내 예언 틀린적 있나? [전광훈] 이미 대한민국은 내전 상태에 들어갔다. https://youtu.be/SiKDhEKteHw ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [컬럼] 선동의 귀재, 문재인이 “세월호가 광주다” 뜻은? 논객 청원 2021 04 17 선동의 귀재, 문재인이 <세월호가 광주다> 뜻은? <세월호가 광주라는 문재인은 학생들의 죽음을 정치적으로 악용하지 말라. 집단광기를 부추겨 국론을 분열시키면, 바로 그 집단광란의 제물로 비참하게 사라질 것.> 망국의 원흉 좌빨 무리들이 세월호 7주기인 16일 모두 모여서 세월호사건을 < 학생들아, 미안하고 고맙다> 라고 말하면서 학생들에게 보은의 생각을 한 것 같다. 이런 상황을 볼 때, 박근혜 탄핵은 애국을 위한 거사가 아니라 정권 찬탈이 목적이라는 사실이 분명하게 드러났다. 국가가 그렇게 쉽게 반란범들에게 넘어가다니! 그런 상황이 지구상 어느 구석에서 일어날 수 있겠는가! 통탄해 마지않는다. 당시 박근혜(朴槿惠) 대통령도 강력한 구국 이념이 부족했음을 절감한다. 각종 사법기관, 정보기관, 안보기관의 정보는 활용하려고 있는 것이지 기록으로 남겨놓기 위하여 존재하다. 박근혜(朴槿惠)박근혜(朴槿惠) 가 반란의 위험이 있을 때 마지막 권한인 비상계엄을 왜 선포하지 않았는가? 김수남은 지금 어디에 있으며, 황교안은 지금 무엇을 생각하는가? 김무성과 유승민은 잘 먹고 잘 사는가? 어제 전국학부모단체연합 등 애국 시민단체들이 '세월호 사건'을 교육현장에서 정치적으로 악용하지 말라고 규탄했다. 현재 전국 교육감들은 세월호 교육감이라고 말해도 지나치지 않다. 이 단체들은 특히 조희연 서울시교육감이 세월호 사건을 "자신의 정치적 선전장으로 활용해왔다"고 비난했다. 아이들의 죽음을 입신먕명의 도구나 사리사욕의 방편으로 이용해서는 안 되는 것을 모르는가? 세월호참사는 아무리 추적해보아도 사건이 터질만한 동기가 없어, 인위적인 음모가 작동했음을 부정할 수가 없다. 다음을 보면 누구나 공감하게 될 것이다 ❶ 너무 수상한 세월호침몰 참사 15개 의문점 1. 그날따라 있을 수 없는 엄청난 과적을 왜 했을까? 2. 하필이면 알바 선장 이준석(68세)이 왜 승선했나? 3. 세월호가 하필 김일성 태양절 다음 날 왜 침몰했을까? 4. 통진당당원(?) 초보 3등 항해사가 왜 급변침을 했을까? 5. 교육청의 분산 승선 지시를 전교조 교사가 왜 거부했을까? 6. 진도 해경은 40분간이나 침몰되고 있는 세월호 주위를 왜 맴돌기만 했을까? 7. 진도 해경은 구조가 가능한 40분간 인근 선박의 접근을 왜 차단했을까? 8. 해경 팀장이 탈출 명령을 잊었다는 진술이 말이 되는가? 9. 최초 보고받은 김장수 안보수석이 내린 탈출 명령을 왜 거부했을까? 10. 정규직 선원들 속에서 자다 깬 알바 선장 이준석이 독단으로 지휘하다가 도망을 친 사실이 가능한가? (실제 아무 지휘도 안 했는데 정규직 선원들은 왜 가만히 있었나?) 11. 정규직 선원들은 벙어리처럼 왜 아무 조치도 하지 않았을까? 12. 경기도교육청(이재정)이 학부형들에게 보낸 <전원 구출>이라는 문자메시지를 왜 보냈으며 문화일보 오보(이후 몇 시간의 오보 혼란)가 단순 실수인가? 13. 도망간 선장과 선원들이 왜 하필 전남 해경의 집에 가 숨어 대접을 받았을까? 14. 전남 해경은 미국과 일본의 구조헬기 지원을 왜 거부했을까? 15. 종북세력의 집요한 수사 방해와 말도 안 되는 괴담 공세로 연막을 쳐야만 했든 뒷사정과 배후는? ❷전국학부모단체연합의 주장 -세월호 사건, 특정 정치집단의 전유물로 변질돼 국론 분열을 주도한다. 우리 학부모와 시민들은 세월호의 정치적 이용을 반대한다. 우리 아이들을 세월호의 늪에서 건져내라. -세월호 사건은 많은 학생들의 목숨을 빼앗아간 끔찍한 해상 재난 사고로 우리 모두가 아픔을 공유해온 국민적 비극이다. 유독 노란색 상징으로 자리 잡아 특정 정치집단의 전유물처럼 변질돼 국론 분열과 정치적 갈등을 증폭시켰다. -세월호 사건은 2014년 4월16일 인천에서 제주도로 향하던 여객선 세월호가 전남 진도군 조도면 병풍도 인근 해상에서 침몰해 승객 299명이 사망하고, 5명이 실종된 사고다. 문재인은 그해 5월 15일 자신의 SNS에 "세월호는 또 하나의 광주입니다"라는 문구를 올려 세월호 사건을 5·18 광주사태에 빗대었다. -세월호 죽음 선전은 집단 광기를 부추기는 모습이다. 좌파 교육감이 선출된 지역은 노란색 리본, 노란색 플래카드, 노란색 조형물, 노란 마스크 등을 통해 끊임없이 <세월호 죽음>을 선전해 수많은 청소년의 마음을 우울하게 만들었다. 그들의 의식에 동참하지 않으면 큰 죄인이라도 되는 양 집단 광기를 부추기는 모습은 과거 나치즘과 파시즘, 중국과 북한의 공산주의를 연상시킨다. 이렇게 강요된 집단의식은 전체주의의 불길한 징조이기 때문에 절대 반대한다. -조희연 서울시교육감이 특히 세월호 사건을 정치적 야망의 실현 도구로 악용한 대표적 인물로 꼽았다. 조 교육감은 2016년 4월 총선을 앞두고 '세월호 주간'을 선포해 교육부와 마찰을 빚었다. 이는 전국교직원노동조합 소속 교사들이 교육부의 '독도교육주간' 방침을 어기고 '세월호 교과서'를 토대로 '계기수업'(정규수업 외에 특정 주제를 교육하는 수업)하는 것을 부채질하는 효과를 가져왔다. 조희연은 이후에도 '서울시교육청 세월호 대담회' '세월호 추모기간 운영' 등을 통해 끊임없이 세월호 사건을 자신의 정치적 선전장으로 활용했다. ❸김수진 전국학부모단체연합 상임대표 -밝고 건강하게 자라나야할 청소년들을 계속 비극적 슬픔에 머물도록 반(反)생명적인 교육을 강요하는 것은 교육행정가의 올바른 자세가 아니다. 언제까지 우리 아이들을 '세월호 슬픔의 늪' '세월호 집단죄의식'에 빠뜨려 고통을 겪게 만들고 고문하려ㅎ하는가 ? 논객 청원 2021 04 17 (링크) : 전교조는 왜 인천항 안개 악천후에 세월호만 출항을 했는가? http://systemclub.co.kr/bbs/board.php?bo_table=13&wr_id=181563&page=227 (출처) : 단원고 전 교감 세월호 출항 반대 정황…유족 눈물 / 연합뉴스TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgMNWzUVaTE (월간조선TV] 발생 이틀 전에 '세월호 사고' 예견했던 '문재인의 측근' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mSqsktjN9I ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [사설] ‘막말·오만·폭주’ 장본인이 대표로, 아무것도 바뀌지 않을 정권 조선일보 2021.04.17 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AAjrxQ2OAU 상상 이상의 맹폭이 쏟아진 청문회 현장 : 증인들의 난타 (이인호 서울대 명예교수 외) “한국 정권은 김정은의 비위를 거스르는 행동을 하지 않기 위해 노력하고 있는 자들이다. 문 정권은 국민의 자유를 방해하는 새로운 법들을 만들고 있고, 이번에 미 의회의 첫 관심을 끈 대북전단금지법은 북한의 인권 상황에 개입하고자 하는 UN의 노력을 반대하고자 하는 문재인 정부의 지속적인 거절 노력중 하나에 불과하다. 그러한 노력은 김정은의 뜻에 반하는 일은 하지 않겠다는 문 정부의 의지가 반영된 자이다." "박근혜 탄핵 이후 일어난 일은 단순한 정권 교체 사건이 아니다. 촛불혁명이라 는 것은 세밀하게 잘 짜여진 각본과 흥분한 미디어에 의해 주동됐다. 부패척결, 경제정의, 북한과의 평화, 기회의 평등 같은 매력적 구호를 내걸어 급진적인 전복이 일어났기 때문에 그 뒤에 숨겨진 사악한 기획을 의식하는 사람은 거의 없었다." "한국 집권 세력은 국회 의석의 3/5를 차지한 뒤 대담해져서 진정한 이념적 색채를 드러내고 있고, 비판의 빌미를 주지 않기 위해 코로나를 이용한다. 