By engaging in this kind of thing though, you are taking steps toward a total breakdown. Remember Yeats?
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
and later on
The best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity.
It's not about being a doormat for the sake of being a doormat, it's about refraining from breaking the rules because the rules are civilization, and you don't want to tear that down.
The issue is that you always thought they'd come for your freedom with a hard style. Jackboots and midnight knocks. Instead they're just going to regulate your life, inch by inch. You won't resist, because no one act is an egregious assault. Boiled frogs and salami slices is the way they're doing it. The Nazis took 5 years to turn Jews from citizens to air pollution. That's what we look out for. It will not happen that way here. It's not stormtroopers breaking your windows, it's social workers taking children without a trial or hearing. It's not secret police wiretapping you, it's the EPA telling you how much energy you can use.
I can't remember where, but I once read an interview with a Soviet dissident. He was talking about Brezhnev, and how different he was from Stalin. See Brezhnev's KGB would nip things in the bud in a subtle manner. If they heard of a rumbling, they'd mention to the rumbler his daughter's university application, or his mother's need of surgery, or his own need for ration coupons for gasoline. Keeping your head down meant you'd get crumbs, and turning informer meant scraps. The point was that while Stalin ruthlessly killed or imprisoned anyone he even suspected, Brezhnev realized that was inefficient, because the whole Soviet Union was a gulag. The State controlled everything, and thus it was far more efficient to use things like food, housing, and medical care to control the population.
See, I think we have seen the gun thing as a the line in the sand for so long that it's a bit of a mental block. I think they'll take over everything, and then leave us our guns. As long as they have decently fair elections (with a majority of voters dependent on the State), the support for any kind of resistance will be nil. Democracy has been conflated with liberty in the minds of the majority of the country.The smothering nanny state is hard to fight. The jackboot state would be resisted by millions of Americans, which is why it cannot exist here. We won't be choked to death, we'll be smothered with a goose down pillow.
The UK government has not become the bloated monstrosity it is because of the gun ban. The crime is of course almost wholly due to the gun bans, but the superstate with 50% taxation happened because a majority of the people keep voting themselves bits of the treasury. You cannot fight this in any meaningful way. Dependency is a permanent state, until total collapse. The ideas of liberty are almost totally dead here. They survive only in a twisted and atrophied form. Most people get some kind of "free" money, they are bought and paid for. Pell grants and Social Security, food stamps and Medicare, there's some pie for everybody that wants some. There's no stigma attached to stealing the wealth of others.
I predict total fiscal collapse or civil war. Or the latter will follow the former. This nation is once again deeply divided. Once again, it's freedom versus slavery. This time, I think slavery will win. They have the numbers, and they have the will.
Sometimes I think that if we could just get the socialists and statists out of office, this country would rebound quite nicely. Then I remember that somewhere around half the voters (those who care at all) actually want them there. And as Marxy demonstrates so frequently, many of these are immune to logic.
As I see it, the problem is not They The Government, it's We The People. The only way I see of avoiding a breakdown is to take back education and the media. (And yes, I also think Christianity is critical.)
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
—Benjamin Franklin
"[This] Form of Government…is productive of every Thing which is great and excellent among Men. But its Principles are as easily destroyed, as human nature is corrupted…A Government is only to be supported by pure Religion or Austere Morals. Private, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics."
—John Adams
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
—John Adams
"...It's not about being a doormat for the sake of being a doormat, it's about refraining from breaking the rules because the rules are civilization, and you don't want to tear that down..."
Horseshit.
By that measure, it's only about making rules, or laws, and more of them, or "better" laws, or, as our usual whipping boy thinks, having, "the right people," in the driver's seat. Then everything is just hunky-dory...and that is precisely where we are, right now. And it's all looking rather bad.
It's about being a moral person first, and the results of being virtuous lead to civilization when practiced on a wide scale. If everyone gives up being virtuous because many have, then there is no one being virtuous to build a civilization on. In other words, GIGO.
Ed, Yes, I realize that, and I'm always one to push that idea, right there, morals.
It's me being nitpicking, but it's an important distinction to make between rules and morals, damnit. It's sloppy language and conflated thought that have mightily contributed to our current situation.
I mean no offense to Britt or any of the other contributors here, save Marky (he's hardly what I'd call a contributor), but when I read things like that, it makes my blood boil.
When we throw out the rules, it leads them to throw them out even more, using our actions to bolster their case. It's nonsense, it's illogical, but that's what will happen.
For a historical example, we can look at the American Revolution and the Boston Tea Party. The King did not see the Tea Party and say "oh man, these guys are really pissed, I should maybe get some of these taxes repealed." No, he said "cheeky buggers, I'll show them."
