# Letter From An Enemy of the State **URL:** **By** Karl Hess **Published:** January 1, 1973 --- “What is more real than the police power, the very life-blood of state power!” Ironic tales abound in which a person granted a wish discovers that a literal fulfillment of that wish brings disaster. A person wishes for a forest of golden trees only to be faced with starvation because of the lack of real fruit. Such a tale is unfolding in Washington today. Liberals have now been granted their fondest wish: an all-powerful executive, able to sneer at Congress, treat the people as children in need of guidance, and even rebuff the greed of businessmen. Some businessmen, that is—notably those small businessmen whom the liberals have long regarded as little better than well-heeled red-necks. Conservatives also have been granted a fond wish: a presidency bound and determined that America remain the most powerful military power on earth; or, where challenged seriously, to compensate for the challenge by close cooperation with the only other great military power, the Soviet Union. Some conservatives may consider that last proviso a fly in the ointment but, so long as the Marines are ever ready to kick the stuffings out of uppity folks in the hinterlands, they’ll probably learn to live with it and even enjoy it. What has happened, of course, is a triumph of scale in the Nixon administration. And for anyone to properly analyze where they stand in relation to it, it is important to understand not where one might have stood in terms of old liberal/conservative rhetoric, but specifically in terms of the reference points of scale. Under Nixon, locally-based business and industry is giving way to the national and multi-national giants. Locally-based political power is giving way to the international demands of the national security state. Big scale, Big Daddy, Big Progress. Finally, the local base upon which the individual can best stand is being swept away by the needs of a national pedestal upon which great abstractions most comfortably rest and posture. By enlarging the power of the presidency—and by effectively isolating it from attack and even criticism, which is sort of the ultimate enlargement—Nixon is not saying that it will be a busy-body government the way liberals might wish. Far from it. It seems apparent that on those matters which the now majestic president considers trivial, it is quite all right for even the lowest level government agency to take over. Nixon seems, for instance, to be perfectly delighted to have welfare, racial and perhaps even health matters referred back to local politicians. Not people, mind you, politicians. All this, it seems to me, simply means that Nixon understands that these areas are messy for a king; that federal intervention in these areas always makes possible national organizing in these areas, and that _that_ could get out of hand; and that the best way to get people to quarrelling among themselves, rather than quarrelling with the king, is to take a handful of money, throw it out across the country, and just chuckle as everybody scrambles for what they can get. Revenue-sharing certainly has an effect of that sort. If any president actually were interested in returning real power to the people it seems only logical that the process would involve letting the people keep the resources they have, rather than redistributing it through Washington’s bureaucracy. Some liberals, therefore, may be expected to see some new virtue in the old conservative arguments about actual localism (political power based in the community and kept there, rather than delegated away). What Nixon may achieve by his programs of “new federalism” is important in the development of monarchial forms. First of all, the majestic president may concentrate on his role as wielder of supreme power, a role often marred by the imagery of ward-heeling, wheeling and dealing. With the monarch relieved of the maternal chores of providing for the welfare of the children, he may now concentrate on the heavy paternal responsibility of providing Discipline. This emphasis seems highly regarded by conservatives, who usually ignore radical reminders that the same power which makes citizens “behave” can also be the power that permits government to misbehave. The areas in which this may most significantly appear are in dealings with the trade unions and in establishing a national police force or national police power. By becoming a disciplinarian in these fields, Nixon may run the least risks of disaffecting liberals and conservatives—and, of course, Middle Americans. This course also should prove effective for Nixon if he wants to be respected, the way a stern father is supposed to be respected (not loved, you understand, for that is viewed as a feminine principle). The national police force or power should appeal to those who fear disorderly streets so obsessively that they would even accept martial law to quiet them down. The alternative of communities policing themselves, for instance, is not widely discussed, particularly at the national level. There is a tip-off here. With all the talk about “local” control that Nixon engages in, you will note that this is never extended to any control in the realm of real power—and what is more real than the police power, the very life-blood of state power! Evidence of the national police power that should grow more apparent during this second reign of King Richard the First will be the growing centralization of training, funding and liason within the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. With John Hoover now dead, and a lackluster bureaucrat in his place, the LEAA may well outbid the FBI as the holder of high cards in the police game during Reign Two. Also, there may well be a steady development of the use of Federal Grand Juries to harrass otherwise inaccessible irritators of the royal sensibility. The use of the Internal Revenue Service as a national police force to punish enemies and reward friends was, of course, one of the first great police props of this presidency. This preceded the development of the Department of Justice as the legal terrorism arm of the White House, as in the Palmer raids, for instance, or in selective anti-trust and fraud prosecutions. One highly specialized result of this growing centralization of police power could be, again ironically, to centralize crime. The great agents of presidential police power, such as the FBI and the Department of Justice or the CIA, have so far proven very apt at attacking disorganized or entrepreneurial crime. Independent robbers, dope dealers or crooked small businessmen can expect to have the roof cave in on them at any time from the sheer accumulating weight of Federal policemen on their shelters. The most organized criminals, however, in the Cosa Nostra or Mafia, among overseas dictatorships or in the most plush boardrooms, may find it far more effective to wheel and deal, bribe, cajole or even join forces with a highly centralized power than with scattered little police agencies. A close eye, therefore, should be kept on arrest stories as this reign progresses. The arrests could be revealing. In fact, they should be. Already, with exercises such as the Pentagon Papers caper _versus_ the Watergate caper, we can see a vigorous example of where the presidency stands on zeal for the use of its police power. Both capers appear equally innocent in the actual results of the felonies involved; but in the Papers caper, one gets the distinct feeling that all of civilization has been threatened, while in the Watergate case, it may be hard in a few months to even recall that it happened. In dealing with unions, Nixon’s disciplinarian bent should impel him toward continued efforts to end or at least seriously curb the right to strike. In this he will be aided by a growing popular feeling that there is no such right if “the public” is concerned. Perniciously, much of this feeling is fueled by the consumer protection furor—which, albeit well-meaning, tends to make the citizen’s role as consumer his central role. Anything that diminishes the central importance of the person as producer, it seems to me, reduces the importance of the person overall. A person who does nothing but consume, as a matter of fact, would be described, technically, as a parasite. The right to strike intimately and importantly involves the role of the person as producer. This is the role that I regard as paramount, for instance, in my own life. I have, even, the feeling that the less I consume, the better; while the more I produce, the better and more joyous. At any rate, compulsory arbitration legislation is certainly on the horizon. Also looming is a lot of Nixon and, most emphatically, Agnew talk about protecting the people against the workers—a dichotomy that only a pair of real non-workers, non-producers, and purely manipulative types could so enthusiastically endorse. Union bosses, also, may have a special reason for growling about but nevertheless acceding to this development. Wildcat strikes, in the long run, are as threatening to the labor bosses as to anyone. A wildcat strike is, quite often, a spontaneous assertion of the rights of the local workers against the interests of the national bosses. More power to them! But, because of that, the big labor bosses and bureaucrats—not, thankfully, a bunch that includes all trade union officials by any means—may find a continuing detente with Nixon to be in their own interests despite anti-labor charges which may be made. Big bosses and big bureaucracies, after all, have more in common with one another than with people generally. So, growing national police power, harsh restrictions on the right to strike all go together to reinforce a hierarchy of power, a scale of power. And it is the stability of that hierarchy, as well as the principle of the hierarchy, the scale of power itself, that might reasonably, from its point of view, occupy the second Reign of the King from California. And the first term of a Monarch from Maryland! Or His Majesty from Massachusetts when, in God’s time, it is his turn to rule. What happens in _our_ time, hopefully, could be a different matter.