가장 중요한 것은 현재의 모습이 아니라 국가의 방향이며 이미 많은 가지가 파괴되었다. 나는 진심으로 큰일이 날 것 같다.” 결론 : 문재앙 정권 좆 됐고, 미국의 문재앙 정권 교체각이다. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [서민교수 비아냥] "인재 알아보는 데 도가 튼 文...백신구매 서두를 필요 없다던 기모란을 청와대 방역기획관으로 발탁" --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NPR For the first time, U.S. and Chinese scientists have created embryos that are part human, part monkey, in an effort to find new ways to produce organs for transplants. But some ethicists worry about how such research could go wrong. 미국과 중국의 과학자들이 장기 이식용 기관을 만들기 위해 반 인간, 반 원숭이 태아를 만들었다. --->넘지 말아야 할 경계가 있는데, 인간들이 그런 경계를 넘고 있다. 이런 실험은 나중에 큰 화를 불러 올 수 있다. 우한 폐렴도 하지 말아야 할 실험을 하다, 연구용 바이러스가 유출된 사례였다. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 두려움의 정치경제학 대중에 대한 정부의 권위는 근본적으로 두려움에 근거한다. 지배자들은 대개 정복에 의해 만들어졌고, 우월한 무력을 지닌 지배자들은 후에 이집트의 파라오처럼 자신들을 신 또는 신의 자식으로 주장함으로써 내세의 권력까지도 거머쥐었다. The Political Economy of Fear Robert Higgs [S]ince love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved. — Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513 All animals experience fear—human beings, perhaps, most of all. Any animal incapable of fear would have been hard pressed to survive, regardless of its size, speed, or other attributes. Fear alerts us to dangers that threaten our well-being and sometimes our very lives. Sensing fear, we respond by running away, by hiding, or by preparing to ward off the danger. To disregard fear is to place ourselves in possibly mortal jeopardy. Even the man who acts heroically on the battlefield, if he is honest, admits that he is scared. To tell people not to be afraid is to give them advice that they cannot take. Our evolved physiological makeup disposes us to fear all sorts of actual and potential threats, even those that exist only in our imagination. The people who have the effrontery to rule us, who call themselves our government, understand this basic fact of human nature. They exploit it, and they cultivate it. Whether they compose a warfare state or a welfare state, they depend on it to secure popular submission, compliance with official dictates, and, on some occasions, affirmative cooperation with the state's enterprises and adventures. Without popular fear, no government could endure more than twenty-four hours. David Hume taught that all government rests on public opinion, but that opinion, I maintain, is not the bedrock of government. Public opinion itself rests on something deeper: fear.1 Hume recognizes that the opinions that support government receive their force from "other principles," among which he includes fear, but he judges these other principles to be "the secondary, not the original principles of government" ([1777] 1987, 34). He writes: "No man would have any reason to fear the fury of a tyrant, if he had no authority over any but from fear" (ibid., emphasis in original). We may grant Hume's statement yet maintain that the government's authority over the great mass of its subjects rests fundamentally on fear. Every ideology that endows government with legitimacy requires and is infused by some kind(s) of fear. This fear need not be fear of the government itself and indeed may be fear of the danger from which the tyrant purports to protect the people. The Natural History of Fear Thousands of years ago, when the first governments were fastening themselves on people, they relied primarily on warfare and conquest. As Henry Hazlitt ([1976] 1994) observes, There may have been somewhere, as a few eighteenth-century philosophers dreamed, a group of peaceful men who got together one evening after work and drew up a Social Contract to form the state. But nobody has been able to find an actual record of it. Practically all the governments whose origins are historically established were the result of conquest—of one tribe by another, one city by another, one people by another. Of course there have been constitutional conventions, but they merely changed