Many are the laws that go unenforced, or are selectively enforced according to the whim of “the authorities.” Many are the laws written to target particular institutions or individuals, who are thus made “enemies of the state” in fact if not in name. Many are the laws written so obscurely that even those who wrote them cannot explain their intent nor their effect. Many are the laws that have advanced injustice rather than justice.When those who claim to represent the law decide, arbitrarily, when it applies and what degree of enforcement it deserves, then there is no law. When they decide, for whatever reason, that the law binds some persons but not others, then there is no law. When the law is written in such a fashion that no one can be certain what it compels or forbids, then there is no law. And when the law is “interpreted” to override the natural rights of individuals to their lives, liberties, and honestly acquired properties, then there is no law.
I meant it then, and I mean it now.
I’ve also written, on several occasions, that the pillars of freedom are three: education, communications, and weaponry. Power-seekers know that quite well. In every society on Earth, the State strives to control all three: to impose itself upon them; to thwart alternatives to them; and to prevent escape from the State’s versions of them. I challenge you, Gentle Reader, to cite an exception. Thus, what serves the freedom-seeker can serve the power-seeker equally well.
Let’s have a quick survey of those things in these United States:
- Education is almost completely controlled by governments. Their tool for imposing State-controlled “public” education upon us is principally economic: high levels of taxation that demand two incomes per family and discourage expenditures on educational alternatives. The escape of homeschooling compels serious economic compromises by families that choose it.
- Armament in private hands is obviously suppressed by governments to the maximum possible extent, despite the “protections” of the Second Amendment. Yes, you can buy a surplus tank or howitzer, but only after rigorous investigation by the State and rendering the thing impotent for conflict.
- Private persons’ ability to communicate is where we retain the greatest latitude. However, it’s also where the State is most active today, principally through lawfare, anti-“hate speech” campaigns, and the seduction of Big Tech into its agenda.
All that, despite the “protections” of the Constitution! No need to imagine where we’d be without the Constitution; just look at what’s been done to the peoples of Europe.
So we see that the pillars of freedom serve equally well as the pillars of power. To the extent that the State controls them, it controls us. It denies us and our progeny what we need to retain even a shred of freedom. Flee? To where?
Have a bit of Orwell for dessert:
If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles.
If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflexion of the voice, at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength. would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it? And yet-!
He remembered how once he had been walking down a crowded street when a tremendous shout of hundreds of voices women’s voices — had burst from a side-street a little way ahead. It was a great formidable cry of anger and despair, a deep, loud ’Oh-o-o-o-oh!’ that went humming on like the reverberation of a bell. His heart had leapt. It’s started! he had thought. A riot! The proles are breaking loose at last! When he had reached the spot it was to see a mob of two or three hundred women crowding round the stalls of a street market, with faces as tragic as though they had been the doomed passengers on a sinking ship. But at this moment the general despair broke down into a multitude of individual quarrels. It appeared that one of the stalls had been selling tin saucepans. They were wretched, flimsy things, but cooking-pots of any kind were always difficult to get. Now the supply had unexpectedly given out. The successful women, bumped and jostled by the rest, were trying to make off with their saucepans while dozens of others clamoured round the stall, accusing the stall-keeper of favouritism and of having more saucepans somewhere in reserve.
There was a fresh outburst of yells. Two bloated women, one of them with her hair coming down, had got hold of the same saucepan and were trying to tear it out of one another’s hands. For a moment they were both tugging, and then the handle came off. Winston watched them disgustedly. And yet, just for a moment, what almost frightening power had sounded in that cry from only a few hundred throats! Why was it that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered?
He wrote:
Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.
“The proles” are us, Gentle Reader. We quarrel over potholes, zoning laws, the noise from this one’s barking dog and whether that one’s hedge violates community standards. We joust over school buses, and after-school programs, and trivial differences in property tax rates. We contend over “inequality.” We’ll fight to the death over that last saucepan.
What would we do, were we actually conscious of what’s been done to us? What’s still being done to us? Would anyone dare try to smash any one of the three pillars of power? Who would risk his life and fortune to try?
Perhaps I’ll be back later. Just now, it’s time for Mass.
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