L: Doug, I hear that a friend of yours, Indian activist Russell
Means, has passed away. He was an unusual and interesting character. Are
you up to talking about it?
Doug: Yes. You know, I've gotten into the habit of doing
obituaries in recent years in The Casey Report – but generally of
people I don't like. I know that's considered improper, because you're not
supposed to speak ill of the dead, but –
L: It's Totally Incorrect.
Doug: [Laughs] Totally. But that's perhaps the best reason
to do it. I hate to see sepulchers whitened, especially when their contents
are morally rotten. But Russell, whom I got to know to some degree, is worthy
of praise. We hung out together a couple of weekends in past years.
L: I caught that Heart of Darkness reference. We
really should talk about books again, with a broader context than our conversation on speculative fiction. We've had requests.
Doug: I'd like that – maybe next week. Anyway, I have a
lot of respect for Russell. So I think I can say what I really think and not
violate accepted mores.
L: Okay. Perhaps we should start with who he was and how
you came to know him?
Doug: Sure. Russell rose to fame because he was involved
in what's sometimes called the Second Battle of Wounded Knee, back in 1973. About 200
Oglala Lakota occupied the town of Wounded Knee for over two months, and were
surrounded by a small army of federal marshals and FBI agents, buttressed by
a bunch of armored personnel carriers. There was a lot of shooting, resulting
in several deaths. If it had happened today, it might have wound up like
Waco. Means and others were put on trial, but the charges were dropped on
based on prosecutorial misconduct. But Russell was very involved, and you can
bet that he was on the line, pulling the trigger. He was that kind of guy. A
couple of years later two FBI agents were killed there, and Leonard Peltier –
a friend of Russell's – was found guilty. That became a cause célèbre
as well, since there's some real question of whether he did it. He's still in
jail.
I'm on the side of the Indians. Sure, they may have broken some laws, but
most laws today are artificial, unnecessary, and corrupt constructs. They're
very unlikely to be changed from within the system. And, apart from that, the
Indians are a special case in many ways.
Russell was an outspoken sort of guy and a good self-promoter. So,
subsequent to Wounded Knee II, he got into the movie business. As an actor he
may be best known for playing Chingachgook in The Last of
the Mohicans. He also had a role in Oliver Stone's Natural Born
Killers and a voice appearance in Disney's Pocahontas.
He was actually a good actor, I thought. Maybe that's because he basically
played himself: a grizzled old Indian. He was a character actor: someone with a great persona that
people just like to watch. There's nothing wrong with that – John Wayne was
famous for doing the same thing, as was Steve McQueen.
L: Really? I had no idea… I knew of him as a libertarian
activist – somehow, it never came up that he was in the movies.
Doug: He was an activist, that's for sure. That's what
brought him to the Eris Society meetings I hosted for 30 years, where I met
him. Russell was always interesting company, but not always easy to get along
with. He had what you might call an evenly balanced personality – a chip on
both his shoulders. He seemed to be constantly looking for a confrontation,
if not an actual fight. And he demanded to be treated with respect. I had no
problem with that, because I found him worthy of respect.
L: A shining example?
Doug: He had strong points. He was definitely a guy you'd
like at your side when the time came to fix bayonets. But like all of us, he
had faults. The thing about Russell is that he was what I'd call a
professional Indian. And I mean that with all due respect. I just think that
he made too big a deal out of being part of his people. We're all
individuals, and we should be judged on our own achievements and faults, not
those of whatever groups we belong to. The same goes for professional
Irishmen, professional Jews, professional blacks, or what have you. Your
ethnicity and racial background is definitely part of who you are, but it
shouldn't take over your personality. Making an accident of birth the
centerpiece of your life makes no sense to me; I view it as a psychological
failing. But it's a common enough error, and one that's encouraged by today's
politically correct society. Russell certainly wasn't the only one to make
it, nor the worst.
L: It seems to have worked for him. If only for the movie
roles, he must have made a lot of money almost literally by being a
professional Indian.
