The myth goes something like this: Prior to the rise of the modern States in the modern world, all had been darkness. A backward feudal system existed with bloodthirsty warlords and tyrannical bishops spreading war and despotism across Europe. Then, one day, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment took hold in Europe, breaking the power of the superstitious and ignorant Old Order, and establishing in its place, a rational, enlightened system of States. The States of this new Age of Reason were admittedly not democratic, but they were certainly a vast improvement on the old State of affairs. Over time, the kings gave way to democracy for a few people, and eventually, to democracy for everyone, making the State, at long last, the benevolent servant of "the people." At the same time, the Industrial Revolution took hold, but capitalism exploited the workers and polluted the environment. Fortunately, the State was able to bring the capitalists under control and bring an end to mistreatment of workers, long hours of toil, and widespread environmental degradation. The 20th century provided some challenges to the spread of democracy, but those were conquered, just as we knew they would be, and today, justice, equality, and protection from all enemies of the great democratic order is provided for but a meager sum of tax funds. Civil rights and economic prosperity are improving all the time while foreign enemies are being cleared away, and the day will surely come when the end of history itself arrives, and we will all be thankful that we had such just and powerful governments at our disposal.

Murray Rothbard called this theory of history the State’s "Great March Upward into the Light," and much of his work, especially his newly republished History of Economic Thought, is devoted to debunking it. Always at the center of this march to perfection is the State. For the socialists and the left, the State will bring the society of perfect equality. For the neoconservatives and the right, the State will bring the millennial Pax Americana and the End of History. Few believers of the myth will deny that there have been some minor setbacks, yet they are firm in their contention that there can never be true progress without the State. Without the armies, and agencies, and weapons of the State, humanity would degenerate back into superstition, war, ignorance, and want. Depending on one’s point of view, a world without the State holds the prospect of capitalists, or terrorists, or communists, or Christian theocrats returning humanity to the presumed lowly State of the pre-modern world. The modern defenders of the State never speak in terms of "the State," and they may not even think in such explicit terms. Yet, the end result is the same whether one is explicit about it or not. States are at the center of their world, providing the necessary means to combat the evils of our time, destroying the oppressions of the past, and securing a safe and just future.

Rothbard had little patience for this pat view of human history. The myth of the modern State as freeing mankind from a dark past was particularly insidious to Rothbard. Whether discussing the American Revolution, the Great Depression, or the history of economic thought, we find in Rothbard’s work a thorough insistence that the political and intellectual history of modernity is the history of a battle against the State.

Rothbard’s view of history revolves around at least three central assertions. First, the history of liberty does not begin with the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, or any other modern era claiming to be born out of an earlier, darker age. The foundations of liberty are established much earlier, in an era of increasingly free trade and of weak and decentralized medieval States. The intellectual birth of liberty begins with the foundations of natural law and natural rights laid down by the medieval scholastics. Second, the industrial revolution must be regarded as a good thing. In fact, it should be regarded as one of the best things to ever happen in human history. Third, the material prosperity made possible by the Industrial Revolution, coupled with the ancient ideas of natural law and natural rights, is a potent enemy of the State and the reason that liberty is likely to prevail in the long run.

In his essay "Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty," Rothbard sums up his view of the "Old Order":

The myth held that the growth of absolute monarchies and of mercantilism in the early modern era was necessary for the development of capitalism, since these served to liberate the merchants and the people from local feudal restrictions. In actuality, this was not at all the case; the king and his nation-State served rather as a super-feudal overlord reimposing and reinforcing feudalism just as it was being dissolved by the peaceful growth of the market economy. The king superimposed his own restrictions and monopoly privileges onto those of the feudal regime. The absolute monarchs were the Old Order writ large and made even more despotic than before.



Contrary to the myth, the rise of modernity did not make the State more just or more enlightened. It just became bigger, stronger, and more likely to abuse its power. The States of the Middle Ages had been decentralized, weak, and couldn’t even qualify as "sovereign States." Thanks to overlapping political jurisdiction and the influence of the Church, no king of this era could claim total control over internal affairs. Yet, the absolutist States that heralded the arrival of the modern era were exactly the opposite. They were centralized, vast, powerful, and their rulers could indeed claim total internal sovereignty over their subjects

The political theory of the Middle Ages also constrained the power of the States. In The History of Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, Rothbard focuses on the influence of scholasticism. Associated closely with Thomas Aquinas, scholasticism revolved around theories of natural law that governed all men and all institutions which were in turn expected to adhere to immutable divine laws of justice and governance. Kings and rulers who did not rule according to natural law were subject to morally justified rebellion and even regicide.

