Overall, I guess you could say that 1984 felt like two different books. The first half felt like simply a parabel of future society. But, the second half takes you deep into the evil that absolute power can produce in the mind of man. Whereas Ayn Rand’s Anthem was similar in it’s vision of where government would go in the future if it remained un-checked, 1984 was a much darker book. Anthem only gives you vague impressions of the people behind the curtain of government. 1984, in contrast, introduces you to them in their fullness.

Throughout the first two-thirds of the book, I kept running into phrases and whole sections that sounded like they perfectly described what we see in our own government today. It was, at times, uncanny. Here’s some that stood out to me about war:

“…in a physical sense war involves very small numbers of people, mostly highly-trained specialists, and causes comparatively few casualties. The fighting, when there is any, takes place on the vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at…”

–George Orwell, 1984

“The primary aim of modern warfare .. is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.”

–George Orwell, 1984

“The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed.”

–George Orwell, 1984

“War, it will be seen, accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the Party itself. Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war.”

–George Orwell, 1984

“It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.”

–George Orwell, 1984

“…In past ages, a war, almost by definition, was something that sooner or later came to an end, usually in unmistakable victory or defeat… But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded. As we have seen, researches that could be called scientific are still carried out for the purposes of war, but they are essentially a kind of daydreaming, and their failure to show results is not important. Efficiency, even military efficiency, is no longer needed. Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the Thought Police.”

–George Orwell, 1984

“The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair… The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word ‘war’, therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist.”

–George Orwell, 1984

To say that this book is highly recommended is an understatement. It is a must read. But, make sure you carve out some time, because once you start reading it, you probably won’t put it down until you’re finished.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WVtpao0KSM

G.K. Chesterton

His comments are very, very interesting. Especially considering the timing of it being written in 1922. This was less than 60 years removed from the Civil War. That would be like someone writing about Korea and Vietnam right now. The memories and direct consequences of those wars are still very real to us today. Chesterton was born in 1874, only four years after Virginia itself was re-admitted to the Union (1870).

Anyway, I cherry picked what I thought were the most interesting:

On religious liberty at America’s founding:

Now there is nothing in this to diminish any dignity that belongs to any real virtues and virilities in the Pilgrim Fathers; on the contrary, it is rather to the credit of their consistency and conviction. But there is no doubt that the note of their whole experiment in New England was intolerance, and even inquisition. And there is no doubt that New England was then only the newest and not the oldest of these colonial experiments. At least two Cavaliers had been in the field before any Puritans. And they had carried with them much more of the atmosphere and nature of the normal Englishman than any Puritan could possibly carry. They had established it especially in Virginia, which had been founded by a great Elizabethan and named after the great Elizabeth. Before there was any New England in the North, there was something very like Old England in the South. Relatively speaking, there is still.

–G.K. Chesterton (1922)

On a Northern vs. Southern birth view of America’s founding:

Long ago I wrote a protest in which I asked why Englishmen had forgotten the great state of Virginia, the first in foundation and long the first in leadership; and why a few crabbed Nonconformists should have the right to erase a record that begins with Raleigh and ends with Lee, and incidentally includes Washington. The great state of Virginia was the backbone of America until it was broken in the Civil War. From Virginia came the first great Presidents and most of the Fathers of the Republic. Its adherence to the Southern side in the war made it a great war, and for a long time a doubtful war. And in the leader of the Southern armies it produced what is perhaps the one modern figure that may come to shine like St. Louis in the lost battle, or Hector dying before holy Troy.

–G.K. Chesterton (1922)

On the analogy of Ireland as the American South:

England once sympathised with the South. The South still sympathises with England. It would seem that the South, or some elements in the South, had rather the advantage of us in political firmness and fidelity; but it does not follow that that fidelity will stand every shock. And at this moment, and in this matter, of all things in the world, our political propagandists must try to bolster British Imperialism up, by kicking Southern Secession when it is down. The English politicians eagerly point out that we shall be justified in crushing Ireland exactly as Sumner and Stevens crushed the most English part of America. It does not seem to occur to them that this comparison between the Unionist triumph in America and a Unionist triumph in Britain is rather hard upon our particular sympathisers, who did not triumph. When England exults in Lincoln’s victory over his foes, she is exulting in his victory over her own friends.

–G.K. Chesterton (1922)

Observation on the Southern view of the War’s court history:

I can answer for it, at least, that there are some people in the South who will not be pleased at being swept into the rubbish heap of history as rebels and ruffians; and who will not, I regret to say, by any means enjoy even being classed with Fenians and Sinn Feiners.