There is a strong moral case for not abiding by the rules when the government isn't. Practically though, it's a big step toward a breakdown in social order, towards civil unrest, and towards all these other very bad things.
If a large group of people were to say, not pay their taxes, do you think the government would say "Wow, people are really pissed off at us, maybe we should reconsider our actions?"
Not likely. It really is going to come down, I think, to some kind of major breakdown. I see one of the chief issues being that the Left has 85-90% of what they want. They control the culture, the educational establishment, the media. They control the bureaucracy, the courts are hopelessly choked with activist precdent, the government has normalized the theft of a third of the country's wealth. The Federal Reserve now owns private banks, the federal government, big business, and big labor are hopelessly interconnected. The whole debate is on their terms. FDR's "freedoms", not Jefferson's are what people care about.
I know Glen Beck is controversial, but he had a really good point a while back: they've been working on this for a hundred years. It will take a very very long time to reverse it. If it can be reversed. Which I'm afraid is a much bigger if then I thought it was. Because the whole time these loud and well organized voices of opposition will be shrieking about the loss of progress, and the turning back of the clock.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Britt, your argument is the one I have with the Threepers - three percent isn't enough. We can't restore a Constitution that damned near NO ONE UNDERSTANDS. And a hundred years of "progressivism" has seen to THAT.
Along similar lines, remember that John Brown (one of my personal heroes) deliberately murdered a bunch of slaveholders in pre-Civil War Kansas, but there was no general rush to join his crusade. And we're not even close today (except among a VERY small segment of citizens) to the level of social vituperation that was present in Bleeding Kansas. If elected officials or bureaucrats started dropping like flies tomorrow, the political elites might be surprised by the level of passive approval among the general public, but there would not be any significant movement among the populace to join in or support broader revolutionary change or "Constitutional restoration."
I disagree, while at the same time wholly agreeing with the Founders' statements you quoted.
To clarify: I agree that any form of self-government is wholly inadequate to any culture whose individuals fail to govern themselves as individuals. I further submit that such self-government on an individual scale is the foundation of all morals. Where I disagree is that Christianity per se, or indeed any religion at all, is a requirement of such "individual self-government", and therefore of moral behavior.
The number of non-Christian (including agnostic or atheist) commenters on this very blog that your personal experience of shows them to be sensible, honorable people, suggests otherwise.
In fairness, Judeo-Christian culture does have many of its best rules and customs inherent in the religions from which the culture grew. But that's not the same as suggesting that a Muslim, a Hindu, a Wiccan or an atheist can't achieve the same result by a wholly different path.
"Your (apparent) prejudice and ignorance of your fellow citizens (not to mention frequenters of this blog) does not flatter you."
Hey, hey, hey, I *really* was not aiming to offend, just to poke fun at a common stereotype. I don't generalize about individuals based on common groups, but I'll happily jibe at the groups themselves.
The only person who should be offended by that (aside from taking offense at ignorance in and of itself) is someone who identifies himself entirely through a group.
That withstanding, I retract my statement. I keep forgetting that religion is the one thing about which people have no leeway in humor.
Britt, your argument is the one I have with the Threepers - three percent isn't enough. We can't restore a Constitution that damned near NO ONE UNDERSTANDS. And a hundred years of "progressivism" has seen to THAT.
_____________
Yeah, I agree. See my last paragraph, with its explicit reference to the hundred year trend of the State.
I don't know. There are so many problems to overcome, and sometimes I feel like we're fighting a two front war. If every advocate of limited government did nothing but education, then the statists would build a permanent government and all that would come to naught. Yet if we throw all our efforts into supporting the right politicians now, then in 20 years a new generation of socialists emerges from Markadelphia's classroom.
I think a counter march through the institutions is the best way to go, but the issue there is that people of a limited government bent do not often go into that line of work. I've noticed that competence and self-reliance are the chief values of people like us, and that does not mesh well with a government bureaucracy. The kabuki dance of "fighting the power" while collecting a government check is the almost exclusive province of the Left, and those on the right who do wish to enter the academy are easily shut out or shouted down.
The fact is, I think we've lost. They control the horizontal and the vertical. Your children are indoctrinated with your money, your elderly are dependent stolen wealth, the media are completely hostile to the idea of liberty, the government controls both your lightbulbs and the law.
I don't, honestly, see a way out. I do see, maybe, when this whole rotten edifice collapses, a possible rebirth of freedom.
