Strikes and Guns for the State

Strikes and Guns for the State
by Russell Madden

My wife and I recently returned from two-weeks in Paris. This visit was our first to the French capital. Before we crossed the Atlantic, we had somewhat anxiously read reports about government workers striking to protest proposed cuts in their pensions. While we planned to spend most of our vacation in the city, we looked forward to train trips to Monet's last home, Giverny; to Versailles; and to Trappes to rendezvous with a French bird watcher my wife had contacted to show us a local preserve.

Not only would cancellations of these jaunts have disrupted our holiday in France, a shutdown of the Metro would, at times, have made navigating Paris a nightmare. While we both are unafraid of long walks, the prospect of four or five mile trips on foot — one way — to see some of the museums and sights on our extensive list dampened our enthusiasm. After a long day of museum-hopping, the idea of trudging for an hour or two back to our hotel on bone-weary feet did not precisely enthrall us.

Fortunately, the dreaded strikes did not materialize while we were in Paris. A few sites such as Sainte Chapelle with its stunning stained-glass windows were closed for a bit, but we did not miss any of the major points on our itinerary.

We did, however, seem to have a knack for running into protesters. On our second day in Paris, for example, as we exited Napoleon's Tomb at the Invalides, whistles and singing and drum-banging greeted us as we ventured into the light rain that dogged us our first week.

As we wended our way from the grounds and zigged and zagged among the rows of tour buses clogging the parking lot, a solid stream of banner-toting, yelling, and waving humanity marched down the street. Many of the men and women were smiling, drinking, and eating. An almost carnival atmosphere surrounded the menagerie of disaffected workers and the stolid-faced gendarmes who ensured that none of the rowdy throng would transgress where they were unwanted, i.e., museums or nearby government buildings where they might confront face-to-face the politicians who dared tamper with their prospective retirement funds.

The French are famous — or notorious — for their strikes that disrupt or effectively tie-up the nation. Indeed, the week after we ran the gauntlet of French and American security to return home with my illicit nail-clippers smugly tucked away in my suitcase, air-traffic controllers and metro and train employees brought much of travel to a shuddering stop. This in apparent contradiction to the statements of the folks at the hotel who assured us that the teachers were striking, yes, but the transportation folks had already secured their pensions.

Regardless, many in France are unhappy. Though the workers there already "enjoy" a mandated thirty-five-hour workweek; experience the satisfaction of a nearly twenty-percent "value-added" tax to help finance all their goodies; pay a non-optional fifteen-percent tip in every restaurant bill regardless of the service they receive; are amazed that all Americans don't automatically "earn" six-weeks of annual vacation; are responsible for higher income taxes than their abused friends across the ocean; still many French citizens clamor for more benefits and to hell with what might happen to the nation's economy down the line.

"Something for nothing" (or rather, at Peter's expense) is not an attitude unique to Americans.

Given consistent election results, most here in the States — as in France — support a government Daddy who will take care of them in sickness and in retirement, in school and in leisure. The fact that Ponzi schemes eventually must collapse and freeloaders will seize any- and everything they can get their grubby little paws on deters none of these folks in their aspirations for comfort and security on someone else's tab.

Strikes do occur in the States. Few such events here, however, are conducted by State employees. Most strikes are local in scope and sanctioned by union employees of private companies in bids to wrest more income or benefits that primarily cost consumers and nonunion employees. The air-traffic controllers here, for example, discovered to their chagrin two decades ago that violating a no-strike clause can cost them dearly when the president fired all the strikers.

Not so in France. "Socialism" is not a dirty word there. (In the States, of course, you can do all the socialistic [or fascist] things you want; you just can't call them that . . . ) "Equality" and "fraternity," after all, ranked right along "liberty" during the French Revolution.

In a free society, of course, in which neither labor nor faceless corporations were protected or favored by the State, striking for higher pay or better working conditions would be perfectly fine . . . along with the full knowledge that someone willing to work for less or under worse conditions might easily replace you.

Such liberty, however, is anathema in a world in which goods and services are merely means to another's ends; in which bogus "rights" proliferate along with the power of the State; in which the "future" and "consequences" and "responsibility" are figments of someone else's fevered imagination.

Ayn Rand's magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, was, of course, originally titled, "The Strike." In contrast to the strikes that periodically cripple France, however, the last thing sought by the strikers who inhabit John Galt's universe was wealth earned on the backs of unwilling others. The reason they went on strike was not to obtain increased Medicare or Social Security benefits; not to gain prescription drug coverage or relaxed student loans or tax credits for children; not to win a shorter workweek or more regulations or rules. No. All they wanted was the right to make their own decisions; to act upon them; to reap the rewards or the costs of what they did.

They wanted what you can say you support in this country but what you cannot actually practice:

Freedom.

Bit by bit, though, this radical rationale for striking is gaining support in the land of Jefferson, Paine, and Henry.

Fed-up with exorbitant liability costs and stultifying regulations, for instance, doctors are leaving the profession. (See my "Doctors Shrugged.") Libertarians such as Claire Wolfe urge people "to just say no" and to ignore the State. Businesses move their headquarters offshore to avoid taxes. The Digital Monetary Trust provides a way for citizens to secure wealth from the government's prying eyes. The "Free State Project" pins its hopes on withdrawing to a receptive state and rolling back the wave of the State bit by bit.

The latest example of such minor trickles of rebellion involves those wonderfully wacky folks in California. In response to the fun-loving guys and gals on the Left Coast who want to ban .50 caliber rifles, Ronnie Barrett (president of Barrett Firearms Manufacturing) says "that he wouldn't sell or service guns to anyone who opposes constitutional rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment."

"'I will not be doing any business with any state agency or local agency that tries to disarm the law-abiding citizen,'" Barrett said. (See "Maker of .50-Caliber Rifle Warns Legislators Are 'Nibbling' Away Gun Rights," Robert B. Bluey, CNSNews.com, June 09, 2003. here)

Given that the State has infiltrated nearly every aspect of life, it is impossible to avoid dealing with the government in some fashion or other. But imagine if every gun and munitions and weapons manufacturer refused to sell to local, state, or federal minions the pistols, rifles, machine guns, grenades, bullets, flack jackets, helmets, batons, shields, planes, or whatever else they need to impose their unconstitutional actions on the public. Imagine if the State were forced to nationalize these industries and reveal its naked aggression for the rights' violation it is.

Imagine if more and more citizens came to believe that freedom was worth striking for . . .

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