Getting our act together

Stephen Hawking has called for a new diaspora, telling a Hong Kong press conference that humanity must leave Earth and colonise the rest of the solar system if it is to avoid extinction.

The respected physicist warned of the increasing risk that some kind of natural or man made disaster - such as global warming, or a nuclear war - could destroy the Earth: "It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," he said.

He believes we could have a colony on the moon within 20 years, and an established base on Mars within 40, according to reports, but says that unless we travel to another star system, we "won't find anywhere as nice as Earth".

The Register

Neurotic people bemoan the lack of inherent value or purpose to life, but isn't biological purpose enough? Survive as a species. Evolve to optimum adaptability, whereby you can define your own role. Achieve internal balance.

We think we've done these things, but it's only an artifact of our short attention spans that allows us to. In fact, we face the biggest challenges ahead.

Of course, Hawking is preaching to an audience that wants to spend more time bickering about how to divide up the cash on earth. The left will bloviate on about the poor and how they don't have enough; the right will get sidetracked by religion and economics again. If we were thinking rationally, we'd ignore the poor and make religion a personal matter, and structure our economics to reward our best.

But that's fascist, of course. Any system of government which does not permit total freedom of the individual, causing chaos that requires imposition of unfreedom, is fascist. At least, this is the case in our nitwit modern parlance, which is spoken by those too neurotic to realize they're already in a state more fascist than fascist -- a doom-bound, disintegrating republic that will soon fragment into oligarchic tyrannies.

I was amused to read of this historical anecdote:

In the summer of 1933, shortly after Roosevelt's "First 100 Days," America's richest businessmen were in a panic. It was clear that Roosevelt intended to conduct a massive redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Roosevelt had to be stopped at all costs.

The answer was a military coup. It was to be secretly financed and organized by leading officers of the Morgan and Du Pont empires. This included some of America's richest and most famous names of the time.

What the businessmen proposed was dramatic: they wanted General Butler to deliver an ultimatum to Roosevelt. Roosevelt would pretend to become sick and incapacitated from his polio, and allow a newly created cabinet officer, a "Secretary of General Affairs," to run things in his stead. The secretary, of course, would be carrying out the orders of Wall Street. If Roosevelt refused, then General Butler would force him out with an army of 500,000 war veterans from the American Legion.

And what type of government would replace Roosevelt's New Deal? MacGuire was perfectly candid to Paul French, a reporter friend of General Butler's:

"We need a fascist government in this country� to save the nation from the communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built in America. The only men who have the patriotism to do it are the soldiers, and Smedley Butler is the ideal leader. He could organize a million men overnight."

Indeed, it turns out that MacGuire travelled to Italy to study Mussolini's fascist state, and came away mightily impressed. He wrote glowing reports back to his boss, Robert Clark, suggesting that they implement the same thing.

But in the early days, many businessmen openly admired Mussolini because he had used a strong hand to deal with labor unions, put out social unrest, and get the economy working again, if only at the point of a gun. Americans today would be appalled to learn of the many famous millionaires back then who initially admired Hitler and Mussolini: Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, John and Allen Dulles (who, besides being millionaires, would later become Eisenhower's Secretary of State and CIA Director, respectively), and, of course, everyone on the above list. They disavowed Hitler and Mussolini only after their atrocities grew to indefensible levels.

HIPPI

I don't think we need to go as far as Hitler and Mussolini, but we know we need something for a government that isn't neurotically obsessed with wealth redistribution.

After all, wealth redistribution, civil rights struggles, plus a big wad of fake cash from WWII economic growth contributed to the rise of the Baby Boomers, the liberalization of America, and the boom of bad credit collapses we're riding now. The plotters were right; Roosevelt was a shithead.

Humanity won't explore the stars until it gets its act together back home, and that won't happen until we transcend the virus of individualism. Until then, drink up, because it's suicide time for our species.