Hillary, Benghazi and Trayvon

Former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton expressed far more remorse about the Zimmerman verdict (“deep painful heartache”) than she did in reflecting on the American who died under her watch in Benghazi (“what difference does it make?”).

So what’s the connection and what difference does it make?

Both the Trayvon tragedy and the Benghazi bungle demonstrate one undeniable fact.  That is that our government is unable to protect us.  Citizen safety is the State’s single most sacred duty.   For safety, we sacrifice countless tax dollars and endure the erosion of precious liberty.  In spite of this enormous price tag, our elected, appointed and hired guardians have failed us.  We are less safe than ever.

We are less safe because we live with an economy that is in shambles.  This arouses fear, uncertainty and desperation.  Even worse, we live in times where income and livelihood are often separated from productivity.  An overwhelming number of Americans have learned to expect and depend upon government handouts, bailouts, subsidies, set asides and transfer payments.  These government goodies are doled out via back room committee meetings and closed door deals with lobbyists. 

The people understand that we are playing Bastiat’s game of “legal plunder” and they fear that they might be losing.   This can only lead to mistrust, suspicion and resentment.

When citizens see their public officials doling out extravagant largesse via political chicanery they rightly become angry.  So politicians of both the left and right try to put a face on the villain and tell us that it is this group or that group who is stealing from you.  It’s Black versus White, Anglo versus Hispanic, rich versus poor, man versus woman, gay versus straight, workers versus investors and management, young versus old and so on and so forth.  And, as in the case of Trayvon and George, this resentment and suspicion boils over into violence.

Don’t think for a moment that the politicos would not rather have the people shooting at each other rather than at them.  It just gives the State another reason to tighten the screws and steal more of our freedom in the name of protecting us.

Likewise, Benghazi illustrates how our decades of foreign interventionism, how the Permanent War has made America none the safer.  Oceans of blood have been spilled throughout the planet in pursuit of the Wilsonian vision of remaking the world in our image.

Many historians assert that American intervention in World War I did not make the world “safe for democracy”.  Rather, it made Europe ripe for Fascism, Nazism and Communism.  This, in turn, led to the four-decade long Cold War.  As we know, the Cold War turned America into the world’s cop with military bases, intelligence gathering and covert operations throughout the world.  Since the 1950s Washington, DC has striven to impose its will in foreign capitals via bribery (foreign aid), subterfuge (covert ops) or outright force (war and occupation).  For decades, the denizens of foreign nations have seen the U.S. topple popular governments, support corrupt and brutal regimes and then invade and bomb their countries when all else fails.

Thus we again engender hostility and hatred.  This interventionism generates the predictable phenomenon of blowback, whereby aggrieved peoples do what they can to settle scores with the U.S.  Given that they cannot realistically confront the world’s only superpower head on, they resort to terrorism.  I’m not saying that it’s right but like Chris Rock, I understand.  In any case we are not safer.

Our activist government makes us poorer and less safe.  It pits citizen against citizen and the world against America.  As an icon of activist government, this is something that Hillary Clinton and her cohorts of both parties should be truly remorseful about.

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