WASHINGTON/ American World View -- A classic maxim teaches that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Since the Seattle riots of 1999, few wheels have been quite as squeaky as the combustible human detritus that has taken it upon itself to follow international summits around the globe like a pack of rabid wolves.

Political criticism and ethical response must ultimately find justification in a coherent set of principles that bear up to a reasonable degree of analytical scrutiny if such grievances are to be taken seriously by the larger public. And even though this renowned troop of World Trade street thugs might have a knack for smashing windows and ingesting tear gas, any complaints these vagabonds might possess decompose into two-faced ramblings when examined through the criteria of the protestors' own belief systems.

The fundamental inconsistencies between the convictions of these self-professed anarchists and the nature of their grievances are most evident in a incident occurring this past July during the G-8 Summit in Genoa, Italy when a law enforcement officer besieged by marauding hooligans was forced to defend himself by firing his weapon. One demonstrator died as a result.

One traveling troublemaker told the Associated Press at another free-for-all in Frankfurt, Germany that Genoa was a turning point. Other protestors have vowed to step up the violence in response to the audacity of police to defend themselves against injury or attack.

But on what grounds do they justify their complaints and to whom should such criticisms be addressed?

By definition, anarchy is the complete absence of government and law. Anarchism, the application of anarchy as a systematic sociopolitical ideology, is the theory that all forms of government interfere with individual liberty and are therefore undesirable. These, in turn, sprout from the soils of antinomianism, defined by Norman Geisler in Christian Ethics: Options and Issues as the ethical belief that there are no objective moral laws.

Protestors assembled at the various international summits have endeavored to implement this worldview on a practical level but cry foul when they befall the consequences of their own ideas. For if there is no right or wrong, frankly what's wrong with the cops cracking a few unruly noggins? And who is it they plan to gripe to when the institutions established to handle the redress of grievances are illegitimate by their own standards?

The Associated Press reported that police threatened jailed Genoan protestors with sexual assault, deprived them of food, and looked on voyeuristically as detainees utilized the toilet facilities.

Here is the hermenutic of one demonstrator interviewed for the BBC's website on June 18, 2001 might be forced to apply to the above situation: "...it's up to each of the people taking part to decide what they do." So if the Italian police get some perverse satisfaction humiliating those in their custody, that's their business. Hey, I'm not for it, but I am one of those stinking moral absolutists impeding so-called social and ethical progressivism.

This charade of portraying anarchists as care free, live and let live relativists is a sham front used to disguise the movement's far more maniacal nature and intentions.

Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr. points out in his July 27, 2001 essay "The New Communists" these globetrotting gadabouts are out to destroy capitalism itself. The goal of these anarchists, in their words, is "a new system that would eliminate inequalities between rich and poor, between the powerful and the powerless, and to expand the possibilities of self-determination."

Building a new system would mean abolishing the old. This movements preferred method for doing so has proven to be what those of us inhibited by reactionary thought patterns usually call violence.

These protestors do not merely employ violence as a defensive tactic but rather as a tool to impose their will on those around them. On a recent Fox News special "Assignment Danger II" cataloging the various dangers faced by frontline broadcasters, footage aired of ruffians in Quebec spray painting mobile news units, hurling hunks of concrete at media equipment, and vocalizing threats of bodily harm directed towards correspondents daring to chronicle these chaotic shenanigans. Fox Reporter Brian Wilson was even forced to defend himself physically against an assault by these rampaging hoodlums.

Rockwell writes, "The attempt [to impose mandatory egalitarianism] would require a looter state on a scale we have not seen since ... the Soviet Union." Rockwell continues, "What life would be like under [such] a regime is foreshadowed in the streets of Genoa: looting, burning, destruction, and chaos."

Thus, ultimately, the thing that really has these thugs ticked is being denied the opportunity to impose their own rules and to inflict the brutality themselves. Despite any faults of law enforcement, at least they are bound by and accountable to some objective standard as embodied by law and not unbridled to "do there own thing" as advocated by these slovenly neo-hippies.

Many Americans probably dismiss the beatnik protest movement as a nuisance rather than as a serious threat. However, it's not likely to fritter out with the maturing of these collegians having too much time on their hands.

This propensity towards mayhem and destruction in the name of justice may metastasize into an essential characteristic of the so-called educated mind (i.e. one surrendered to the tripe propagated by the tenured polemicists of perdition). The treatise of treason and terror published by so-called "educators" Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Rockwell reports, is so popular this semester as a standard classroom text on American campuses that this rag is on six week backorder at Harvard University Press. Already it has gained notoriety or infamy --- depending on your perspective --- as a new Communist Manifesto.

The Western World totters along the brink of a destructive revolution determined to destroy all that is good, pure, and holy to be replaced by totalitarian designs devised in the den of the devil himself. Enemies from abroad succeeded in delivering an unbelievable blow to this great nation. We cannot allow grungy rabble from within to finish the job.

Copyright 2001 by Frederick B. Meekins

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