The Threepers speak of resistance, but again they speak of Concord Green. It will not happen like that, if it does happen. The sad fact is, that if liberty is going to be restored, the model will be the Bolsheviks and not the Patriots. You really will have to set up a false flag and overthrow the government by force, and then impose by diktat a new order in favor of liberty. Which is of course very suspect, being that coercion and violence, no matter how noble your aims are, is morally wrong.
I shrink from this course. I forget who, but some philosopher I read once argued that you could do anything to yourself except sell yourself into slavery. I disagree. If a majority of my countrymen wish to shackle themselves that is their business. They simply do not have the right to take me with them. Which they are doing. They do violence to me, so I have the right to do violence in return, but I do not want to.
If we speak of extreme measures, then I think the most practical of the extreme courses (if that's not an oxymoron) is secession. An armed rebellion would be fantastically bloody, unlikely to succeed, and even "success" would not be a good thing. The well would be well and truly poisoned. Emigration is out, as there is nowhere to run to.
That leaves the creation of a new polity in which to establish a classically liberal government. Which is fantastically difficult, fraught with all kinds of dangers and of course likely to lead to an armed conflict, if not at the moment of secession, then down the road as a totally decrepit and ruined USA seeks to destroy the prosperous new state, as all socialist governments must.
I honestly don't see a way out. I think the quote you've posted many times before, about the last generation to be minimally truly free, is sad but true. I don't think my children will be free. I see nothing but a further decline. I hope I am wrong.
But to the question of "Where is your personal breaking point?", that is a very, very good question.
The wife and I have a place that we are on a slow path to making our very own personal "Galt's Gulch", and we spoke about "our path" only last night, but the question has always been: "When do we leave?"
If al Qaeda sneaks in their Islamic nuke and incinerates Phoenix, the answer will be simple: If we're still alive--we leave now prepared to fight our way out. But what if they incinerate Las Vegas or Los Angeles? What if Rodney King-style riots erupt across the country? What if the course Captain Utopia has set is just the start of a 2-decade long slide into full-on Marxism?
I've put a fair amount of thought on the question--which I think makes me miles ahead of the rest of the sheep--but for the life of me, and as a regular reader of both TSM and The Market Ticker, I still don't know the answer.
I think one of the biggest problems with today's population is that people have lost the distinction between legality and morality.
At the train station in the morning there is a train that stops on the opposite track right around the time I reach the station. That is: empty track, empty track, platform, track with stopped train on it (unloading). I have no issue crossing those two empty tracks to get to the platform, even though the gates are down. Illegal? unambiguously.l Immoral? How? In what possible way am I possibly harming anyone? (And don't give me the "setting a bad example" bullshit. I stop, look both ways, and then cross. That's a GOOD example.)
And yet... you'd be surprised at how many people are *horrified* to hear that I cross when the gates are down. "That's dangerous!" sometimes, but more often "That's illegal!"
The bigger example I can think of was a news item a number of years ago. Remember when the practice of "upskirting" was all over the news for a while? It was the early days of the Internet, and scumbags would go around with video cameras hidden in shopping bags, and film up some unaware girl's skirt, and then post it on the Internet?
So some news show had one of these guys on, and was interviewing him, and the interviewer finally asks the obvious question:
"Don't you think this is immoral?"
The scumbag doesn't bat an eyelash. "It's not illegal."
"Well, yes, but is it *immoral*?"
"It's not illegal."
My original thought was that he was simply dodging the question, but the more time passes, I'm not so sure. I think there are a whole lot of people out there who have no concept of a difference between "moral" and "legal", which pretty directly leads to an idea that we need laws to regulate ALL of our behavior so that people don't behave wrongly.
Which in a way explains why I believe that religion is VERY important to a society's health -- and I'm an atheist! (Mind you it depends on the religion. Islam doesn't seem to have the best track record in turning out strong societies....)
Atheists can be moral people, but it takes a *thoughtful* atheist who actually ponders morality in a significant way. Many people really do need a guiding hand such a religion provides.
I've been an atheist for over 20 years, but I've never endorsed it to others.
(comments on this post: http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2009/12/interesting-question.html )
Atheists can be moral people, but it takes a *thoughtful* atheist who actually ponders morality in a significant way. Many people really do need a guiding hand such a religion provides.
Quite true, and pretty much the point I was trying to make. While Christianity, among other religions, may improve your chances of having a people moral enough to govern themselves, nonetheless thoughtless Christians are just as capable of deliberately constructing a handbasket to go to hell in as anyone else.
This suggests to me that Karl Marx's observation that "religion is the opiate of the masses" may perhaps be useful for those content (or actively desiring) to be sheep, but for those who want their lives to make a difference to those around them, thoughtfulness is the key and religion is at best tangential.