–G.K. Chesterton (1922)

On Southern slavery vs. Northern “slavery”:

Strange to say, it is not certain that a lost cause was never worth winning; and it would be easy to argue that the world lost very much indeed when that particular cause was lost. These are not days in which it is exactly obvious that an agricultural society was more dangerous than an industrial one. And even Southern slavery had this one moral merit, that it was decadent; it has this one historic advantage, that it is dead. The Northern slavery, industrial slavery, or what is called wage slavery, is not decaying but increasing; and the end of it is not yet. But in any case, it would be well for us to realise that the reproach of resembling the Confederacy does not ring in all ears as an unanswerable condemnation.

–G.K. Chesterton (1922)

On ex-post-facto justification of Lincoln:

And if [Lincoln] has been proved right, he has been proved right by the fact that men in the South, as well as the North, do now feel a patriotism for that American nation. His wisdom, if it really was wisdom, was justified not by his opponents being conquered, but by their being converted.

–G.K. Chesterton (1922)

This last quote was particularly interesting. It is the quote that Nock was referring to in his book. The crushing of secession was ultimately written down in history as the “right” thing to do, only because, ultimately, most Southerners accepted it as simply immutable. That’s what reconstruction was all about. Reconstruction was to be the re-programming of the Southern mind. It worked, and now Lincoln is seen as great. If, as Chesterton alludes to with his Irish example, the Southern spirit had continued to buck against centralized government and the resistance had continued into the twentieth century, Lincoln would be viewed more like Cromwell than Bismark.

I understand your concerns regarding Sections 1031 and 1032 of the FY 2012 NDAA. As we continue to combat terrorism around the world and fight extremists on the battlefields in Afghanistan, it is important to have a judicial system in place to bring these suspects to justice. However, allowing detainees suspected of supporting terrorist activities to be tried in civilian courts in the United States jeopardizes the security of the city in which the trials would be held and would award detainees the same rights as U.S. citizens, hindering the government’s ability to bring these enemy combatants to justice. To mitigate these concerns, the Guantanamo Military Commission was created to give fair and meaningful trials to unlawful enemy combatants housed at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

–Scott Brown, via @siracusa (emphasis mine)

What is he saying in plain language? He’s saying, “The bill of rights inhibits justice.” Obviously, this is ridiculous. The rights we have been “guaranteed” (as much as words on paper can guarantee anything) by the constitution are there specifically to ensure that justice is brought about. The withdrawal of those rights guarantees only that raw power will prevail. It has nothing to do with justice.

But, remember what we’re talking about here. The whole controversy is about detaining Americans, captured on American soil. So, when Scott Brown says that trying these folks in court would “award detainees the same rights as U.S. citizens,” he is evidently saying that once you are detained, you are no longer a citizen. This is actually fairly consistent with the trajectory of criminal justice as a whole over time. Convicted felons can’t own guns or vote. They are treated like non-citizens. Now, Scott Brown just takes the next logical step and includes suspects in the non-citizen category also. Why wait for a conviction to strip citizenship when you can go ahead and do it just for being detained?

What a load of crap.

Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor?

If you don’t know the answer to this question, you really shouldn’t speak on the topic until you go and find out. So, to help you, let me paint some broad brush context to begin with:

1. In war, nobody is blameless.
2. Progressive era wars were about empires, not “freedom” as we would describe it now.
3. Countries the size of Japan don’t just attack other superpowers without, what they consider, really good reasons.
4. After war, the winner writes the history.

It’s these three concepts that drive my interest in WW2. The official history doesn’t seem to take any of those important ideas into account, and thus, it smacks of mythology. So, what’s the context of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor? Why would they make such a bold move when they were already deeply involved in wars within their own continent? Why attack the U.S. specifically? Why Hawaii? Well, let me give some more specific context about Japan in this era and suggest some good books:

• World War I was about competing European empires, and America sided with the British to help defend the economy of the British empire against competition from a rising German empire. A continuation of this story is what World War II was all about.
• Japan’s defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905) marked the Empire of Japan as a surprise threat to the English-American-Dutch empire. They were suddenly a serious player in Asia that could threaten European colony dominance.
• Japan has virtually no natural resources, so it relies on imports for all of it’s heavy industry and military. Thus, the U.S./Dutch oil embargo on Japan in July of 1941 was seen as a major provocation. It was a continuation of previous sanctions on heavy industry items.
• The U.S. knew their actions would provoke Japan into attacking(see the “8-action memo”) and cut off negotiations. The subsequent moving of the entire Pacific fleet to Hawaii provided a nice honeypot target for Japan to attack first and be seen as the aggressor.