Doug: True enough. There is, however, a different sort of
professional Indian that Russell despised. One of his favorite phrases for
such people was: "hang around the fort Indians." [Chuckles] I
thought that was a great description.
L: Sorry – what does that mean?
Doug: Welfare Indians and Indians turned white – hanging
around the fort, making supplications to their conquerors, seeking to game
the system and gain advantage from the treaties and deals with the US, rather
than living on their own terms. Like so many things in the political world,
it's perverse. The US government basically stole most of the Indians' lands
and destroyed their way of life. It broke absolutely every treaty it made
with them. Then it turned them into welfare junkies as compensation. Some
compensation…
L: It has seemed to me that many Indians, or First
Nations peoples, as they call them in Canada, are caught on the horns of a
real dilemma. On one hand, they want to adhere to their traditional ways.
Fair enough. But on the other, their traditional ways are a Stone-Age culture
with no modern medicine and absolutely no way to fight a modern aggressor. To
live like that, they would have to trust in the benevolence of the more
powerful cultures around them – that's clearly no good. But they can't attain
technological, economic, and perhaps even military parity with the Western
culture that surrounds them while hunting and fishing.
Doug: Yes, they've had a tough break. They can't just
exist as a living anthropological exhibit. It seems to me the best solution
would have been for the tribes to maintain their own independent countries.
At that point, individuals could take what they wanted from the Europeans'
culture or become totally part of it. But throughout history, cultures with
superior technologies or numbers have always crushed their competitors. It's bad karma – with all that implies – but that seems to be
how people are wired.
There is, however, mounting evidence that there were actually many more
Indians when the Europeans arrived in the Americas than was previously
believed. I remember learning in history classes that North America had a
native population of maybe a couple million, max. Their hunter-gatherer
civilization was not thought to be able to feed more than that. New research
is coming out that suggests that there were easily ten times as many natives,
maybe even more. The Cahokia
Mounds in Illinois, for example, is now thought to have been the site of
a city larger than London in 1250 AD.
But their populations were wiped out and their civilizations destroyed –
not with bullets, but with smallpox and other Old World diseases. The same
thing allowed Cortez to subdue a much larger Aztec population in Mexico, and
Pizarro the Incas in South America. The Indians had no immunological defense
against such diseases at all, and 95 percent of the population died. There's
very interesting archeological work proceeding on this front, and I suspect
we'll know much more in just a few years.
L: I've heard they're finding Mayan cities no one knew
about with satellite imaging now, looking for circles of altered vegetation
that still surround old Mayan population centers even now, centuries later.
This is interesting… But back to Russell Means. I never met
him, and I wish I had. I always wanted to ask him what it was about him, what
experiences he might have had, that enabled him to grasp the basics of libertarian
thinking, and why so few other native leaders have done the same. Do you
know?
Doug: Well, I'd say that Russell was a gut libertarian.
He wasn't good at articulating economic theory, but he was by nature a strong
individualist. Actually, I'd say he was pretty conflicted. On one hand he was
a staunch individualist, but on the other, he would never admit to the fact
that he was allowing himself to be defined by his ethnic group. Maybe this is
more evidence in favor of a premise I've long suspected is true:
libertarianism is actually a genetic mutation.
L: It certainly feels that way. Frequently.
Doug: It does, doesn't it? Even when people recognize and
intellectually understand the philosophy of personal freedom and
responsibility, most just can't integrate it into themselves emotionally. And
others simply refuse to grasp it intellectually. I'm afraid libertarianism is
fated to appeal to only a small minority.
L: Marshall Fritz used to administer Myers-Briggs tests to people at Advocates for
Self-Government meetings. I remember him saying that 90% of the time,
they'd come up INTJ. And I don't think people are distributed evenly among
the 16 Myers-Briggs personality types – INTJs are rare, so 90% is quite
extraordinary.
Doug: David Galland is a fan of Myers-Briggs tests. He
had me take it once, but I don't remember what it said I was… Do you know
what you are?