"...but for those who want their lives to make a difference to those around them, thoughtfulness is the key and religion is at best tangential."
True, but when we're talking about changing the country, good luck getting the masses to be thoughtful about morality. Religion is the "mass production" of morality.
Britt, your argument is the one I have with the Threepers - three percent isn't enough. We can't restore a Constitution that damned near NO ONE UNDERSTANDS. And a hundred years of "progressivism" has seen to THAT.
Kevin: It's not that we think we can win, it's that there are some circumstances under which we can no longer not fight. See also: Churchill.
I'd like to agree with you, but I can't. It's a nice hypothesis, but the Crusades, the Catholic/Protestant wars in Ireland, the ongoing Wahhabi terrorism, and other things suggest that mindless acceptance of a given line of argument is every bit as dangerous as mindless rejection of one.
It's the mass production of something, certainly. But since it appears to be as easy for religion to "mass produce" a culture full of people who not only condone, but celebrate beheadings, stonings,burning at the stake and the mass murder of innocents as to produce a culture that is supportive of its members, even those who do not conform to social norms... I'd call religion the social equivalent of gasoline: Very useful for increasing the power and the work that can be gotten from a given system. But potentially lethal to both the user and everyone around him if not handled with proper care and respect, and full awareness of its limitations.
No, GOF, he's right. You're just making Christian "Golden Rule" morality the definition of all morality, and that's not the case. "Morality" is nothing more than a code of conduct for members of a particular society. It just so happens that (in general) the Protestant Christian religion(s) have mass-produced a morality that works better than any other I'm aware of at maximizing human freedom and potential. Other moralities, the one dictated by Islam being a good example, doesn't work at well at that. That doesn't mean it can't build a functioning society. As Sarah is fond of pointing out, all non-religious societies have (so far) produced moralities that are tremendously destructive of human freedom and potential.
People who spend a lot of time thinking about morality and coming up with solid personal codes based on sound reasoning and perspective are kind of like gourmet cooks.
I mean, everybody's got to eat, but there are a lot more people chowing down on McDonald's than making fine cuisine in their kitchens.
Actually, this comment is completely unnecessary, as Kevin nailed it. Again. ;-)
You're just making Christian "Golden Rule" morality the definition of all morality, and that's not the case. "Morality" is nothing more than a code of conduct for members of a particular society. It just so happens that (in general) the Protestant Christian religion(s) have mass-produced a morality that works better than any other I'm aware of at maximizing human freedom and potential.
Exactly. In general. As I said:
While Christianity, among other religions, may improve your chances of having a people moral enough to govern themselves, nonetheless thoughtless Christians are just as capable of deliberately constructing a handbasket to go to hell in as anyone else.
I guess the short version of this is that while Christianity may be helpful, indeed more helpful than anything else that has ever been found, it is nonetheless not an answer in and of itself. And given the hazard of applying religious standards mindlessly, I think it's fair to thoroughly distrust religion in a culture's leaders unless you are absolutely certain that it's coupled with enough rational thinking to avoid the "Crusader mentality".
That's why I took issue with the use of the word "critical", as opposed to merely "valuable". It implies that even thoughtless people raised in the Christian tradition will not be hazardous as leaders, and that no matter how thoughtful or rational someone is, he/she is dangerous as a leader if they are not Christian. I can't accept that premise.
Christianity is useful, sure. Valuable, sure. But I submit the Congress of the United States as Exhibit A that Christianity can't be counted on to produce integrity, and it most certainly is not an acceptable substitute for it.
There should never be random violence. Any objections to Leviathan's overbearing command & control apparatus must be well aimed at the agents charged with visiting hell on the citizens.
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By engaging in this kind of thing though, you are taking steps toward a total breakdown. Remember Yeats?
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
and later on
The best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity.
It's not about being a doormat for the sake of being a doormat, it's about refraining from breaking the rules because the rules are civilization, and you don't want to tear that down.
The issue is that you always thought they'd come for your freedom with a hard style. Jackboots and midnight knocks. Instead they're just going to regulate your life, inch by inch. You won't resist, because no one act is an egregious assault. Boiled frogs and salami slices is the way they're doing it. The Nazis took 5 years to turn Jews from citizens to air pollution. That's what we look out for. It will not happen that way here. It's not stormtroopers breaking your windows, it's social workers taking children without a trial or hearing. It's not secret police wiretapping you, it's the EPA telling you how much energy you can use.
