"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
Things Were Reportedly Better than They’d Ever Been: And Then Came the Guillotine
“It is easy to underestimate the peasantry, the little people. They appear well under control. All seems calm, unless one looks carefully. The means of control work smoothly: the legions, the church, the media, the secret police, the enforcers of political correctness. The serfs are cowed. Why worry about a distant peonage? Do we not have our castles? Let us dance and drink champagne. And comes the guillotine.”
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Of course I'm prejudiced from a lifetime of feeling coerced by conventional wisdom into teaching "science" in lieu of science. And then anarchy slipped up and bit me in the arse.
But I like Fred Reed generally. This article was quite perceptive, but not among his best. He'd have done better letting the whiners write this piece.
This is one of his best. As I see it. In it, he forces "libertarians" to become libertarians. Those who have the moxie to read past the first couple paragraphs.
Sam
Sam, I think the point Reed was trying to make was that this system we have here just seems to roll on forever. Until they don't. (C.f., French Revolution, 1779, The USSR, 1989)
Some economist once said: "If a thing can't go on forever, then it won't." Yet this system we have seems to defy political gravity in that regard. Cartoon character Wile E. Coyote runs off the cliff while chasing the Roadrunner, but despite that fact, he just keeps going, and going, until he looks down. But this system never looks down, and so it defies gravity and some how just keeps on going.
Go figure? I think that's what Reed was getting at, but who knows?
No question about Fred's insight regarding the ghostliness of why the masses, seeing the egregious nature of monopoly central political "authority", continue to lust for and support it. I'm not totally certain we, libertarians, "libertarians", and/or anarchists, will be all that productive in any attempt to "...evangelize our cause..." in that regard. Or to see ourselves as martyrs in marching at the head of some "movement". The lust appears to go on, and on, and on.
Eerie.
And, in a strange attempt to distance ourselves from "religion", far too many of us will fall for conventional wisdom sold as "science". I sensed that as a snot-nosed science teacher in my 20's -- long before I ever met Karl Hess or Harry Browne. That's my purpose for stating that Fred might be more effective in sticking with his poking fun at faulty "science" sold as the real. It tends to seek out soft underbelly and create some epithelium on the hides of "libertarians".
That was my purpose for emphasizing the second link to one of Fred's other recent works -- not posted at STR, now or ever (likely). My mantra has been for some time that I must be free. Here. Today. Where I'm "at". I can't wait for the masses to be evangelized into liberty and freedom in order for me to become free. My time's too limited -- even though I fully plan to live well past 100.
I can run, but I can't hide. Reality is much too intense.
Sam