Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the true snake in the garden of liberty, is, when there is good governance, people become complacent and stop bothering to vote, those that do, are more inclined to change, change from good governance, is by definition, bad governance, therefore, good governance sows the seeds of bad governance. If you are fortunate enough to live under good governance, this is the blog for you, but if you live under bad governance, this blog will give you ideas…
When people, (lets call them the first ethos), live in a state of general liberty, we become complacent. It is just the way it is. We all are this way, the better we have it, the more comfortable we become. In our comfort we may understand what is in our best interest but we may not act on it. If things are going fine, why fool with them? It is easy to fall into this form of thinking. Especially when we have to specialize so much in our daily work, that we don’t have time to do the proper research it would take, to make a reasoned decision, so we don’t. Leaving those that want change from liberty to statist governance more voting power..
Other folks,( lets call them the second ethos), who are unsatisfied with general liberty, they see their fellow man as a problem, incompetent, stupid, ignorant or what have you, they see it as their atheistically god given duty, to control us, if only to protect us from ourselves. The only really effective means to this end is total government. They believe themselves above the total state they will impose on society. A person committed to this ideology will often die for their cause. By definition this type of person will never miss an opportunity to vote. They understand, all they need to win is once, where you don‘t.
If you think about it, in this way for a moment, it will come to you that this set of incentives and feedbacks, will lead to some sort of frequency. A swinging from bad to good and back again. Except that, once bad governance is ushered in, people of the second ethos will undermine the democratic process, with voter fraud, vote rigging, ballot stuffing, voter intimidation, in short a Chicago style election. So the swing from good to bad will be quick, but, the swing back will be retarded through undermining the democratic process, by those with the second ethos. We, of the first ethos, by definition, don’t seek to control others and so don‘t vote rig. So, once power swings decisively to the second ethos, the pendulum will stop there for some time.
Sometimes the pendulum slowly swings back, but more often than not, it takes violence to get it back to the side of liberty. Statists, by definition, don’t cede power willingly. One Historical example of this process is, Nazi Germany, Hitler was elected in a generally free election. Once he gained power, he consolidated it, and ended the Republic. It took the Second World War to unseat him. Sixty million people died to restore liberty to Germany and Japan. Because of a bad vote.
The future will fall victim, to this pernicious cycle, as we do today. People are people, and we can expect to see, in the future, what we have seen in the past. That is the nature of humanity. We learn very slowly, even when history books, stand open in front of us, with dire warnings. We become complacent, and cede to radicals, our government. Then we complain our liberty is rapidly disappearing. Even as the statist policies cause us to loose our jobs and we become dependent on them.
According to Tzu Ssu, Confucius said, “All men say ‘I know,‘ but they are driven into nets, caught in traps, fall into pitfalls, and not one knows how to avoid this.” We are the people he talked about. We are the ones caught and driven into nets, because we don’t open our eyes. We follow what people who claim to be unbiased say without a glint of disbelief. We look at the cave wall and are mesmerized by the shadows there. Apparently it is in our nature to be this way. To our children’s grave peril.
But then again, if we are so stupid we allow ourselves to be tricked out of our liberty, did we ever really deserve it in the first place? Which would make the statists right, we are too stupid to do for ourselves, we need Big Brother, to do for incompetent us.
Cradle to grave baby, cradle to grave… never to leave the bassinette.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
