Re: “The Ax vs. the Icon” in Ark. Dem-Gazette

Dear Free Weekly Readers,

“What a diabolically evil editorial!” was my first reaction. On Sunday, March 23, the Arkansas Dem-Gazette came out with a super-warmonger editorial that seemed straight out of Pentagon Psy Ops’ playbook. The editorial was about the liberation of the Crimea, but did not mention the Crimea even once. Amazing! There was a whole lot about Russia invading and the Ukraine being “cleaved.” The poor editors don’t know squat about history, in particular that the Crimea is not and never has been a legitimate part of the Ukraine. The double-think behind the editorial is amusing — the ardent support of “the sanctity of international borders” decreed by a Soviet era strongman. If the editors came out supporting the “sanctity” of Chinese control over Tibet, or condemned the U.S. Empire’s crossing of international borders (and continued occupation) of Iraq, Afghanistan, parts of Africa, etc., then at least they’d be consistent. Their patriotic parochialism is obvious.

The editors are stumping for war, and make no bones about it. They openly state that they want to make the same stupid error that Churchill did to start his “unnecessary war” (Churchill’s own words) by violently preventing reunification of cultural groups. Fact: Chamberlain was right and should have stuck to his guns. He should have ignored warmonger Churchill’s advice to start a war when Hitler was attacking a common enemy in the opposite direction. What a better world we would have if Hitler and Stalin had beat each other to death!

The most disturbing thing to me is the editor’s flat rejection of government by consent. For Crimea, there is a clear-cut choice: Do you support consensual government as Jefferson so eloquently praised in the Declaration of Independence, or do you support existing decreed artificial statist borders? Will you let people be free, or will you kill them or enslave them to maintain statist rulers’ decreed borders — in this case “made holy” by the commie ruler Khrushchev? The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette comes out firmly in favor of treating decreed borders as sacrosanct and treating the people of Crimea as expendable livestock.

The editorial is right about one thing: It’s not about language. It is about government by consent. This is the elephant that warmongers are trying to hide when they talk only of Russia and Putin and Ukraine and “the West” and other chess pieces on their much-wished-for blood-stained global battle-ground. The Jeffersonians among us, including me, celebrate government by consent and the secession of Scotland, Crimea, Venice, S. Sudan, Montenegro, and so on. The more small entities there are, and the more devolution of big bloat-state power that occurs, the freer and more peaceful the world will be. The editor’s brain-dead jingoistic support of empire and war for national glory is absolutely disgusting!

Sincerely,

Hogeye Bill

a.k.a. Bill Orton

Categories: Commentary