Dear Friends,
It seems to me, when you mow a lawn, you must start at some point and make overlapping passes, since it is not possible to do it all instantly. Mowing a lawn has to be done in stages. No matter how much the person on the mower wants the chore to be done it takes multiple passes to do the job. There are many things in life that are like this. One of them is going from a state of liberty to a state of tyranny.
No matter how much the hopeful tyrant wants to start oppressing people immediately, he or she must take it in swipes. They cannot be too big, else people will wake up, and they cannot be too small, else the would be tyrant might run out of time. There is an art to moving a people from liberty to tyranny, just like mowing a lawn.
Since neither can be done immediately both activities need a starting point. In both, the best spot to start is the most convenient corner, in the lawn or society. Find some dark corner and pass laws that deny some disliked element their rights. Step on them to the delight of onlookers. Then move on to the next group of politically disfavored people. Move in this way up the ladder of society until all elements have fallen into line.
Like the weekend landscaper uses a mower, the tyrant wanna be, uses the power of government. It is the mower that does the real work, the guy or gal just guides it around the lawn, as it is the mechanism of government that does the real work of oppressing, the tyro tyrant just guides the Leviathan around. This has an added benefit, when taking too big a bite and people start to open their eyes, one can simply point to the bureaucracy and blame it, until we loose interest and return to our distractions again.
The adolescent tyrant even tries to appear as though they want liberty just as a home owner fertilizes their lawn. As power is amassed the tyrantoid bestows extra “rights” on his people, like abortion, gay marriage, assisted suicide and so forth, claiming to be the angelic benefactor who understands real “rights” versus old fashioned Rights, like freedom of, speech, self defense, religion, property and so forth. Even people who have no stake in the society or government are given the very Rights taken from the masses. Groups are turned against groups as each vie for political favor to get the “rights” bestowed by the government, who is… the person who lusts to be tyrant.
It is always wise to create distractions when a tyrantesque is caught. As scandal is raging, forward some absurd law, regulation or initiative, one that will destroy the economy and put thousands out of work. Label it green or for the children and stand under moral grounds. The conversation will be turned from the scandal, to the imminent destruction of the economy, and the tyrantette is off Scot free. Let’s see, some absurd initiatives that could work might be… carbon credits for climate change, or maybe amnesty for illegal immigrants would be another.
No one has ever gone to bed in liberty and awoken in tyranny. The process is always and everywhere done gradually… Unless by revolution. Tyranny is something that has to be done in stages like mowing a lawn. An out of the way corner is chosen to start and the landscaper makes overlapping swathes until the entire lot is done, and a neotyrant does the same thing, but with law and government. Yea, an unmowed lawn may look like chaos, but there is real diversity and productivity in a pasture, while there is total conformity enforced by a periodic mowing on a lawn. So, where do we want to live, as uniform blades of grass in a lawn or as wild flowers in a lea?
Sincerely,
John Pepin
