“Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will.  But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.  I do not add “within the limits of the law,” because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.” – Thomas Jefferson

MEDIA ROOTS- Being free is an experience you must consciously choose to have. For example, think of the pictures you take, the poems you write, or the clever contraptions you fashion from seemingly useless materials: where does it all come from? It comes from you- not a savior, and certainly not a government. Every thought you have comes from you. You guide your body and your mind, you collect knowledge and experiences, and you fashion them to reflect upon an expression of yourself.

Free expression is your first amendment right. If that does not matter to us, than we are already slaves. Your government is obliged to defend it. I swore an oath to defend it. I did not swear an oath to a Fuhrer (Emperor), or to an institution, but rather to the idea that we are all born with unalienable rights. So when is free expression unjust? When must we obstruct it?  Can we? 

The answer lies within the mechanism chosen to produce accountability. Up until you hurt or threaten to hurt someone, your free expression cannot legally be obstructed in any way. In fact, it must be defended. So who says what is right and wrong? Our constitution gives that responsibility to a jury of our peers, and their judgment provides the mechanism for accountability. They are tasked with hearing a case and deciding if rights should be denied to an offender.  They decide the moral answer on that case and that case alone. Are all homicides equal?  Are all acts of theft the same?  Is a substance inherently wrong to possess?  Should we be forced to pay for insurance?  The moral relativity depends upon the moral compass of your peers and the circumstances for a particular case. If you don’t hurt your neighbor, then a truly free society lets you go in peace. A free society also takes nothing from its people without permission. It is alarming just how many non-violent drug offenders there are in our jails today, and how little government revenue comes from charity. 

If we have arrived at a place where we can now recognize individuals as the source of all ideas, all innovation, and all feelings, then we can see how individuals are the source of morality in this world as well. This is a key belief that any tyrant must undermine. If a tyrant hopes to enslave a free man, he must first replace this belief in an individual with promises of heaven on earth, equity, and entitlements. He must victimize, produce threats, pit groups against each other, and shake a free man’s confidence in himself. This is precisely why most local cultures in Moldova, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, Uzbekistan, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Ukraine were nearly destroyed after 70 years of banned expression of their uniqueness by their leaders. Could it be that the people in those countries had ways of expressing themselves that were in fact senior to the doctrine of Russia’s former Soviet Union? How inconvenient for tyrants when a people are free in their hearts. To be free in your heart and soul is the native state of man.

We hear so much about this idea of separation of church and state. This is not actually spelled out anywhere in our Constitution, rather it’s implied by the first Amendment, which erects a wall to prevent the collusion of any church into the Republic. Consider this: your neighbor practices a religion privately in their own home, and you have no problem with it. Imagine if their beliefs became law?! Sadly, this is easily found throughout history. How do you think a church ended up in every town from Kosovo, to Moscow, Dublin, and Madrid? Perhaps it was spread through collusion followed by coercion. This is not an attack on the church or any other organized ideology. I’ll rally for any faith based system, and will protect your private and peaceful devotion to it- but I sometimes wonder where our ability to think has gone. What has come of the burnings at the stake, or of the men and women of science who believed the earth was round, or that it revolved around the sun?  People have been viciously, savagely, and tortuously attacked and murdered for simple free expression. Where else can we find this sickness?

In more recent history, the world has witnessed eugenics. Imagine if science said that depending on certain cranial measurements, DNA characteristics and genetics, you may or may not be put on a train car with a one-way ticket to extermination. That’s right, science colluded with government to round folks up and have them killed. To a lesser extent, Soviets groomed their children for certain jobs and left them no other choice for them to live their lives another way. The state decided where they would go and what they would do based upon testing and “science”.

More recently,  in December of 2009, Germany sent the fathers of eight families to jail for refusing to allow their children to attend a state mandated sexual education program. According to their statistics, children are less likely to become pregnant or contract STDs if they take the class. Apparently it’s no longer the parent’s choice of how they should teach their own children about the “birds and the bees.” Once again we see science colluding with lawmakers to make these decisions for you. 

