I have come to hate not only the Federal government with all my heart and mind, but all government in my country, for the most part.
If there was a red button I could push that would blow up Washington along with every Fed employee and building around the country, the only thing that would stop me is the sure knowledge of how my countrymen would immediately rush in to refill all those positions and continue the same insanity.
As Francis mentions below, the crisis isn't a matter of lawyers and bureaucrats getting carried away. It is a fundamental abandonment of the principles of liberty and freedom by a supine population following the path of least resistance.
For my money, only bloodshed can restore the hope of Liberty. It is only when men are willing to fight and die for something as important as freedom, that they will cherish and sustain it.
Americans tried to do that in 1861 and were sorely defeated, but the case can be made that the North, rather than acting as a scourge and destroyer of liberty throughout everyday life, was merely an empire acting on it's will to maintain and expand itself.
The result, though, was that these United States became the United States. And signaled the end of individual freedom and sovereign states.
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I know it will take some kind of Lexington and Concord to awaken enough patriots to come to arms and we are not close to that point yet; although the Govt's renewed desire to disarm Americans provoked heated and vocally militant responses.
The Second Amendment appears to be the only cause that a great many Americans will fight and defy over.
You would have thought a free people would never allow themselves to be manhandled, groped, and molested by govt agents at airports (and elsewhere) in direct contravention of the Fourth Amendment, but I, like many, thought wrong. Few people were willing to stick their necks out -- knowing how the government loves to make examples of the few who do object to being abused by it.
You might also have thought that devout religious people would not allow their First Amendment right to freedom of religion be so easily trampled as King Obama and his minions have done in Obamacare.
Yes, ministers and bishops protested, informed their congregations to no effect. You could say they're waiting for it to be settled by the Supreme Court before anyone gets too exercised, but I think it's clear. The devout will never be exercised enough to matter and will allow the government to pick off any one or company that defies the regulations that force them to pay for abortifacients and abortions.
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I understand human inertia, the herding instinct, and quotidian matters. Mortgages need to be paid, jobs attended, braces for the child's teeth paid for, soccer practice to drive to, and the school play to watch.
How does a man risk throwing his family out on the street all because he wants to have a government and society that leaves him alone?
There has to be some alternative, a place of hope to rely on, a community where men can fight and not fear the worst for their families; that there is some kind of place and people in numbers who can support the fight for freedom.
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This is why the drive to push populations into urban (and suburban) settings is nefarious and not entirely accidental.
Yes, the claim of economies of scale, increased productivity by machinery and so forth has pushed people off the farms, out of the forests, from the seas, but in many cases, it has been the work of politicians on behalf of corporations and urban environmentalists who have turned our rural regions into depopulated poverty zones.
In the West where half the land is owned by fed and state govts is it any wonder why rural areas have so few people?
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If the next revolution is going to be fought and tried again by Americans, it will have to come from a region that can sustain and nurture it long enough to have a chance to succeed.
I have no idea where that might be.
2 comments:
So, does the answer lie in a renewed push to reverse urbanization? Agriculture is so controlled by the feds that it's no wonder that all but a few mega-farms can even survive on the land. How to we get people back to a rural setting? Do we attack consumerism and try to live simple lives? Do we promote an Amish lifestyle, but without the pacifism? Would that even last more than a single generation?
I know one thing: getting rid of all these damned federal departments with their central controls, and letting state and local communities control their own affairs would be a good start. Only states can battle the federal leviathan. We must strengthen the individual states.
The question comes down to -- our we willing to pay a little more for food and commodities?
If we could hold down taxes to a total of 10%, we wouldn't notice the slightly higher cost of maintaining and increasing a prosperous middle class. But robbed as we are of so much wealth by govt we are forced to prefer the cheapest goods and services we can find creating a spiraling race to the bottom along with a great incentive to import cheaper laborers.
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