Although brought up in a rationalist rather than a religious household, as a
child fascinated with mythology and folk stories I'd read about a supernatural
being called the Golem, supposedly created by the legendary Rabbi Lowe (Lion)
of Prague back in the 16th Century; and said to have been the inspiration for
the "Frankenstein" tale. Although there were various versions with differing
details, simply put the story went like this: As was the practice in
Christendom in those days, whenever the Rulers felt the need to divert public
attention from famines, epidemics, catastrophes or other disturbances, the cry
would go out that "The Jews are responsible," and soldiers would be sent to
the Ghetto to rape, pillage and burn. In response to pleas for help from the
members of his congregation, eventhough he knew that such things had been
forbidden by the Council of Rabbis, Rabbi Lowe decided to utilize his
knowledge of Kabbalistic (magical) principles to create a giant figure out of
clay. Once the clay being, or Golem, was completed, the Rabbi inscribed
certain Hebraic characters on its forehead; causing it to spring to life. The
Rabbi then taught the Golem such things as how to fetch water, chop wood, and
perform other utilitarian tasks. The next time that the soldiers came to
attack the Ghetto the Rabbi told the Golem to fight them; and it killed a
soldier. The other soldiers, seeing that the Golem was invulnerable to their
swords and arrows, panicked and fled in disarray. Believing that, at last,
there was someone who could protect them, the Jews hailed the Golem as their
hero. But the Golem, now having learned how to kill, proceeded to kill a Jew -
one of the very people the Rabbi had created it to protect. Realizing that
he'd unleashed something terrible, Rabbi Lowe searched the Ghetto until he
found the Golem, which was in hiding because it had by then acquired enough of
a conscience to realize that it had done something wrong. When the Rabbi
changed the Hebraic character which stands of "Life" on the Golem's forehead
to that which stands for "Death," the creature was transformed back into
inanimate clay.

It wasn't until I'd completed the public education system, earned a couple of
college degrees, done my time in the US Army, and was engaged in post-graduate
studies in Social Psychology that I began to understand what the Golem legend
really was: an allegory which cautions us about the pitfalls which we must
strive to avoid when we use our knowledge of the world around us to develop
constructs and systems which, while intended to serve us, may wind up doing
the opposite. Just as we've learned how to shape clay into ceramics, weave
things out of fibres, sharpen wood and stones, or mine, smelt, and form metals
into such useful things as containers, clothing, knives, spears, automobiles,
spaceships, computers, etc., so we also invent procedures, organizations, etc.
which we believe are necessary to make our lives better. We pride ourselves on
thusly being able to use our intelligence to provide ourselves with more
certain and satisfactory supplies of food, shield ourselves from the extremes
of heat or cold by making clothing and building houses, protect ourselves from
predatory animals, and defend ourselves against attacks by other human beings.
But just as the Golem, having been taught how to kill in order to defend the
Ghetto, then killed one of the very people it had been created to protect, so
we must always be on guard that the very systems which we invent to enhance
our security don't endanger it themselves.

There is nothing mysterious about understanding the dangers of the Golem
Principle - for every day we try to anticipate and avoid being injured by the
very things we create to assist us - making traffic laws, signals, crosswalks,
etc. to keep from being injured by our motor vehicles, etc. The first steam
engines tended to explode when the pressure grew too great for their boiler
walls to contain. This problem was solved by designing safety valves which cut
down the fuel supply or otherwise reduced the pressure when it approached the
danger point. Our nation's Founding Fathers, anticipating the danger of the
concentration of power into the hands of an individual or small partisan
group, established our system of checks and balances. Congress was supposed to
have the sole power of drafting legislation. The Administration was authorized
to carry out those laws. And the Courts were the only body which could rule as
to the conformity of said laws to the national Constitution - which is
essentially our code of ethics.

However, just as Doctor Frankenstein unwittingly implanted the brain of an
executed criminal in his creature, so we all-too-frequently discover that our
security organizations themselves have been taken over by corrupt if not
outright criminal opportunists, such as was recently the case with Ames in the
CIA and Hansen in the FBI; an organization whose founding Director, J.Edgar
Hoover, himself is reputed to have amassed secret scandal files which he used
to blackmail leading politicians in order to stay in power. The USA is not
alone in this regard. Practically every nation's security organizations have
had their high-level traitors and perverters: Philby, head of British
Counter-Intelligence, was a Soviet agent; Penkovsky, Brezhnev's son-in-law,
was executed for spying for the West; and Beria, head of the KGB, was a rapist
and mass murderer. Is it that such people tend to gravitate to such positions,
or is it by their very nature that such organizations, which in the name of
secrecy are often closed to all oversight and criticism, provide a fertile
environment for such persons?