I can't remember where, but I once read an interview with a Soviet dissident. He was talking about Brezhnev, and how different he was from Stalin. See Brezhnev's KGB would nip things in the bud in a subtle manner. If they heard of a rumbling, they'd mention to the rumbler his daughter's university application, or his mother's need of surgery, or his own need for ration coupons for gasoline. Keeping your head down meant you'd get crumbs, and turning informer meant scraps. The point was that while Stalin ruthlessly killed or imprisoned anyone he even suspected, Brezhnev realized that was inefficient, because the whole Soviet Union was a gulag. The State controlled everything, and thus it was far more efficient to use things like food, housing, and medical care to control the population.
See, I think we have seen the gun thing as a the line in the sand for so long that it's a bit of a mental block. I think they'll take over everything, and then leave us our guns. As long as they have decently fair elections (with a majority of voters dependent on the State), the support for any kind of resistance will be nil. Democracy has been conflated with liberty in the minds of the majority of the country.The smothering nanny state is hard to fight. The jackboot state would be resisted by millions of Americans, which is why it cannot exist here. We won't be choked to death, we'll be smothered with a goose down pillow.
The UK government has not become the bloated monstrosity it is because of the gun ban. The crime is of course almost wholly due to the gun bans, but the superstate with 50% taxation happened because a majority of the people keep voting themselves bits of the treasury. You cannot fight this in any meaningful way. Dependency is a permanent state, until total collapse. The ideas of liberty are almost totally dead here. They survive only in a twisted and atrophied form. Most people get some kind of "free" money, they are bought and paid for. Pell grants and Social Security, food stamps and Medicare, there's some pie for everybody that wants some. There's no stigma attached to stealing the wealth of others.
I predict total fiscal collapse or civil war. Or the latter will follow the former. This nation is once again deeply divided. Once again, it's freedom versus slavery. This time, I think slavery will win. They have the numbers, and they have the will.
Britt, excellent analysis.
Sometimes I think that if we could just get the socialists and statists out of office, this country would rebound quite nicely. Then I remember that somewhere around half the voters (those who care at all) actually want them there. And as Marxy demonstrates so frequently, many of these are immune to logic.
As I see it, the problem is not They The Government, it's We The People. The only way I see of avoiding a breakdown is to take back education and the media. (And yes, I also think Christianity is critical.)
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
—Benjamin Franklin
"[This] Form of Government…is productive of every Thing which is great and excellent among Men. But its Principles are as easily destroyed, as human nature is corrupted…A Government is only to be supported by pure Religion or Austere Morals. Private, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics."
—John Adams
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
—John Adams
"...It's not about being a doormat for the sake of being a doormat, it's about refraining from breaking the rules because the rules are civilization, and you don't want to tear that down..."
Horseshit.
By that measure, it's only about making rules, or laws, and more of them, or "better" laws, or, as our usual whipping boy thinks, having, "the right people," in the driver's seat. Then everything is just hunky-dory...and that is precisely where we are, right now. And it's all looking rather bad.
tia,
It's about being a moral person first, and the results of being virtuous lead to civilization when practiced on a wide scale. If everyone gives up being virtuous because many have, then there is no one being virtuous to build a civilization on. In other words, GIGO.
Ed, Yes, I realize that, and I'm always one to push that idea, right there, morals.
It's me being nitpicking, but it's an important distinction to make between rules and morals, damnit. It's sloppy language and conflated thought that have mightily contributed to our current situation.
I mean no offense to Britt or any of the other contributors here, save Marky (he's hardly what I'd call a contributor), but when I read things like that, it makes my blood boil.
As I see it, the problem is not They The Government, it's We The People.
Yep. People get the government they deserve. Obama and his ilk are not the problem, they're a symptom.
I'll amplify some.
When we throw out the rules, it leads them to throw them out even more, using our actions to bolster their case. It's nonsense, it's illogical, but that's what will happen.
For a historical example, we can look at the American Revolution and the Boston Tea Party. The King did not see the Tea Party and say "oh man, these guys are really pissed, I should maybe get some of these taxes repealed." No, he said "cheeky buggers, I'll show them."
There is a strong moral case for not abiding by the rules when the government isn't. Practically though, it's a big step toward a breakdown in social order, towards civil unrest, and towards all these other very bad things.
If a large group of people were to say, not pay their taxes, do you think the government would say "Wow, people are really pissed off at us, maybe we should reconsider our actions?"
Not likely. It really is going to come down, I think, to some kind of major breakdown. I see one of the chief issues being that the Left has 85-90% of what they want. They control the culture, the educational establishment, the media. They control the bureaucracy, the courts are hopelessly choked with activist precdent, the government has normalized the theft of a third of the country's wealth. The Federal Reserve now owns private banks, the federal government, big business, and big labor are hopelessly interconnected. The whole debate is on their terms. FDR's "freedoms", not Jefferson's are what people care about.
