By Chris Basten

  I have not read any mainstream news for days now. But this does not mean that I am free from its clutches. I like to work out at a local club after my graveyard shift and was recently confronted with something disgusting. Large screen TVs gaze upon those who wish to watch and tune in to specific channels while patrons hit the treadmills or Nautilus machines. The sound is off, of course, but the words loom large upon all onlookers.

The TVs are bad enough as it is. However, what really caught my eye in particular was the grotesque quote taken from a viewer's letter to Fox News network. The viewer had this to say: "If only Fox News would have been around during the Vietnam War in 1968. Keep up the smile spin in Iraq" How nice. Nothing warms the heart like good ol' fashioned bloodshed, apparently.

Just previously at work, I had spoken to a coworker who came to my desk to clarify a message I had sent her. She couldn't help but notice the book I was reading: "Speaking of Liberty," by Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr. She read the synopsis on the back cover and verbalized a pro-statist view. To paraphrase her, she mentioned things like, "There is no such thing as a free market." I responded, "Not when our government is as big as it is."

I really wasn't in the mood for a political discussion with a coworker and just wanted to verify the message since she had approached me at my desk. But she didn't let the book thing go. She wanted to know what this guy's (Rockwell's) position was. I was rather befuddled because I wasn't prepared to give a book report. How do you sum up a dense treatise on liberty?

At any rate, I replied that the author's position is the following: The less government, the better. My persistent coworker seemed personally threatened by the statement and I allowed her to vent. "So with anarchy are we just supposed to go without roads and education?" I've heard this reflexive response too many times to get caught in its trap. I let it go and allowed her to think that her precious government is for the good of all. Nothing I was going to say would have changed her mind, anyway. Besides, work is full of enough bureaucratic garbage; I wasn't about to embrace anymore political discussions.

The amount of resistance I face whenever I mention anything anti-government to most folks is unsettling. People get huffy and puffy about how much everything would fall apart if we were to even consider limited growth in Washington. Some people seem to think that the state invented liberty. War tends to make people think crazy things, though. When Bush isn't busy telling us how moral killing is, Fox News is putting a "smile spin" on it.

This is exactly why I have chosen to pay as little attention as possible to the mainstream press about current events. Conventional journalists tend to put many spins on the truth while conveniently avoiding the moral imperative to flat out report it. Though I disagree with Llewellyn Rockwell on some fronts, I align with him on his views about war. He states,

Running an empire based on war requires more, much more, than tacit approval from the taxpayer public. It requires the public be charged up and cheering both the objective and the methods of war. When the public is so charged, the State is provided some public-opinion capital to spend when casualties and bills begin arriving. This is the real point of military parades, war drums, and the symbolic displays of patriotism required by the modern totalitarian project.

You will be hard-pressed to find this commentary in the Wall Street Journal or on Fox News. That is why I turn to literature that is not afraid to speak the truth. War is such a chaotic, immoral, dark force to humanity and yet people lie to themselves and each other about how much good it is doing for others. This is hardly the truth.

Truth says that war is a perversion of life and causes nothing but pain, poverty, and submissiveness. War is a last resort and should defend the rights and properties of citizens. It is not a necessity that breathes life into the planet as the good-looking, suit-wearing, plastered-smiling newsies tell us on the brainwashed networks like Fox News. There is no "smile spin" that can be put on war. It is the ugliest form of decadence that humanity has ever bestowed upon itself. Moreover, it is the tool of choice by the State to keep it large and in charge.

If we are to preserve what is kind and decent about humanity, we must preserve what we know to be true. War chews up humanity and spits it out while praising the monsters of the State. For times like these, Ludwig von Mises said it best: "Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it."