Maggie's Farm

One Longs For 1776, The Other For 1936. It is true.

When our Dr. Bliss writes on the topic, she tends to put it in terms of peoples' dependency and security wishes which are placed on government, while imagining government as an altruistic, caring, "ideal" parent (as if an ideal parent were a constantly gratifying one without realistic limits, who can make everything right), or Santa or a god.

I know what she means, but I do not think of these things in those terms. I think of it in terms of power. Governments tend to accumulate power. People who work in government tend to enjoy power and, for reasons I cannot comprehend, tend to think that they are smarter and wiser than us regular citizens. Unlike wealth, however, power is indeed a zero-sum game. Any power our federal government accumulates comes from your own personal supply of it, or your town's, or your state's.

Wise adults are not prodigal with their funds, nor should they be with their far more precious freedoms: our funds are got by labor, but our freedoms from external powers are given by God but got by blood. America is uniquely formed on the ideal of limited government and maximum individual freedom. What is idealized, so to speak, is the genius of the individual - not the ancient notion of the divinity of rulers and government and their powers.

America is not for sissies, and was never meant to be. She was designed for the brave, the bold, the resourceful, and the independent. Designed for the New Man of the Enlightenment, rather than for the weary and government-oppressed and controlled of the rest of the world. People who wanted a chance, not to be ruled and "governed" and "helped" by their betters.

That's why people came here from all over: to take their chances for their dreams in a New World of freedom from the Powers. But how much of their - our - depressing history came with them?

What if the founding idea was wrong? What if most humans are more serf-like, dependent, and willing to be ruled than our founders thought? Our founders, after all, were not exactly ordinary people (whatever "ordinary people" means - I've never met one).

How many Lefties would be standing at the 1775 Concord bridge today with a squirrel gun to resist a "tyranny" which was peanuts in comparison to an admittedly elected American government of today? This is why I write here on occasion about the danger of selling our birthright of freedom for a lousy bowl of lentils (not to disparage the lowly lentil - lentils with chopped carrots, shallots, etc makes a fine bed for a medium-rare breast of Ruffed Grouse with a generous drizzle of gibier sauce over it all).

This CS Lewis quote is always worth repeating:

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.