Contemplating The Eschaton: Protecting The Status Quo

Thanks to commenter Obola, I’m feeling quite a bit cheerier today. Nevertheless, this is an important subject that should be explored somewhat further. So let’s have a look at some influences designed to prevent the United States from altering its course toward the Eschaton.

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Persons who’ve “done a corner” in political and social theory will often feel that their prestige, if not their livelihoods, are tied to the maintenance of Things As They Are. Sad to say, some of these will posture as promoters and defenders of freedom. Here’s a sad example. As I don’t want to take the least little chance of misinterpreting Dr. Epstein, please read his essay for yourself.

Now, when I read that piece, I found myself thinking that Dr. Epstein doesn’t trust market forces quite as much as he once claimed. (Clearly he doesn’t trust them as far as does Dr. Paul.) His endorsement of regulation in the current paradigm and State definition of intellectual property rights opens the door to all the horrors of unaccountable, essentially omnipotent government that’s stifling us today. But regulation provides lots and lots for policy analysts to write about; it’s a form of job security for the Ivory-Tower Class. The implications are unpleasant.

Needless to say, public intellectuals less favorable to freedom are even more blatant about their approval of the Alphabet Monster. But then, it hasn’t taken a bite out of them...yet.

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Our beloved Emperor Misha (long may he reign) brings us notice of yet another stroke intended to suppress anti-regime communications:

The producer of a new movie that criticizes Obamacare has reportedly become the latest prominent conservative slapped with an IRS audit.

Logan Clements, producer of “Sick and Sicker: ObamaCare Canadian Style,” announced via press release Tuesday that he is being audited for the first time ever.

“I had never been audited before I made this movie,” he says in a YouTube video. “There seems to be a pattern here.”

Of course there isn’t, you deranged, paranoid, right wing extremist rayciss hater! You’re sounding just like Gibson Guitars right after they were audited for the crime of donating to political causes while Republican, or when Tea Party organizers were audited, then OSHA’ed for the crime of organizing while conservative, or when Breitbart was audited for felony acts of actual journalism while conservative, or…

Oh wait… It’s almost as if there is a pattern here… Nah, can’t be.

Does everyone remember the ordeal of Catherine Engelbrecht? How about the recent prosecution of Dinesh D’Souza? Then there’s Nakoula Bassey Nakoula, and that O’Keefe fellow, and...

Seen any black helicopters in your neighborhood?

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Recently, an up and coming young actress shocked a has-been talk show host by rejecting her obligatory hyphen. Watch this brief video and decide for yourself.

No regime can oppress a people who have refused to be divided. The Old Media and regime loyalists who dominate it have, among their functions, the perpetuation of as many sorts of social division as they can maintain. Hyphens are a critical element of their tactics.

I’ve resolved to reserve the hyphen for my fiction. What about you?

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One more citation of stunning implications should serve today’s purpose:

In Connecticut, Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s Sandy Hook Advisory Commission has returned a curious and controversial draft recommendation: the state should increase its oversight of homeschooled children with emotional or behavioral challenges. The proposal has outraged the state’s homeschoolers, who, like homeschoolers everywhere, are keenly aware of their sometimes conditional freedoms. In Connecticut, as elsewhere, the law allows parents to homeschool if they choose. But the practice has always been viewed as threatening by left-wing academics, social architects, and teachers’ unions—all well represented on Malloy’s 16-member panel. Sadly, this is only the most recent assault on the rights of Connecticut homeschoolers.

Established to investigate the causes and consequences of the 2012 massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, the Sandy Hook commission issued an interim report last year that nodded appropriately to gun safety, school security, and emergency planning, but made no mention of homeschooling. Now the panel has determined that among the things that went wrong in the run-up to that tragedy was that the killer, Adam Lanza, was homeschooled briefly as a teenager. They are recommending that the state give local officials approval power over parents who wish to homeschool children with social, behavioral, and emotional challenges. “Given the individuals involved in the tragedy that formed the basis of this commission, we believe that it is very germane,” said commissioner Harold I. Schwartz, psychiatrist-in-chief at Hartford Hospital’s Institute of Living. “The facts leading up to this incident support the notion [that there is a] risk in not addressing the social and emotional learning needs of [homeschooled] children.” Schwartz admitted that the commission didn’t have access to Lanza’s school files and medical records. But he maintained that those records would support the commission’s proposals.

Homeschooling is a declaration of independence – independence of mind and values. It’s a refusal to allow the State to condition one’s children into politically correct, State approved attitudes. There has never been a more important target for the State to break to its harness. You may rest assured that even if the above absurd rationale fails the educrats, they will be back, and back, and back, until they’ve quenched homeschooling in Connecticut – possibly all over America – forever.

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Apropos of this topic, in his novel Kildar, John Ringo has protagonist Mike Jenkins (formerly Mike Harmon, a.k.a. “Ghost”) categorize formally organized armies according to their designed function:

• Parade Ground Forces;
• Regime Protection Forces;
• Field Forces.

This is a useful partition, to be kept in mind when assessing the military capabilities of any nation. But it also serves us somewhat here. There are “regime protection forces” well distributed and well emplaced throughout America’s key institutions. The regulatory bureaucracy might be the most fearsome, but it’s far from the only one. Consider how vital to the maintenance of the “statist quo” the educational establishment has been. Consider how viciously the victicrats wield their hyphens at us, denying us the unum our pluribus is supposed to weld. The Ivory Tower types’ influence might appear subtle from the outside, but they constitute the pinnacle of the “intellectual structure of production” from which most policy ideas are born.

The Eschaton, should it arrive, will be their doing quite as much as those at the levers of power.