People around the world are feeling the pain of families who lost their little kids during a school massacre in Peshawar, Pakistan. I am running out of words and cannot express my grief properly. We, all are very sorry for the loss of life and psychological shock incurred on everyone effected. Along with sympathy and condemnation, people are expressing all kind of opinions, as well. I am so disheartened to see lots of comments on social media, placing all the blame on Pakistan and Pakistanis. Of course, just like any other complicated affair, there could be and there are many justifiable views and opinions on it.
8PM with Fareeha Idrees 16 December 2014
Unfortunately, religions, ideologies, state and governments have been condoning the use of force to achieve certain objectives for a long time. Hence, is the long history of violence, assassinations, killings (judicial or otherwise) and wars, going on, as far back as you can go in history of the world. This is the problem here. You may or may not be in the favor of use of certain type of force for certain reasons, under certain circumstances. But, it does not matter, at all. No killing, no assassinations, no mass murders, no serial killings, no genocides and no war has ever waged without a “justification”.
So, the real issue is, once you start to allow the use of force, there is no limit. All different kind of groups, extremists, governments and stats can always find justification for anything they do. A good example is recently highlighted police brutality in U.S. All this law enforcement stuff started with providing “little safety and security” to people. The basic idea was that with tax payers’ sponsorship and funding certain people can defend you better than you can yourselves. Over the course of time, idea kept “evolving”, resulting into more funding, more training, more organization, more boots on ground, more weapons and more authority.
It is not that violent crimes did not happen before. But, there were times when police was not allowed to kill anyone, under any circumstances. As a matter of fact, police was not even supposed to have deadly weapons. At the best they had sticks, canes or may be teargas. Then came the idea that they are dealing with dangerous criminals they should at least have guns for self-defense, just like all the other citizens. After that it became acceptable for police to kill in case of violent crimes. Of course, once started, it did not stop at any point.
Now people are getting shot for selling loosies and of course, there is always a justification. Wars have similar story. It all started with mobilizations of citizens for self-defense, if attacked. After going through different stages and excuses, now, the “preemptive” and “preventive” wars to prevent certain presumed consequences are okay. Taxation was started with “just a little money to guarantee and enforce Justice”, to a point where almost four trillion dollars of tax revenue are not enough for government and they always want to tax more. Funniest thing is that it is always done for “common good’, but, without any exception ends up benefiting elite, at the cost of commoners.
Mostly poor young men have died in wars. But benefiting arms dealers and manufacturers, defense contractors, bureaucrats and rulers have always been rich and powerful. Law enforcement has given us the highest incarceration rates in whole world. But, not a single white collared criminal was jailed in multi-trillion dollar fraud which led us and the rest of world to 2008 financial crash, we are not even over with yet. About 16-17 trillion dollars of tax payers’ money are spent so far in rescue and stimulus packages, and QEs to rescue big corporations, banks, automobile companies and financial institution. But, homes are still getting foreclosed, small businesses are still getting bankrupt and about 20% of our work force is till unemployed or under employed.
But the corporate media and crony politicians have trapped us in perpetual circle of more and more government. Government creates, complicates, intensifies and perpetuates all these problems and when things go wrong, they convince us to have even more government to solve the problems created by governments and for that matter, “unfortunately” we have to be taxed even more. Things will get even worse next time. So, even a worse sacrifice of personal liberties will be required.
This is like the kids who run into trouble all the time and then blame parents for their issues. Sensible parents have a very simple answer for them. “You will not get out of these issues until and unless you learn to live and survive independently”. Same thing applies to us in this case. These problems are not going anywhere. As a matter of fact these will keep getting worse, until and unless we learn to live and survive without any dependence on government.
Constitutionally speaking, we are not even supposed to have standing army. A “well organized militia” is supposed to take care of our defense. Switzerland has “well organized militia” and when Hitler was running over the super powers like Britain and France, he did not dare to attack Switzerland. Every single armed and trained citizen was ready to defend his or her country. Everyone sixteen or older by law must own and get trained to the use of weapons. Shooting is their most popular sport and pass time activity. Yet, their violent crime rates are lowest in whole developed world.
So, these are the points, I am trying to make. One, if we allow any justification for use of force, except, of course in self-defense than there is no end to it. Two, the oppressive and authoritarian institutions, we are counting on to end violence and terrorism, are, in fact, at the root cause of these problems. When these institutions are created and tax payers’ money is being spent on those than they always need justification for their existence and spending. Also, by their nature, these institutions always seek more power, money and bigger size. Only solution is that the freedom loving people come together and end this perpetual cycle of oppression by governments, and government sponsored groups and institutions.
Loss Shop