Scholasticism, of course was closely associated with the Catholic Church, and as the power of the Church declined in the Late Middle Ages, so did scholasticism and the intellectual rigor it relied on. The rise of the modern State accelerated with the Reformation and with efforts to overturn scholastic critiques of political power. From the German princes in the north to the rulers of the Italian city-states in the south, kings and princes seized on the Reformation as an opportunity to increase their power.

Having abandoned the scholastic tradition, the original Reformers were forced to fall back on proof-texting scripture for guidance on political affairs, concluding that "absolute obedience and non-resistance" was what scripture commanded. At the same time, Niccolò Machiavelli would add to the assault on reason arguing that States and princes should not be restrained by natural law, reason, or any other external force, but only by the arbitrary and often irrational will of the prince himself."

In the wake of this intellectual and political revolution came Absolutism. The new absolute monarchs went to war against the merchant classes that had arisen during the High Middle Ages. Kings used their new bureaucracies to impose taxes, enforce regulations, and wage large-scale wars against their enemies. It was the age of Hobbes’s Leviathan, and it was a great step backward for liberty. Yet, even as the new vast modern States were consolidating their power, theories of natural law and natural rights continued to be developed. Theorists like John Locke and Richard Cantillon would reclaim the natural law tradition and go on to use "rational scholastic methods" and forward compelling defenses of private property, commerce, and human freedom. Thus, by the 18th century, the natural law theories of the scholastics had been revived and were being reworked into liberalism, the new ideology of individualism, liberty, and capitalism.

Meanwhile, the Industrial Revolution was spreading across Europe in spite of State attempts to control trade, knowledge, and even the movement of capitalists themselves. The great enemy of the Industrial Revolution, of course, has always been the State, and mercantilism ruled the day with its price controls, tariffs, taxes, regulations, and endless favors for friends of the ruling regime. The "intellectual" justifications for mercantilism were never anything more than irrational appeals to nationalism and privilege, while the liberals maintained that mercantilism was not only despotic and contrary to natural law, but inefficient and crippling to the economy. Naturally, those who ruled also happened to benefit from the largesse of the mercantilist despotism. But slowly, throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, liberalism gained ground. In "The Meaning of Revolution," Rothbard outlines the struggle:

Theories blended into activist movements, rising movements calling for individual liberty, a free-market economy, the overthrow of feudalism and mercantilist statism, an end to theocracy and war and their replacement by freedom and international peace. Once in a while, these movements erupted into violent "revolutions" that brought giant steps in the direction of liberty: the English Civil War, the American Revolution, the French Revolution. The result was enormous strides for freedom and the prosperity unleashed by the consequent Industrial Revolution.

Eventually, liberalism swept Europe as a mass movement putting forth the natural rights of men against the State. Yet, by the early 20th century, liberalism had retreated. Various forms of nationalism and socialism had begun to overtake liberalism in the 19th century, and by World War I, liberalism had disappeared as the dominant ideology of Europe. Liberalism’s intimate connection with capitalism and the industrial revolution was particularly damaging. Communists, socialists, nationalists, romantics, and primitivists all denounced the Industrial Revolution for being exploitive, for corrupting the morals of society, and for breaking down the alleged virtues of the distant past. The drive against the Industrial Revolution was thoroughly anti-intellectual as well, with the opponents of capital pining for the days of yesteryear when men could live by their wits in the wilderness and not be constrained by the evils of the modern industrial world. Rothbard’s writings exhibit particularly enthusiastic scorn for arguments such as these, unleashing a rhetorical torrent of contempt on the romantics and primitivists who had conveniently forgotten that the real history of subsistence farming and the pre-industrial age was one of famine, toil, and death.

