The Establishment In Crisis By Butler Shaffer
(2010-01-25 at 19:06:53 )

The Establishment In Crisis By Butler Shaffer

There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and
this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by
ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to
be served. - Jane Jacobs

Perhaps not since Caligula appointed his horse to the Roman Senate has
the political establishment gone so far out of its way to flaunt its
absurdity. The inanity is not confined to any particular factions; it is
pure bipartisanship that unites the politically-minded in their efforts
to Bamboozle the Booboisie with terrifying specters and the kinds of
implausible explanations of events that recall childhood tales told
around a late-night campfire.

The Latest Entrant in this Preposterousness Marathon is Hollywood actor
Danny Glover, who informed the world that the devastating earthquake in
Haiti was occasioned by Global Warming and Climate Change. I do not know
whether Glover was trying to overtake such men as Pat Robertson and
Charles Colson, among others, who offered their peculiar interpretations
of the 2005 flooding of New Orleans as an omen, or punishment, from God
for failing to halt legal abortions and/or fight the war on terror.
Perhaps Glover, having seen Al Gores efforts produce an Academy Award
Oscar - may have seen an opportunity for his own such trophy.

Such comments, standing by themselves, may be dismissed as the babblings
of silly minds. They occur, however, within the shadows of equally
nonsensical, and far more dangerous, practices undertaken by political
institutions.

We live in the terminal days of Western civilization, and the
institutional interests that have wormed their ways into the fabric of
society, and which have long fed upon the resources and energies of
individuals, now desperately work to reinforce their collapsing
structures.

Our civilization is overly-politicized; grounded in the principle of
violence. The State is the Institutionalization Of Violence. But Force is
Antithetical to Life, for it makes life be what it does not choose to be;
Compels it to act Contrary to the pursuit of its self-interests.

The State Wars Against the Spontaneity and Autonomy that Define Life and
Make Societies Prosper.

This War Against Life Processes has Produced Nothing of a Creative
Nature, but Much in the Way of Social and Economic Dysfunction. The
System Does not Work as we were conditioned to believe that it would:
fostering peaceful, orderly, and productive social behavior. The
Intellectual, Economic, and Moral Underpinnings of Our Culture are in a
Bankruptcy for which no Chapter 11 reorganization remedies are possible.

Constitutional principles do not govern the American state any more than
the Soviet Constitution, based on the American model, restrained the
Stalinist Regime. Free-market concepts and practices have been Supplanted
by government largesse as the source of economic success and discipline.
Government Schools are in shambles, while America Leads the Rest of the
World in the Number of People Held In Prisons.

A Rational, Intelligent Response to All of this might have been for the
Political Establishment to Reduce its Coercive Impulses and Allow the
Creative Life-Forces to Reassert Themselves.

Instead, the state has intensified its efforts to control the hundreds of
millions of persons subject to its authority. New threats e.g., obesity,
nitrogen, under-inflated tires etc. are concocted with which to
Rationalize Increased Police and Regulatory Powers; definitions of
Terrorism are expanded to include the Criticism Of Government, opposition
to abortion, and the exercise of Second Amendment rights to own guns.

Warfare continues to destroy life, even as military schemers plot to
extend their butchery to new targets -Iran? Yemen?. Those who oppose
Obamas Policies are labeled by some media babblers and a former president
as Racists. Numerous Czars, defined as Absolute Rulers and Despots have
been Appointed by Presidential Dictate to Rule Over Various Sectors Of
American Life; while auto manufacturers, banks, and insurance companies
have been effectively Nationalized by Fiat.

American Civilization is Collapsing for the same reason the Soviet Union
did: the inability to sustain itself under the burden of its inner
contradictions and conflicts. The system is no longer capable of being a
catalyst for the production of the values upon which life depends.

One of the governmental responses to all of this has been the creation of
a Financial Crisis Commission, or Crisis Commission for short. You can be
assured that this commission, like governmental agencies in general, will
become a Permanent Fixture, if for no other reason than the fact that the
centrally-directed, vertically-structured organizational model upon which
all state systems are built, is being challenged by decentralized
horizontal networks. The awareness of this transformation of social
systems is what has kept the institutionalists so agitated in recent
decades. The bogeyman threats with which the established order has kept
the Booboisie in its Obeisant Position have, of late, been defined in
terms of their supposed permanency. The War On Terror will last forever,
we have been told; the perils of Climate Change will be with us
Forevermore; even a federal judge, apparently unfamiliar with the lessons
of chaos and complexity, has ordered nuclear waste disposal decisions to
account for consequences extending up to one million years, a period of
time longer than mankinds presence on the planet!

