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Women are human beings, and consequently have all the natural rights that any human beings can have. They have just as good a right to make laws as men have, and no better; AND THAT IS JUST NO RIGHT AT ALL. No human being, nor any number of human beings, have any right to make laws, and compel other human beings to obey them. To say that they have is to say that they are the masters and owners of those of whom they require such obedience.

The only law that any human being can rightfully be compelled to obey is simply the law of justice. And justice is not a thing that is made, or that can be unmade, or altered, by any human authority. It is a natural principle, inhering in the very nature of man and of things. It is that natural principle which determines what is mine and what is thine, what is one man’s right or property and what is another man’s right or property. It is, so to speak, the line that Nature has drawn between one man’s rights of person and property and another man’s rights of person and property.

This natural principle, which we will call justice, and which assigns to each and every human being, is, I repeat, not a thing that has made, but is a matter of science to be learned, like mathematics, or chemistry, or geology. And all the laws, so called, that men have ever made, either to create, define, or control the rights of individuals, were intrinsically just as absurd and ridiculous as would be laws to create, define, or control mathematics, or chemistry, or geology.

Substantially all the tyranny and robbery and crime that governments have ever committed – and they have either themselves committed, or licensed others to commit, nearly all that have ever been committed in the world by anybody – have been committed by them under the pretence of making laws. Some man, or some body of men, have claimed the right, or usurped the power, of making laws, and compelling other men to obey; thus setting up their own will, and enforcing it, in place of that natural law, or natural principle, which says that no man or body of men can rightfully exercise any arbitrary power whatever over the persons or property of other men.

There are a large class of men who are so rapacious that they desire to appropriate to their own uses the persons and properties of other men. They combined for the purpose, call themselves governments, make what they call laws, and then employ courts, and governors, and constables, and, in the last resort, bayonets, to enforce obedience.

There is another class of men, who are devoured by ambition, by the love of power, and the love of fame.

They think it a very glorious thing to rule over men; to make laws to govern them. But as they have no power of their own to compel obedience, they unite with the rapacious class before mentioned, and become their tools. They promise to make such laws as the rapacious class desire, if this latter class will but authorize them to act in their name, and furnish the money and the soldiers necessary for carrying their laws, so called, into execution.

Still another class of men, with a sublime conceit of their own wisdom, or virtue, or religion, think they have a right, and a sort of divine authority, for making laws to govern those who, they think are less wise, or less virtuous, or less religious than themselves. They assume to know what is best for all other men to do and not to do, to be and not to be, to have and not to have. And they conspire to make laws to compel all those other men to conform to their will, or, as they would say, to their superior discretion. They seem to have no perception of the truth that each and every human being has had given to him a mind and body of his own, separate and distinct from the minds and bodies of all other men; and that each man’s mind and body have, by nature, rights that are utterly separate and distinct from the rights of any and all other men; that these individual rights are really the only human rights there are in the world; that each man’s rights are simply the right to control his own soul, and body, and property, according to his own will, pleasure, and discretion, so long as he does not interfere with the equal right of any other man to the free exercise and control of his own soul, body, and property. They seem to have no conception of the truth that, so long as he lets all other men’s souls, bodies, and properties alone, he is under no obligation whatever to believe in such wisdom, or virtue, or religion as they do, or as they think best for him.

This body of self-conceited, wise, virtuous, and religious people, not being sufficiently powerful of themselves to make laws and enforce them upon the rest of mankind, combined with the rapacious and ambitious classes before mentioned to carry out such purposes as they can all agree upon. And the farce, and jargon, and Babel they all make of what they call government would be supremely ludicrous and ridiculous, if it were not the cause of nearly all the poverty, ignorance, vice, crime, and misery there are in the world.

Of this latter class – that is, the self-conceited, wise, virtuous, and religious class – are those woman suffrage persons who are so anxious that women should participate in all the falsehood, absurdity, usurpation, and crime of making laws, and enforcing them upon other persons. It is astonishing what an amount of wisdom, virtue, and knowledge they propose to inflict upon, or force into, the rest of mankind, if they can but be permitted to participate with the men in making laws. According to their own promises and predictions, there will not be a single natural human being left upon the globe, if the women can but get hold of us, and add their power to that of the men in making such laws as nobody has any right to make, and such as nobody will be under the least obligation to obey. According to their programme, we are to be put into their legislative mill, and be run through, ground up, worked over, and made into some shape in which we shall be scarcely recognized as human beings. Assuming to be gods, they propose to make us over into their own image. But there are so many different images among them, that we can have, at most, but one feature after one model, and another after another. What the whole conglomerate human animal will be like, it is impossible to conjecture.

In all conscience, it is not for us even to bear the nearly unbearable ills inflicted upon us by the laws already made, – at any rate it is not better for us to be (if we can but be permitted to be) such simple human beings as Nature made us, – than suffer ourselves to be made over into such grotesque and horrible shapes as a new set of lawmakers would make us into, if we suffer them to try their powers upon us?

