Waco and liberal corruption

By Llewellyn Rockwell Jr.

The mainstream press is trying to ignore it, but the government’s
role in the fire at Waco seven years ago is finally on trial, thanks to
the wrongful-death lawsuit brought by the victims’ families. At last,
the possibility for establishing wrongdoing now presents itself.

There is no chance, however, for true justice. The men, women, and
children gassed and burned at government hands cannot be brought back to
life. There will be no jail terms for those responsible. At best, the
families may get some monetary compensation. And perhaps we will see an
end to the blaming of the victims and the jailing of those who managed
to survive.

How telling that this trial takes place while Bill Clinton is busy
trying to buff up his image for the history books. Doesn’t he know that
after the smoke of the last eight years clears, the Waco massacre will
emerge as the most significant domestic event of his presidency? He
should have been forced out in the days following the incident. Congress
should have impeached him then instead of pretending that his worst
crime was fibbing about his White House sexual romps.

Waco will be remembered forever because it sums up key features of
the political culture of the 1990s: the untrammeled power of the
presidency, the complicity of the media in covering up federal crimes,
the bias against religion among the power elite, and the disregard of
individual rights that is habitual in our time. How ironic, how telling,
that all these developments have taken place under the cloak of
“liberalism,” a word that once referred to the attempt to circumscribe
the power of the state.

Who can forget the live pictures of the Davidian community in flames?
Clearly, the government was murdering those people. For weeks, they had
been fighting for life against a government that was terrorizing them.
This was no doomsday cult bent on suicide. For some strange reason, and
it’s never been entirely clear why, the government hated those people.

After the massacre, one hoped that even liberals would have sensed
the injustice. Surely the old lefties in the White House would recall
their past as crusaders against federal militarization, their shock at
Kent State, their sympathies with marginalized groups, and rise up to
denounce this federal oppression. Surely there would be shock and
outrage, even within the executive department. Resignations would
follow. Clinton would be discredited, and those responsible for this
outrage would be brought to justice.

It was not to be so. Over the next few weeks, the media cooperated
with the Clinton administration in an amazing cover-up of what was
plainly evident. Far from investigating the fire and the lies of the
White House, the media cabal demonized the Branch Davidians and smeared
anyone — the “lunatic fringe” — sympathetic with their plight.

We were told that they had probably committed suicide, or, if they
hadn’t, they merited no sympathy because of their crazy religion and/or
child abuse and/or gun stockpiling and/or drug use. Take your pick of
crimes; the Branch Davidians, most of them dead with the survivors
hauled off to prison, were not in a position to defend themselves. Reno
went on television to “take responsibility.” How courageous she is, the
news weeklies told us.

The meaning of the event had a further significance. It was the
largest display in the post-war period of what has become of American
liberalism: not a movement dedicated to protecting the liberties of
minorities or the rights of citizens, but to defending every manner of
coercion at the hands of the Leviathan state. It is for political
reasons that they turn a blind eye to the crimes of states they support.

This same fanatical ideology denied that the Soviets had committed
crimes against humanity in the Ukraine and the Gulag. After all, these
crimes were committed in the name of progress, which to the leftist mind
means collectivization and the eradication of bourgeois prejudices. This
same cast of mind seeks to deny that the Clinton administration did
anything wrong in Waco. Even the government’s case boils down to the
claim that if the Davidians had only obeyed the government, there would
have been no deaths; hence, it is the fault of the Davidians.

In 1993, these American liberals, who had just finished cheering on
the destruction of Iraq and would later whoop it up as bombs fell on
Serbia, were willing to defend the use of military weapons against
American citizens who were minding their own business. For liberals, it
was enough that Janet Reno had decided to move against those people.
That alone was proof they deserved it. Liberalism, which embraced
statism in the Progressive Era, the planned economy in the ’30s, and
outright redistributionism in the 1960s, has become nothing more than
state worship.

