Bob Wallace's Columns
"As
long as we are tribal, and narcissistic, and divide people into good and evil,
human and non-human, sacrifices and scapegoats, we must
always create enemies into order to maintain our tribes, our narcissism, and
our belief we are good and others are evil.
"It made me grateful for machines, the free market, liberty, and human ingenuity, all of which I consider almost miraculous because they create things like refrigerators, air-conditioning, dentistry, washing machines and driers, clothes, and food I can buy in the store instead of having to produce myself." Column by Bob Wallace.
From Huck to John and Jack to Winston
"That's what happens when the State gets inside you: it will steal your soul. To keep your soul as your own, you must always oppose the State, and never, ever let it get inside your head, no matter what kind of propaganda it uses." Column by Bob Wallace.
In the Year of Our Empress, 4784
"...the novel had a profound effect on me. It made me realize States always deal in force and fraud, whereas the pro-liberty Weapon Shops used only persuasion, non-aggression, and self-defence." Column by Bob Wallace.
A Nifty Pocket Guide to World Domination!
"So, in several nutshells, here is now you conquer the world: You take the natural desire for community and turn it into fascism. You get people to worship a leader. You teach them war is life-affirming." Column by Bob Wallace.
Those Persnickity Natural Socialists
"The
"In
a sense, these great but bad men are practitioners of Black Magic, who cast
spells, through the use of words, to charm the susceptible masses into believing
Bad is Good -- into believing it is acceptable, indeed necessary, for
governments to eternally engage in force and fraud, otherwise evil will
overwhelm them....Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn understood this when he wrote,
'Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by
violence'." Column by Bob Wallace.
"This here's-my-nose-put-the-ring-into-it eagerness has got to be some kind of instinct in people, otherwise they wouldn't fall so easily for these con jobs. And it certainly proves the contention of religion that people are inherently flawed and fallen." Column by Bob Wallace.
"Modern war has now become a video game. We watch it on TV; middle-class kids don't have to fight; it's so heavily censored we don't see our coffins coming home or blown-apart Iraqi 12-year-old kids with no arms. For all practical purposes, the wars don't exist for most people. That's the way the military and the administration wants it." Column by Bob Wallace.
"I have a different, and more optimistic view. It's one in which the government isn't one-third of the economy and sucking up half of people's incomes. It's a world without public schools crushing kids' spirits. It's a free world. And in that world inventions come whizzing at us like crazy. And without the government as a parasite, wages skyrocket." Column by Bob Wallace.
"The problem with politics is that it always attracts the active, whether they're smart or stupid. The public is the one that pays for their activity. If we have to have politicians, we need lazy ones." Column by Bob Wallace.
Bob Wallace responds to a critic.
"He
has impoverished and brutalized
"The
more I thought about it, the more I marveled at how easily society takes care of
these things. No government
involved, no weird, complicated crackpot 'philosophies,' no lawyers or
politicians or taxpayer money . . . just a guy with a hurt back who got his
shoelace tied in the street by a woman who decided that in every grown man,
there's a five-year-old boy just waiting to be taken care of.
"We're not dogs, seeking an exact place in a hierarchy. We have to have liberty; it is good for us, indeed necessary for us, because it allows us to be the most, and the best, we can." Column by Bob Wallace.
"Imams
preserve us! An 85-year-old woman
with a .357 Colt Python loaded with frangible Magsafes and Glaser Safety Slugs,
that will explode inside us making horrible and fatal wounds, but will not
penetrate aircraft window glass or the fuselage!
I believe we should surrender!
By Bob Wallace.
"Think about all those lost in all of history, due to what States has done. How far behind are we? Two thousand years, maybe? Think of all the inventions lost, all the advances in all fields delayed." Column by Bob Wallace.
A book review by Bob Wallace.
"Some examples of that are saying, 'We'll kill them until they give up' or 'Too bad innocent children and babies die in war, but that's the way it goes. Can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.' Of course, what they invariably mean as long as it's someone else's children, but never theirs. To murder other's children for a 'good cause' is acceptable, but their children being murdered is always bad." Column by Bob Wallace.
"It is through stories--through those Secondary Worlds--that those ideas are passed from generation to generation. Without those Secondary, imaginative worlds, you can start saying goodbye to the collected wisdom of humanity, passed from old to young." Column by Bob Wallace.
