The Coming Warlords

When governments fall, or are too weak to control the
outlying provinces, warlords arise and take over those regions where there is no
order. Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe and England, men little better than
bandit chieftains established their rule over populations too weak to protect
themselves.

Lest the king bring together his troops and wipe out these
bandits, they often pledged a kind of loose loyalty to the Crown and were given
sanction to keep their territory. The king often granted such titles because the
region was not worth his effort to conquer it. This was Feudalism and the
warlords became titled lords and servants of the king and had the power of life
and death over their subjects.

The warlord part came in because neighboring bandits, or even
other sanctioned lords were a constant threat to the territory. So the warlord
had to be fighting off competitors on a pretty constant basis.

In China, for quite awhile before Sun Yat Sen took over in
1911, that large country too, was controlled by bandit warlords, often with no
sanction from the weak central government.

Nearly every American Indian chief was a warlord.

With the formation of a strong central government, governors
are appointed or elected. Since they can be recalled by the central government
or voted out of office, they cannot be considered warlords.

Heads of regional National Guard units are the nearest thing
we have to warlords. They are held in readiness to put down civil disturbances,
help out in case of earthquakes, floods, or to bear the brunt of an enemy
attack. Even so, their leaders are not warlords in the actual sense, because
they have no authority over the general populace, except by order of the
governor.

Following the collapse of every civilization, warlords have
sprung up to consolidate the territory they inhabited and to fend off
neighboring warlords who wanted more. When our world system dies, Feudalism will
again rise to replace the destroyed or critically weakened central governments.

Upon the collapse of our civilization, due to economic
blowout, an overload of degenerate dependents, or a combination of several
factors, each region will be on its own. Aside from the big cities, which will
perish in a burst of rioting, burning and plague, only the towns will be worth
defending and so what I call warlords will not only be inevitable, but
necessary.

It might be commonly supposed that a modern warlord would be
the district military commander. But military people are not qualified to
administer local governments serving their native populaces. They might be used
to head the local National Guard and serve in a purely defensive capacity.

Their main function would be to fend off bands of refugees
from the cities. Such refugees would be plentiful, desperate and, for the most
part, useless to the local economy. Purely military units would be necessary to
reroute them around the town and escort them out of the county. After the
initial fighting off of outsiders, the military types could be assimilated into
the population, since they are used to disciplne and could pitch into any
community endeavor.

You might consider the County Sheriff as the likeliest
candidate for warlord, but he would not qualify. First, he is an elected
official. As such, he is usually corrupt and in any case would not be adequate
to administer the needs of the towns under his jurisdiction. His staff might be
excellent but they are mainly involved in policing the outlying districts and
are not familiar enough with the workings of the towns to administer.

Forget the mayor. Another politician, he is a dingbat by
nature, usually senile, and so crooked he needs his own accountant to keep from
cheating himself.

In fact, any elected official should be automatically written
off as a choice for warlord. Politicians have no other goals in life but to get
and keep a place at the public trough. Therefore, they are natural parasites and
are incapable of any gainful or useful employment. This is partly because their
training consists mainly in appealing to the lowest common denominators in their
constituency. In other words, they make their appeals to the average. As you
well know the average voter is a grasping ignoramus who believes the world owes
him a living. So successful politicians are skillful only in telling the voters
what most of them want to hear. Consequently, the most incompetent and
unscrupulous get elected.

I am sure you have listened to our President. As aimless and
moronic as is his political performance, he can give an off-the-cuff speech
which projects hope to the hopeless and intelligence to the
pseudo-intellectuals. This shows political refinement but such is the opposite
of true qualifications for effective leadership.

A local politician is so clumsy and obvious that he sounds
like Captain Kangaroo addressing the residents of Sesame Street. The congressman
representing my district is a dumbbell but has turned political degeneracy in an
art form.

In the more extreme category, are militant political groups.
The political militants would be the first to be wiped out by the local militia.
Many political militants fantasize that when the government collapses, the
people will clamor for their bizarre solutions.

As an ex-right wing fanatic, I realize my old comrades and
their counterparts on the left would be lucky to be left alive in any community
they tried to take over.

The best choice for warlord would be your local chief of
police. In most cases, he is well trained, efficient, conscientious, courageous
and honest. He generally knows more about the community then any other man in
town. He is also mature enough to establish martial law in the best interests of
the majority of the population.

He could be trusted to appoint the people best able to bring
the townsfolk through the crisis. Furthermore, he would be the most likely to
step down when order was established and delegate authority to those
professional people of merit who could run the town without coercion.

Only the police chief could justly implement the harsh
measures a warlord would have to impose on the populace. Not caring to remain
warlord, as would a politician or military officer, the police chief could
establish internal and external security, regardless of criticism.

Like a surgeon cutting out cancer, a police chief could
objectively eliminate the local parasites. A politician could never kill a
degenerate whom he would later depend upon for votes.