In spite of the political revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, and the growing acceptance of natural rights as an immutable restraint on the power of States, the 20th century was a disaster for liberalism. The rise of National Socialism in Germany, Communism in Eastern Europe, and the militarized welfare-warfare State in America did much to destroy the liberalism that had expanded throughout the previous century. Serious talk of global nuclear war, the continued rise of socialism in Europe and the Americas, and the marginalization of liberal intellectuals had all but relegated liberalism to the dustbin of history.

Yet, even in 1965, before the fall of Soviet communism, before the internet, and before the Chinese government decided it preferred industrial revolutions to cultural revolutions, Rothbard was optimistic. In "Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty," he writes:

"What the Marxists would call ‘objective conditions’ for the triumph of liberty exist everywhere in the world and more so than in any past age; for everywhere the masses have opted for higher living standards and the promise of freedom and everywhere the various regimes of statism and collectivism cannot fulfill these goals."

In spite of his long-range optimism, however, Rothbard was always one to emphasize that history is in no way linear. In the High Middle Ages, the fledgling bourgeoisie might have thought that the benefits of free trade and weak States might have lasted forever. But Absolutism and "Enlightenment" intervened. The liberals of the 19th century might have thought similar thoughts. The disaster of the 20th century certainly put an end to that as well. Today, we are left wondering if the 21st century will be more like the 20th or the 19th. It is still too early to tell, but the problem for defenders of liberty is the same today as it has always been. The choice is between the State and liberty; between a free economy and a controlled economy; between peace and war. The myth that modern kings, and democracies, and armies of freedom secure the blessings of liberty for all has been an obstacle to real liberty for centuries. The real history of the State is one of power, war, and domination. Real freedom has advanced in great salvos against the State from political revolutions and from industrial and technological ones. In spite of the 20th century, and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles the State continues to pose against the cause of liberty, freedom has nevertheless erupted at the most unexpected times. Rothbard, knowing the resilience of liberty through the centuries, undoubtedly agreed with Thomas Paine that although "the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire."

Ryan McMaken teaches political science in Colorado.

Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com

We returned from the United States this morning feeling low. Maybe it was just the effect of so much traveling. It could the delayed effect of attending a memorial for a dear friend. Perhaps it was our drive down to the family farm... or the result of the book we were reading on the plane.

We had not seen the family farm in Maryland in a few years. As we drove to it, we wondered again about this extraordinary period of prosperity in the United States. By the gross numbers, Americans added more to their wealth in the last 20 years than in any equivalent period in history. But something seems wrong. What kind of wealth is this, we wondered? All we could see on our drive was a wealth of opportunities to spend money badly. The countryside is being junked up with strip malls and highways.

You can barely throw a beer can out the window without hitting a collection of Chicken Fil's, WaWas, and Mr. Noodle's...not to mention muffler shops and car dealers. There are more cars and more roads to drive on, but there doesn't seem to be anywhere worth driving. And driving down the road itself is depressing. We remember as a child that our grandparents would get in the car on Sunday afternoon to "go for a drive." It was fun just to drive around and take in the sights. We can hardly imagine doing that now.

On paper, people are a lot richer than they were 20 or 50 years ago, but it doesn't seem as though the money has done them much good. Maybe our memory is giving out, but we don't ever remember the area looking so shabby, so crowded, or so disagreeable.

When we finally got to the farm, we were disappointed to find that even our own place seemed to have fallen into the same junky disrepair as the rest of the neighborhood. The fences are broken. Trees have fallen down and lay on the ground like unburied soldiers. Shutters bang in the wind. We worked for 10 years building it up; now, it seems like a lot of time and effort for nothing.

But maybe that was only our mood and who really knows what causes moods or what our moods cause?

That we have moods, no one denies. They react to the world around us, and then cause us to change the way we think and act.

And they affect entire nations. Of course, we see this in the markets. Sometimes people are buoyant and upbeat about the future. Other times, people are downcast and gloomy.

Sometimes a dollar's worth of earnings can be sold for $20. Other times, investors will turn up their noses even at a $10 price.

Sometimes moods sink – even deeper than stock prices – deep into the heart and soul of a people. Our reading on the flight was a book we found in an airport kiosk. It was a "social history" of the Soviet Army in World War II. Rarely has any group of people been so roughly handled as the Soviet soldiers in the '30s and '40s. If a soldier escaped being slaughtered by the enemy, it was only to be annihilated by his own government. Sometimes he managed to get lucky and get shot or he died from sheer incompetence...with neither proper gear...nor proper food...sans sleep....and sanitation.

