{"id":523,"date":"2015-02-07T23:00:50","date_gmt":"2015-02-07T23:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=523"},"modified":"2015-02-20T22:39:06","modified_gmt":"2015-02-20T22:39:06","slug":"the-american-sniper-is-lower-than-a-criminal-thug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/02\/the-american-sniper-is-lower-than-a-criminal-thug.html","title":{"rendered":"The American Sniper is lower than a criminal thug"},"content":{"rendered":"

La grandeur du crime est la seule diff\u00e9rence qu’il y ait entre un conqu\u00e9rant et un brigand.<\/em><\/p>\n

The magnitude of the crime is the only difference there is between a conqueror and a robber.<\/p>\n

Jean-Paul Marat<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Governments and their hit-men\u00a0aren’t morally higher than lone gunmen, and they certainly aren’t\u00a0more morally justified to kill or steal.<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Above: Sheldon Richman, who attracted criticism after he compared the American Sniper “hero” Chris Kyle to the infamous\u00a0Sandy Hook school shooter<\/em><\/p>\n

In fact, our present governments\u00a0should be\u00a0less entitled to get away with\u00a0either of these atrocities than any random individual from the crowd. Unfortunately, the\u00a0reality is that our governments have an arrogance born out of their idea that they are legitimate representatives. It is the reason they condemn Edward Snowden’s alleged “arrogance”, for compromising\u00a0the secrecy\u00a0of the espionage techniques\u00a0used against terrorists\u00a0and thereby supposedly putting our lives at risk. Even if Snowden\u00a0did cause\u00a0said threats to our security, and was arrogant<\/a>, the government\u00a0argument presupposes\u00a0the government’s moral right\u00a0to put our lives at risk where a whistleblower is not. I am pleased for whistleblowers to put all our lives at risk. It is a cost worth paying for the digital liberation\u00a0and decentralization that our civilization is making in\u00a0era\u00a0of drastic\u00a0individual empowerment by the technium. What I’m not pleased with is that our archaic national governments still presume to risk our lives on their delusional foreign and domestic policy adventures in order to save their dwindling legitimacy and power.<\/p>\n

Merely because we voted for them, government figures\u00a0think they’re allowed to cut our throats and claim it must have been what we wanted.\u00a0Based on their logic, you would think that\u00a0voting for someone pre-ordains all the decisions the official\u00a0later makes, making those decisions “democratic” even if the public was trampled all over to get them done.<\/p>\n

Democracy has been cheapened to a idol. It is waved around by our leaders to justify their bad decisions, assume the aforementioned moral arrogance and superiority compared with other regimes, and blame the public itself for the government’s errors. Our shallow\u00a0form of democracy supplies nothing more than some tactics\u00a0for our leaders to shirk responsibility for their mistakes in the press, and run away.<\/p>\n

The form of democracy that presently exists doesn’t create enough accountability for our rulers, but they pretend it does. They hide behind the reminder\u00a0“but you voted for us, we’re legitimate”, and the scam that we have the capability to stop future bad policies\u00a0simply by voting in a different band of liars and business cheats\u00a0to public office.<\/p>\n

I mention the fact that governments aren’t morally higher than lone gunmen because it is an argument made by Sheldon Richman at a controversial post for\u00a0The Future of Freedom Foundation<\/a>. He argued that US sharpshooter Chris Kyle, the protagonist of the recent Iraq War movie American Sniper<\/em>, is no better than the Sandy Hook shooter: a psychopath who helped to invade and slaughter another country based on George W. Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s lies.<\/p>\n

I fully support Sheldon’s\u00a0argument, and I am not surprised by the way that conservatives have hit back, using the old “we\u00a0fought\u00a0for your right to say that” argument<\/a>. I am not so sure US soldiers ever fought a battle\u00a0for people like Sheldon Richman to criticize the US military and its crimes, and the battle they’re waging by trying to disparage\u00a0Sheldon\u00a0or other critics of the US military\u00a0is exactly the opposite. The reality is that America doesn’t provide any special freedom for people to criticize its military. Sheldon\u00a0could have been\u00a0sitting in Cuba or Iran, and no-one would have prevented him from writing his article (it might even have had millions of thumbs-up). In fact, the conservative media establishment and fanatics of US “patriotism” are not fond at all of the freedom of writers\u00a0like Sheldon Richman to criticize the US military. So this argument is just pure and utter nonsense, and only makes sense to people incapable of critical\u00a0thought.<\/p>\n

