In medieval times it was not out of the ordinary for the Catholic Church to allow selected persons exemptions from moral law. Higher ranking members were allowed “privileges” that would never be tolerated when done by ordinary church subjects. These exemptions were issued at the sole, unaccountable discretion of the Catholic Church, regardless of any conflict with the founder of the Church, Jesus Christ. A monopoly on morality being very lucrative, Catholicism even created the market for moral exemptions, or Indulgences, for sins.
Today, we at the government have taken your sense of patriotism, and twisted it to grant ourselves the same moral authority possessed by the medieval Catholic Church. We’ve even got you people vigorously defending our right to do whatever we want to you. You never tolerate illegal kidnapping and torture when done by your next door neighbor; many parents live in fear of such happening to their children. You same people cheer us on as we, with no accountability whatsoever, extraordinarily rendition people to be tortured, or simply kill them. You go to great lengths to demonize the likes of Ted Bundy and others, but when the kidnappers have our Federal Blessing, you enthusiastically defend their actions. Your “patriotic” cries for “justice” against those we deem evil are not dampened in the slightest by your own knowledge of our disregard for our laws, Constitution, and moral principles. We have made our continued killing too important to you.
Consider our own drone strikes in Pakistan. The Brookings Institute has USA drone strikes killing an estimated 10 civilians for every one militant as the running average. Imagine if the Taliban was still at war with Russia, and Russia determined that Taliban members were hiding out in Florida. Consider your reaction if Russia, without permission, or even informing the USA, began bombing the Floridian neighborhoods in which these Taliban suspects reside with full knowledge of the resulting innocent casualties. This would be considered an atrocity and an act of war. We at the US government do the same to Pakistan every day, and lose no sleep over the lives of those innocent Pakistanis. We do such under our own Federal Blessing, so our actions cannot possibly be wrong on moral, ethical, or any other grounds. Our consciences are clear.
The American Indians defended themselves against an aggressive, invading force. They had been labeled “evil” by us in government, and our assaults against them labeled “good.” After exerting our moral authority to steal their land, the justice of the Indian cause became irrelevant. This is how we running the USA were able to pull off what is arguably the world’s greatest and most successful holocaust with no significant resistance on moral or humanitarian grounds.
We can even grant ourselves the moral authority to exempt ourselves, or remove our moral exemption retroactively. Consider the case of the Japanese American in the 40’s. Japanese Americans were kidnapped, had their homes confiscated, and placed in detention camps by us at the government. This would have been viewed as horrifically unjust if done by anyone acting without our Federal Blessing (imaging the public outcry if Boeing attempted this), but we met little resistance after exempting ourselves from moral law. To buy more of your loyalty we retroactively removed our Federal Blessing on this specific act. Today it is viewed as a horrible injustice because and only because we Feds removed our Blessing. You people view the treatment of Japanese Americans in the 40’s as an injustice entirely due to our removal of our Blessing.
We’ve begun to delegate Blessing authority to increasingly low levels. Here, Mr. Richard Barnes refused to allow one of our government employees to enter his home. Mr. Barnes reasoned that he had some mythical right to refuse entry to a government employee who did not have a warrant. When the government employee tried to force his way into Barnes’ home, Barnes demonstrated his extreme anti Americanism by going so far as to push the officer. The Indiana State Supreme Court, taking care of its own in government, said "We hold that there is -no right- to reasonably resist unlawful entry by police officers.” Regardless of that fact that Unlawful Entry is a crime, Barnes will be the one punished for his insubordination to the government.
Nazi Germany delegated such authority to its SS officers and Gestapo. We at the US Government are not far behind.
The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty
- John Adams