The last institution that our Constitution sought to maintain separate from the government was the monetary system. Our founding fathers sought to establish a government that would defend and preserve a free market, one that hasn’t effectively existed in the United States since the early 1900s.  If paper money has no inherent worth, then how should we trust it to hold any value?  If I work hard expending my physical and intellectual energy, how do I know that what I’ve earned is real?  A fiat money supply system is one that allows us to trade more easily, but imagine if the world had only one legal paper money to trade?  If the supply of money were monopolized by a single organization, then no one would ever be able to hold them accountable for their actions or keep them from manipulating that system. More importantly, what type of person would seek to proliferate and influence it? 

The only universal currency that is immune to such manipulation is precious metals, and the only way to keep fiat money resistant to devaluation is to have alternatives available, as it is in the supply of any product. The suppliers compete and are held accountable by the consumers, and the next thing you know they all back their little bills with a contractual promise to pay- redeemable into something tangible. This is precisely how and why the United States dollar became the world’s reserve currency. We had a large and booming economy which was producing a lot of fiat currency, and the money was backed by gold. The departure from the gold standard was a crucial and required step for government collusion and control over your economic system- it transferred your wealth and your energy elsewhere.  Folks, that’s slavery.  It is a process of enslavement- an engineered decline and a covert transformation of a free market, and subsequently the inevitable, comfortable end of individualism.

Remain asleep if you choose.

It may be time to stop trusting your current institutions- they are not what we began with and they are certainly not what was intended. The once “free market,” the market that had once been accountable to the consumer, has been buddying up with a government that is supposed to be of you, for you. Don’t blindly trust science either. PhDs and politicians are walking hand-in-hand, like the clerics and the monarchs of 500 years prior. There are less than ten companies representing most major industries- pharmaceuticals, automobiles, banking, media, fuel… it’s not a free market that brought this lack of choice.

Americans need and crave alternatives – we demand alternatives. When will it be time for us to hold our government accountable?

The recent health care bill that was passed, which your legislators did not have time to read, is about 2000 pages long. Our Constitution, on the other hand, is only 18 pages on Microsoft Word, 12pt, Times New Roman. Demand that your religious, scientific, and economic institutions stand apart from your government as the Constitution requires. Reserve government as a conduit for accountability to each other, to which we are all subject. The fundamental ill here is not resolved by voting based on a few issues, an ideology, group identity, and certainly not on the presidency. 

The Constitution is not some neo-conservative movement. It was the first radical movement of individual liberation. It was built upon a movement away from Monarchs. Our founders were the original liberals in the true sense of the word. To liberate. To free. They provided an opportunity for every idea to be expressed, a mechanism to prevent the domination of any one person or group over the rest, and they built a Republic for Americans- Americans who are brave, noble souls and rugged individuals, willing to stand for nothing less than being a truly free human being, in every thought and with every breath.

“What we are trying in all of these discussions and talks here is to see if we cannot radically bring about a transformation of the mind.  Not accept things as they are, but to understand it, to go into it, to examine it, give your heart and your mind and everything that you have to find out the way of living differently, but that depends on you and not somebody else.  Because in this there is no teacher, no pupil, there is no leader, there’s no guru, there’s no master, no savior.  You yourself are the teacher, you are the pupil, you are the master, you are the guru, you are the leader.  You are everything.  And to understand is to transform what is.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Yossarian.

[The following is a response to the editor of Media Roots, re: the Wikileaks video showing journalists killed in Iraq]

MEDIA ROOTS- What do you get for all the effort and risk involved to become an Army aviator? In the Apache video footage of the journalist massacre, US ground forces had already been engaged sporadically in that area earlier that day.

Being a war photographer is not safe, and the people in this video were operating away from any American forces. They were carrying big cylindrical objects (cameras), and running around trying to get photos of American forces in combat. 

As for the Iraqi civilian paparazzi, they often act like this. Being in a mob of civilians doesn’t quite follow the common sense principle in an area where any country’s young troops are being engaged. 

One of our biggest concerns is rules of engagement. We brief this to no end. We constantly talk about techniques to prevent fratricide. We have a lot of civilian “observers” mixed in with IA (Iraqi Army), IP (Iraqi police), and another policing group called “Sons of Iraq.” 

Now flash back to a couple thousand feet up in the air to the Apache pilots looking at all these people on the ground – none of them have radios, uniforms, or training.