L: Well, I object to the idea that human beings all come
in one of 16 personality types, but as a sort of shorthand, the system is
useful. I tested as an INTJ – Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging –
though I was borderline between introverted and extroverted.
Many people think I'm extroverted, because they see me on stage, teaching,
lecturing, or on TV. I'm not afraid of such performances, but I find them
draining. I think real extroverts get a charge out of that sort of attention.
I'm usually happier alone with a good book, or with my close friends and
loved ones.
Doug: That sounds like me too – I totally agree with you,
and frequently prefer my own company. I've often thought that if I were the
last person left alive on the planet, I'd probably get along just fine. But
that's getting way off topic.
L: Yes. It's too late now, but for years I've had a fond
fantasy that Russell Means would persuade some band or tribe somewhere to
exercise the sovereign independence they truly and legally have, and tell the
US government to go get stuffed. The US can keep its welfare checks and other
"help." Instead, once acting independently, they could set up a
free-trade zone and invite businesses to lease land for a dollar for 99 years
– sort of like the original Hong Kong setup – and levy no taxes. Businesses
would gladly move to South Dakota – or wherever – to enjoy a real tax haven
without having to leave the continental US. Even without the taxes, the
businesses would create countless jobs and benefits for the tribes –work with
dignity. If there were also fewer regulations than in the US, technological
progress and innovation could happen faster. Instead of being romanticized
welfare projects, such reservations could become shining beacons of liberty,
prosperity, and progress…
I'm sure he must have tried – a pity the idea never caught on.
Doug: Absolutely. It worked for China; it should work
even better for Indians, who are not burdened with the legacies of Maoism.
But I guess INTJs are just as rare among American Indians as among Americans
of European descent. Perhaps even more so.
Worse, native culture has been all but destroyed, not just by the wars and
decimation of their population, but by the welfare mentality foisted upon
natives by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The BIA since its founding has been
the most notoriously corrupt of all government agencies, which is saying
something. It still spends billions per year, largely keeping Indians dependent
and on their reservations – hanging around the fort, as Russell said. The BIA
is one agency that should be abolished tomorrow morning, and then a thorough
criminal investigation launched for malfeasance and misfeasance among both
its current and retired employees. It's time Indians controlled the property
they own and are stopped being treated like wayward children.
But to answer your question, going back to something I said earlier, as
much as I respected Russell, his greatest failing may have been that he did
not educate himself deeply on the philosophical matters that concerned him.
He never read enough of the classics and current literature to gain a
thorough theoretical understanding to back his gut libertarianism. He could
argue from the heart, but not as effectively from the head – he was quite
capable of it, very intelligent, but he just didn't bother. This may be why,
as passionate and impressive as he was, he couldn't talk any of the tribes
into doing as you say.
L: Reminds me of the king telling Mozart in Amadeus:
"Herr Mozart, you are passionate, but you do not persuade."
Doug: [Laughs] Exactly.
The last thing Russell got involved in some was project in the Dakotas – I wrote about it in the International Speculator
at the time; it had to do with setting up a free country, just as you described.
I meant to get in touch with him about it, but urgent things got in the way
of important things. Anyway, he had some health problems at the time, and I
didn't think he was the sort of guy who'd want to go out with a bunch of
tubes stuck up his nose in a white man's hospital. I thought he might look to
pick a fight with the Federales and go out in a blaze of glory. It didn't end
up that way, and that may just be the greatest tragedy of Russell's life.
Anyway, he was a stand-up guy, and I'm sorry that he's gone… but nobody
gets out of here alive.
L: Okay then. Hm. This doesn't seem to lend itself to any
investment insights, but it was interesting.
Doug: Perhaps not. I will point out that Indians have
done well opening up casinos on their reservations. They ought to do much,
much more. But that's a question of political entrepreneurship as much as
economic entrepreneurship.
L: Speaking of Native People at this time of year, I
can't help but remember my son Orion's favorite holiday song: Stuck
in the Smoke Hole of Our Tipi. It's sung by Shoshoni Elder Oldhands
and is pretty politically incorrect
Doug: I'll check out the song. Have a good week.
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