I know Glen Beck is controversial, but he had a really good point a while back: they've been working on this for a hundred years. It will take a very very long time to reverse it. If it can be reversed. Which I'm afraid is a much bigger if then I thought it was. Because the whole time these loud and well organized voices of opposition will be shrieking about the loss of progress, and the turning back of the clock.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Britt, your argument is the one I have with the Threepers - three percent isn't enough. We can't restore a Constitution that damned near NO ONE UNDERSTANDS. And a hundred years of "progressivism" has seen to THAT.
Along similar lines, remember that John Brown (one of my personal heroes) deliberately murdered a bunch of slaveholders in pre-Civil War Kansas, but there was no general rush to join his crusade. And we're not even close today (except among a VERY small segment of citizens) to the level of social vituperation that was present in Bleeding Kansas. If elected officials or bureaucrats started dropping like flies tomorrow, the political elites might be surprised by the level of passive approval among the general public, but there would not be any significant movement among the populace to join in or support broader revolutionary change or "Constitutional restoration."
(And yes, I also think Christianity is critical.)
I disagree, while at the same time wholly agreeing with the Founders' statements you quoted.
To clarify: I agree that any form of self-government is wholly inadequate to any culture whose individuals fail to govern themselves as individuals. I further submit that such self-government on an individual scale is the foundation of all morals. Where I disagree is that Christianity per se, or indeed any religion at all, is a requirement of such "individual self-government", and therefore of moral behavior.
The number of non-Christian (including agnostic or atheist) commenters on this very blog that your personal experience of shows them to be sensible, honorable people, suggests otherwise.
In fairness, Judeo-Christian culture does have many of its best rules and customs inherent in the religions from which the culture grew. But that's not the same as suggesting that a Muslim, a Hindu, a Wiccan or an atheist can't achieve the same result by a wholly different path.
"Wiccan"
Being facetious here, but, really? I don't think Dungeons and Dragons, Mountain Dew, and Cheetos are cornerstone components of a civilization.
Talk to Zendo Deb about that, Adam. She's Wiccan, I believe.
Adam:
Your (apparent) prejudice and ignorance of your fellow citizens (not to mention frequenters of this blog) does not flatter you.
Besides, I know two Wiccan paratroopers, a Wiccan narcotics detective and an Odinist Marine who'd disagree with your assessment ;-)
"Your (apparent) prejudice and ignorance of your fellow citizens (not to mention frequenters of this blog) does not flatter you."
Hey, hey, hey, I *really* was not aiming to offend, just to poke fun at a common stereotype. I don't generalize about individuals based on common groups, but I'll happily jibe at the groups themselves.
The only person who should be offended by that (aside from taking offense at ignorance in and of itself) is someone who identifies himself entirely through a group.
That withstanding, I retract my statement. I keep forgetting that religion is the one thing about which people have no leeway in humor.
"I don't think Dungeons and Dragons, Mountain Dew, and Cheetos are cornerstone components of a civilization."
Well, as long as that civilization can still live in their mom's basement, I think it'd be fine.
Hm.. I feel I need to clarify.
On one hand, I feel the need to apologize.
On the other, I'm a little annoyed. If I'd chosen Catholicism and made some joke about stereotypes there, I doubt I would have gotten one comment.
Britt, your argument is the one I have with the Threepers - three percent isn't enough. We can't restore a Constitution that damned near NO ONE UNDERSTANDS. And a hundred years of "progressivism" has seen to THAT.
_____________
Yeah, I agree. See my last paragraph, with its explicit reference to the hundred year trend of the State.
I don't know. There are so many problems to overcome, and sometimes I feel like we're fighting a two front war. If every advocate of limited government did nothing but education, then the statists would build a permanent government and all that would come to naught. Yet if we throw all our efforts into supporting the right politicians now, then in 20 years a new generation of socialists emerges from Markadelphia's classroom.
I think a counter march through the institutions is the best way to go, but the issue there is that people of a limited government bent do not often go into that line of work. I've noticed that competence and self-reliance are the chief values of people like us, and that does not mesh well with a government bureaucracy. The kabuki dance of "fighting the power" while collecting a government check is the almost exclusive province of the Left, and those on the right who do wish to enter the academy are easily shut out or shouted down.
The fact is, I think we've lost. They control the horizontal and the vertical. Your children are indoctrinated with your money, your elderly are dependent stolen wealth, the media are completely hostile to the idea of liberty, the government controls both your lightbulbs and the law.
I don't, honestly, see a way out. I do see, maybe, when this whole rotten edifice collapses, a possible rebirth of freedom.