To protect ourselves from the former in the past we've tried to make certain
that no one in a position of authority, and this includes the Chief of State,
is above the law - as was borne out in the Watergate Affair and the subsequent
resignations of Vice-President Agnew and President Nixon.

I fear that, panicked by such things as the horror of the attacks on the World
trade Center and the Pentagon, the mailing of anthrax-laden letters, and the
possibility of even worse assaults by religiously-inspired "Martyrs" armed
with weapons of mass destruction, we are creating our own, 100% American,
Golem. The events of September 11, 2001 have caused a blind stampede on the
part of our Congress to hand over their law-making power to the Administration
and, in the name of national defense, George W. Bush has enthusiastically
authorized his minions to violate almost every protection guranteed by our
Bill of Rights. His appointee, Governor Ridge, whose face (coincidently?)
resembles that of a blocky chunk of stone, is answerable to no one but Mr.
Bush, who is pressuring Congress to okay Ridge's spending of thirty eight
billion dollars of the taxpayers money without any oversight whatsoever.

The Germans fell victim to their own Golem back in 1933. First there was their
defeat at the hands of the Allies in World War One, then came the collapse of
the imperial system and the flight of the Kaiser, then the severe reparations
insisted upon by France's Clemenceau, and the breakdown of the economy and
runaway inflation, all of which led to increasing hardship and desperation.
Hitler and his National Socialists (Nazis) declared that only they could save
the German nation from being taken over by Thalmann and the Communists. Then
someone, it has been charged that the Nazis did it themselves via a tunnel
from the offices of Minister of Justice Hermann Goering, set fire to the
Reichstag (German Parliament). Panicked, the members of Parliament, including
the Social Democrats, who had previously been opposed to the Nazis, joined in
the stampede to "Save The Nation" by giving Hitler the right to make all laws
on his own. Hitler's well-known policies then led to the destruction of much
of Europe and the murder of tens of millions, including the deaths of
approximately eight million Germans themselves. In the name of "National
Defense" Germany destroyed both its neighbors and itself.

After the end of World War Two, having learned from the tragic mistakes of
others, the US leadership tried to avoid such errors. Back during the Korean
Conflict we, as a nation, were faced with the possibility of being sucked into
a war against China when General MacArthur took it upon himself to order our
advance units to cross over to the north side of the Chosin Reservoir and
enter Chinese territory. When his actions resulted in the Chinese, whose
Communist leadership had come to power only the year before in 1949, entering
the conflict in large numbers and hurling our forces into a costly retreat,
General MacArthur wanted to use atomic weapons. Despite the fact that
MacArthur had powerful financial and political supporters and was a popular
hero here at home, faced with the possibility of his actions igniting World
War III, Truman was forced to fire him.

Now, a half-century after Truman fired MacArthur, we are told that, to defend
ourselves against what Mr. Bush tells us is an "Axis of Evil" which includes
Iran, Iraq & North Korea, our military appears to be preparing to attack Iraq
and overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein. But this time the danger isn't
some professional militarist who only knows how to make war, our nation finds
itself under the control of a man who behaves as if he is answerable to no
one. When our Supreme Court itself acts to stop the counting of disputed
ballots, effectively appointing someone President who failed to gain the
majority of the popular vote, and that person then exploits the present
emergency to cut funds from social programs in order to give billions of
dollars in tax cuts and defense contracts to his backers, who has the power to
intervene?

The present situation makes it imperative that we insist upon there being some
sort of non-partisan body which can stop our vast military and security
systems from being unleashed without careful consideration as to the
consequences. This is especially the case when those responsible for the 9-11
attacks are not the leaders of a specific nation, but of an international
movement whose elusive membership is worldwide. There's no question but that
we must defend ourselves, the question is by what means? Secret arrests and
imprisonments where revealing the identities of those arrested itself can be
considered a crime, warrantless searches and seizures, military tribunals
where the rules of evidence and the right to appeal do not exist, electronic
surveillance of everyone, especially those who dare to question the powerful.

Are these the only means by which we can save the nation? Are we so frightened
that we are ready to be ruled by the Golem itself? Any construct which is not
constrained by a paradigm involving a basic ethic can all too easily injure
those it was intended to protect. Let us demand that our elected
representatives stop catering to the tiny minority of avaricious nihilists,
corporate cannibalizers and other special interests whose "campaign
contributions" have corrupted them, and reassert themselves as representatives
of all of "We The People" so that the US is not conned into a war for control
of the world's oil supply or becomes a repressive police state ruled by those
whose sole ethic is the insatiable drive for power and profit, and the
suppression of all who dare to oppose them.

Copywrite (C) 2002 Robert Carl Cohen radfilms.com

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