printDominating this week’s news headlines were two events: The hunt for Christopher Jordan Dorner and Barack Obama’s fourth State of the Union (SOTU) extravaganza. Both events involved forceful displays by what Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises called the Total State.
(Only the first event is the topic of this blog post. BHO’s SOTUs have been chronicled in “Man With The Reverse-Midas Touch” (2010), “Barry Soetoro Frankenstein: Spawn of the State” (2012), and in many blog posts. The president’s 2013 SOTU doesn’t rate a mention.)
Von Mises coined the term in his treatment of “totalitarian collectivist systems” exemplified by Nazism and fascism. The arc of totalitarianism, however, led Mises and others to the post-modern totalitarian state, which is characterized by a “soft fascism,” as Perry de Havilland of the British Samizdata blog calls the modern Managerial State.
But there was nothing soft about the way Local, state and federal assassins went in for the kill in the countrywide manhunt for Christopher Dorner. Dorner, who is presumed dead, was a former LAPD officer with a grudge against the Los Angeles Police Department.
According to the Wikipedia timeline, the Navy veteran blew his stack and went on the lam after a killing spree in Southern California. He is alleged to have shot three police officers, one fatally, in Riverside, and committed a double homicide on Sunday, in Irvine, murdering the daughter of a former Los Angeles Police Department captain (Randal Quan), also the lawyer who represented Dorner during his dispute with the LAPD. Ms. Quan’s fiance was also murdered.
I am not here saying that Christopher Dorner did not need killing. I’m asking you to jump a level of abstraction and look at the meta picture. The one killer syndicate (the state’s agents) converged on another lone assassin (Dorner), as the first group concentrated almost all the resources provided (at the point of a gun) by a third party (taxpayers), to eliminate the lone assassin with whom a personal score had to be settled.
The police force went in for the kill, Waco style. Dorner’s cabin did not combust, or “catch fire,” as media put it, but was incinerated with smoke devices and demolished wall by wall.
In the course of this demonstration of might, innocent bystanders were shot at, their vehicles rammed, and businesses entered and shuttered.
Does this sound like law enforcement, or like the actions of a private army run for the benefit of sectional interests?