Our ground forces hardly ever know where they are. The “insurgents” switch sides all the time. You can’t quite get the big picture, until you’ve seen American forces get hurt that are depending on you to protect them. Then it doesn’t matter why anyone is there. You can’t always think perfectly straight either when you have been flying 6 to10 hours a day for 15 months straight.

This film is a “video/sound-bite”. That’s a nice name for propaganda. Remember, if you really want to figure it out, assume you are already brainwashed. I just feel badly for that crew. It isn’t fair to put soldiers in such positions. It isn’t fair to have wars like this one. As I said, short of defense, war is not justified. It serves other purposes. 

     “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, and even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, and every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

     In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

     We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” 

    Transcription courtesy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum.

There is much going on that we do not know about, and not just in the Middle East.  This is why we need a First Amendment and a free, unbiased press.  When the press is truly unhindered and free, they serve as your eyes and ears, and will take you places to make you aware of events you never could have otherwise in order for you to make your own judgements.  Do you really know what the First Amendment is and why it’s the first item in the Bill of Rights?  Why is it there? Who would ever attempt to remove it and how?  “Politically correct” censorship, for example?  We will explore this next in greater detail…

Yossarian.

This is the first in a series of articles from a soldier’s perspective that I am writing for Media Roots.  These articles will provide an inside look at the military, war, the players involved, and my own personal take on it all.  While I’ll try not to overly indulge myself in biographical reverie, I feel it will be important for the reader to know a little about me.

As a young boy I remember visiting the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum and indoctrinating myself with aviation. I was in love with it. There is no clear place in my evolution where I can remember thinking that I really wanted to fly military aircraft, it was just always  there. Smithsonian imagery no doubt played a part. 

I wonder, in every person I meet doing what I do, what that thing was for them when they were young. But here we are now, young military pilots, the best of the best flying army gunships in the night.

My perspective of this experience, and the path leading up to it, has opened myself to questions I might not otherwise have entertained, and forced me to examine core beliefs and basic assumptions within myself. That has been a good thing, a very good thing – hastening thought processes within myself.

This and subsequent articles are my attempt to give the reader a different perspective, my take on what might actually be going on in the world. I don’t mean at any point to be presumptuous, condescending, or inconsiderate. In fact, I truly believe that your right to your personal beliefs and the freedom to express those beliefs is why I’m here. But do you really know what your beliefs are? Are they really your beliefs? What is in YOUR mind?

The war I want is a war of the minds – a mental jousting match followed by respect and a better understanding and openness to original ideas. My father taught me to begin with the assumption that you are, in fact brainwashed.  In other words, take everything you think you know and question it mightily, peeling the layers back.  Therefore, my opening question shall be: Who will wake up and step up to participate?  Will you truly exercise this innate human faculty? 

I am a warrior.  I swore to ‘defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.’  My job is to kill, lose fellow soldiers, and to continue functioning exceptionally well physically and mentally, in spite of all that.  However, in doing this, I have come to believe there is no just war, only just defense.  That means that if I am defending my life, or the life of my nation, I am innocent.  Have you asked yourself if your country is conducting a war of defense?  Do you have the information required to decide if you support what your young country men and women are tasked to do? 

As an officer, and proud member of my unit in the United States Army, I fly gunship helicopters. Yes, the kind so many of you have seen shooting people to pieces – literally.  I am not here to openly question my chain of command.  That remains within the chain, just as your family’s business remains internal, or should at least. 

My purpose in writing is to invigorate the cause of freedom as the Constitution of the United States of America intended, a document and concept to which I am sworn and bound to defend and uphold.  I implore you to drop what you think you know about it and read it. Develop a fresh understanding of its purpose. Why was it written the way it was?  Then simply compare that doctrine to the actions of your current representation and system of laws. I want you to understand that freedom of expression is the first and most important one to consider, especially during  times of war.

I spent thirteen months flying over enemy in Iraq. I was a creature of the night – a young man who stares at people through a powerful infrared camera for six to ten hours a night, followed by head-bobbing a helicopter back to base as the sun was rising. Redbull was my friend. I helped give ground commanders the leverage they needed, tools that ensured the preservation of lives, not only of young American soldiers, but of innocent civilians as well. 

