G. Gordon Liddy’s When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country, Part 2

2,411 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here ^[2])

The Environment

Since I’m a tree hugger, this was a rather difficult chapter for me. Still, I’ll give it a fair hearing. Liddy begins by demonstrating that there is still plenty of fossil fuel, and that there will be for a long time. I’ll grant him that point, though it’s somewhat more complicated than that. As easier-to-reach reserves are depleted, there’ll be diminishing returns which will eventually make the price of fossil fuels exorbitant, or even prohibitive. This has been going on for a long time; the age of dirt-cheap oil is over.

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Furthermore, having a petroleum needle in our arm is a geopolitical pain in the ass. To take only one thing, it means that the United States Navy must maintain a continual presence in the Persian Gulf, at taxpayer expense. One of these days, I hope to be the first kid on my block to have a Mr. Fusion.

Then he takes aim at the climate change narrative, getting closer to the mark:

Just as dangerous are those environmentalists who wish to control others. Most of these are politicians. They use the same scare tactics. Their goal is not money, however, but new laws and regulations to limit liberties even further. This is a problem not just here in America. Certain zealots want to control all people, no matter their citizenship. As evidence, I give you the Brussels bureaucrats who brought us the Kyoto Protocol on “global warming.”

I’ll concur that the climate change scare is overhyped and loaded with side agendas to grant more power and control to governments and unaccountable non-governmental organizations. Worse — something the author doesn’t get into — is that it’s geared toward deindustrializing the Western world, with non-white countries exempted for the most part. (Now if I really wanted to be a conspiracy nut, I might speculate that the purpose might be to destroy our economy and serve a depopulation agenda, similar to the Morgenthau Plan.) There’s a big difference between real environmentalism and globalist-friendly AstroTurfed environmentalism ^[4]. To tell the difference, note which one gets played up in the media.

Then the author takes a swipe at recycling. I’ll have to quibble with that. Why recycle glass bottles when their raw material is sand? That one is easy enough. Every item going into a recycle bin is diverted from the trash stream. Landfills eventually do run out of space, providing little to no residual property value. Finding a new place to dispose of mountains of trash is a major headache, especially because nobody wants to live around a garbage dump.

Then there’s a long description of what life was like in the 1920s: no contemporary appliances, air conditioning, and so forth. Would we really want to give up all our modern conveniences? He has a point here, too. I haven’t seen any of my fellow tree huggers give up their iPhones, televisions, and other gadgets to rough it in a low-tech lifestyle — other than the Unabomber. That’s why I’m looking forward to putting in a solar array shortly, and no longer pay an arm and a leg for my power bill. I know there are some drawbacks, but wait until I get my Mr. Fusion!

Then he describes some of his gas-guzzling vehicles: a fully tricked-out Chevrolet Silverado HD, a couple of Harleys, and a ZR-1 Corvette:

It is good for zero to sixty in under four seconds, can top two hundred miles per hour, and is torch red. The license plate reads “H20GATE” — not that you’ll be able to read it when it flashes by, its wake turbulence blowing the Greenie Weenies’ enviro-buggies into the weeds where they’ll feel more at home.

I gotta hand it to him — nice! Still, one of these days I look forward to getting a shiny hovercar that goes up to Mach 3, has a maximum ceiling of 80 angels, and carries a 12-pack of photon torpedoes. Best of all, it’ll run on a mash of pureed bok choy and mung bean sprouts infused in kratom — so there!

The Military ^[7]

EMMA | THE CALLING | GOARMY

This chapter opens with the author’s reflections on September 11. To him, it felt like Pearl Harbor all over again. He has much to say about America’s lack of preparedness due to the 1990s budget cuts. Moreover:

On 1 September 1939, when war broke out in Europe, America’s armed forces were smaller than those of the Netherlands and Portugal, our navy smaller than that of Romania — all because we had foolishly considered World War I, “The Great War,” to be “the war to end all wars” and had disarmed.