This just barely scratches the surface of what was going on at the time. Here are some books you should read for more details:

• A Century of War by John Denson
• Day of Deceit by Robert Stinnet
• Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy by Percy Greaves
• The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable by George Victor
• No Clear And Present Danger: A Skeptical View Of The United States Entry Into World War II by Bruce Russett
• Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Its Aftermath by Harry Elmer Barnes

These books aren’t all written by modern revisionists. Some of them are old. And, two in particular were written by men who thought Roosevelt did the right thing by provoking the Pearl Harbor attack. What’s not in doubt is that he did provoke the attack. Calling the attack unprovoked is mythology, not history. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether the provocation was “worth it.” For my part, I think the killing of 3 million Japanese is non-justifiable.

The first premise of my argument is:

What I’m basically saying is that the most readily accessible information about war is predominantly some form of propaganda. And, by propaganda, I don’t mean some sort of tin foil hat kind of thing. I just mean that the narrative of the information we read and watch is guided in a certain direction so that a particular impression is given. This does not mean that there is a secret person, or group of people within government that exert this control over the narrative. Instead, there are groups of people at every level of government, business and media that benefit from misinformation about war. And, because of this, they are all coincidentally on the same page.

I think, that war information is propaganda, is obvious if we consider these facts about such information(news):

1. Fear causes people to be less interested in the veridicality of news and information they receive about war.
2. Self-interest at every level of government produces an organic filtering of news as it travels through the bureaucracy.
3. Civilians naturally flee active and potential war zones, leaving only the military and embedded journalists behind.
4. Battlefields, thus being controlled by militaries and absent of competing news interests will inherently provide only curated news.

These seem fairly obvious to me, and provide a context that we can use to judge history as we look at a few examples.

There are four phases of war propaganda that we can look at:

1. The Leadup to War
2. The Ground War
3. The Actors Involved
4. Post-war Justification

I’ll cover the first two here, and go over the next two in the next post of this series.

1. The Leadup to War (Justifying initiation of hostilities)

“The deception of whole peoples is not a matter which can be lightly regarded. A useful purpose can therefore be served in the interval of so-called peace by a warning which people can examine with dispassionate calm, that the authorities in each country do, and indeed must, resort to this practice in order, first, to justify themselves by depicting the enemy as an undiluted criminal;”

–Arthur Ponsonby, Falsehood in War-time: Propaganda Lies of the First World War

Proper justification for the initiation of a war is absolutely critical for gaining the popular support necessary in a democratic system. Therefore, the lead-up to war is where the narrative is the most controlled. There are many examples of this, and whole books have been written on the topic. So, for the sake of brevity, I’ll share three examples that I feel are the most easily explainable: the sinking of the Lusitania, the Gulf of Tonkin and the killing of babies in Kuwait. These three events cover a large time period and show that lead-up propaganda is nothing new and hasn’t really changed much.

• The Sinking of the Lusitania

  The latest studies of the Lusitania wreckage confirm that the ship was indeed carrying munitions. The Germans were right. Wilson had been warned by the Germans in advance that they considered the Lusitania to be a valid target since it was carrying war supplies and munitions to and from England. Wilson, instead, did not warn Americans sailing on the ship about the threat, and publicly denounced the German action in a series of three “notes.” The sinking of the Lusitania was widely used in war posters and recruiting propaganda to whip up sentiment for America joining the war.

  Churchill, for his part, in a confidential memo said, “It is most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hope especially of embroiling the U.S. with Germany. For our part we want the traffic – the more the better and if some of it gets into trouble, better still.”

• The Gulf of Tonkin Incident

  It’s widely known now, due to the recent de-classifying of material, that Lyndon Johnson lied about the gulf of Tonkin incident that justified, in American eyes, the full scale invasion of Vietnam by U.S. forces. The declassified NSA report that describes the lie says, “It is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night. [...] In truth, Hanoi’s navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2.” Robert Mcnamara corroborated this in the documentary The Fog of War.

• Killing of babies in Kuwait

  Like the Gulf of Tonkin event, it is now known that the George H.W. Bush administration lied about the killing of babies by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the lead-up to the first gulf war. It was widely reported, and repeated by Bush himself, that Iraqi Republican Guard troops, during the invasion, had gone into a Kuwaiti hospital, removed babies from incubators and left them to die. The eye witness(known at the time simply as Nayirah) that testified to the event was later found to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, and her story was coached by P.R. firm Hill & Knowlton. The story was false, but it was used readily by the Bush administration to justify the first gulf war. George W. Bush would later use a similar tactic (claiming Saddam was pursuing material for nuclear weapons) to justify the second gulf war.

2. The Ground War (Controlling the narrative)

As long as the lead-up propaganda was properly executed, the narrative of the ground war is fairly easy to control. Once the justification is made to actually start a war, many things will be forgiven in the mind of the public that might be inexcusable in another context. Let’s again look at three events from twentieth century wars.