the working rules of governments already in being. Losers who were not slain in the conquest itself had to endure the consequent rape and pillage and in the longer term to acquiesce in the continuing payment of tribute to the insistent rulers—the stationary bandits, as Mancur Olson (2000, 6–9) aptly calls them. Subjugated people, for good reason, feared for their lives. Offered the choice of losing their wealth or losing their lives, they tended to choose the sacrifice of their wealth. Hence arose taxation, variously rendered in goods, services, or money (Nock [1935] 1973, 19–22; Nock relies on and credits the pioneering historical research of Ludwig Gumplowicz and Franz Oppenheimer). Conquered people, however, naturally resent their imposed government and the taxation and other insults that it foists on them. Such resentful people easily become restive; should a promising opportunity to throw off the oppressor's dominion present itself, they may seize it. Even if they mount no rebellion or overt resistance, however, they quietly strive to avoid their rulers' exactions and to sabotage their rulers' apparatus of government. As Machiavelli observes, the conqueror "who does not manage this matter well, will soon lose whatever he has gained, and while he retains it will find in it endless troubles and annoyances" ([1513] 1992, 5). For the stationary bandits, force alone proves a very costly resource for keeping people in the mood to generate a substantial, steady stream of tribute. Sooner or later, therefore, every government augments the power of its sword with the power of its priesthood, forging an iron union of throne and altar. In olden times, not uncommonly, the rulers were themselves declared to be gods—the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt made this claim for many centuries. Now the subjects can be brought to fear not only the ruler's superior force, but also his supernatural powers. Moreover, if people believe in an afterlife, where the pain and sorrows of this life may be sloughed off, the priests hold a privileged position in prescribing the sort of behavior in the here and now that best serves one's interest in securing a blessed situation in the life to come. Referring to the Catholic Church of his own day, Machiavelli takes note of "the spiritual power which of itself confers so mighty an authority" ([1513] 1992, 7), and he heaps praise on Ferdinand of Aragon, who, "always covering himself with the cloak of religion, ... had recourse to what may be called pious cruelty" (59, emphasis in original).2 One naturally wonders whether President George W. Bush has taken a page from Ferdinand's book (see, in particular, Higgs 2003a and, for additional aspects, Higgs 2005b). Naturally, the warriors and the priests, if not one and the same, almost invariably come to be cooperating parties in the apparatus of rule. In medieval Europe, for example, a baron's younger brother might look forward to becoming a bishop. Thus, the warrior element of government puts the people in fear for their lives, and the priestly element puts them in fear for their eternal souls. These two fears compose a powerful compound—sufficient to prop up governments everywhere on earth for several millennia. Over the ages, governments refined their appeals to popular fears, fostering an ideology that emphasizes the people's vulnerability to a variety of internal and external dangers from which the governors—of all people!