The real intelligence failure of the Cold War was the situation where the KGB, Mossad, MI-5, and every other competent intelligence service knew exactly what the US was doing, what technologies and weapons we had and what we were doing with them, etc. At the same time, the American people were never told, and punished if they tried to inform themselves and others.
So, the main concern of our "national security state" is not (and never has been) "to gather intelligence" about what other nations or underground groups were doing, but to prevent the American people from knowing what our own government is doing. It's been a criminal conspiracy from the start, and formally recognized as such by people like William Graham Sumner, a Yale historian of the turn of the 20th century, who wrote some brilliant essays like "The Conquest of the United States by Spain" <http://praxeology.net/WGS-CUS.htm> and "Bequests of the 19th Century to the 20th". I have it in one of those Gateway Editions by the conservative publisher, Henry Regnery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Graham_Sumner
Now, Sumner is considered a leader of the Social Darwinists, and he is akin to Herbert Spencer in that regard, and in some respects, his American counterpart. He also had a similar social position, if not an equal output of original scholarly material.
When I first read these guys in college (not for any assigned classes, I might add), I thought I'd found the Holy Grail. In fact, in my one conversation with Hayek, I asked him what he thought of Spencer, and how he seemed to be a "Constructivist Rationalist," methodologically (or Positivist-materialist, like Marxists and Fascists), yet a libertarian politically. Ayn Rand's "Objectivism" (different from the generic kind which you can find in encyclopedias of philosophy) would also be in this category, and it was Hayek who showed me the way out of that intellectual labyrinth. He merely said he hadn't read much Spencer, but I was probably correct.
Apparently, Spencer - like Sumner - had fallen into deep disrepute for his critique of imperialism and totalitarian government. It is more than ironic that "conservatives" should claim them, now. These were the truly radical thinkers of their time - akin to Chomsky or Howard Zinn.
So, what was the US Government doing that they didn't want their own citizens to know? It's a long list, leading finally to total censorship and regimentation of schools and libraries, the media etc. Offshore, our "service men" and women were destabilizing democracies, staging coups, rigging elections, and assassinating "unfriendly" leaders in some 80 countries during the 20th century alone. For most of that, it was in the name of "fighting communism", which makes about as much sense as fighting democrats or libertarians.
When communism finally went away, they invented "terrorists", but instead of sending 20 people with box cutters after them (or even a couple of hundred commandos with advanced weapons), we tripled the military budget and killed maybe half a million (or 3 million, some claim) largely innocent and helpless human beings, as well as a few (or many) thousands of our own patriotic, American soldiers.
The object, we were told, was to "fight terrorism", and thus overcome whatever resistance there might be to "globalization", a one-world police/surveillance state, Full Spectrum Dominance, "Imperialism," or whatever you want to call it.
And the professional intellectual class (AKA "the liberal media") barring a few "dissidents" who were rarely interviewed or given a platform, never revealed or denounced any of these crimes of aggression, just as they are now concealing the real facts about the Ukraine, NATO, Libya, Iran, Russia, Syria, and the Crimea, now. Most of it was planned or carried out by the CIA, and that is officially "black" or "off the books" so no one can take credit for it, or be blamed. Decades later, the stories finally come out, just in time (as in the case of Iran), to set the record straight as to who was the aggressor, the threat to world peace, the legions of oil imperialism, or whatever.
In case anyone thinks that this is a new thing, it's been our standard foreign policy since 1898, if not the Mexican War (Bernard DeVoto's "1846 - The Year of Decision") and other assaults on our Hispanic neighbors. "Indian Removal" and other genocide, as well as chattel slavery (now replaced by wage slavery) was the Order of the Day. But the only thing they're talking about is the degree of punishment and exploitation. That they should not be happening at all is simply unthinkable.
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Thomas Jefferson's Akrasia
Since writing about "Eunice Belgum's Akrasia Project" a few months ago, <http://paul-stephens.blogspot.com/2013/12/eunice-belgums-akrasia-project-update.html> I've also been re-evaluating the Jeffersonian tradition in politics. I long considered myself a "Jeffersonian" - a more or less utopian agrarian philosopher and practitioner of all sorts of worthy arts.
