The Messianic Character of the NSA
The modern state is messianic. While denying the existence of God, it seeks to replace God.
My father-in-law, R. J. Rushdoony, used to say that the state wants to predestinate mankind, because the state wants to become the god of this society. Exactly half a century ago this month, his book appeared: The Messianic Character of American Education. The founders of public education in the United States really did believe that the agency of the tax-funded school could redeem individuals and the American social order. They said so repeatedly, and Rushdoony assembled the citations and provided the footnotes.
The same analysis can be applied to the intelligence community. Its impulse is messianic.
Also half a century ago, I studied under philosopher and theologian Cornelius Van Til. Van Til had many aphorisms, and his aphorisms were far more powerful than his prose. One of them was this: "Autonomous man believes that he can know anything truly, only when he knows everything exhaustively." In a universe in which anything can conceivably affect anything else, a person who wants to understand anything needs to know all of the potential causal relationships involved. But these relationships are inherently infinite. This is the so-called butterfly effect. If a butterfly in California can flap its wings and cause a hurricane in Miami, then it behooves the weather services in Miami to monitor every butterfly.
MONITORING EUROPEAN LEADERS
In recent days, another release of information accumulated by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA has been monitoring telephone calls of Western European leaders for a decade. Why did the NSA do this?
It had to do with two factors: the inherent bureaucratic commitment to expansion vs. the price of expansion. Pricing is always at the margin. Someone pays something extra for a little more of something else. The NSA pays a little more, or perhaps a great deal more, in order to accumulate more information in its databases. There is an economic law that says the following: when the price falls, more is demanded. The price of information, and especially stored data, has fallen as nothing else has in the history of mankind. It will continue to do so.
There is a theory known as the technological imperative. It says the following: "If it can be done, it must be done." Why should this imperative be true? Why should something be done merely because it can be done? That was the response of Bill Clinton with respect to Monica Lewinsky. This was not a technological imperative, but it certainly was what appeared to be a psychological imperative. In neither case should we regard such an imperative as legitimate.
The bureaucratic imperative, the statist imperative, and the falling price of data collection and storage have combined to create a snooping state. It cannot be reformed so as to overcome these three imperatives. It can only be de-funded.
THE STATE AS GOD
The NSA, the CIA, and the FBI are not simply following a supposed technological imperative. They are following a messianic imperative. They are pursuing exhaustive knowledge, on the assumption that they cannot know anything accurately unless they know everything exhaustively.
Much the same can be said of the healing arts. There was a time when men believed that God can heal sick individuals. Today, most people believe that medical science can heal sick individuals. Given such a view, the state is sure to intervene. The state seeks control over medicine. Its agents assert both the authority and the capacity to serve as the functional gods of society, and therefore the state cannot allow medicine to be governed by free market agreements. The state is seen as having a moral imperative, which is ultimately a religious imperative, to intervene into the relationship between the healthcare provider and the customer.
The NSA, the CIA, and the FBI will continue to accumulate as much data as they can afford, and far more data than they admit to possessing. This is consistent with the modern view of the state. The state is seen as the agency of salvation. It is seen as the agency of healing. It is seen as the agency of protection. Citizens should not expect to limit the extension of data accumulation by these agencies until they reject the theology which undergirds the messianic state. To place limits on these agencies would be to reject the operating theory of the modern messianic state, namely, that the state is the only functional god of society, and is therefore the highest court of appeal. There is supposedly no appeal beyond the state. As Stalin put it, "How many divisions does the Pope have?" This doctrine is the divine right of the state. This theory of state sovereignty has replaced the divine right of kings.
The good news is this: the bureaucrats who staff the tenured positions in these agencies are not omniscient. They are overwhelmed by the amount of data which their digital technology has accumulated. They are unable to connect the dots. They are unable to protect society from dedicated people who are willing to die for a cause, and who have adopted terrorism as the appropriate tool for their cause. The bureaucrats are not willing to die in defense of their cause. They are also incapable of connecting the digital dots. The agencies will continue to accumulate data, but they will not be able to implement effective policies to control acts of terrorism against the state. There is growing resistance to the state. The agencies' decision to accumulate such information testifies to their theology of statist salvation, a theology which the terrorists reject with respect to the United States. The technological imperative is in fact the messianic imperative, and it always creates resistance.
The data accumulation and retrieval systems are no better than the courage, wisdom, and ability to connect the digital dots possessed by the employees of the various bureaucracies that accumulate the data. The larger the bureaucracies, the less their implementation of courage, wisdom, and the ability to connect the dots. This is a bureaucratic imperative.
BUREAUCRACY AND MEDIOCRITY
The inherent thrust of bureaucracy is toward mediocrity. No bureaucratic official wants to hire people with significantly greater abilities than he has, because they will make him look incompetent. He also does not want to hire anybody of obviously inferior abilities, because that will invite intervention by a higher level of the bureaucracy. So, the bureaucratic imperatives incline toward mediocrity, and mediocrity is not the stuff of divinity.
The messianic state is a false god. It will continue to intervene whenever possible, irrespective of the law, including the moral law. This is the messianic imperative. But this is inherently self-defeating. The state eventually runs out of money. It is always threatened by its limited supplies of courage, wisdom, and the ability of its members to connect the dots.
The brouhaha associated with the NSA's bugging of European leaders' phones will blow over soon enough. There is only one test of any relevance regarding the extension of the bureaucracy's authority, and that is the decision of politicians to cut the bureaucracy's budget. Nothing else matters to the bureaucrats. Congress is not going to cut the budget of the NSA, which supposedly is in the range of $52 billion a year. So, the messianic imperative will continue to operate. The cost of accumulating information will continue to decline.
Nevertheless, the NSA has suffered a major setback. Its budget will grow, but so will its timidity. The senior bureaucrats want to protect their budgets. They want to protect their positions of seniority. They want their promotions, and to get those promotions, they must adhere to the supreme bureaucratic imperative: "Don't make a mistake."
The NSA's ability to implement a program of surveillance is limited only by technology and its budget. Its ability to make decisions in terms of the surveillance is highly vulnerable, and under the present conditions, we can be certain that the NSA's courage, wisdom, and ability to connect the dots will decline.
CONCLUSION
The NSA is part of the messianic imperative, and this god will fail.
The NSA, the CIA, and the FBI are all in the business of implementing a theology of state omniscience. They are all involved in a gigantic deception: blind man's bluff. The source of this deception is not inside the agencies. It is inherent in the citizenry, which has adopted by default a theology of salvation by legislation. The messianic character of politics is shared around the world, nation by nation. This theology always leads to the same kinds of bureaucratic blunders in every society that adopts it.
Part of this theology asserts the ability of the citizenry to reform the state, but without rejecting the theology of the salvation by legislation. That is another great deception.
The more the agents of the state claim digital omniscience, the blinder they will become. There are too many dots to connect; too many butterflies to monitor.