—are said to be their protectors. Government, it is claimed, protects the populace from external attackers and from internal disorder, both of which are portrayed as ever-present threats. Sometimes the government, as if seeking to fortify the mythology with grains of truth, does protect people in this fashion—even the shepherd protects his sheep, but he does so to serve his own interest, not theirs, and when the time comes, he will shear or slaughter them as his interest dictates.3 Olson (2000, 9–10) describes in simple terms why the stationary bandit may find it in his interest to invest in public goods (the best examples of which are defense of the realm and "law and order") that enhance his subjects' productivity. In brief, the ruler does so when the present value of the expected additional tax revenue he will be able to collect from a more productive population exceeds the current cost of the investment that renders the people more productive. See also the interpretation advanced by Bates (2001, 56–69, 102), who argues that in western Europe the kings entered into deals with the merchants and burghers, trading mercantilist privileges and "liberties" for tax revenue, in order to dominate the chronically warring rural dynasties and thereby to pacify the countryside. Unfortunately, as Bates recognizes, the kings sought this enlarged revenue for the purpose of conducting ever-more-costly wars against other kings and against domestic opponents. Thus, their "pacification" schemes, for the most part, served the purpose of funding their fighting, leaving the net effect on overall societal well-being very much in question. Both Olson and Bates argue along lines similar to those developed by Douglass C. North in a series of books published over the past four decades; see especially North and Thomas 1973, and North 1981 and 1990. When the government fails to protect the people as promised, it always has a good excuse, often blaming some element of the population--scapegoats such as traders, money lenders, and unpopular ethnic or religious minorities. "[N]o prince," Machiavelli assures us, "was ever at a loss for plausible reasons to cloak a breach of faith" ([1513] 1992, 46). The religious grounds for submission to the ruler-gods gradually transmogrified into notions of nationalism and popular duty, culminating eventually in the curious idea that under a democratic system of government, the people themselves are the government, and hence whatever it requires them to do, they are really doing for themselves—as Woodrow Wilson had the cheek to declare when he proclaimed military conscription backed by severe criminal sanctions in 1917, "it is in no sense a conscription of the unwilling: it is, rather, selection from a nation which has volunteered in mass" (qtd. in Palmer 1931, 216–17). Not long after the democratic dogma had gained a firm foothold, organized coalitions emerged from the mass electorate and joined the elites in looting the public treasury, and, as a consequence, in the late nineteenth century the so-called welfare state began to take shape. From that time forward, people were told that the government can and should protect them from all sorts of workaday threats to their lives, livelihoods, and overall well-being—threats of destitution, hunger, disability, unemployment, illness, lack of income in old age, germs in the water, toxins in the food, and insults to their race, sex, ancestry, creed, and so forth. Nearly everything that the people feared, the government then stood poised to ward off. Thus did the welfare state anchor its rationale in the solid rock of fear. Governments, having exploited popular fears of violence so successfully from time immemorial (promising "national security"), had no difficulty in cementing these new stones (promising "social security") into their foundations of rule. The Political Economy of Fear Fear, like every other "productive" resource, is subject to the laws of production. Thus, it cannot escape the law of diminishing marginal productivity: as successive doses of fear-mongering are added to the government's "production" process, the incremental public clamor for governmental protection declines. The first time the government cries wolf, the public is frightened; the second time, less so; the third time, still less so. If the government plays the fear card too much, it