The Pathological Selfishness of Government Officials

Scott Lazarowitz

Recently I wrote about how some people use the armed, compulsory powers of government to restrict the rights and economic activities of others as a means of protecting one’s own selfish economic interests, profits, etc. That includes the unions and minimum wage laws, and big corporations such as those among Big Pharma in their legal restrictions against generic and supplement makers.

But there is another kind of government selfishness, even worse. That is when the government officials themselves restrict the rights of and threaten those people who publicly express dissent and criticism toward those government officials and their bad policies.

On his blog yesterday, Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger wrote:

“Leaving aside what Awlaki did to justify his assassination, one big problem is that governments often end up viewing citizens who oppose their policies as enemies of the state, ones who are considered just as dangerous to ‘national security’ as those who actually take up arms against the government.

Thus, governments with the omnipotent, non-reviewable power to take out their own citizens oftentimes end up sliding the assassination scale to encompass those who are threatening national security or demoralizing the war effort by simply opposing what the regime is doing…

In (government officials’ and statists’) minds, whatever the U.S. government is doing to combat communism or terrorism has to be good and anyone who opposes it must be helping the communists or the terrorists. The best way to describe this statist mindset is through the simplistic statement, ‘You’re either with us or against us.’ Thus, if a person is opposing the government’s actions against communists and terrorists, that person must be supporting the communists or the terrorists.

That’s how dissidents and critics end up on their government’s watch lists, terrorist lists, communist lists, no-fly lists, or assassination lists. By standing up against the government’s policies, they are inevitably viewed as enemies of the state by government officials.”

You see, even though many of our government officials’ policies have been counter-productive and destructive to our liberty and unnecessarily murderous of foreigners overseas, these government officials are so selfish and narcissistic — and to a criminally pathological extent — that they must stifle through police actions the criticisms toward them amongst the civilian population. As America is becoming increasingly totalitarian, so too are our government officials becoming in their intolerance of dissent. It really becomes a personal matter among these self-centered politicians and bureaucrats.

It not only is an issue for individuals and groups who publicly criticize government policies, but with some people within that government, such as whistleblowers who have taken the risk of exposing actual crimes being committed by government officials. One example is Bradley Manning, who allegedly exposed war crimes committed by members of the U.S. military, from top levels on down to enlisted soldiers. Manning has been held in solitary confinement in most inhumane conditions for over a year without any charges or conviction of any crime. Manning may have embarrassed government officials.

I suppose if I were a pathologically narcissistic and selfish, incompetent, corrupt government official, I probably also wouldn’t want my incompetence, corruption and crimes exposed, and probably would want to keep surveillance on, silence, or kill my critics. Cass Sunstein and the Federal Reserve want to do so regarding the surveillance; VeriSign now wants to do it regarding the silencing, and Barack Obama has done it regarding the killing.

For example, if I were the incompetent and corrupt ignoramus that is our Attorney General Eric Holster, I also wouldn’t want exposed how I allowed a gun-running op to go on under my authority, running guns to Mexican drug lords that resulted already in the deaths of hundreds of people. I probably would want to silence those who want to expose that.

And, it is no surprise that the Federal Reserve wants to keep surveillance on bloggers, Internet websites and social media to find those who criticize the Fed and try to “set them straight” about how important the Fed really is. If I were the incompetent and clueless Ben Bernanke, I probably also would want my critics silenced. The Bernank is obviously no fan of Ron Paul, that’s for sure. (Oh, and by the way, End the Fed!)

And if I were any of the thousands and thousands of corrupt psychopaths of the U.S. military, responsible for the deaths of hundred of thousands of innocent Iraqis and other Middle Easterners, for no good reason other than to provide profits for the military contractors, and provide government bureaucracy “jobs” for the otherwise unemployable amongst us, I wouldn’t want that exposed either. If I were former President George H.W. Bush, I wouldn’t want my act of starting a war of aggression against another country that was of no threat to Americans, the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and, along with the sanctions throughout the 1990s that resulted in skyrocketing disease and deaths and widespread anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East, I also would not want such incompetence, buffoonery, corruption and criminal activities exposed and talked about, and probably would want to silence my critics.

Given how much worse the younger Bush and Obama have been, and how Obama has become the current War Criminal-in-Chief, should it be any surprise that Obama’s regime is also crushing civil liberties domestically, silencing criticism and punishing dissenters left and right? This is typical of totalitarian governments and their selfish narcissists at the helm.

But will the selfish narcissists of the State completely kill our right to expose the truth about them, protected by the First Amendment?

Will the people ever wake up? The people need to realize that the only way to restore our freedom is to abolish the federal government completely, and free the states to retain their individual sovereignty and independence, decentralize, de-monopolize away from government control, and secede from the centralized totalitarian monstrosity, that self-serving, occupying foreign government in Washington.

Scott Lazarowitz is a libertarian writer and cartoonist. Please visit his website Reason and Jest.