“They fought for you to have the freedom to say that!”: this\u00a0claim is simply\u00a0empty and false. They died for lies.<\/p>\n

US soldiers who lost their lives\u00a0in Vietnam and Iraq\u00a0didn’t die for freedom, but\u00a0for lies.<\/h2>\n

No matter how hard we close our eyes and try to believe that dead US Army personnel\u00a0died for our “freedoms”, such a silly fantasy\u00a0will never be\u00a0true. They died for nothing. None of them needed to die. They could have still been alive, and here to enjoy their freedoms too. No-one needed to die in Iraq.<\/p>\n

As for the reactionary arguments that society is becoming detached from the military and unappreciative of its work, this shows a profound misunderstanding of how politics function. It has never been the civilians’\u00a0job to pay homage to the armed forces or adjust their values to match the military. If there is a “disconnect” between the military and the society, the military’s backwardness is to blame. The civilian population are under no obligation to protect the armed forces or make them feel politically comfortable: it’s supposed to be the other way round. Trying to impose military values on the civilian life, reverting life back to the 1950s in order to try and restore glory and reverence to the US military,\u00a0would be a completely repressive and illegitimate campaign at best and a military coup d’etat\u00a0at worst.<\/p>\n

Nationalism is a religion. Nationalists are like Islamists.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Sheldon Richman (@SheldonRichman) February 6, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To believe that soldiers needed to die for the empty idols of US democracy and freedom amounts to preaching nonsense,\u00a0barbarism and depravity that will destroy civilization. It is at the same level as\u00a0the fanatics\u00a0who argue about strapping\u00a0a bomb to their bodies to blow themselves up\u00a0for their god. There is no sense at all in claiming that a cultural idol\u00a0such as our alleged democracy or freedom, both of which are\u00a0actually nonsense and widely disputed, is\u00a0worthy of spilling millions of people’s blood for in other countries. If you can get people to believe\u00a0absurdities, you can get them to commit atrocities. Therefore, the people who make the idiotic argument about soldiers fighting for “our freedoms”, are the ones\u00a0most responsible for\u00a0atrocities\u00a0like the My Lai Massacre and\u00a0Collateral Murder.<\/p>\n

\n

By\u00a0Harry J. Bentham<\/a><\/p>\n

\"HJB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

La grandeur du crime est la seule diff\u00e9rence qu’il y ait entre un conqu\u00e9rant et un brigand. The magnitude of the crime is the only difference there is between a conqueror and a robber. Jean-Paul Marat Governments and their hit-men\u00a0aren’t morally higher than lone gunmen, and they certainly aren’t\u00a0more morally justified to kill or steal.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,68,71,17,313,72,127,67,66,70,15,69],"tags":[464,465,467,1483,472,466,58,469,468,470,471],"class_list":["post-523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antistatism","category-conflict-2","category-conflict-resolution","category-edward-snowden","category-entertainment","category-international-relations","category-journalism","category-middle-east","category-politics-2","category-religious-violence","category-us","category-violence","tag-american-sniper","tag-chris-kyle","tag-dick-cheney","tag-edward-snowden","tag-edward-snowden-arrogant","tag-george-w-bush","tag-iraq","tag-iraq-war","tag-iraq-war-lies","tag-sheldon-richman","tag-the-future-of-freedom-foundation"],"yoast_head":"\nThe American Sniper is lower than a criminal thug - L'Ordre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/02\/the-american-sniper-is-lower-than-a-criminal-thug.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The American Sniper is lower than a criminal thug - L'Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"La grandeur du crime est la seule diff\u00e9rence qu’il y ait entre un conqu\u00e9rant et un brigand. The magnitude of the crime is the only difference there is between a conqueror and a robber. Jean-Paul Marat Governments and their hit-men\u00a0aren’t morally higher than lone gunmen, and they certainly aren’t\u00a0more morally justified to kill or steal.…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2015\/02\/the-american-sniper-is-lower-than-a-criminal-thug.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"L'Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-02-07T23:00:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-02-20T22:39:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/fff.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Richman-20141-150x123.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Harry J. 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