You mean — gasp — the politicians lied to talk us into a war? More seriously, we also had a Great Depression going on in 1939 — not the best circumstances to build a military force suitable for imperialistic adventures abroad. Much could be said about FDR’s funny money policies. Still, at the time it wasn’t in full swing yet. When the war broke out, that’s when the massive borrow-and-spend spree began.

Moreover, recall how the entire nation mobilized for World War II. I remember it clearly. By war’s end, the United States had more than 16 million men under arms, this at a time when the nation’s population was only about 140 million. To get some sense of what this was like, consider that, to be proportionate to the way things were in 1945, our current military would have to have some 33 million men on active duty. Today, however, we have only about 1.4 million serving in our active-duty armed forces. Only after the heinous terrorist attacks on American soil and the beginning of our global war on terror have our armed services begun to hit their recruiting goals.

Once more, I’ll have to dissent here. A little more reflection would’ve helped — again, like Pat Buchanan ^[8]. There’s a reason the Founding Fathers didn’t want us to have a huge standing army in peacetime.

It’s a long chapter, with much about the first Gulf War. (The second was still in the planning stages at the time.) More follows about the Somalia bungle, Yugoslavia, and so on. Then, the subsection “Social Experimentation in the Military” brings us to a strong finish, nearing the home stretch:

Americans should be aghast at the social engineering that has occurred in our armed forces, because it has dramatically threatened our war-fighting capability. The military is not supposed to be a microcosm of greater America. It is not a jobs program, or a place for social experimentation, or a venue for political correctness.

The author then goes on a long tirade about women in the military. (That much seems like just the sort of problems that could’ve been predicted quite easily. Still, the Pentagon just had to do that, because feminism.) Liddy also has a few words criticizing the wisdom of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” measure. All I have to say is, if only he could see us now — hoo boy! ^[9]

Finally, I already knew that G. Gordon Liddy was somewhat less of a pacifist than Attila the Hun. (I get it; I’ll just say that my Viking heritage gives me a particular affinity for sharp and pointy objects.) Society very obviously has a place for warriors. Martial enthusiasm is a good thing, if channeled in the right direction. On the other hand, unthinkingly getting whipped up into war fever whenever the politicians push our patriotism buttons — a particularly American attribute, most regrettably — doesn’t end so well if the result is getting killed in someone else’s fight or leaving the world in a worse place. More to the point, why exactly has it been America’s job to put the kibosh on the Kaiser, toot-toot in Der Fuehrer’s face, and lately to overthrow every country on Israel’s shit list ^[10]? Next time there’s another Zio-war, I say they can count us out ^[11].

Of Men and Women

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The G-Man stays remarkably on point in this chapter. It isn’t quite so ideological, but more like a sort of John Gray “Mars and Venus” discussion. There’s a good amount of actionable advice, too — for example:

The Golden Rule works for marriage as well as it does for everything else. If you had a very bad day and you take it out on your spouse, you will get it back.

In addition, always keep in mind that words are very powerful. Let us say that you are having a disagreement and your spouse has said something you find offensive. You know exactly the right comeback to score a devastatingly effective win. Don’t say it! Words once uttered can never be taken back. They can be forgiven but will never be forgotten (especially by women, who forget nothing), and things said in moments of anger will accumulate, festering and eroding the relationship until finally it is gone.

Indeed — one of the principles of Verbal Judo is that the most dangerous weapon is a cocked tongue. Heed this well!

Survive or Prevail? ^[13]

There’s an obvious distinction in the title, explained by the following:

“To survive” means merely “to continue to live or to exist.” What kind of way of life is that? But flip back in the dictionary to another verb, “prevail.” Look at that definition: “to overcome; to gain the victory or superiority; to gain the advantage; to have the upper hand, or the mastery; to win; to triumph; to be victorious.” What a completely different way of life!

Much of what follows consists of war stories, one in particular being quite gruesome. Other than that, the author suggests using precise language rather than the typical politically correct euphemisms that had come into vogue by then. More discussion follows that is not so ideological on topics from neurobiology to character.

