Swatting Flies While Vultures Pick Your Bones

“They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

- Benjamin Franklin

Two tragedies occurred on September 11, 2001. The first was horrendous in nature that claimed the lives of thousands of Americans as it unfolded before our very eyes on the television screens of the world. Time after traumatic time we viewed the film of one of the tallest structures on the face of the earth crumble into a smoking mountain of rubble. A nation was in shock and the whole world mourned the innocent lives snuffed out at the hands of a few men that needed nothing more than box cutters to cause the greatest terrorist catastrophe in the history of mankind.

The second tragedy was more subtle as if it were a tremor following a major earthquake. The first tragedy is bad enough so that the second hardly seems like anything to be concerned about at all. However, I am afraid this time the aftershock is far worse than the quake itself.

While the first tragedy on that fateful day in early autumn claimed the lives of a few thousand unfortunate Americans, the second has claimed tens of millions. The terrorist achieved exactly what they set out to do. By killing only a few thousand citizens, along with themselves, they were able to send untold millions into such a panic that they have turned their backs on the very things this great country was founded and built upon. Lying buried beneath the tons of stone and steel that once was the World Trade Center, along with thousands of innocent Americans killed, are those precious American siblings — Liberty and Freedom.

The tragedy that we now face as a nation is the State’s manipulation of the effects of fear. Fear that causes people to act and think in ways they never would in its absence. Fear that turns brother against brother and allows politicians to rob citizens of their riches and freedom. Fear that causes citizens to willingly sacrifice their liberty before the great god Security, promised them by a government that seeks to enslave them. A government that uses fear as a deflection in the hopes that citizens will not notice the real terror that is produced by the parties that control its Houses. The State uses fear to keep you distracted swatting flies while the vultures pick your bones.

Now, I can hear the screams from the hawks already. They are screeching blatant lies such as, “You are un-American,” and, “You say, Aha! This proves that America is altogether evil.” Some will even go as far as Mr. Scott on our message board and accuse me of hating America. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it is my love for this country, and the liberty and freedom that are her foundation, that prompts me to write of the atrocities of the State. It is my affection for our beloved Constitution that commands me to call attention to the actions of unscrupulous politicians in their attempts to destroy its meaning. The flies of fear will not distract me while the vultures of CONgress pick my bones!

I have been castigated lately because I refuse to support Mr. Bush’s War on Terrorism. Because I disagree with the hawks, I have been told I am un-American, un-Libertarian, ignorant, a terrorist sympathizer, and that I lack compassion. So, I will ask you the same thing I asked Mr. Scott in our discussion forum, “What makes you think we can win a war against a phantom called Terror?” We have NEVER won one of these wars before, so why will this time be different? We have waged war on Poverty since the sixties, and people are still poor. We have engaged the evil enemy Ignorance since the seventies, and still our children cannot read. We have gallantly fought the demon Drugs for decades, and all we have done is fund terrorist organizations in other countries. And you expect us to believe that the US will stamp out terrorism? You are comforted by the effort; I am appalled at the lack of results. You believe the lie, and I speak the truth. These are our differences.

We are told the mission of the War on Terrorism is two fold. To capture or kill Osama bin Laden specifically; and, to generally rid the world of terrorists altogether. The first will be easier to accomplish than the second, because just like America’s other phantom wars the mission of ridding the world of terrorism is impossible to achieve. I don’t think even the staunchest war hawk really believes that we can possibly stamp out terrorism. The difference I have with them is they find comfort in the government’s effort while I remain suspicious of the State’s hidden agendas that practically everyone acknowledges. It should throw up some pretty big red flags when CONgress passes into law a bill that takes the Bill of Rights and feeds it to a paper shredder, without even reading the damn thing! Ron Paul says the bill wasn’t even printed for his colleagues and himself until AFTER the treasonous law was passed and ready for the president’s signature. It looks like CONgress is not immune to the fear themselves. Why else would you do something so foolish as to vote to enact a law that you had not read? This is what the vultures were doing, Mr. Scott, while you were busy swatting all those flies.

I know it is a hard truth to accept, especially for those of us that cherish America and the “grand experiment” handed down through every generation of a nation from her founders. It is the love for liberty and devotion to freedom that has perpetuated a way of life that before America was unknown to mankind. The only way that “way of life” will be passed on to the next generation, is if we stay ever vigilant to preserve its very nature.

Before she died in 1961, American newspaper columnist Dorothy Thompson wrote:

“When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.”

This is what concerns me. This is why I remain skeptical and untrusting of the State at war. The most dangerous threat to our freedom is allowing the fear of the world to blind us to the terror we face at home. Stop swatting at the flies and pay closer attention to the vultures. Enough is enough!





Originally published in Liberty For All February 7, 2002.



R. Lee Wrights is a writer and political activist living in Texas. He is the co-founder and editor of the free speech online magazine Liberty For All. Contact Lee at rleewrights@gmail.com.