Problems of Such Endless Durations Will, Of Course, Require The Constant
Oversight Of A Commission Devoted To The Control Of Such Endless Crises.

Such efforts cloud the real Crisis that the political and corporate
establishment does not want any of us to consider: the decline and fall
of the coercive, top-down model of social systems. As happened with the
collapse of prior civilizations, significant social change took place,
and change is incompatible with the institutional needs for stability.
Indeed, the Status Quo can be regarded as a synonym for the Institutional
Order. Civilizations always manage to become infected by the Virus of
Institutionalism, a Symptom of which is that we become Attached to, and
thus learn to Value, the organizational forms that once served as tools
of cooperation, but were later transformed into ends in themselves.

Thus do Banks, Insurance Companies, Major Manufacturing Firms, and even
the State Itself, Come to be Regarded as Too Big To Fail. Their weakened
foundations must be reinforced, we are told, by billions upon billions of
dollars being given to corporate giants, while the state will be allowed
to reverse its terminal condition by an increased ingestion of its
principal means of sustenance, namely, the power of violence over human
beings. Whatever threatens the status quo becomes a threat against which
the established order must mobilize its forces. To such interests,
individual liberty becomes a form of entropy i.e., energy otherwise
unavailable for productive use. Change, which expresses the very nature
of life itself, generates a Crisis to which a response must be made. Even
Change in the climate can be used to reinforce, in the minds of Boobus,
the Threat posed by any kind of variation. Have you really thought
through the Absurdity of regarding a Warmer or a Cooler Environment as a
threat to your existence? Our geologic history has pulsated with climate
changes to no apparent greater harm than an inconvenience to established
conditions.

Politicians and government officials, along with media chatter-boxes and
scribblers, continue to preach the gospel of Stability and Equilibrium,
even though productive societies do not exhibit such qualities. A
Creative World is quite Unstable, with existing practices being
Challenged by the Forces of Change. Nor does either the marketplace or
the life of an individual ever achieve equilibrium, works toward, but
never achieves, a steadfast position. But such a world of inconstancy is
troubling to the lifeless interests i.e., institutions, that seek to
Maintain The Status Quo.

Our attachments to the established order have been reinforced by our
acceptance of the need to introduce more Security into our lives. We have
learned to embrace Social Security, National Security, Homeland Security,
Investment security, Neighborhood Security, and countless other
Expressions of Our Devotion to Making Our World Safe From the Influences
of Change.

To Protect Such Interests, We Have Allowed, And Learned To Insist Upon,
An Expansion Of Governmental Power To Control And Regulate Any Conditions
That Might Disturb Our Acquired, Child-Like Need For Security.

It is for the purpose of resisting the centrifugal forces that are
transforming the vertical into the horizontal in our world, that such
agencies as the Crisis Commission will focus its efforts. There will be
no inquiries made as to the causes that have brought Western Civilization
into decline. The voices of institutionalized verticality will be heard
to propose such extensions of governmental power as will be consistent
with keeping the general public in a state of contentment. The Crisis to
which this body will address itself will be limited to the threat that
Decentralizing Forces will have to the Countrys True Owners!!
i.e., The Established Order.

Civilization, not the institutional order, is in a critical condition,
One Brought On By The Failure Of Our Intellectual And Spiritual Immune
Systems to Resist the Virus Of Institutionalism. This Crisis Is Not To Be
Found in Washington, or Detroit, or on Wall Street, But in Our Thinking
About Who We Are As Individuals and As Members Of Society.

As Long As We Revere The Interests Of Organizations More Highly Than We
Do Our Own; As Long As We Continue To Invest The Lives Of Our Children
And Grandchildren As Resources For Institutional Consumption, This
Crisis Will Continue Unto The Disintegration Of Civilization Itself.

Human history has seen a repetition of such patterns in the growth and
decline of civilizations. Our culture is not fated to such ends, but we
must confront the crisis in our thinking, yours and mine, not Theirs
If We are to Reverse the Entropic Course on Which We are Now Headed.

Each of Us Must, Individually, Abandon Our Subservience To the Authority
Of Others. In This Connection, We Might Wish To Recall The Words Of The
Poet Ezra Pound: A Slave Is One Who Waits For Someone To Come And
FREE HIM!!

January 22, 2010

Butler Shaffer teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law. He
is the author of the newly-released In Restraint of Trade: The Business
Campaign Against Competition, 1918–1938 and of Calculated Chaos:
Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival. His latest book is
Boundaries of Order.

Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or
in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.