…the simpering excuse of the Moral Coward.

It’s lesser form, “I’m just doing my job,” brings to mind the incompetent half-ass; the man at the printing store who delivers $500 worth of stationary to you, with an obvious typo in the title – a typo you missed as you wrote the order in haste – which he didn’t think worthy of a telephone call to verify.*

For any Man of Red Blood, no explanation of the Nuremburg Defense is necessary: Right is Right, and Wrong is Wrong.  The very pathways of our souls are ordered along these lines.  Debates, perhaps, when the situation is particularly nuanced – but there exists a common sense as to what Justice means, as well as an acknowledgement that it is a social construct, existing objectively, outside of us; that it is not something subjective, ammenable to our whims and fancy.  There’s no need to write down what everybody knows.

But because we are Men, we have codified it explicitly.  The Canadian Forces Code of Conduct says:

…every member of the CF [Canadian Forces] has an obligation to disobey a manifestly unlawful order regardless of rank or position.

Emphasis mine.

In other words, if your CO commands you to execute a disabled enemy soldier, it is your duty to turn around and train your rifle on him.

Yet another document emphasizes just how serious Ethics are to a True Military Man:

QTC: You are an ambulance driver. Your military ambulance is clearly marked with the Red Cross. You are about to return to the front to pick up more wounded. A senior NCO approaches you and orders you to open up the ambulance so that he can load ammunition into it. You tell him that such action is illegal. The act of transporting the ammunition in the ambulance is illegal under the Law of Armed Conflict. True or false?

A: True. The use of a vehicle marked with a Red Cross for a military purpose is perfidy. Therefore, it is illegal to transport ammunition in an ambulance.

Now, I can’t say I’m a fan of the Law of Armed Conflict – it reeks of Univesalism, and the rampant Leftism of the UN.  There’s a callow vegetarianism to the whole thing, with an authorship coming out of the well-fed classes.  It lacks an understanding of aggression, violence, or the implications of total war, and yet…

And yet the soul of the document is bold statement, shouted out at the great unwashed masses of the world: “We are Civilized Men; we are Men of our Word.  We shall grant quarter to a defeated enemy, and respect the courage with which he fought.  We disdain the use of torture, indignity, and the savagery of chemical/biological weapons.  Violence is instrumental – not a principle.  We reject your Big Man State.  We shall fight you, and grind you into the earth… but we shall fight with Honour.”

This has been a principle I’ve lived my life by, in spite of Doctor Milgram; I always figured that the 65% who failed at morality were the cattle living in the suburbs, the doughy soy-bean people, the group which cops and criminals alike refer to as ‘citizens’ (not to be mistaken for Heinlein’s gun toting, meat eating, spaceship building, family raising Citizen).  I understood the world to be a place where the majority of Armed Men carried the Authority of the Karateka in their heart.

At least, that’s what I believed until a year ago; as I made my way through the distended bowels of that gluttinous beast known as the ‘Justice System’ I saw first hand the divergence of values between the militar,y and the government as a whole.

“Listen-” said the Probation Officer, after I pointed out, not just the cruelties and indignities, but the outright material harm she was subjecting an Innocent Man to; “I’m just doing my job.  We’ve all got a job to do.  I could have you put back in prison, right now, to await trial.  Is that what you want?”

Reading this article on The Spearhead got me thinking, again, on all of this; on just how Low and Contemptuous is the character of the modern Cop, Prison Guard, Prosecutor, Probation Officer, and Bureuacrat.

Events such as this – all too common nowadays – bring up discussions about the “militirization of the police force” – and in one sense, that discussion is bang on.  SWAT Teams have become paramilitary death squads, using weapons and tactics similar to what you’d find in Afghanistan.**  But there’s one important difference.

Before a Civilized Army attacks you, they declare war.  They are clear about their intentions; they are clear about their behaviour; they are clear about what led to the conflict.  And when they lock you in a POW camp, make no mistake – you are still resisting. You may have acquiesced for the time being, but you are still their enemy.  They know this; you know this.  And yet, chances are, you will be better treated than any two-bit crook locked up by the government which claims to represent him.

The acutal military at least has the civility to Declare War before grinding you under the heel of their boot; our Modern Police State bellows “We are your Friend!” whilst tasering you for no reason at all.

The concept of Right and Wrong as Abstract Ideals has flown out the window long ago; we’re back to the scoiety of the Big Man.  The legal system has grown capricious, schizophrenic; Right has become a question of Might – be it from the barrel of the gun, or from back-room politics.  Might makes Right, and Lies rule the day.  You show me a corrupt cop getting fired, and I’ll show you a bigger, stronger, better connected Media Conglomerate who took issue because the Innocent Victim had a sympathetic nature – a Media Conglomerate who turned a blind eye to the past hundred victims; members of the Unfavoured Class who wound up “bleeding from the forehead” as the cops like to say.

The book Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (review) is a compendium of Legal Insanity.  Its eponomy based on the fact that – yes – thanks to excess legalislating, we all commit three indictable offenses per day, but it gets worse: most of these crimes lack the element of mens rea.  In other words, you don’t have to have evil intent, and your ignorance is no excuse (a premise which only makes sense when the laws are sensible).  Just piss off the wrong cop and you will find out, first-hand, what a Horror prison is to the Free Man.

So if I could offer one piece of advice to any of you Good Folk out there, it would be this: never leave your house without some cash in hand, your phone in your pocket, and a fresh pack of cigarettes.

You never know who’s going to be taken next.

* The inverse of the lesser form is LFCA TC Meaford motto: “Never pass a fault.” If you see something that’s all fucked up – you stop and fix it.

** I lie, there are two important differences: the second being that SWAT Teams are utterly incapable of dealing with a trained, alert, and determined Man of Violence.  Their tactics – the cowards! – assume docility in the target.  Anything more dangerous than a gangbanger with his blat-blat is utterly beyond them.