The Threepers speak of resistance, but again they speak of Concord Green. It will not happen like that, if it does happen. The sad fact is, that if liberty is going to be restored, the model will be the Bolsheviks and not the Patriots. You really will have to set up a false flag and overthrow the government by force, and then impose by diktat a new order in favor of liberty. Which is of course very suspect, being that coercion and violence, no matter how noble your aims are, is morally wrong.
I shrink from this course. I forget who, but some philosopher I read once argued that you could do anything to yourself except sell yourself into slavery. I disagree. If a majority of my countrymen wish to shackle themselves that is their business. They simply do not have the right to take me with them. Which they are doing. They do violence to me, so I have the right to do violence in return, but I do not want to.
If we speak of extreme measures, then I think the most practical of the extreme courses (if that's not an oxymoron) is secession. An armed rebellion would be fantastically bloody, unlikely to succeed, and even "success" would not be a good thing. The well would be well and truly poisoned. Emigration is out, as there is nowhere to run to.
That leaves the creation of a new polity in which to establish a classically liberal government. Which is fantastically difficult, fraught with all kinds of dangers and of course likely to lead to an armed conflict, if not at the moment of secession, then down the road as a totally decrepit and ruined USA seeks to destroy the prosperous new state, as all socialist governments must.
I honestly don't see a way out. I think the quote you've posted many times before, about the last generation to be minimally truly free, is sad but true. I don't think my children will be free. I see nothing but a further decline. I hope I am wrong.
"Your (apparent) prejudice and ignorance of your fellow citizens (not to mention frequenters of this blog) does not flatter you."
*facepalm*
Really? REALLY?
I'm speechless.
I recommend a spending a few minutes in front of the mirror while saying that. Projection and all that.
But to the question of "Where is your personal breaking point?", that is a very, very good question.
The wife and I have a place that we are on a slow path to making our very own personal "Galt's Gulch", and we spoke about "our path" only last night, but the question has always been: "When do we leave?"
If al Qaeda sneaks in their Islamic nuke and incinerates Phoenix, the answer will be simple: If we're still alive--we leave now prepared to fight our way out. But what if they incinerate Las Vegas or Los Angeles? What if Rodney King-style riots erupt across the country? What if the course Captain Utopia has set is just the start of a 2-decade long slide into full-on Marxism?
I've put a fair amount of thought on the question--which I think makes me miles ahead of the rest of the sheep--but for the life of me, and as a regular reader of both TSM and The Market Ticker, I still don't know the answer.
I think one of the biggest problems with today's population is that people have lost the distinction between legality and morality.
At the train station in the morning there is a train that stops on the opposite track right around the time I reach the station. That is: empty track, empty track, platform, track with stopped train on it (unloading). I have no issue crossing those two empty tracks to get to the platform, even though the gates are down. Illegal? unambiguously.l Immoral? How? In what possible way am I possibly harming anyone? (And don't give me the "setting a bad example" bullshit. I stop, look both ways, and then cross. That's a GOOD example.)
And yet... you'd be surprised at how many people are *horrified* to hear that I cross when the gates are down. "That's dangerous!" sometimes, but more often "That's illegal!"
The bigger example I can think of was a news item a number of years ago. Remember when the practice of "upskirting" was all over the news for a while? It was the early days of the Internet, and scumbags would go around with video cameras hidden in shopping bags, and film up some unaware girl's skirt, and then post it on the Internet?
So some news show had one of these guys on, and was interviewing him, and the interviewer finally asks the obvious question:
"Don't you think this is immoral?"
The scumbag doesn't bat an eyelash. "It's not illegal."
"Well, yes, but is it *immoral*?"
"It's not illegal."
My original thought was that he was simply dodging the question, but the more time passes, I'm not so sure. I think there are a whole lot of people out there who have no concept of a difference between "moral" and "legal", which pretty directly leads to an idea that we need laws to regulate ALL of our behavior so that people don't behave wrongly.
Which in a way explains why I believe that religion is VERY important to a society's health -- and I'm an atheist! (Mind you it depends on the religion. Islam doesn't seem to have the best track record in turning out strong societies....)
Atheists can be moral people, but it takes a *thoughtful* atheist who actually ponders morality in a significant way. Many people really do need a guiding hand such a religion provides.
I've been an atheist for over 20 years, but I've never endorsed it to others.
(comments on this post: http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2009/12/interesting-question.html )
Atheists can be moral people, but it takes a *thoughtful* atheist who actually ponders morality in a significant way. Many people really do need a guiding hand such a religion provides.