The excuse which the women offer for all the laws which they propose to inflict upon us is that they themselves are oppressed by the laws that now exist. Of course they are oppressed; and so are all men – except the oppressors themselves – oppressed by the laws that are made. As a general rule, oppression was the only motive for which laws were ever made. If men wanted justice, and only justice, no laws would ever need to be made; since justice itself is not a thing that can be made. If men or women, or men and women, want justice, and only justice, their true course is not to make any more laws, but to abolish the laws – all the laws – that have already been made. When they shall have abolished all the laws that have already been made, let them give themselves to the study and observance, and, if need be, the enforcement, of that one universal law – the law of Nature – which is “the same at Rome and Athens” – in China and in England – and which man did not make. Women and men alike will then have their rights; all their rights; all the rights that Nature gave them. But until then, neither men nor women will have anything that they can call their rights. They will at most have only such liberties or privileges as the laws that are made shall see fit to allow them.

If the women, instead of petitioning to be admitted to a participation in the power of making more laws, will but give notice to the present lawmakers that they (the women) are going up to the State House, and are going to throw all the existing statute books in the fire, they will do a very sensible thing, – one of the most sensible things it is in their power to do. And they will have a crowd of men – at least all the sensible and honest men in the country to go with them.

But this subject requires a treatise, and is not to be judged of by the few words here written. Nor is any special odium designed to be cast on the woman suffragists; many of whom are undoubtedly among the best and most honest of all those foolish people who believe that laws should be made.

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) was a lawyer, writer, entrepreneur, and libertarian activist.

From LRC, here.

For a couple of decades, I covered the military for various publications, as for example the Washington Times and Harper’s, and wrote a military column for Universal Press Syndicate. I was following the time-honored principle of sensible reporters: “Ask not what you can do for journalism, but what journalism can do for you.” The military beat was a great gig, letting you fly in fighter planes and sink in submarines. But if you take the study seriously, as I did, you learn interesting things. Such as that a war with a real country, such as Russia, China, or even Iran, would be a fool’s adventure. A few points:

Unused militaries deteriorate

The US fleet has not been in a war since 1945, the air forces since 1975. nor the Army in a hard fight since Vietnam. Bombing defenseless peasants, the chief function of the American military, is not war.

In extended periods of peace, which includes the bombing of peasants, a military tends to assume that no major war will come during the careers of those now in uniform. Commanders consequently do what makes their lives easy, what they must do to get through the day and have reasonable fitness reports. This does not include pointing out inadequacies of training or equipment. Nor does it include recommending large expenditures to remedy deficiencies. Nor does it include recommending very expensive mobilization exercises that would divert money from new weapons.

Thus an armored command has enough replacement tracks for training, but not enough for tanks in hard use in extended combat. When the crunch comes, it turns out that getting more track requires a new contract with the manufacturer, who has shut down the production line. The same is true for air filters, there not being much sand at Fort Campbell but a lot in Iraq. Things as mundane as MRATs and boots are not there.in real-war quantities.

GAU-8 ammo is in short supply because theory says the F-35 will do tank busting. The Navy runs out of TLAMs early on and discovers that manufacturing cruise missiles takes time. Lots of it.

And of course, some things simply don’t work as expected. Military history buffs will remember the Mark XIV torpedo, the Mark VI exploder of WWII, and the travails of the Tinosa.

Come the war, things turn into a goat rope. FUBAR, SNAFU.

Conscription

The United States cannot fight a large land war, as for example against Russia, China, or Iran. Such a war would require conscription. The public would not stand for it. America no longer enjoys the sort of patriotic unity that it did at the beginning of the war against Vietnam. It will not accept heavy casualties. People today are far more willing to disobey the federal government. Note that many states have legalized marijuana in defiance of federal law, that many jurisdictions across the country simply refuse to assist federal immigration enforcement. Any attempt to send Snowflakes and other delicates to fight would result in widespread civil disobedience.

The Navy

The existing fleet has never been under fire and does not think it ever will be. Most of its ships are thin-skinned, unarmored. One hit by an antiship missile would remove them from the war. This is as true of the Tico-class Aegis ships as of the newer Arleigh Burkes.

An aircraft carrier is a bladder of jet fuel wrapped around high explosives. The implications are considerable. A plunging hypersonic terminally-guided ballistic missile, piercing the flight deck and exploding in the hangar deck, would require a year in the repair yards. The Russians and Chinese are developing–have developed–missiles specifically to take out carriers. Note that the range of some of these missiles is much greater than the combat radius of the carrier’s aviation. Oops.

The USS Stark, 1987, after being hit by a pair of French Exocet missiles fired by an Iraqi Mirage

The USS Forrestal in 1967 after a five-inch Zuni land-attack missile, a pipsqueak rocket, accidentally launched on deck. It hit another fighter. The resulting fire cooked off large bombs. One hundred thirty-four dead, long stay in repair yards.

The Navy is assuming that it cannot be hit.

The Milquetoast Factor

Through Vietnam, America’s wars were fought by tough kids, often from rural backgrounds involving familiarity with guns and with hard physical work. I know as I grew up and went to Marine boot with them. Discipline, if not quite brutal, came close. Physical demands were high. In AIT–Advanced Infantry Training–at Camp Lejeune, it was “S Company on the road!” at three-thirty a.m., followed by hard running and weapons training until midnight. Yes, oldsters like to remember how it was, but that was how it was.