overloads the public's sensibilities, and eventually people discount almost entirely the government's attempts to frighten them further. Having been warned in the 1970s about catastrophic global cooling (see, for example, The Cooling World 1975), then, soon afterward, about catastrophic global warming, the populace may grow weary of heeding the government's warnings about the dire consequences of alleged global climate changes—dire unless, of course, the government takes stringent measures to bludgeon the people into doing what "must" be done to avert the predicted disaster. Recently the former Homeland Security czar Tom Ridge revealed that other government officials had overruled him when he wanted to refrain from raising the color-coded threat level to orange, or "high" risk of terrorist attack, in response to highly unlikely threats. "You have to use that tool of communication very sparingly," Ridge astutely remarked (qtd. by Hall 2005). Fear is a depreciating asset. As Machiavelli observes, "the temper of the multitude is fickle, and ... while it is easy to persuade them of a thing, it is hard to fix them in that persuasion" ([1513 1992, 14). Unless the foretold threat eventuates, the people come to doubt its substance. The government must make up for the depreciation by investing in the maintenance, modernization, and replacement of its stock of fear capital. For example, during the Cold War, the general sense of fear of the Soviets tended to dissipate unless restored by periodic crises, many of which took the form of officially announced or leaked "gaps" between U.S. and Soviet military capabilities: troop-strength gap, bomber gap, missile gap, antimissile gap, first-strike-missile gap, defense-spending gap, thermonuclear-throw-weight gap, and so forth (Higgs 1994, 301–02).4 One of the most memorable and telling lines in the classic Cold War film Dr. Strangelove occurs as the president and his military bigwigs, facing unavoidable nuclear devastation of the earth, devise a plan to shelter a remnant of Americans for thousands of years in deep mine shafts, and General "Buck" Turgidson, still obsessed with a possible Russian advantage, declares: "Mr. President, we must not allow a mine-shaft gap!" Lately, a succession of official warnings about possible forms of terrorist attack on the homeland has served the same purpose: keeping the people "vigilant," which is to say, willing to pour enormous amounts of their money into the government's bottomless budgetary pits of "defense" and "homeland security" (Higgs 2003b). This same factor helps to explain the drumbeat of fears pounded out by the mass media: besides serving their own interests in capturing an audience, they buy insurance against government punishment by playing along with whatever program of fear-mongering the government is conducting currently. Anyone who watches, say, CNN's Headline News programs can attest that a day seldom passes without some new announcement of a previously unsuspected Terrible Threat—I call it the danger du jour. By keeping the population in a state of artificially heightened apprehension, the government-cum-media prepares the ground for planting specific measures of taxation, regulation, surveillance, reporting, and other invasions of the people's wealth, privacy, and freedoms. Left alone for a while, relieved of this ceaseless bombardment of warnings, people would soon come to understand that hardly any of the announced threats has any substance and that they can manage their own affairs quite well without the security-related regimentation and tax-extortion the government seeks to justify. Large parts of the government and the "private" sector participate in the production and distribution of fear. (Beware: many of the people in the ostensibly private sector are in reality some sort of mercenary living ultimately at taxpayer expense. True government employment is much