Owing to having been largely incapacitated since early Thursday morning, I have the sort of day before me that makes outright slavery seem an attractive alternative, so I have one quick item for you today, after which I must be off.
Failure can awaken one to what he does not know...unless he's a politician.
Consider how bereft of response were the politicians confronted by this 15-year-old girl:
This young woman is both well informed and remorselessly logical. But will she convince her local political class of her position? Almost certainly not. Why not?
Give that some thought.
Men of good will habitually assume that other men are much like them. They, being animated and guided by what C. S. Lewis called the Law of General Benevolence, have difficulty conceiving of a body of motivation centered on malice, venality, or cruelty. They want nothing from others except what should come to them in consequence of a fulfilled agreement, and cannot imagine how anyone could be otherwise oriented.
Most Americans are men of good will. Most politicians are not:
- The man of good will seeks prosperity in harmony with his fellows; the politician seeks power over others.
- The man of good will understands the requirements for comprehension and honest effort in the fulfillment of his promises; the politician dismisses such notions as "for the little people."
- The man of good will frankly discloses his aims to his trading partners, and expects them to do likewise; the politician hides his true agenda for as long as possible.
Thus, for a man of good will to deal with politicians and political bodies as if they were like him is a fatal error. The latter will view the former as a sheep to be shorn.
When the man of good will lays out an airtight logical case before a political body, as did the young woman in the video above, he expects it to prevail on the merits. When it fails to do so, often leaving no trace of its passing, he tends to look for fault in himself. He assumes there must have been some flaw in his reasoning, or some ambiguity in his evidence, such that his argument failed to convince. This, too, is a fatal error.
Politicians are not educable in the traditional sense. They are creatures of power: power seekers and power fearers. Their relations with one another are intensely suspicious and zero-sum competitive. Their relations with common citizens are indelibly imbued with contempt. With vanishingly few exceptions, nothing but power matters to them.
The defense of the right to keep and bear arms is not about educating our political class. They don't lack any element of the knowledge or logic behind that right. They know full well what it was guaranteed to provide: a bulwark against the infinite lust for power that animates them and others like them. Their hostility to it, regardless of their verbal representations, is not about your safety; it's about theirs.
They will never, ever agree that the State must respect the right to keep and bear arms. All that will prevent them from ripping it out of our hands is fear: in the best case, fear of being turned out of office; in the worst, fear of being hanged from a lamppost for the edification of others.
Milton Friedman was at his wisest when he said that freedom depends less upon electing good men than upon creating conditions within which bad men would feel irresistibly pressured to do the right thing. Friedman understood the essential evil of the State -- and that an evil institution, necessary or otherwise, would inevitably become the demesne of evil persons.
The moral should be clear.
Do not think to "educate" politicians.
Never condescend to "negotiate" with them.
Instill in them an ineradicable fear of your wrath.
As Mark Twain said, they're "our only native criminal class."
Verbum sat sapienti.
5 comments:
Thank you for this post. It is validation of something I've been saying for awhile, an expansion of an old theme;
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, but centralized power corrupts whole nations, because central power attracts evil like moths to a flame.
If you study the Ancients, you see that in the kabbalah texts, power and control over others is the 5th desire of the soul of man. This was written thousands of years ago, and little has changed.
Thus, evil is perpetually attracted to power.
The only solution, is the elimination of central powers.
But the only way to eliminate centralized power is to eliminate centralized money creation. Money is the water of life and death.
This was the Lords final battle against the money changers, in the temple, beholden to Rome. It must be the central focus of any action.
The Godly must awaken along with the secular patriots, to join together in unity, to reform to the constitution, and eliminate the bricks of power, the Fed and the term limits, and the civil service, at a minimum. Without eliminating the bureaucracies, you have done nothing.
But before any of this, you must awaken the Preachers, as a new Black Robe Regiment. To speak truth to power, and awaken the sleepers. For this is what the British feared more than G. Washington's pathetic little army... where are they? They were bought for 30 pieces of tax free silver. Patriots, turn the Preachers, make them render unto Caesar... and then they will render unto God, the Liberty of the People.
So that we can 'pound our swords into plowshares... and neither learn war, anymore'.
That is a wonderful post full of the greatness of virtue.
It is going to be very difficult to vote our way out of the rule of power those bereft of virtue have garnered for themselves.
No matter, it is the likes of this young American patriot who will define what is legitimate and what is illegitimate. And that I believe is what makes all the difference.
God bless here virtuous soul.
See, I believe it is people such as this young lady who by virtue of her belief in the cardinal things such as faith, courage and the hope of something better and larger, a plurality is nurtured.
It is refusing consent for what and who are absolutely wrong in their actions, agenda and the force they use to subject others.
That young lady is quite simply the most legitimate American possible.
Good for her.
It is profoundly inspiring to see such courage and faith.
I think there are millions more of her stripe who hold such wonderful ideas and beliefs in high esteem.
I hope this young lady inspires people, many people. This is where a plurality comes from, her and those millions.
I hope something happens that is catalyst for this plurality to grasp what it is, what it is capable of accomplishing.
Foremost I hope this plurality discovers itself, discovers it exists among like minded Americans.
Then we turn from a culture under siege of divide and conquer, to become manifold in our destiny.
It is that young lady that is the difference between tyranny we face and the Liberty that naturally belongs to us and only us.
I have said this elsewhere, but it bears repeating.
Our Founding Fathers risked their lives, fortunes and "Sacred Honor" in order to found this nation. How can the Republic be entrusted to anyone willing to risk any less?
We should have a special election any time someone leaves public office; from the County Dog Catcher to the POSTUS, -erp sorry, "POTUS".
In this special election We, the Citizens should get to decide if politician X gets their full salary and the thanks of a grateful populace, or a Prison term of NO LESS than their time in office -as well as being stripped of EVERY asset. Responsibility and Power MUST balance, there MUST be accountability. Thomas Paine suggested that accountability would be de facto as politicians would return to ordinary citizenship and be forced to live among their neighbors -who would tar and feather or do worse to those who abused their power while in office. Obviously, with lifetime Secret Service protection; this last bastion of accountability is gone, and we Must find another.
She's too young to know the ways of the world. Give her time, she will figure it out. I'm glad she knows how to shoot, a skill a hell of a lot more useful than attempting to persuade tyrants to be good.
Small detail, but a big deal: The 2nd Amendment does not "grant" the right to bear arms. it codifies it.
The right to bear arms is innate in your existence as a person, and that right needed to be included in the USC to slightly delay and befuddle collectivists, as well as remind sleepy comfortable persons of their duties.
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