• The Katyn Forest Massacre

  In 1938, Russia killed 22,000 polish intelligentsia and buried them in mass graves in Katyn Forest. Stalin blamed the Germans for the atrocity after the Nazi government discovered the mass graves at a later date. The massacre was used widely in Europe during the war to reinforce the view of Germany as evil. Of course, German officials would indeed turn out to commit atrocities, but the Katyn Forest massacre was propagandized in a way that covered up war crimes by an ally(Russia) and blamed it on the enemy(Germany). It’s also clear from now-public dispatches between Churchill and F.D.R. that they knew with fair certainty that Stalin was to blame for Katyn, but kept the matter quiet.

• Vietnam Body Count

  This is not an event, but rather an interesting observation that, even to this day, there is almost no awareness of the true death toll in a major U.S. war. Very few average citizens know how many Vietnamese were killed during that decade of active war(nearly two decades of U.S. involvement). The total number of deaths due directly to the war is over 1.2 million. But, the only numbers most Americans are aware of are U.S. troop casualty numbers. This protocol of not reporting on enemy death counts is still in place today, and for good reason. The numbers are shocking.

• Iraqi Body Count

  Again, like Vietnam, the lack of knowledge is what’s so fascinating. The best count we can get on the number of dead as a result of the Iraq war is from the government itself. The number of war dead, according to leaked documents, is placed at well over 100,000, with over 60% of those being civilians. This is a number that virtually no American citizen on the street is aware of because it’s never given to them in a mainstream news broadcast.

  Controlling the ground war narrative in this way is very easy. Since active war zones are under military control, it’s a simple matter to keep journalists out of those areas. And, the reporters who are “embedded” with various troop units have very little incentive to report information that would reflect negatively on military operations, since that would get them sent home.

I’ll examine the propaganda surrounding the personalities of war and the post-war justification period in the next post of this series. These take a long time to research, so it might be slow in coming. I have to get the facts straight however, so I’m taking my time.

I’ve blogged before on how central banks and fiat currency allow states to silently fund large scale war machines. This idea was reinforced to me today when I ran across this quote in the book War and the Rise of the State:

The wars with Spain depleted the French treasury and forced Francis I (1515-1547) to undertake administrative reforms. Yet his reforms never resolved the fiscal dilemma, since other contenders were also boosting their military spending. France was caught in a cycle of escalating violence, which its own efforts at taxation and military spending only served to propel upward; hence a fresh military crisis loomed every few years. This unremitting fiscal pressure forced centralizing reforms on a government whose inclinations were still largely medieval, but whose aspirations required the organizational accoutrements of a modern state.

Bruce Porter, War and the Rise of the State

This is what you would expect. The French were bankrupting themselves in the so-called “Italian Wars” that seemed to go on and on. War is very, very expensive. So, what did they do about it? They created a central bank:

Two reforms in particular arose from France’s involvement in the wars. In 1523, as it was mobilizing troops for a fresh campaign in Italy, Antoine Duprat, the king’s chancellor, established the first central treasury of the realm, the Trésor de l’Épargne or Treasury of Savings.

Bruce Porter, War and the Rise of the State

This is what states do when the burden of war becomes too high. They look for ways to hide the cost from the public, who would rapidly grow disenchanted with funding endless war if they had to do so up front at face value. This is precisely the reason that nobody younger than 50 knows what a “war bond” is. The direct connection between the citizen and the funding of war has been broken. Instead, the Federal Reserve now prints the money which ends up back in the treasury, through the purchasing of Treasury Bonds, where it can be used to pay for more war. The only effect we see is price inflation on a lag. Basically, our endless wars are funded with debt created and sold by the Fed, and paid for in the form of higher market prices.

This is why I call the Federal Reserve the “silent” killer of millions of people all over the world. It’s the great enabler of vice and moral hazard. The next time a drone strike takes out a wedding party in Afghanistan, you’ll know that the extra .03 cents per gallon you’ll pay for milk in a few weeks helped pay for it.

This really is the most comprehensive talk on the topic you’re going to find. Most people aren’t brave enough to take on this challenge(full anarcho-capitalism). And, it really helps that Murphy is such a great speaker. He makes what could be a boring topic very interesting. Here are the video and audio versions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0_Jd_MzGCw

1. It’s likely that we cannot trust the information being given to us about wars.
2. Most of us can’t make an informed decision about the history, or context that lead to conflict.
3. It’s likely that the motives of those leading the wars are not focused on human dignity and natural law.
4. The result of war is less freedom for the vanquished and the victor alike.
5. War requires the demonization of fellow image-bearers and a disregard of God’s common grace.
6. War kills the innocent.
7. War requires the aligning of the Christian with the collective at the expense of his duties to his fellow man.
8. War enlarges government, which necessarily results in less freedom.

I’ll go over these in future posts. Each one is requiring a load of research.