greater than officially reported [Light 1999; Higgs 2005a] .) Defense contractors, of course, have long devoted themselves to stoking fears of enemies big and small around the globe who allegedly seek to crush our way of life at the earliest opportunity. Boeing's often-shown TV spots, for example, assure us that the company is contributing mightily to protecting "our freedom." If you believe that, I have a shiny hunk of useless Cold War hardware to sell you. The news and entertainment media enthusiastically jump on the bandwagon of foreign-menace alarmism—anything to get the public's attention. Consultants of every size and shape clamber onboard, too, facilitating the distribution of billions of dollars to politically favored suppliers of phoney-baloney "studies" that give rise to thick reports, the bulk of which is nothing but worthless filler restating the problem and speculating about how one might conceivably go about discovering workable solutions. All such reports agree, however, that a crisis looms and that more such studies must be made in preparation for dealing with it. Hence a kind of Say's Law of the political economy of crisis: supply (of government-funded studies) creates its own demand (for government-funded studies). Truth be known, governments commission studies when they are content with the status quo but desire to write hefty checks to political favorites, cronies, and old associates who now purport to be "consultants." At the same time, in this way, the government demonstrates to the public that it is "doing something" to avert impending crisis X. At every point, opportunists latch onto existing fears and strive to invent new ones to feather their own nests. Thus, public-school teachers and administrators agree that the nation faces an "education crisis." Police departments and temperance crusaders insist that the nation faces a generalized "drug crisis" or at times a specific drug crisis, such as "an epidemic of crack cocaine use." Public-health interests foster fears of "epidemics" that in reality consist not of the spread of contagious pathogens but of the lack of personal control and self-responsibility, such as the "epidemic of obesity" or the "epidemic of juvenile homicides." By means of this tactic, a host of personal peccadilloes has been medicalized and consigned to the "therapeutic state" (Nolan 1998, Szasz 2001, Higgs 1999). In this way, people's fears that their children may become drug addicts or gun down a classmate become grist for the government's mill—a mill that may grind slowly, but at least it does so at immense expense, with each dollar falling into some fortunate recipient's pocket (a psychiatrist, a social worker, a public-health nurse, a drug-court judge; the list is almost endless). In this way and countless others, private parties become complicit in sustaining a vast government apparatus fueled by fear. Fear Works Best in Wartime Even absolute monarchs can get bored. The exercise of great power may become tedious and burdensome—underlings are always disturbing your serenity with questions about details; victims are always appealing for clemency, pardons, or exemptions from your rules. In wartime, however, rulers come alive. Nothing equals war as an opportunity for greatness and public acclaim, as all such leaders understand (Higgs 1997). Condemned to spend their time in high office during peacetime, they are necessarily condemned to go down in history as mediocrities at best. Upon the outbreak of war, however, the exhilaration of the hour spreads through the entire governing apparatus. Army officers who had languished for years at the rank of captain may now anticipate becoming colonels. Bureau heads who had supervised a hundred subordinates with a budget of $1 million may look forward to overseeing a thousand with a budget of $20 million. Powerful new control agencies must be created and staffed. New facilities