Appendix: The Key to Watergate

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Since the author is best known as a Watergate guy, it’s hardly a surprise that he presented some new material about it. As a side note, the happenings of the Nixon administration take me right back to when I was an ankle-biter. Wasn’t it amazing to have a real President? Warts and all, Tricky Dick is looking great ^[17] right about now!

Generally, Liddy’s supplementary material is presented to support the thesis in the book Silent Coup ^[18]. To make a long story short, the book alleges that John Dean had a personal motive in the Watergate caper: namely, to raid a filing cabinet that allegedly contained derogatory information concerning his then-girlfriend (now his wife). The G-Man regarded him as a snitch — in his words, a “notorious rat” — and describes Dean’s lawsuit. He had plenty to say, such as this:

Remember that Dean claimed that not only didn’t he write [his autobiography] Blind Ambition, he didn’t even fully read it? Wait until you hear his explanation for that yarn. According to Dean, speaking under oath, he was ill and in bed when he received the galley proofs of Blind Ambition from the publisher, and his wife wouldn’t let him review them to make corrections because he had once stained her sheets with ink from his pen. (Ever hear of that new high-tech invention called a pencil? Hello!) The point is that Dean, when cornered, hid behind his wife’s skirts. It would not be the last time that Dean hid behind a woman, which is why I say the case was not yet closed.

But wait! There’s more!

After being badgered for a year, the woman [whose Watergate office had contained the filing cabinet in question] finally, on the last day she legally could, sued me. Whereupon the Deans’ former lawyer became her lawyer. That’s one way to get clients. It’s called barratry. Having found another woman behind whose skirts to hide, Dean folded his suit against me, for my money so he wouldn’t have to face a public trial at which his irreconcilable accounts of Watergate events would be exposed to the press and public.

Ooh burn! Since I’m not intimately familiar with Watergate, I can’t render a personal opinion on whether the filing cabinet thing was the key motive, a side agenda, or a false lead. But those who are interested in Watergate history might appreciate this section, which contains extensive court transcripts.

Conclusion

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All told, it was a worthwhile book for its time, despite some faults. The theme is worthy of some discussion. There’s always a tension between restriction and permissiveness. The right target to shoot for is the distinction between liberty and license. A stifling nanny state is a bad thing. On the other hand, allowing people to do whatever the hell they want will often end badly ^[20]. The problem is that arriving at a proper distinction isn’t always easy, and figuring out the correct way to discourage destructive trends can be difficult, too. Without bogging down the discussion with definitions and drawing lines, I’ll just say that this can be the subject of much debate. Settling these matters is a normal part of statecraft as well as the legislative process.

It’s hardly a surprise that the dividing line varies by ideology, with laxity promoted in some areas and restriction promoted in some others, all depending on one’s underlying premises. This tends to cause Leftists and Rightists to point fingers and call each other control freaks. For instance, liberals trip out whenever someone tells them they shouldn’t have their cummies however they like it, and conservatives resent others forcing medical policies on them. (Meanwhile, there’s the old chestnut that Democrats want to be your mommy, Republicans want to be your daddy, and libertarians want you to be an adult.) Still, the never-ending controversy doesn’t mean that carrying on the debate is a hopeless effort. Moreover, shying away from it will favor the prevailing side by default, so nice guy neutrality isn’t a viable option. As Pat Buchanan put it in Right from the Beginning:

Traditionalists and conservatives have as much right as secularists to see our values written into law, to have our beliefs serve as the basis for federal legislation . . . [We must not stop fighting] until we have re-created a government and an America that conforms, as close as possible, to our image of the Good Society, if you will, a Godly country . . . Someone’s values are going to prevail. Why not ours? Whose country is it, anyway?

That said, I’ll go with healthy paternalism. If Rightists and Leftists regard each other as control freaks, it’s better to go with the side that brings to the table practicality, common sense, and traditions that work. Again, I’m just a fascist that way.