And yet, why did these millions of armed men still not turn on their tormentors? Ah, that's where mood – the zeitgeist – of the country plays its part. The people of the Soviet Union were, for the most part anyway, believers. They believed in the Soviet ideology, in rational materialism, and in Stalin himself. That is to say, they believed in things most people today regard as delusions. Even those who survived Stalin's mass murders often still say his name with reverence...as if he were a national saint.

"You know what, I think the mood in the U.S. has changed a lot in the last decade," said a friend at breakfast. "I remember when I went to West Point, we were taught to respect the enemy. He was a worthy opponent. If captured, he should be treated as well as you could treat him. In World War II, that's what we did. That's probably part of the reason so many Germans surrendered to us at the close of the war. They wouldn't surrender to the Russians, because they knew they would be killed. And it's probably why we had a relatively easy time reconstructing our enemies after the war.

"But I have a friend with a son at West Point now. What I hear is that they regard the enemy as though he were inferior...and no longer deserves either respect or the courtesies of the Geneva Conventions. Of course, that could be just his opinion. I don't know...but I can't imagine that we would have put burlap bags over the head of our prisoners in World War II, or had WACs stripping them down and kicking them in their private parts."

How much has the mood of America changed in these last 20 years? In what direction? We know the average American will pay nearly three times as much for the same dollar of earnings. Why does he think it so much more valuable? What else has changed?

We don't know.

• The war in Iraq costs $150 million a day, according to a recent USA Today report. Afghanistan adds another $27 million.

Meanwhile, fears over Iran sent the oil price up last week. And then came Venezuelan President Chavez, with a helpful remark. He said he'd shut down U.S. oil installations in the country and sell his oil to China and India, if America got on his nerves.

And these tensions over Iran's nuclear ambitions didn't only affect oil prices...gold, the "safe-haven metal" traded near 25-year highs today.

"It might even be a calm before the storm. I think we're going to see some further tests higher this week," said James Moore, analyst at TheBullionDesk.com.

"The market is going to remain a bullish trend and we will continue on towards the $600 (an ounce) level, probably over the course of the year," he said.

• "The debt is exploding and the president isn't facing up to it," said Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee.

Dubya may not be facing it, but well-respected bond guru, Bill Gross, certainly is.

At a financial conference at UCLA last week, Gross "expressed concern that the game might be up – that foreign investors would decide that U.S. bonds and other securities weren't worth the money, leaving the American economy suddenly desperate for capital," notes the LA Times.

"In any case, the extent of foreign investor control over the U.S. economy's fortunes is a cold reality," Gross said.

Savings rates are at a 72-year low. Of course, back in the '30s people had lost their jobs. They couldn't save; instead they had to draw down savings simply in order to eat and pay the rent. Now, we just heard that employment is near a record high. So, now people don't save for another reason – because they think they no longer need savings.

There will always be jobs, ATM machines, and home equity lines, right? What a strange public mood! It's almost delusional. People cannot imagine that times could ever get so bad that they would need to draw on their own savings. There will always be someone ready to lend them money, won't there? What they don't consider is where the money will come from. If Americans no longer save, who will have savings to lend?

Well, that must be why God made foreigners.

• Due to soaring deficits, the Bush administration will be forced to ask Congress to raise the national debt limit, which is now at $8.2 trillion...and counting.

But never fear – Bush has made a pledge to cut the U.S. deficit in half by the end of his term in 2009...and how exactly does he plan to do that? After reading a bit about his new proposed budget, to start October 1 of this year, your guess is as good as ours, dear reader.

In his budget proposal, Bush is asking Congress for $120 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on top of 5 percent increases in the Pentagon and Homeland Security budgets.

With these increases, to meet his goal of cutting the colossal deficit in half in the next three years, the budget plan calls for $36 billion in Medicare cuts over five years, as well as putting "the squeeze on the one-sixth of the budget that funds the nonsecurity operations of government – everything from running the national parks to buying paper clips," CNN.com reports.

