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The Terror Threat

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

June 6, 1996

Whip yourself into a frenzy. Dig a shelter out back. Fly into a panic and be extremely scared. It's time for special alarms, drills, and teach-ins. Most of all, pay your taxes with diligence and joy so the government can protect you.

The big news? The feds say terrorists are loose on the land. And you could be their next victim. The only way to safety is to surrender your money, your freedom, and your guns to the bureaucrats, and quake with fear unless the FBI is near. At least that's what we'd do if we believed everything we're being told. Ever since the Oklahoma bombing, we've heard that the threat of domestic terrorism means the government needs vast new power and money. Every chance they get, officials from virtually every federal police agency--the FBI, FEMA, Justice, the CIA--tell the press that a bomb could blow up your neighborhood any minute. Look out!

And that's only the beginning. Why, do you realize that someone could use chemical weapons against your hometown? Even more frightening is the supposed prospect of biological warfare. If something isn't done right away, we'll be infected with a deadly disease or writhe on the floor, dying from asphyxiation. "The likelihood that state or nonstate actors," says head spook John M. Deutch in his best bureaucratise, "will attempt to use weapons of mass destruction against U.S. interests is growing." But, never fear, the feds are here to protect you, just as they protected so many in the past.

Last November, for example, FEMA hosted a creepy gathering in Mount Weather, Virginia, attended by the CIA, the FBI, and various other spies and paranoids prominent in the D.C. political racket. They met in a huge bomb shelter built at the height of the Cold War to maintain life and luxury for government officials as the civilian population suffered nuclear annihilation.

At this meeting, according to the Wall Street Journal, the geniuses in government met to fret about how little money is being spent to prepare for terrorist attacks. But "some serious planning has begun," says the Journal. Oh to be a fly on that wall. Who can doubt that these people salivate over the prospect of martial law, suspending the Constitution, and shoving the population around like cattle?

What will the ruling regime do to maintain its power in the post-Cold War environment? Well, there is the terrorism bill passed by Congress and signed by the president. It bolstered federal police power with new funds and responsibilities, and restricted the rights of American citizens.

Funny that the framers of the Constitution never anticipated the need for an internal police force to keep the people in check and protected. If they had, they might have given up those silly ideas about liberty and self government.

Going on seven years now, the ruling elites have confronted a serious problem. With no credible foreign threat on the horizon, the central state seems to have lost its primary reason for existence. The average fellow can't understand what the apparatus in Washington does with 1.7 trillion bucks every year.

A government this big does its best to avoid peace at home and abroad. As it knows from experience, these are the times that try men's pocketbooks. People demand lower taxes, shrinking government power, and less government arrogance.

For instance: during the first World War, the government practically established martial law at home, planned most industrial and agricultural production, revved up the military machine to full capacity, and squelched free speech and a free press. It was a sad chapter, but one that came to a quick close when the war was over.

For the American people demanded an immediate end to the violation of their rights and the high taxation of their property. The military shrunk in size, and the war planning boards were shut down, not to be reopened until the New Deal (under the auspices of curing an economic crisis, itself brought on by the Federal Reserve).

The same thing might have happened after the Second World War, which also saw an explosion in government power over the economy. But just as people were demanding a return to normalcy, the Cold War intervened, and thankfully so for folks in Washington. The communists were coming, and taxpayers could be relied up on to stay frightened and relatively docile for another forty years.

Fast forward to 1989, and the end of the ramshackle Soviet empire. With no substantial foreign policy threats on the horizon, peace and freedom threatened to break out yet again. A series of botched military exercises overseas has made the public ever more skeptical of the ruling regime.

Terrorism is as good an excuse as any for keeping people alarmed about some enemy, and to deflect attention away from the real threat to their liberties, which is the government itself. Indeed, for several years, polls have recorded record-level dissatisfaction with government.

Washington is none too happy that nobody seems to care about the supposed terrorist threat. Complains Senator Dick Lugar, "there is almost a sense of denial out there in the public." Indeed a recent poll--which underscores that the public is keeping its wits-- reveals that only a few Americans are "seriously worried" about terrorism.

The government is trying to fix that. Some militia guys were recently arrested in Georgia, and the anonymous federal informant who had undoubtedly egged them on told the press they planning to bomb the Olympics. Not true, said the on-the-record briefing that followed, but the essential message had already been planted in the minds of many.

And last year, the feds called the Anaheim, California, fire department to say that Disneyland would be sprayed with poison gas in three hours. Whoops, they said later, it's not true. But again, the essential message had been planted.

From the beginning of time, governments have used the prospect of attack, real and phony baloney, to inspire citizen compliance. Will it work this time?

I have my doubts. A government that can't deliver the mail surely can't stop poison gas attacks. And the American people have become stingy with their rights and liberties, as they should be and will ever be, now that government has become the "fearful master" George Washington warned us against.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.

 
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