Today America has a military corrupted by social-justice politics. Recruits are no longer country boys who could chop cordwood. Obesity is common. The Pentagon has lowered physical standards, hidden racial problems, softened training. The officers are afraid of the large numbers of military women who are now in combat positions. One complaint about sexism and there goes the career.

Officer Rot

In times of extended peace, the officer corps decays. All second-tour officers are politicians, especially above the level of lieutenant colonel. You don’t get promoted by suggesting the senior ranks are lying for political reasons, as by insisting that the Afghan war is being won. Peacetime encourages careerists who advance by not making waves. Such Pattons of PowerPoint invariably have to be weeded out, at a high cost in lives, in a big war.

Today’s military is not going to fare well in anything resembling equal combat against Afghans, Russians, or Iranians. The US military has not been able to defeat Afghan villagers in eighteen years with an immense advantage in air power, gunships, armor, artillery, medical care, and PXs. What do you think would happen if they had to fight the Taliban on equal terms–sandals, rifles, RPGs, and not much else?

Unrealism

The future is the enemy of the present.

The military is not ready for a real war now because its focus is always on things down the road. For example, the Navy cannot now defeat hypersonic antiship missiles but will be able to, it thinks, someday, maybe, world without end, with near-magical lasers still in development. These will funnel lots of money to Raytheon or Lockheed Martin or somebody whether they work or not. Which isn’t important since nobody really believes there will be a serious war.

This is common thinking. America is in the process of acquiring B-21 intercontinental nuclear bombers for a frightening price. These will be useless except in a nuclear war when they would still be useless because the ICBMs would already have turned targets into glowing rubble when the B-21s got there.

Why build them? Because Northrop-Grumman has so much money that its lobbyists use snow shovels to fill Congressional pockets. In my days of covering the Pentagon, whenever a new weapon was bought, the AH-64 for example, the prime contractor would hand out a list of subcontractors in many states–whose congressmen would support the weapon to get the jobs. It is all about money. Sometimes Congress forces the military to buy weapons it explicitly says it doesn’t want, such as more M1 tanks from the factory in Lima, Ohio. Jobs.

In short, many weapons are bought for economic reasons, not for use in war. In my day, II saw many not-for-use weapons. The B1, B2, DIVAD, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the M16, the V-22, the LAW. Nothing has changed.

The Blank Ignorance Factor

The landscape outside of the Five-Sided Wind Tunnel is at least as bleak as that within. A friend, very much in a position to know, estimates that ninety percent of the Senate does not know where Burma is. Think Hormuz-Malacca-South China Sea.The likelihood that Trump knows what countries are littoral to the Caspian is zero. When I covered the military very few in Congress and nobody in the major media knew anything at all about weaponry and it uses: surface duct, deep sound channel, convergence zones, pseudo-random beam steering, APFSDS, staring receivers, chirp coding. These are the first-grade small talk of people who pay attention. These do not include minor lawyers-become-Congressmen from East East Jesus, Nebraska. Yet hey vote on military policy.

The Arrival of the Maintenance Hog

Being in a real war is hard on equipment. There are battle damage and heavy wear and tear. This doesn’t matter in the wars today’s military fights. America cannot really lose, only be worn down and leave. If the US “loses” in Afghanistan or Syria, it won’t matter to Americans and few will even notice. Because America always fights from well-protected bases and airfields, it can afford to use weapons that require a lot of maintenance, often including high-tech work. In a real war, no.

In WWII, a fighter plane was just a malformed truck: engine, windshield, tires, motor, stamped metal. If one came back full of holes, repair crews with reasonable training could repair them fast on the hangar deck. It wasn’t quite pop rivets and Bondo, but close.

After the Big War, American aircraft almost always flew from relatively safe bases. For example, in Vietnam, the carriers were never in danger. After Vietnam, the aerial forces seldom even suffered battle damage. Since the US was always attacking utterly inferior enemies, sortie rates and repair time ceased to matter.

And the military came to expect such luxury.

But now we have the F-35, the latest do-everything fighter of grotesque cost. It seems to be a real dog, poorly designed and suffering from endless problems. By accounts in the technical press, it is a hangar queen with very low sortie rates, poor readiness, and requiring complex electronic maintenance often at remote echelons.

This isn’t how you fight a real war.

How Wars Turn Out

Typically, not as planned. I’ve said this before but it is worth repeating. Look at history:

The American Civil War was supposed to last a day at First Manassas; wrong by four years and 650,000 dead. Napoleon thought his attack on Russia would end with the French in Moscow, not the Russians in Paris–which is what happened. WWI was supposed to last weeks and be a war of movement; wrong by four bloody years of trench warfare. The Japanese Army did not expect WWII to end with GIs buying their daughters drinks in Tokyo, nor the Germans that it would end with the Russian infantry in Berlin. The Americans did not think they would lose in Vietnam, nor the Russians that they would lose in Afghanistan. And so on.

Continue reading…

From LRC, here.