Before I became a military aviator, I was a totally different person. I experienced a typical middle class upbringing. Before twelve, family was everything, Christmas was magic, and my neighborhood was candy land.  JV and Varsity years pulled my attention to girls, grades, sports, and working random jobs to fill my gas tank, drink alcohol, and pay even more attention to girls. I was the typical middle class male, basically trying to have a good time and not kill myself while preparing for higher education.

My folks had limited financial means to support me in college.  Fortunately, I was able to deal with this burden without their help.  Clearly, the middle class is under financial attack when it comes to tuition. If you’re wealthy, obviously paying for school isn’t an issue in the first place but universities don’t pay their bills off the affluent few.  If you’re poor, you’ll get the financial assistance you need.  If you’re middle class, you’ll likely be crushed with six-figure debt per child.  In any event, I decided to finance my college education with running my own professional business.  It worked and it also set me apart from all the other students.

I figured out early on that college was a sham. The classes were kind of bullshit. I could do a lot at home, without any aid. Many students didn’t give a shit. Many professors didn’t either. No one knew why they were there.  If you spoke about any social issue in a way that was inconsistent with the crowd (and faculty), you were in trouble. Better to be outwardly politically correct no matter what you actually think. I mistakenly thought it was an environment that welcomed debate, flexing the grey matter, but in practice that wasn’t really true.  As I made money, connections, and experienced firsthand how the business world actually worked, I began looking at my schooling in a different and more cautious light.

I became by degree an engineer.  The co-op portion of my program put me into real-world industrial environments where often my stark “book-based” learning process came up short of the practical world’s real problems of an applied technology, business concerns and how one engineer might fit in and provide value.  School had not prepared me for the thought processes required for dealing with the reality of industry. One of the most valued engineers at the mill I worked at had no degree. He kept trying to retire but management needed his skills so badly they just kept offering him more money until he’d say okay to another few years. He was truly a legacy. While the co-op aspect of the program intended to give an appreciation of all of this, I was nonetheless amazed at  the level of indifference real business and industry had towards academia.

Ultimately, people are hired based on their true ability and skill.  All around me I see people putting their faith in a diluted form of education to which we now must subscribe to in order to be considered for any well-paying job. Kids pay a hundred thousand dollars and up only to end up slowly paying off outrageous debt working at Home Depot, Best Buy, TGI Fridays, or in their field using relatively little of what they studied with no creativity.  I began to see the whole system as an over-priced shake down of the middle class.  Why do I bring this up?

Our culture really believes in that diploma. So do the soldiers. Many young soldiers joined the military for college money. We are so entrenched with the idea that we need to shell out large sums of money in order to learn skill sets to survive and prosper in the economy that we will actually risk getting blown up to get that money!?  Ridiculous!

Despite my growing awareness of a system that seemed to punish the middle class, regulate speech through PC pressure, and propogate a cultural myth in which an expensive 4-year college experience was more important than anything else, I was still wistfully dreamed about being a military aviator.

9/11 did nothing to increase or decrease my desire to fly.  The desire just was.  I remember saying I wanted to do something for my country in response to the tragedy but was only a small part of me. I wanted the glory.  I wanted to do this thing I thought was heroic.  I sold my business, and when I was finally within weeks of leaving for flight school, my father told me that I was entering into something  dangerous, and that this decision could mean that in just a matter of a few years, I could very easily be dead.  He was right in the case of two friends.  And equally important, he said  I would likely take the lives of others.  He asked me if I really understood what that meant and if I thought the cause was just.

I was angry at him.  He was ex-Army, and his father had fought in WW2 and survived – with lasting physical and mental effects. But we took pride in his service. His older brother flew two tours in Nam and was highly decorated.  His uncle flew Air Force One under President Ford.  How could my father expound upon our family’s participation in the US military and then question my motives?  How could he allow me to watch every war movie ever made, and then not understand why I wanted to join?

I simply remarked back that I could die on the highway tomorrow, and that I wanted to do something for my country.  If 18 year olds were going to be risking their lives and dying, than I should help.  He basically backed me down until I admitted that I was joining more for the glory of being a military pilot, than for any of the altruistic reasons I was touting.  He was right and I was pissed, but I joined anyways. 

Not to spite him, but because I was so excited… to become an Army aviator!

Yossarian.

Photo by flickr user US Army