Jefferson's college education, such as it was, (and it must have been quite good for the time) was at William and Mary, the same college in Virginia where Eunice Belgum taught and was so liked and admired. I just made that connection - Akrasia was precisely what Jefferson "suffered from," or was confused by. His blood and family were of slave-owners and wealthy squires with estates in the 10's of thousands of acres, much like Montana, today. Not for a moment did they think that "all men are created equal." To have done so would have been the end of their racket.
So, that was Thomas Jefferson's lifelong internal conflict and contradiction. And why he was always near bankruptcy (financial equality) even if he couldn't reduce himself to "equality" in other ways. It's a big problem for all public-spirited elitists (if there is such a thing). And why it's not a good idea to accumulate capital and use it to enrich oneself, or pursue even more disastrous purposes like militarism, or a desire to own and control other people.
After writing the above, I did some research in Dumas Malone's comprehensive biography, and found that Jefferson was mostly tutored by the one secular professor at W&M when he was there, and there were only a few dozen students. The rest of the faculty (maybe 8 men) were ordained, as it was a Church of England college to train clergy, teaching Greek and Latin, history, logic, math, etc - the original "liberal arts."
The amazing thing (which many historians of ideas must already know) was that this tutor, named Small, was from Glasgow, Scotland, and actually knew and worked/studied with both James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, and Erasmus Darwin, a social philosopher who was also the grandfather of Charles, and who had similar theories about "cultural evolution".
Even though Jefferson came by all his knowledge and Enlightenment values honestly, it must have been a continual internal struggle to reconcile these "higher truths" and wisdom with the greed and tyranny of the "ruling class" or what we'd now call "the one percent." It also explains his deep interest in science, history, as well as technology and innovation (several patentable inventions are attributed to him).
I used to think that all elitists (elites doing their thing, even if they profess not to believe in it) were control freaks. They really seemed to like dominating and controlling other people. It was like sports to them, or military regimentation, and ultimately, the law of the jungle - "One for all, all for one, and every man for himself," as the Three Stooges used to put it. And some recent accounts (Smithsonian, November 2013 for one) reveal that he was a very practiced and "normal" sort of slave-owner, using beatings, dividing families, etc. for "crimes" like trying to escape.
Now, I see that a lot of it is merely "defense", or as we say in the Nuclear Garrison Town, "deterrence." If we don't act aggressively, someone else will see us as "weak" and attack us, or otherwise usurp our property and local community. But this is one of the main determinants of the course of history. Something as simple as a love affair gone bad (or in a more rigid culture, "wife-stealing", as in Helen of Troy), or a bad gambling debt can have ruinous consequences for all. That is supposedly the reason we establish (or at least tolerate) governments and legal systems at all. We expect some sort of fairness and protection of our rights and property from them. But what happens when they go "rogue," and become, instead, the corporate crime syndicates we have, today?
I happen to live in what can only be called a "nuclear garrison town." Everything revolves around the presence of 150 (formerly 200, with 600 deliverable warheads) nuclear-armed Minuteman missiles. This is defended with all the political capital Montana can muster in Washington, D.C. as an absolutely essential "deterrent" to something or other. Aliens, perhaps. Really, that's the only explanation that makes even a little bit of sense, to me.
Meanwhile, "national security" takes precedence over everything. We were like the missile fields of the Soviet Union. The locally-owned Great Falls Tribune, highly critical of this strategy, was soon bought out by the Minneapolist-Star-Tribune (Cowell family). The local TV and radio stations were gradually taken over by big chains; the downtown gutted by shopping malls and sprawl, and later, the "big box stores" with which no local businesses could compete. Once a union town, the transient population of ex-military and military dependents wouldn't honor picket lines, and also kept wages low in service jobs, and with their veteran's preference, took most of the civil service jobs, as well.
So it's in vain to claim that there are any "economic benefits" to a military economy. It's nothing but waste, violence, and real dependency. It's the ultimate state socialism, tolerated as such because it's believed to be necessary. But is it?
No one can make a case for the necessity of a nuclear arsenal in remote Montana, capable of literally destroying human civilization. Unless you see this as some sort of divine punishment or other intention, it has no purpose whatsoever. It's just an instrument of nuclear terror - as much directed at the local populace and Americans in general as it is against some imagined "aggressor" - of which we are clearly the leading representative.
"We have met the enemy, and he is us."
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