How pathetic, too, to witness Congress’ attempts to investigate what
had happened at Waco. A committee summoned various lackeys from the
administration to testify. Lie after lie went unchallenged. Witnesses
with phony stories prattled on and congressmen and their staffs listened
as if to the gospel. The committee disbanded with the White House
vindicated. But the issue wouldn’t go away, thanks to public pressure
and the hard work of a handful of political dissidents.

That event also symbolized something about the present state of the
Constitution: instead of the balance of power, we live under a de facto
executive dictatorship. The White House never felt the need to ask
permission of the Congress before it undertook the raid, and the
Congress never raised a serious challenge to the White House’s assertion
of complete sovereignty. Our elected representatives provided the
illusion of participatory government, while Reno and various anonymous
and unelected underlings held the reins of government in reality.

In the old days, the American system was supposed to exemplify the
ideals of democracy and self-government. Not for us the system of
autocratic rule, where one man can dictate policy at the expense of
natural liberty. No indeed: we had a government of laws to which even
the rulers were subjected. But beginning decades ago and culminating in
the Clinton administration, we have tolerated regimes in love with their
own power. In the Clinton years, this has been exemplified in the
executive order, which Paul Begala, the glib Friend of Bill, famously
described this way: “Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool.”

Kinda despotic, actually. And that kind of crack exhibits a
totalitarian mentality. But it perfectly captures the willingness of the
present regime to use any means to hold on to power. Thus is the state
of liberalism today. There are no ideals left. There is precious little
public support for their goals. There is only raw power, wielded by
courts that ignore the Constitution and unelected bureaucrats who
believe themselves to be a people set apart.

In the former Soviet Union and its former East Bloc, in Latin
America, and in much of Europe, the term liberal refers to those who
want a society and economy free from the shackles of state control.
Pascal Salin of the University of Paris has just come out with a massive
volume with the title “Liberalism,” the purpose of which is to recapture
the full sense of the term as used by Ludwig von Mises in his 1927 book of the same name.

In this tradition, liberalism means individual rights, capitalism,
decentralism. The horrible reality is that in America, the term
liberalism refers to the exact opposite: the unquestioned power of the
executive to carry off state violence, as in Waco, and to do so with
neither permission nor reprisal from any other branch of government or
the media.

Political philosopher Paul Gottfried, author of “After Liberalism: Mass
Democracy in the Managerial State,”
has recently noted the new
vogue for the term “post-liberalism.” It refers to the theory that
freedom is essentially dangerous because it permits inequalities,
discrimination, and secession from civic culture. The modern state
cannot tolerate this.

In place of freedom, post-liberalism seeks a total state to
reconstruct people’s thinking, to coerce their every association, to
manage every business, and to prohibit the exercise of private ownership
and decision-making. Post-liberalism is also ruthless: it dreams of
eradicating its enemies by any means necessary.

This is the basis of nearly every act of tyranny committed in
present-day America. This is the basis of the Supreme Court’s decision
on prayer at sports events. It is the basis of the EEOC’s relentless
attack on business. It is what’s behind the federally imposed curriculum
in the public schools. It is what sustains the welfare-warfare state. It
is the genesis of the whole of the modern statist enterprise.

If the court should rule that the Waco victims’ families deserve
compensation, or that those responsible for the invasion of property and
the taking of life should face some sort of reprisal, it would nicely
symbolize the coming turn of events: the end of the Clinton era and the
possible new dawn of a day when the state is no longer permitted
absolute power.

What we need is not another post-liberal regime but a new
appreciation of classical liberalism in order to replace the frightening
corruption of the last eight years and before. When our communities are
safe from federal tanks, our property is our own, our associations are
private affairs, and our businesses are permitted to serve customers and
not the state, we will know that true liberalism has returned.

Llewellyn Rockwell Jr.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. He also edits a daily news site, LewRockwell.com. Read more of Llewellyn Rockwell Jr.'s articles here.