GERM WARFARE

-- by L. Neil Smith --

So now it's North Korean nukes, is it?

The one thing George Bush was good at -- and it looks like
Bill Clinton is following in his footsteps -- was the age-old
Teddy-Rooseveltian art of bullying small countries.  All sorts of
places in recent history come to mind, but the case in point is North
Korea, guilty of attempting to join the U.S., Russia, formerly-Soviet
Georgia, Ukraine, India, South Africa, Israel, and France -- among
others -- in the possession of weapons powered by fissionable elements.

Admittedly, North Korea is one of the world's most repressive
countries -- only slightly more tolerable than Santa Monica, Berkeley,
Aspen, or Boulder -- and it may not be good if they have nukes of
their own (as opposed to just borrowing them the way Germany does).
But there are worse things than North Korea having nukes, or things
that are more immediate, that we ought to be concerned about.

Throughout the final months of the Nixon Administration, I worried
about the officer whose duty it was to carry the "football" -- also
known as "The Button" -- everywhere the President went.  If Tricky had
ordered a strike on, say, North Korea, this poor chump would have had
to decide whether to obey a guy who was wandering through the White
House at night talking to portraits of his predecessors, or figure the
Commander-in-Chief had gone all the way out to lunch and that the best
thing was to use his .45 on the First Dick -- and then on himself.

Today, when most of the world's nuclear weapons are already in the
most dangerously irresponsible hands I can conceive of -- those
of Bozo and Bozita Clinton -- why the hell are we so upset at the
prospect of the North Koreans having them, as well?  Didn't Waco
demonstrate pretty clearly that Billy-Jeff wouldn't hesitate to use
the bomb on _us_ if he thought he could get away with it?

While we're asking questions, whatever happened to national
sovereignty?  Why isn't pressuring another country into allowing
international inspection of its most critical defense industry a
truly horrible precedent for our own sovereignty?

And hasn't Clinton surpassed even himself, hypocrisywise, since it's
clear he wants to impose on us the kind of social and political regime
that North Korea has?

And while we're at it, Mr. President, why is it that the Bosnians have
a natural right to defend themselves from a renegade government, while
Americans do not?

But I digress.

After all is said and done, isn't this just another flatulent liberal
attempt to impose gun control, which we all know perfectly well --
through examples ranging from our own inner cities to Germany following
World War I -- doesn't work?

Of course it is.

So, I pretend to hear you asking, what would I do about North Korea if
I were President?  I'd use the original American belief system as the
potent intercontinental weapon it's always been.  If all the stories
we hear about the Korean War are true, they used to love accusing
us of using germ warfare on them.  It always seemed to be a central
feature of the confessions they forced American prisoners to sign.
Very well, I'd warn the North Koreans that they're perfectly entitled
to develop nuclear weapons, but that, if they insist, we'll exercise
our equal right to infect them with a _terminal case of individualism_.

I'd begin with Korean-language radio and TV broadcasts -- translated
by Los Angeles shopkeepers who've shown a working understanding of it
-- from land, sea, and space, of works advocating and celebrating the
most rugged forms of individualism known.  Not the namby-pamby liberal
claptrap they used to air over Voice of America or Radio Free Europe,
but the hard stuff, like the Bill of Rights, Eugene Zamiatin's _We_,
the Bill of Rights, Ira Levin's _This Perfect Day_, the Bill of
Rights, Poul Anderson's _Shield_, the Bill of Rights, Robert
B. Boardman's _Savior of Fire_, the Bill of Rights, Paul Lepanto's
_Return to Reason_, the Bill of Rights, Robert Heinlein's _The Moon is
a Harsh Mistress_, the Bill of Rights, Eric Frank Russell's _The Great
Explosion_, the Bill of Rights, F. Paul Wilson's _An Enemy of the
State_, the Bill of Rights, Henry Hazlitt's _Economics in One Lesson_,
the Bill of Rights, Ayn Rand's _Anthem_, the Bill of Rights, J. Neil
Schulman's _Alongside Night_, the Bill of Rights, perhaps even my own
_The Probability Broach_ or _Pallas_, and the Bill of Rights, with
emphasis on the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments.

Especially the Second.

We could probably supply little radios, to be dropped from high-flying
B-52s.  If I were doing it, the interpretations, linguistic and
philosophical, would be as radically Libertarian as I could make them.
After all, we're out to really _hurt_ the other fellow here, aren't we?
And there would even be commercials.

For handguns and assault rifles made in _South_ Korea.

History shows that this kind of thing works -- people in captive
nations will risk their very lives to listen to radio that's
even halfway uncensored, even when it's done haphazardly and
lackadaisically by government employees whose personal philosophies
don't differ that much from those of the target dictatorships.

The message would always be:  "Your life belongs to you, and to no
one else:  seize it from those who falsely claim they have a right to
control it, and you and your children will enjoy unprecedented peace,
progress, and prosperity."

And if you don't, then we'll leave Jimmy Carter over there with you,
forever.

The one real difficulty I foresee with this concept is that neither
the Democrats nor the Republicans have the testicular fortitude to
carry it out, for fear that it might backfire, spreading runaway
individualism throughout the U.S.S.A.  And you can be damn sure that
the Japanese -- who run a country where individualism is beaten out
of kids in grade school, confessions are tortured out of suspects at
precinct stations, and the police search your home for weapons twice a
year as a "courtesy" -- won't want to risk this kind of exposure, either.

Only a Libertarian administration could wage this kind of germ warfare
safely and effectively.  Individualism is more dangerous to Bill and
Hillary than nuclear weapons.

And they know it.