"I don't expect humanity to give up its belief in conspiracies, ever. It's just too easy to blame your problems on others, and too comforting and satisfying to believe you've won by claiming you've discovered and exposed the Bad Buys. The day people stop pointing fingers at others is the day the belief in conspiracies will end. That day, unfortunately, will never come." Column by Bob Wallace.
"Some people claim we need the schools to 'socialize' kids. Schools don't socialize kids; they traumatize them." Column by Bob Wallace.
Comforting But Dangerous Stories
"What we've got then, is the belief that we are 'good' and our opponents are 'evil' as being similar to the child's dreamworld you find in fairy tales. It is based on lying to oneself and refusing the face the facts." Column by Bob Wallace.
Politics and the Garden of Eden
"Stalin had even more problems than Hitler. He, too, was short and frail, in addition to being badly pockmarked, with a withered arm and fused toes on one foot. When he gained political power, did he, like Hitler, use it to overcome his fear, his humiliation, his hate, and his envy?" Column by Bob Wallace.
Reeding, Riting and Self-Esteam
"What we get instead are young people with an inflated (and therefore false) self-esteem, with nothing to back it up. You get that inflated pride on top, with shame underneath (and envy, too, which is why they expect entitlements without doing anything)." Column by Bob Wallace.
"The book is about freedom and slavery, about tyrants, about community, about politics, about the importance--indeed the necessity--of religion, and about war. The rabbits are just stand-ins for people...." Column by Bob Wallace. The editor also recommends this book.
"Inherent in human nature, and therefore all societies, is the fact there is an unbridgeable chasm between the fantasy world of Perfection and the real world of Imperfection. The attempt by humans to move this fantasy world of Perfection into the real world of Imperfection doesn't create a Heaven on earth; it always creates a Hell." Column by Bob Wallace.
"Countries
can be afflicted with hubris, too, especially when they become empires.
Every country denies the bad it has done, sees itself as good, and blames
its problems on others. Bush and his
supporters are claiming the
"Bush claims he is a Christian, doing God's will. But he's engaging in mass murder and mass theft, having invaded and conquered two other countries. If he thinks that's what God supports, how exactly is anyone supposed to tell the difference between God and Satan?" Column by Bob Wallace.
"It took me years to understand what that saying, 'Love your enemies' means. It doesn't mean to 'love them,' not really. That's impossible. It means to see them as people, not subhumans, not things, not demons, ones to hate and project all of the world's evil onto, so that one can self-righteously use God and country as an excuse to slaughter them." Column by Bob Wallace.
"If one person kills another, he is a murderer. If he kills 100, he is a monster. But if he kills 10,000, he is a hero. And the only way one can become this type of 'hero' is through the agency of the State." Column by Bob Wallace.
God, Satan Hold Joint Press Conference
"It's like I've always thought: most people have gotten God and Satan mixed up. Let's put it this way: if people think God supports war and the mass murder it brings, theft, and lies, and all the other horrible stuff governments always bring, then what exactly does Satan support? I guess that's why I have such a hard time finding a church that makes any sense." Column by Bob Wallace.
Resistance Is Futile, Under-People!
"For some reason I can't quite fathom, many people fall for the simplistic view of splitting things into either good or bad, with nothing in between. Of course, they always consider themselves good (Core) and other people bad (Gap). Since they consider themselves 'good,' all badness must lie elsewhere, with others....This either-good-or-bad, either Hero or Villain view of things is bad enough when an individual perceives the world that way, but it's a catastrophe when it afflicts groups." Column by Bob Wallace.
"The worst offender for improper brain development is the government--misnamed "public"--school system. Forcing kids, and especially boys, to sit for hours a day at the desk, with little movement, interferes with proper brain development. Just remember that Ritalin is being forced down kids' throats because of their behavior in school." Column by Bob Wallace.
"Gangrene has no use at all. It's an infection that eats away at a healthy body. And that certainly describes politicians and politics, which eat away at society and civilization." Column by Bob Wallace.
"Bill the Galactic Hero contains lessons for today, lessons to which the human race rarely pays attention, and has to painfully relearn every generation: that in war, the first casualty is the truth, there is no such thing as glory, the State always lies to you, and there is no such thing as a hero, only cannon fodder." Column by Bob Wallace.
"Since the State tries to trick the masses into thinking it is not only the protector of Society, but indeed is Society, it is no wonder these Oliver North-types goes into State militaries, since they, like most people, can no longer tell the difference between the State and Society." Column by Bob Wallace.