Quite true, and pretty much the point I was trying to make. While Christianity, among other religions, may improve your chances of having a people moral enough to govern themselves, nonetheless thoughtless Christians are just as capable of deliberately constructing a handbasket to go to hell in as anyone else.
This suggests to me that Karl Marx's observation that "religion is the opiate of the masses" may perhaps be useful for those content (or actively desiring) to be sheep, but for those who want their lives to make a difference to those around them, thoughtfulness is the key and religion is at best tangential.
"...but for those who want their lives to make a difference to those around them, thoughtfulness is the key and religion is at best tangential."
True, but when we're talking about changing the country, good luck getting the masses to be thoughtful about morality. Religion is the "mass production" of morality.
Britt, your argument is the one I have with the Threepers - three percent isn't enough. We can't restore a Constitution that damned near NO ONE UNDERSTANDS. And a hundred years of "progressivism" has seen to THAT.
Kevin: It's not that we think we can win, it's that there are some circumstances under which we can no longer not fight. See also: Churchill.
Deftly done, perhaqr.
Sorry...perlhaqr. (I caim that there is a severe "l" shortage today.) ;)
Of course, there is always a the possibility of failure. See Demosthenes, the Churchill of his day.
Or rather, Churchill was the Demosthenes of his day, but with the Allied forces winning instead.
When will my trigger be pulled?
All of the esoteric bullshit aside, it will be when they come down the street.
Religion is the "mass production" of morality.
I'd like to agree with you, but I can't. It's a nice hypothesis, but the Crusades, the Catholic/Protestant wars in Ireland, the ongoing Wahhabi terrorism, and other things suggest that mindless acceptance of a given line of argument is every bit as dangerous as mindless rejection of one.
It's the mass production of something, certainly. But since it appears to be as easy for religion to "mass produce" a culture full of people who not only condone, but celebrate beheadings, stonings,burning at the stake and the mass murder of innocents as to produce a culture that is supportive of its members, even those who do not conform to social norms... I'd call religion the social equivalent of gasoline: Very useful for increasing the power and the work that can be gotten from a given system. But potentially lethal to both the user and everyone around him if not handled with proper care and respect, and full awareness of its limitations.
No, GOF, he's right. You're just making Christian "Golden Rule" morality the definition of all morality, and that's not the case. "Morality" is nothing more than a code of conduct for members of a particular society. It just so happens that (in general) the Protestant Christian religion(s) have mass-produced a morality that works better than any other I'm aware of at maximizing human freedom and potential. Other moralities, the one dictated by Islam being a good example, doesn't work at well at that. That doesn't mean it can't build a functioning society. As Sarah is fond of pointing out, all non-religious societies have (so far) produced moralities that are tremendously destructive of human freedom and potential.
And I say this as an atheist myself.
GrumpyOldFart -- I didn't say *good* morality!
People who spend a lot of time thinking about morality and coming up with solid personal codes based on sound reasoning and perspective are kind of like gourmet cooks.
I mean, everybody's got to eat, but there are a lot more people chowing down on McDonald's than making fine cuisine in their kitchens.
Actually, this comment is completely unnecessary, as Kevin nailed it. Again. ;-)
You're just making Christian "Golden Rule" morality the definition of all morality, and that's not the case. "Morality" is nothing more than a code of conduct for members of a particular society. It just so happens that (in general) the Protestant Christian religion(s) have mass-produced a morality that works better than any other I'm aware of at maximizing human freedom and potential.
Exactly. In general. As I said:
While Christianity, among other religions, may improve your chances of having a people moral enough to govern themselves, nonetheless thoughtless Christians are just as capable of deliberately constructing a handbasket to go to hell in as anyone else.
I guess the short version of this is that while Christianity may be helpful, indeed more helpful than anything else that has ever been found, it is nonetheless not an answer in and of itself. And given the hazard of applying religious standards mindlessly, I think it's fair to thoroughly distrust religion in a culture's leaders unless you are absolutely certain that it's coupled with enough rational thinking to avoid the "Crusader mentality".
That's why I took issue with the use of the word "critical", as opposed to merely "valuable". It implies that even thoughtless people raised in the Christian tradition will not be hazardous as leaders, and that no matter how thoughtful or rational someone is, he/she is dangerous as a leader if they are not Christian. I can't accept that premise.
Christianity is useful, sure. Valuable, sure. But I submit the Congress of the United States as Exhibit A that Christianity can't be counted on to produce integrity, and it most certainly is not an acceptable substitute for it.
There should never be random violence. Any objections to Leviathan's overbearing command & control apparatus must be well aimed at the agents charged with visiting hell on the citizens.
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