• At the memorial service for our friend Thom, we got together as many surviving members of the old 'Ouzilly Band' as we could. Even at its best, the Ouzilly Band was pathetic. Without Thom in the lead, it was worse. Still, it was a time for music, laughter and tears; that's what Thom would have wanted. A performance of the Ouzilly Band accomplished all three. When people heard us play, they laughed, unless they were real music lovers...in which case, they cried.

"All the test results are actually negative, so that's very good news," Schneider told reporters about three hours after the Russell Senate Office Building was evacuated.

"We have a good outcome tonight, so we are all very happy about this," she said.

The alarm, which was sounded around 6:30 pm (2330 GMT), saw scores of emergency vehicles and hazardous materials teams descend on the building. Police within the congressional complex evacuated senators' offices and ushered workers into a holding area located within a garage. The building is linked by an underground tunnel to the Capitol, which houses the US Congress.

Police said workers, including some senators, had been directed to the garage for their own safety as further tests were being conducted.

"There was an alarm to immediately leave the building," Eileen McMenamin, a spokeswoman for Senator John McCain, told CNN television from the garage area.

"There are guys down here testing the air," she said. "They just used the words 'nerve agent'."

Schneider said no one reported any symptoms that would be consistent with a chemical or biological attack, but could not say what the white powder was that set off the sensors.

One word can do a lot for a politician, especially if it is repeated like a political mantra. I'm not exactly sure how many times Bush has used the word "terror" or its derivations, because that would require actually listening to all the Bush speeches -- an act that would almost certainly cause the permanent IQ reduction of anyone foolish enough to engage in such activities.

Without question, Bush has invoked the "terror" word with near religious zealotry in his campaigns to simultaneously overthrow foreign nations and domestic civil liberties. Never before has so much evil sprung from the repeated invocation of a single word.

The Terror of the Masses

The outright evil of one man is not nearly as surprising (nor frightening) as the collective evil of the people who go along with him. Dumbfounded Conservatives all across the country blindly stroll into history along the same well-trodden path followed by Hitler's fascist supporters.
It's a well-worn path: First you create an imaginary enemy to justify war. Then you strip away the civil liberties of your own citizens and launch domestic spying programs to keep everyone in a constant state of fear. Next you manipulate the propaganda to tell everyone what to think. The torturing of "enemy combatants" is already underway, and it won't be long before the clockwork arrest of "dissenting" Americans begins.

None of this talk is even in the realm of conspiracy theories anymore. It's practically a play-by-play account of exactly what the Bush Administration is doing. Under the Clinton Administration, a secret domestic spying program being discovered would have been Conservatives' call to hang the poor man from a tree, but under Bush, Conservatives go right along with any liberty-destroying action, no matter how ludicrous or illegal.

That all this is happening right before our eyes, with such obvious historical parallels to the rise of Hitler, is practically unbelievable. The rhetoric is almost exactly the same, except it's in eighth-grade English rather than German. But warmongering and global imperialism need no language translations, because the message communicated by an imperial soldier shoving a rifle in your face is pretty much universal. Both Hitler and Bush call it "freedom," and both explained their invasions of foreign nations as "liberating their people," but students of history know better. (Does anyone read history anymore?)

Like nearly every empire in the history of human civilization, the Bush empire will eventually fall. And in its wake will be left the horrors of American imperialism. One day the mass hallucinations of the Bush supporters will disappear, and they will wake up and ask themselves, "What have we done?" It will be like the citizens of Germany seeing the Nazi concentration camps for the first time following Hitler's suicide. They could not believe what they had supported. They could not imagine what evils they had tolerated, if not downright participated in.
And after the fall of the Bush empire, the American people will have to get down to the business of repairing what's left of the Constitution. They will have to roll back government powers, pursue criminal prosecutions of the active war criminals currently operating throughout the Bush Administration, and reestablish the rule of law.

The King of Terror

It is precisely the rule of law, by the way, that Bush now imagines does not exist. In an astounding act of tyrannical defiance, Bush actually admitted he not only supported the high crimes of secret domestic spying on American citizens, but he actually intended to EXPAND such actions in direct violation of every law upon which this nation was founded. On that day, King George declared his kingship of the land, and effectively announced that he was now above all laws.
Astoundingly, there was no marching in the streets. Members of Congress did not call an emergency session and impeach the President. Even the press hardly mentioned the unprecedented transition that had just taken place, because of course they were too busy high-fiving each other with the word "terror" to actually say anything useful.