"Politics creates hate and anger in people. It is inherently civil war. Since the State is based on coercion and the threat of violence, so is politics. Politics is about nothing more than who gets to apply how much violence to people. Politics sets people at war with each other. I wish it didn't exist." Column by Bob Wallace.
"The full story of the modern Chickenhawk is this: deluded, lying, blood-thirsty cowards, afflicted with hubris, who have a lust for political power and attention. They refuse to fight, but trick other into doing so, because of their mistaken belief in their intellectual and moral superiority. They think the belief in their superiority gives them the right to sacrifice huge numbers of people, who should do as they are ordered, without question, so the Chickenhawks can social-engineer the world through political violence...." Column by Bob Wallace.
Kill 'Em All and Let God Sort Them Out
"Stripping people naked and stacking them into pyramids might help a tiny little bit, but it's not going to put an end to the guerilla problem. Moving up to pliers and fingernails would be much more effective. Cigarette lighters, too. They won't put an end to the guerilla problem, either, but they sure are an awful lot of fun if you're a sadist." Column by Bob Wallace.
Bob Wallace answers your questions about Shrub and the Middle East.
"Christian
Zionists support
Mad Scientists, Traps & Tortures, and Skull Island
"My view of the State is that it's Bizarro World, the planet in the Superman comics where everything is turned upside down....It is in Bizarro World where disarmed passengers sit helplessly while guys with box cutters fly jet airliners into skyscrapers. That's the State for you." Column by Bob Wallace.
"People
like Rush Limbaugh and William Kristol and Max Boot, and Paul Wolfowitz and
David Frum and Donald Rumsfeld, who actually think we can invade cultures
thousands of years older than ours, and by murder and mayhem, remake them into our
image, are idolaters worshipping Man as God, ones who have more in common
with the story of Satan than anything recognizable as 'conservatism'."
"You'd think after thousands of years of failure, people would realize there are no political solutions to our problems, but they never seem to learn. Politics is beating something with a hammer until it breaks. It doesn't matter who gets voted into office. They can't change the nature of that hammer." Column by Bob Wallace.
"The closest anyone can come to saving the world is to stop trying to club people into being good, and just leave them alone to work out their problems. Any help they want they can ask for." Column by Bob Wallace.
Books That Will Never Be Written
By Bob Wallace.
"The essential difference between a hero and a villain is the between Jesus and Satan, when the former was offered by the second, political power over 'all the kingdoms of the world.' The hero always says, 'No.' The villain, always 'Yes.'" Column by Bob Wallace.
Satan Disappointed in Neocon Spawn
"I
wanted millions dead, decades of war and murder and destruction, and trillions
of dollars wasted. These punks
couldn't even do that.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?
Try Pony League klutzes always dropping the ball!"
Puny Warmongers! Bob Will Smash!
"Isn't that what most everyone wants--power to make the State and other criminals leave you alone, and freedom from all the bad things in the world?" Column by Bob Wallace.
Can't Help You, But Sure Can Hurt You
"Is this what the nature of government really is? Let's Play Pretend? And ignore the serious stuff? Let's X-ray T-shirts and newspapers, then, hey, look, folks, now we're safe! No wonder the government never sees anything coming!" Column by Bob Wallace.
They're Insane, I Tell You! Completely Insane!
"Bush thinks he is a religious man, that he's doing God's work on earth. He think he's using technology in the service of God. But you know what? I don't think so. When one is being a Mad Scientist, playing God, and using advanced technology unethically to murder, maim, steal and destroy, it's not God who's whispering to Bush in his head. It's the Other Guy, whose worst crime was that of hubris. The one who says, 'Might makes right.'" Column by Bob Wallace.
"The
Borg are actually a
Half a Brain Is Better Than No Brain
"And when a woman asks a man, 'What are you thinking about?' and he says, 'Nothing,' he's telling the truth. There's nothing inside our heads, not even static, like from an untuned radio. It's a complete blank...." Column by Bob Wallace.
"Another reason for the ability of artists to foresee the future is that the good ones almost always have a pronounced anarchistic streak. They almost instinctively see the State for the oppressor that it is, probably because they are able to easily empathize with others, and in doing so, can see just how little good, and how much harm, the State does. And, obviously, those who spend their lives working for the State (which pretty much excludes those with great intelligence, imagination and anarchism) aren't going to see it as the Black Thing that it truly is. They're going to see it as a good thing, especially if they've made millions of dollars from it machinations and exploitations." Column by Bob Wallace.
New Root Striker Bob Wallace on medical marijuana.