Hiroshima, Brought to You By Statism

On this date in the not too distance past, a man pushed a button while flying over a faraway city. Fifty thousand individuals below died. Within three months another 50,000 perished. Hiroshima, 1945.

Statism – believing badges grant extra rights and conflating legislation as law – was the cause. It’s just a bad idea, and bad ideas have bad consequences. Yes, the man who pushed the button is responsible for his actions (as are others involved) but would he have been thousands of miles from home pushing a button that released an atomic bomb if not for that bad idea?

At its core Statism belies arbitrary authority – the belief that an individual can do things not right for you or me to do simply based on their title or place of employment.

So how do we mitigate such horrific incidents like Hiroshima and other democide? We stop looking to others to lead us. We govern our own lives and leave others to do the same. To paraphrase voluntaryist author Carl Watner, we take care of the means, after which, the ends will take care of itself.

Strengthening and building civil society is paramount the erosion of bad ideas of Statism. When people see that the poor, the mentally ill, and others who may need a helping hand are better taken care of from those in their community voluntarily rather than through a top-down faceless bureaucracy based on violence – they’ll cease to buy into the scare tactics relentlessly peddled by politicians and the mainstream media.

In light of today’s Statist anniversary, check out the essay below by Food Not Bombs cofounder Keith McHenry. Because with good ideas come good consequences.

August 6th – Remembering the Nuclear Bombing of Hiroshima

August 6th has always haunted me. My mother’s father John Vanderpool Phelan was proud of his participation in the bombing of Japan. Lt. Phelan was and Intelligence Officer with the 468th  Bombardment Squadron in 1944 and 45. When he returned from Asia decorated the den at his home in Needham, Massachusetts with the 50 framed black and white photos of the fire booming of Tokyo. He took each photo so he could determine the length of time his squadron would need to fly before dropping more fuel bombs on the civilian population of Japan. His photos were evidence that he helped burn nearly 5 million people alive.  My family took me to several 468 Conventions to hear stories of  near misses and missed targets. Hi men would brag about  Lt. Phelan’s work to provide General Curtis LeMay with a flight plan for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima that would have taken “Little Boy” over the Himalayas to its target.

I visited my grandfathers home often during the time of the Vietnam War. Every Christmas Grammpy Phelan would pace below his photos of the fire bombing in heated phone conversations to General LeMay about the value of dropping a nuclear bomb on Hanoi.  Decisions about taking so many lives was a burden our family had to endure.

One sunny spring day in 1977 I took a break from my job at the Old South Meeting House telling tourists about the history of the Boston Tea Party and walked over to Park Street Station to eat lunch on the Commons.  A small woman stood on a Hood Dairy Milk Crate explaining that there were thousands of nuclear missiles that could be launched in a minuted notice. The Soviet Union could kill millions of Americans if they believed the United States was about to attack and the U.S. Military could kill millions in the Soviet Union. I later found out she was Doctor Helen Caldicott and was seeking to end the threat of nuclear war.

I could see how regular people, people like my mother’s father could rationalize horrible acts like the use of nuclear weapons and the murder of nearly 5 million people in a quest to defend corporate power.

A few years later I happened to have a job trimming produce at an organic grocery in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was alarmed by how many cases of nutritious produce I was expected to discard so I took it to the hungry residence at the housing projects near the store. Very skinny children played outside the dilapidated brick buildings in the shadow of a modern glass tower where scientists were developing guidance systems for intercontinental nuclear missiles. Our society clearly valued bombs over food. That August 6th the new group Food Not Bombs march from Cambridge City Hall to the front of that weapons laboratory. I took the Boston Phonebook from a bucket of  gas held it up to those assembled. “If a one megaton  nuclear weapon were to hit Boston today all the people listed in this phone book would die in a flash!” I set a match to the book and up it went in flames.

Thirty years later we still face this very real danger.  As we feared Reagan  started a policy of redirecting our resources from healthcare, education and the real security that Americans need to the world’s largest military build up.  On the anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki I will be going to court in Orlando, Florida along with many others for the “crime” of sharing free vegan meals with the hungry in protest to war and poverty.

Food Not Bombs could sure use your support. The most important thing you can do is join or start a local Food Not Bombs group.  The number of people needing food increases every day.  We could also use financial support for our legal expenses as well as to help us recover, prepare and provide food to the hungry and those who are protesting the dangerous policies of austerity, war and environmental destruction.

Thanks so much.

Keith McHenry
cofounder of the Food Not Bombs movement.

For more:
Seven steps to organizing a Food Not Bombs chapter in your community
Agorism
Food Not Bombs-related content on OrlandoCopwatch.com
The Voluntary City by David Beito (via Google Books)
Voluntaryist.com – a site maintained by Carl Watner
Death by Government by RJ Rummel
Alliance of the Libertarian Left
Food Not Bombs Saves Lives (post) and video (below) from our time with the Food Not Bombs crew in Vegas last year