The people, the lawmakers and practically the whole country just went along with King George! Consider the irony. The United States of America, a nation that was founded by revolutionaries who insisted on self-rule and freedom from the tyranny of kings, had just crowned its own new king, with hardly a whimper from the masses. It's as if Americans have no knowledge whatsoever of their own history.

Even now, no one seems to notice. We are marching full-force into history's Hall of Shame, with our new king, our new media, and our new imperial wars. Never has so much been evil achieved by the invocation of a single word: TERROR.

And the terror is by no means over. Americans will be kept in a constant state of fear (by chance or by design) for as long as the Bush family can get away with it. Because terror, after all, is very, very profitable for certain industries and power brokers, most of which happen to be strong supporters of the Bush Administration.

Remember, Americans. Remain afraid. Imagine Islamic enemies in your head when you go to sleep at night. Support your new King and his troops. And tune in to Fox News to be told what to do next.

A Halliburton subsidiary has just received a $385 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security to provide "temporary detention and processing capabilities."

The contract -- announced Jan. 24 by the engineering and construction firm KBR -- calls for preparing for "an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs" in the event of other emergencies, such as "a natural disaster." The release offered no details about where Halliburton was to build these facilities, or when.

To date, some newspapers have worried that open-ended provisions in the contract could lead to cost overruns, such as have occurred with KBR in Iraq. A Homeland Security spokesperson has responded that this is a "contingency contract" and that conceivably no centers might be built. But almost no paper so far has discussed the possibility that detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law.

For those who follow covert government operations abroad and at home, the contract evoked ominous memories of Oliver North's controversial Rex-84 "readiness exercise" in 1984. This called for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to round up and detain 400,000 imaginary "refugees," in the context of "uncontrolled population movements" over the Mexican border into the United States. North's activities raised civil liberties concerns in both Congress and the Justice Department. The concerns persist.

"Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters," says Daniel Ellsberg, a former military analyst who in 1971 released the Pentagon Papers, the U.S. military's account of its activities in Vietnam. "They've already done this on a smaller scale, with the 'special registration' detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo."

Plans for detention facilities or camps have a long history, going back to fears in the 1970s of a national uprising by black militants. As Alonzo Chardy reported in the Miami Herald on July 5, 1987, an executive order for continuity of government (COG) had been drafted in 1982 by FEMA head Louis Giuffrida. The order called for "suspension of the Constitution" and "declaration of martial law." The martial law portions of the plan were outlined in a memo by Giuffrida's deputy, John Brinkerhoff.

In 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 188, one of a series of directives that authorized continued planning for COG by a private parallel government.

Two books, James Mann's "Rise of the Vulcans" and James Bamford's "A Pretext for War," have revealed that in the 1980s this parallel structure, operating outside normal government channels, included the then-head of G. D. Searle and Co., Donald Rumsfeld, and then-Congressman from Wyoming Dick Cheney.

After 9/11, new martial law plans began to surface similar to those of FEMA in the 1980s. In January 2002 the Pentagon submitted a proposal for deploying troops on American streets. One month later John Brinkerhoff, the author of the 1982 FEMA memo, published an article arguing for the legality of using U.S. troops for purposes of domestic security.

Then in April 2002, Defense Dept. officials implemented a plan for domestic U.S. military operations by creating a new U.S. Northern Command (CINC-NORTHCOM) for the continental United States. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called this "the most sweeping set of changes since the unified command system was set up in 1946."

The NORTHCOM commander, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced, is responsible for "homeland defense and also serves as head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).... He will command U.S. forces that operate within the United States in support of civil authorities. The command will provide civil support not only in response to attacks, but for natural disasters."

John Brinkerhoff later commented on PBS that, "The United States itself is now for the first time since the War of 1812 a theater of war. That means that we should apply, in my view, the same kind of command structure in the United States that we apply in other theaters of war."

Then in response to Hurricane Katrina in Sept. 2005, according to the Washington Post, White House senior adviser Karl Rove told the governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, that she should explore legal options to impose martial law "or as close as we can get." The White House tried vigorously, but ultimately failed, to compel Gov. Blanco to yield control of the state National Guard.

