni.org Page Greetings, In general, you have stated that your organization wants "smaller government" and, at the same time, "strong national defense." This sounds like a contradiction to me. Government, if anything, is not the laws, the legislators, or the parliaments, but the armed, brute force that stands behind these things. There is no government in voting, because then anyone could form their own government by just "voting away" from the majority. Government, or the power of the state, is measured in the length of the soldier's bayonet, the spread of the prison system, and the megaton power of its nuclear missiles. The contradiction should be clear: you want a "small government" when it comes to spending taxes on material benefits for the poor, but you want "big government" when it comes to tanks and bombers and machineguns. This isn't a mild discrepancy. There is no separation from the size of a government and the strength of the armed force that it represents. How can you have a gigantic police state, full of prisons and spies among the people, and then you describe it as "small government"? Are fleets of aircraft carriers small? Are divisions of tanks and armies of soldiers small? Are submarines and jets small? No, none of that is small, meaningless, or insignificant -- they are all very powerful weapons of mass slaughter. "We believe America's leaders must understand that peace comes from strength – and that evil (whether it be Islamic jihadism or Russian aggression) must be confronted with toughness and resolve." Let's take a look at the "evil of Islamic jihadism." In Iran, where Sharia or Islamic law rules, we find a country that was given arms by the United States, in the Iran-Contra Affair. Rather nobly, the "small government" of Reagan paid for it by selling cocaine to the Americans transported from Nicaragua. In Afghanistan, Republicans gave weapons of mass destruction to Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban. Not just a little, either, but "hundreds of millions of dollars worth," according to the Nation. (TheNation.com) Now consider Iraq. Here, the "almost daily" gassing of Kurds occurred under the protection of the United States military. Reports from as early as 1983 suggest that the weapons we were supply to Saddam Hussein were being used for genocide. (IndyBay.org) This isn't some conspiracy theory: this is based on documents that were authored by the United States military, released by the United States military, and are confirmed by the United States military. Don't forget that when you want "big defense," you're talking about increasing the power of those who have genocided the underdeveloped world and then kept their mouths shut when it was happening. Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq: these are places that have maintained rather oppressive dictatorships over their people. And, once again, we're talking about a common slavery imposed upon the people because of the support by the United States government. So, let's compare experience to ideology -- (a) fact: the United States military supports terrorist groups in the Middle East, as well as Islamic fundamentalists. (b) ideal: the United States military needs to be bigger to protect us from the terrorist groups in the Middle East. It should be clear now why I have pointed out the contradiction between "small government" and "big military." The justification that the military provides protection to American civilians, likewise, fails, because the fact is that it provides greater threats to the people, rather than any sense of security. If you think Islamic terrorism and oppressive governments are evil, then your military must be a super-structure of evil! Pouring out of all of its crevices are the propped-up dictators of Venezuela and Chile, Indonesia and Vietnam, Iran and Iraq, and anywhere that a few Capitalists can make money by taking in another colony. In the words of Bill Hicks... "And don't tell me this is the military that protects our freedom - hey, ladies and gentlemen, there ain't no one out there who's a fucking threat to us. They don't exist. Oh - I'm talking now only of countries we don't arm first. All right, if you want to split hairs, you got a point." While government should fund Capitalists, it shouldn't fund anything else, apparently. "The expansion of government into the private sector is not only ineffective, it is immoral." -- Then you're immoral, because you're using private sector productions that are only available because of government expansion. You know, a little thing called the Internet, or that tiny component that makes electronics (and therefore computers) possible, the transistor. Neither of these received any private funding, but were developed entirely by public research. "How immoral." And yet, you see no contradiction in using something that is immoral to show people how it is immoral. You're like the preacher who talks about the sin of sex, and then gets caught with a prostitute, with the excuse, "I was trying to convert her!" You, instead, got caught using public-owned methods of communication to tell people that publicly-owned methods of communication threaten Democracy. "Small government" and "Big military" essentially translate to "small government spending on the poor," "big government spending on the rich." Who else benefits from the exploitation of oppressed nations in Africa, Asia, and South America, except the corporate world's host of sweatshop overseers and slave masters? Thank you, I patiently await a response. These are very basic criticisms, and I trust you should have an answer to them. Thank you. Sincerely,
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