must be built, furnished, and operated. Politicians who had found themselves frozen in partisan gridlock can now expect that the torrent of money gushing from the public treasury will grease the wheels for putting together humongous legislative deals undreamt of in the past. Everywhere the government turns its gaze, the scene is flush with energy, power, and money. For those whose hands direct the machinery of a government at war, life has never been better. Small wonder that John T. Flynn (1948), in writing about the teeming bureaucrats during World War II, titled his chapter "The Happiest Years of Their Lives": Even before the war, the country had become a bureaucrat's paradise. But with the launching of the war effort the bureaus proliferated and the bureaucrats swarmed over the land like a plague of locusts. ... The place [Washington, D.C.] swarmed with little professors fresh from their $2,500-a-year jobs now stimulated by five, six and seven-thousand-dollar salaries and whole big chunks of the American economy resting in their laps. (310, 315) Sudden bureaucratic dilation on such a scale can happen only when the nation goes to war and the public relaxes its resistance to the government's exactions. Legislators know that they can now get away with taxing people at hugely elevated rates, rationing goods, allocating raw materials, transportation services, and credit, authorizing gargantuan borrowing, drafting men, and generally exercising vastly more power than they exercised before the war. Although people may groan and complain about the specific actions the bureaucrats take in implementing the wartime mobilization, few dare to resist overtly or even to criticize publicly the overall mobilization or the government's entry into the war—by doing so they would expose themselves not only to legal and extralegal government retribution but also to the rebuke and ostracism of their friends, neighbors, and business associates. As the conversation stopper went during World War II, "Don't you know there's a war on?" (Lingeman 1970). Because during wartime the public fears for the nation's welfare, perhaps even for its very survival, people surrender wealth, privacy, and liberties to the government far more readily than they otherwise would. Government and its private contractors therefore have a field day. Opportunists galore join the party, each claiming to be performing some "essential war service," no matter how remote their affairs may be from contributing directly to the military program. Using popular fear to justify its predations, the government lays claim to great expanses of the economy and the society. Government taxation, borrowing, expenditure, and direct controls dilate, while individual rights shrivel into insignificance. Of what importance is one little person when the entire nation is in peril? Finally, of course, every war ends, but each leaves legacies that persist, sometimes permanently. In the United States, the War between the States and both world wars left a multitude of such legacies (Hummel 1996, Higgs 1987, 2004). Likewise, as Corey Robin (2004, 25) writes, "one day, the war on terrorism will come to an end. All wars do. And when it does, we will find ourselves still living in fear: not of terrorism or radical Islam, but of the domestic rulers that fear has left behind." Among other things, we will find that "various security agencies operating in the interest of national security have leveraged their coercive power in ways that target dissenters posing no conceivable threat of terrorism" (189). Not by accident, "the FBI has targeted the antiwar movement in the United States for especially close scrutiny" (189). Such targeting is scarcely a surprise, because war is, in Randolph Bourne's classic phrase, "the health of the state," and the FBI is a core agency in protecting and enhancing the U.S. government's health. Over the years, the