Also in September, NORTHCOM conducted its highly classified Granite Shadow exercise in Washington. As William Arkin reported in the Washington Post, "Granite Shadow is yet another new Top Secret and compartmented operation related to the military's extra-legal powers regarding weapons of mass destruction. It allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control."

It is clear that the Bush administration is thinking seriously about martial law.

Many critics have alleged that FEMA's spectacular failure to respond to Katrina followed from a deliberate White House policy: of paring back FEMA, and instead strengthening the military for responses to disasters.

A multimillion program for detention facilities will greatly increase NORTHCOM's ability to respond to any domestic disorders.


Peter Dale Scott is author of "Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). He is completing a book on "The Road to 9/11." Visit his Web site .

The first thing we oldsters learned in school about our government was that it was comprised of three, co-equal branches; Executive, Legislative and Judicial.

Thanks to the GOP revolution, and in particular this current administration, future social studies books will have and easier time of explaining how Americans are governed. Because they've trimmed the three branches down to two branches, of which only one has any real power.

Yes boys and girls, the US Government has been remodeled, trimmed down, made more efficient. Now there's the Executive branch, which runs the show – the whole show. Then comes the Judiciary branch, which has been turned into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Executive branch.

The Legislative branch has been reduced to a facade of democracy, a show, a dog and pony show -- often entertaining, but much sound and fury signifying nothing.

If you doubt this you haven't been paying attention.

Did you catch the Attorney General Gonzalez pretend hearings before the pretend Senate Intelligence Committee? Where pretend legislators vowed to get to the bottom of Executive branch spying on Americans, but refused to insist that the witness be put under oath?

And did you listen as the Attorney General of the United State of America responded to pointed questions from the pretend legislators with a curt, “I am not going to answer that.” To which the pretend legislators responded, “Okay,” and moved on to the next pretend question that would also go unanswered.

Or how about VP Dick's interview with Jim Lehrer? Jim asked the VP Dick if the Executive branch would be willing to entertain legislative changes to domestic spying laws, changes that could make what they are already doing legal. VP Dick, (summoning up the sneer he considers a smile, responded,) “We feel we already have all the authority we need.”

And indeed, they do. How so? Because they say they so. You got a problem with that?

And if you do have a problem with that, don't take it to court, at least not a federal court. Over the past five years the Executive Branch -- with the enthusiastic obediance of the Legislative branch -- has packed the federal judiciary with judges who share the view that the Executive branch should decide which rules should apply to them and which rules were simply too inconvient to be worthy of compliance.

It's hardly an accident that in five year Chief Executive George W. Bush has not vetoed a single piece of legislation. He didn't have to. The GOP-controlled House and Senate have become his Politburo. Remember those old black and white videos we used to see during
the 1960s of sycophantic members of the Soviet Politburo mechancially raising their red voting cards in to pass Kremlin crafted laws? We don't have the same red cards, but we sure as hell have the same stuffed-shirt, pampered breed of lapdog legislators.

Here's a pop quiz: When was the last time either the House or Senate held real investigations into executive branch misbehavior? The kind of hearings where everyone is put under oath? Forget about it.

And, in the best tradition of Kremlin hardball, we learned yesterday that Karl Rove has warned GOP legislators of certain doom should any of them speak harshly of, or support real hearings into executive branch spying on Americans.

"According to Insight, which is published by the Washington Times, Karl Rove & Co are pressuring GOPers to make sure they vote the White House's way on this issue that most assuredly is far more than partisan football:

The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the administration's unauthorized wiretapping.

Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November. (More)

The silence you hear on this subject is the sound of pretend GOP legislators coming to heel.

Oh sure there are Democrats in the legislative branch too, though you'd hardly know it. If the French resistance had been made up of American Democrats the French would eating bratwurst cordon bleu today. Democrats are our pretend loyal opposition party. When we point to the mess being made by this administration Democrats respond that they are “the minority party.” Okay, then at least be the mouse that roars rather than the rat that scurries.

Nope. Get used to it. The American government is now comprised of two branches, not three. And of those two branches, one makes the rules and the other sanctifies them.

The good news is that none of this is yet set in cement. There's a chance next November to revived our currently moribund legislative branch. But time is in short supply. A worthy opponents, Democrat or Republican, are in even shorter supply.