Since austerity would be a fact of life for some time, the
local parasites would have to be destroyed. This would entail rounding up all
habitual criminals, pimps and their whores, sex offenders, long-term able-bodied
welfare recipients, winos and drug addicts, taking them out to the edge of town
and killing them.

There would be no practical reason for letting them survive.
To enslave them would mean appointing guards with better uses to the community.
To turn them loose would only be to inflict the vermin on decent people in other
towns.

If this seems harsh, consider; the collapse of world
civilization will bring about such death and suffering that eliminating a town’s
criminals and assorted parasitical trash will be easy. Especially, when you
consider that the survival of the good people of the town will be accomplished
only through great hardship and austerity enough without the town’s predators
and social refuse.

The next task of the warlord would be a touchy one, indeed.
This would be the elimination of the town’s hopelessly retarded, mentally
incompetent, terminally ill and dependent aged. They will not survive anyway,
and prolonging their lives would be not only a waste of precious resources, but
would be an actual cruelty. Such an unwelcome task would have to be delegated to
the town’s most respected physicians, who would give injections to their
hopeless cases.

Lest parents and relatives protest on behalf of their loved
ones, they would have the final decision. In such cases, those closest to the
useless would be given sleepy-by pills by the doctors to be administered when
their misplaced altruism was overcome by the reality of the situation.

The warlord’s only responsibility in the elimination of the
physically and mentally hopeless, aside from authorizing the program, would be
to see that no food or medicines out of the common stores would be given to the
hopeless. If relatives insisted on preserving such blighted dependents, they
must do so out of their own rations.

In the event of the general recognition of the permanent
collapse of civilization, the populace would panic. The warlord’s first duty
would be to station armed personnel in stores holding food, medicines, tools,
weapons, and anything the community would need to survive.

This does not mean the contents of the stores would be
confiscated. personal property is more than a right. It is a necessity. The
store owner knows his inventory and how best to distribute it. Since he had the
initiative to accumulate the supplies, he would most likely be able to get more,
if possible. For these reasons, he must be left in proprietorship. If he is
alienated by having his stock confiscated, he will be unlikely to cooperate in
making or securing more supplies.

Rather than confiscating the stock, it might prove practical
to remove it to a common building more easily defended but with the inventory
under the owner’s continued proprietorship. In this way, for instance, all the
contents of all the pharmacies could be removed to a common building and the
respective owners could then cooperate in rationing the drugs and medicines,
taking in exchange barter goods or whatever served as currency during the
emergency.

Without such a system, stores would be looted of their most
attractive contents. The less attractive wares, and possibly the most useful,
would be trampled and destroyed.

After the worthless and hopeless members of the town were
disposed of and the stores, utilities and other town necessities were secured,
an individual census should be taken. Every householder should declare all his
belongings. Again, private property rights must be respected, especially among
those who have stocked up in anticipation of the collapse.

The Survivalists will be the most important people in the
region and consequently, the most supportive of the warlord. Their surplus might
also be stored in common warehouses. But they must not be confiscated and
distributed for the “public good”.

The only commodities which should be distributed to the
general populace should be food from the supermarkets. the perishables will have
to be distributed immediately, but with I.O.U. s given to the proprietor by the
warlord. The warlord will, in turn, collect I.O.U. s from the recipients, to be
paid for with work on public projects, especially agriculture.

Since the majority of the town’s food supply is brought in
from outlying area, food will be critical. The current supply must be strictly
rationed as no new stock will be brought in. The warlord must appoint
agriculturists to supervise the cultivation of all arable land in the area. Even
so, the Survivalist with a year’s supply of food must be allowed to keep it. In
turn, he will not draw on the communal food supply except by trading his surplus
for food items he lacks.

Every citizen should be required to submit a list of his
possessions; food, tools, weapons, etc. Again, nothing must be confiscated, but
aside from food, surplus tools, weapons, etc., should be freely loaned for the
common good.

There is an interesting incident on page 481 of LUCIFER’S
HAMMER, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It tells of a farmer who had far
more than he could use and did not report it. He also took the help of those
around him without meaning to help them in return. They took everything he had
and drove him out. He took his wife and kids out and was probably eaten by the
roving cannibals. He deserved it.

So a warlord must be an administrator, judge, fighter,
tactician and a sincere protector of his charges. The idea of a warlord being a
tyrant is absurd in America. There will be enough killing to last everyone a
lifetime without the warlord turning on his own. That is why only the most
responsible and able should become warlords.

The new warlords will save the culture, if anyone can. Only
the local police chiefs qualify in all areas of such a responsibility. Only the
police chief can properly choose townsmen to be deputized to help defend the
region. And he can well realize that his deputies will eliminate him if he turns
on the people.

Supporting your local police is not simply a slogan. There
will come a time, and soon, when your local police chief might save you and
everything you hold dear.

THE
HYPNO-DISC TAPE