FBI has also done much to promote fear among the American populace, most notoriously perhaps in its COINTELPRO operations during the 1960s, but in plenty of others ways, too (Linfield 1990, 59–60, 71, 99–102, 123–28, 134–39). Nor has it worked alone in these endeavors. From top to bottom, the government wants us to be afraid, needs us to be afraid, invests greatly in making us afraid. Conclusion Were we ever to stop being afraid of the government itself and to cast off the phoney fears it has fostered, the government would shrivel and die, and the host would disappear for the tens of millions of parasites in the United States—not to speak of the vast number of others in the rest of the world--who now feed directly and indirectly off the public's wealth and energies. On that glorious day, everyone who had been living at public expense would have to get an honest job, and the rest of us, recognizing government as the false god it has always been, could set about assuaging our remaining fears in more productive and morally defensible ways. [This article was originally published May 16, 2005.] 1.Hume recognizes that the opinions that support government receive their force from "other principles," among which he includes fear, but he judges these other principles to be "the secondary, not the original principles of government" ([1777] 1987, 34). He writes: "No man would have any reason to fear the fury of a tyrant, if he had no authority over any but from fear" (ibid., emphasis in original). We may grant Hume's statement yet maintain that the government's authority over the great mass of its subjects rests fundamentally on fear. Every ideology that endows government with legitimacy requires and is infused by some kind(s) of fear. This fear need not be fear of the government itself and indeed may be fear of the danger from which the tyrant purports to protect the people. 2.One naturally wonders whether President George W. Bush has taken a page from Ferdinand's book (see, in particular, Higgs 2003a and, for additional aspects, Higgs 2005b). 3.Olson (2000, 9–10) describes in simple terms why the stationary bandit may find it in his interest to invest in public goods (the best examples of which are defense of the realm and "law and order") that enhance his subjects' productivity. In brief, the ruler does so when the present value of the expected additional tax revenue he will be able to collect from a more productive population exceeds the current cost of the investment that renders the people more productive. See also the interpretation advanced by Bates (2001, 56–69, 102), who argues that in western Europe the kings entered into deals with the merchants and burghers, trading mercantilist privileges and "liberties" for tax revenue, in order to dominate the chronically warring rural dynasties and thereby to pacify the countryside. Unfortunately, as Bates recognizes, the kings sought this enlarged revenue for the purpose of conducting ever-more-costly wars against other kings and against domestic opponents. Thus, their "pacification" schemes, for the most part, served the purpose of funding their fighting, leaving the net effect on overall societal well-being very much in question. Both Olson and Bates argue along lines similar to those developed by Douglass C. North in a series of books published over the past four decades; see especially North and Thomas 1973, and North 1981 and 1990. 4.One of the most memorable and telling lines in the classic Cold War film Dr. Strangelove occurs as the president and his military bigwigs, facing unavoidable nuclear devastation of the earth, devise a plan to shelter a remnant of Americans for thousands of years in deep mine shafts, and General "Buck" Turgidson, still obsessed with a possible Russian advantage, declares: "Mr. President, we must not allow a mine-shaft gap!" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------