So now it's North Korean nukes, is it?
The one thing George Bush was good at -- and it looks like Bill Clinton
is following in his footsteps -- was the age-old Teddy-Rooseveltian art of
bullying small countries. All sorts of places in recent history come to mind,
but the case in point is North Korea, guilty of attempting to join the U.S.,
Russia, formerly-Soviet Georgia, Ukraine, India, South Africa, Israel, and
France -- among others -- in the possession of weapons powered by fissionable
elements.
Admittedly, North Korea is one of the world's most repressive countries -- only
slightly more tolerable than Santa Monica, Berkeley, Aspen, or Boulder -- and
it may not be good if they have nukes of their own (as opposed to just
borrowing them the way Germany does). But there are worse things than North
Korea having nukes, or things that are more immediate, that we ought to be
concerned about.
Throughout the final months of the Nixon Administration, I worried about
the officer whose duty it was to carry the "football" -- also known as "The
Button" -- everywhere the President went. If Tricky had ordered a strike on,
say, North Korea, this poor chump would have had to decide whether to obey a
guy who was wandering through the White House at night talking to portraits of
his predecessors, or figure the Commander-in-Chief had gone all the way out to
lunch and that the best thing was to use his .45 on the First Dick -- and then
on himself.
Today, when most of the world's nuclear weapons are already in the most
dangerously irresponsible hands I can conceive of -- those of Bozo and Bozita
Clinton -- why the hell are we so upset at the prospect of the North Koreans
having them, as well? Didn't Waco demonstrate pretty clearly that Billy-Jeff
wouldn't hesitate to use the bomb on us if he thought he could get away with
it?
While we're asking questions, whatever happened to national sovereignty?
Why isn't pressuring another country into allowing international inspection of
its most critical defense industry a truly horrible precedent for our own
sovereignty?
And hasn't Clinton surpassed even himself, hypocrisywise, since it's
clear he wants to impose on us the kind of social and political regime that
North Korea has?
And while we're at it, Mr. President, why is it that the Bosnians have a
natural right to defend themselves from a renegade government, while Americans
do not?
But I digress.
After all is said and done, isn't this just another flatulent liberal
attempt to impose gun control, which we all know perfectly well -- through
examples ranging from our own inner cities to Germany following World War
I -- doesn't work?
Of course it is.
So, I pretend to hear you asking, what would I do about North Korea if I
were President? I'd use the original American belief system as the potent
intercontinental weapon it's always been. If all the stories we hear about
the Korean War are true, they used to love accusing us of using germ warfare
on them. It always seemed to be a central feature of the confessions they
forced American prisoners to sign. Very well, I'd warn the North Koreans that
they're perfectly entitled to develop nuclear weapons, but that, if they
insist, we'll exercise our equal right to infect them with a terminal case of
individualism.
I'd begin with Korean-language radio and TV broadcasts -- translated by
Los Angeles shopkeepers who've shown a working understanding of it -- from
land, sea, and space, of works advocating and celebrating the most rugged
forms of individualism known. Not the namby-pamby liberal claptrap they used
to air over Voice of America or Radio Free Europe, but the hard stuff, like
the Bill of Rights, Eugene Zamiatin's We. the Bill of Rights, Ira Levin's
This Perfect Day. the Bill of Rights, Poul Anderson's Shield. the Bill of
Rights, Robert B. Boardman's Savior of Fire. the Bill of Rights, Paul
Lepanto's Return to Reason. the Bill of Rights, Robert Heinlein's The Moon
is a Harsh Mistress. the Bill of Rights, Eric Frank Russell's The Great
Explosion. the Bill of Rights, F. Paul Wilson's An Enemy of the State. the
Bill of Rights, Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson. the Bill of Rights,
Ayn Rand's Anthem. the Bill of Rights, J. Neil Schulman's Alongside Night.
the Bill of Rights, perhaps even my own The Probability Broach or Pallas.
and the Bill of Rights, with emphasis on the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, and
Ninth Amendments.
Especially the Second.
We could probably supply little radios, to be dropped from high-flying
B-52s. If I were doing it, the interpretations, linguistic and philosophical,
would be as radically Libertarian as I could make them. After all, we're out
to really the other fellow here, aren't we? And there would even be
commercials.
For handguns and assault rifles made in South Korea.
History shows that this kind of thing works -- people in captive nations
will risk their very lives to listen to radio that's even halfway uncensored,
even when it's done haphazardly and lackadaisically by government employees
whose personal philosophies don't differ that much from those of the target
dictatorships.
The message would always be: "Your life belongs to you, and to no one
else: seize it from those who falsely claim they have a right to control it,
and you and your children will enjoy unprecedented peace, progress, and
prosperity."
And if you don't, then we'll leave Jimmy Carter over there with you,
forever.
The one real difficulty I foresee with this concept is that neither the
Democrats nor the Republicans have the testicular fortitude to carry it out,
for fear that it might backfire, spreading runaway individualism throughout
the U.S.S.A. And you can be damn sure that the Japanese -- who run a country
where individualism is beaten out of kids in grade school, confessions are
tortured out of suspects at precinct stations, and the police search your home
for weapons twice a year as a "courtesy" -- won't want to risk this kind of
exposure, either.
Only a Libertarian administration could wage this kind of germ warfare
safely and effectively. Individualism is more dangerous to Bill and Hillary
than nuclear weapons.
And they know it.
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