Sarai Eilat America has become a country with a million laws, a billion regulations and a trillion standards all of which define how we live. We have become puppets dangling on strings held in federal buildings, dancing to the tune of the latest study, the next survey, the best proposal from some think tank or agency or assorted collection of busybodies with six figure salaries dedicated to telling everyone what to do all the time. But this isnt just about the loss of freedom. Its about the loss of agency. Countless Americans have become puppets, transformed into problems for some collection of mangy bureaucrats to solve. And some of them have embraced that role. We can see the disaster that has spawned in the black community, but it goes well beyond that. Its present among every demographic, every race, every gender and creed. It defines what life under socialism is really like. That sense of waiting in an endless line to be told what to do. And knowing that its all futile, but going through the process anyway. It is what crafts the numbing sense of failure that rapidly explodes into violence when an entitlement is withdrawn. It leads to neighborhoods of dirty streets, easy stabbings and a general sense of neglect. Because everyone is waiting for nothing at all. Everyone is waiting for the trains to finish running through Washington D.C. It didnt have to be this way, but it is. Because that is the real danger of government. Corporate monopolies come and go. A tyrant can choke on a lettuce leaf. A fanatical religion can sputter out. But a system keeps right on chugging along. Because systems are virtually unkillable, so long as theres money and power for everyone. A political elite that becomes entrenched can take down the entire system with it, because the system itself has become infected by their own ambitions and interests. The system becomes a tool of those ambitions and interests, so that anyone who takes power, becomes corrupted by it. And that is the greatest danger that we face today. The political elite has rewritten the rules so that all the trains, all the money and power runs through their system, and in their way. It has devalued local rights, in favor of national powers. It has devalued individual rights, in favor of government rights. At every turn it has empowered government, while disempowering the people. And it has gone mostly unchecked, because even the few ideological battles that have been fought, have rarely been over whether there should be government powers over individual rights, but rather over who should be in control of deciding what rights there still are. Most of what we have in the way of civil rights has meant the transfer of power from one branch of government to another. And typically that transfer has been one way. Some have benefited from that transfer in the short term, but in the long term, it has meant more power for fewer people. And the transfer has continued. Today unelected judges have more power to decide what rights people will have, than the people themselves. It has become an article of faith among the political elite, that the general public cannot be trusted with self-government. Instead that they must be taken care of, looked after like troublesome children to see that they dont fall and cut themselves every time they step outdoors. Of course it behooves those who want unlimited power to treat the general public that way, to baby them and gaslight them, to dangle shiny objects and angry words, and then chuckle because they know that no matter how an election turns out, the trains will still keep going to the same place. And the trains are more than just power. They are filled with money. Virtually unlimited amounts of money. Not only a cut from commercial transactions, individual incomes and other forms of taxation, but the ability to borrow money in the name of the country. Money isnt just money, its power. Often power at its most naked. The ability to spend unlimited amounts of money translates easily into unlimited power. It becomes childishly easy to use that money to build power structures, NGOs, think tanks, unions, grass roots organizations, and all the rest, that turn democracy into a sham. To boil it down into one hand washing the other, passing money back and forth, between government and its support structures. And then anyone outside the system stops mattering at all. Becomes an annoying buzz that you beat down with union thugs, smear in the press, persecute and hound, fine and intimidate, until they go away. Because it isnt their country anymore, its yours. And theyre the ones driving, while youre sitting in the back. Democratic elections do not create a better brand of leader necessarily, they are meant only to prevent them from becoming entrenched. That is why Washington D.C. has become a vile parody of the man it is named after, a man who represented a brand of leadership that was willing to abandon power, in order to prevent exactly that kind of entrenchment. To free America of kings and tyrants, of a small circle of ministers and appointees hoarding power endlessly for their own ends. But while America has no king, it has princes. The latest prince who flies around the world and around the country, to prance self-righteously in front of audiences is the worst, but not the last or the least of them. The system is broken, because it has become a tool for corruption, and a tool of corruption. It is difficult and almost pointless to try and function within the system without becoming part of that corruption. Because once the system exists to spend money, anyone who tries to get into the system in order to not spend money, is not just fighting for reform, but to turn the whole thing completely around and put everyone out of a job. Imagine someone joining the army in order not to fight wars, or joining a company in order to lose money-- thats the task lying before someone trying to get elected to congress in order to not spend money. That is how bad things have gotten. But they didnt get this bad overnight. It got there because we were overconfident, we thought that American greatness meant that we deserved a great government. It got there because monopolies frightened people badly enough that expanding government seemed like a necessary defense. It got there because every time we had a crisis, every time we went through a war, and every time we felt afraid, we turned to government. From wars through depressions through turbulent change, we turned to government. And government got big and powerful enough to turn on us. Instead of men riding government... governments began to ride men instead. The ideology of the left has turned all that to its own purposes, merging political corruption into ideology, spending in order to bankrupt and regulating in order to control-- but it began to work with the existing corruption and the existing mechanisms of power. Some of the old time Democratic party machinery is baffled by the Obama Administration because they understand government as a vehicle for political corruption, while the Obama Administration is endangered their profits, in order to pursue ideological ends. These are the people who actually think that Hillary Clinton represented a non-ideological alternative. But while Obama represents a political extreme, its only an extension of what already existed. And that brings us to a Republican victory. The end of the road isnt here yet. Were a long way from it. Public dissatisfaction and worries over the economy have made it possible to seriously raise questions and elect candidates that would have been inconceivable several years back. Its an important first step, but not the last step by any stretch of the imagination. When the economy recovers, people will quickly forget. Politicians will quickly rediscover how much fun pork can be. Some will grumble, but go along. Because the sun is shining and that means everything must be all-right. Since Wilson, the Republicans have tried to play the voice of reason, the moderates who accept and try to repackage the legislative radicalism of the Democrats, into a more reasonable package. They water it down, often they expand on it, but they dont really change it. If the Republicans actually repeal ObamaCare, then it will be an important moment when the tide turned. But I suspect they will not, because its easier to rise to power on criticism of a Democratic program, than to dare to dispose of the program itself. Its easier to criticize, than to court controversy by bringing change. But it needs to change. Because the system is broken. Because we have routed all our trains through one place, and the trains go there, but they often dont come back. Our challenge is to be more than a vehicle for one partys political return to power. To be more than tools, but to be changers. This is about more than tax cuts or even ObamaCare. It is about turning back the clock on government and restoring power to the people again. If we can do that, then we can start fixing a system that has been hijacked by an entrenched political elite for its own benefit. If we cant, then we will only be overseeing another phase of its collapse. By all means, go out and vote, but remember that voting is only the first step. The real work is just beginning.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 14:10:53 +0000
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