DANIEL GREENFIELD: IT’S ANOTHER “US” CRISIS
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“The great fundamental issue now before the Republican party and before our people can be stated briefly. It is: Are the American people fit to govern themselves, to rule themselves, to control themselves?” Theodore Roosevelt
“We can’t just leave it up to the parents,” Michelle Obama
We live in a golden age. A wondrous era where the government compels us to buy health insurance, whether we need it or not. And whether we want to or not. Where the First Lady is no longer in charge of the White House’s meals, but of our meals. Where wise and generous czars in the nation’s capital ponder day and night how to stop the flow of free information that’s rotting our minds and filling our heads with critical thoughts about the government.
Previous generations had to do it the hard way. They had to buy a home, find a job, marry and have children– without anyone from the government coming to their doorstep to tell them how to do it all. Few of our nation’s youth born in this golden time can believe what savages we once were. How can they comprehend an America in which anyone could walk into a store and leave with a package of lawn darts a few minutes later? An America where people had to decide for themselves what to order in a restaurant that could sell any type of food at all regardless of its salt and calorie content. A maddening chaotic society in which ordinary citizens could place items on the ballot and they would become state laws. And all the states had different laws. Think of it.
So many choices. How could they ever possibly have hoped to choose correctly without the wisdom and guidance of a vast monolithic bureaucracy of officials to supervise and oversee their every move?
Of course we can’t just leave it up to the parents. Most parents are ordinary Americans. And we don’t believe that ordinary Americans can govern themselves, do we? Of course not. But we don’t even believe that they can raise their own family anymore? No, they need more qualified people to raise their families for them. People like Michelle Obama who married a rising crooked State Senator, got promoted on the strength of it, sat around on her ass and then moved on to the White House, where she has turned her own eating disorder into a national priority.
This is the future of freedom under this type of authority. The witless, the inept, the products of political patronage, the members of public sector unions bleeding the public dry, officials with worthless degrees that have no application outside the corridors of power, drones with no original thinking, maniacs running high on cocaine and ego, consultants who are happy to consult on areas they have no experience practicing in, doctors without patients, politicians without voters, administrators whose only goal is to keep expanding every department under their aegis, the ax-grinders, ass-kissers and every seat-filler who has ever managed to grab a warm spot at some department or another, in congress or in your local Division of Mismanaged Affairs, will be in charge of your life.
Why? Because you’re clearly not fit to govern yourself. If the government ever recognized that the average person was fit to govern himself or herself, there would be no need for them. For the seat-fillers, the consultants, the ax-grinders and specialists in a thousand things, including but not limited to, playing computer solitaire while earning a six figure salary for occasionally writing a memo on how to better make everyone’s lives even more miserable. There would be layoffs the likes of which have never been seen. A migration of parasites from the head of the dog so vast that it would look like all of America had been dipped into a great flea bath.
Tyranny is justified either temporarily by emergency or permanently by public unfitness. Temporary tyrannies are easier to lift when the emergency passes. But a permanent tyranny based on the firm assertion that the public cannot take care of itself– is impossible to pull down. There is no moving or budging such a monstrous entity of contempt. It feeds off that contempt, constantly discovering new problems that only highly qualified people like Michelle Obama can solve.
While the country is at war, they are concerned with far graver threats to public safety. Like fat kids and polar bears and the planet exploding because of flatulent cows, and the second amendment to the Constitution, and the first amendment too, toys that are too dangerous and toys that are too appealing, the news content of local affiliate channels and the sodium content of subs and sandwiches. Wars are passing things. But a permanent emergency of public contempt is forever. Someone has to take away all the toys and label everything properly, and make sure that doing even the simplest thing should require twenty forms, a notarized note from your local county office of mismanagement, and a prayer to the gods of D.C. who dwell on high and look down upon the people and bless them with endless national debt.
That is how tyranny takes hold. Not always with tanks in the street and armored helicopters flying overhead. You only need those when you expect resistance.
Tyranny is the consensus by those who govern, that the people whom they rule over cannot be trusted to govern themselves. That they can’t be trusted to do the little things or the big things. That they are senseless brutes who should do what they’re told, show up at the appropriate speeches and parades to cheer the beloved leaders, and then go home to their meal of government cheese and bread ration, and remember whom they owe it all too. The big men (and women) on top.
Liberals promise us that if we let the government handle the little things, that our rights to the big things, like Freedom of Speech or Freedom of Religion won’t be abrogated (except for maybe that pesky one about the Right to Bear Arms which doesn’t apply anymore now that we don’t have a monarchy anymore). Just leave all the Nanny State stuff to them, and we’ll be well taken care of, and we’ll still be just as free to say what we want and vote for whom we want.
But let’s think about this clearly. If we have an ideological set that believes we can’t even be trusted with lawn darts or what to feed our children– do they really believe that we can be trusted to vote in national elections or engage in political speech?
It isn’t that they trust us more with free speech, than they do with eating nutritious meals. They just know that getting rid of free speech will take more work, than the ObamaCare Mandate. So they seduce us instead. Promise the ‘idiots’ that they can have everything they want without paying for it, then sock them with the interest rates and finance charges. But do it slowly, so they don’t see how much of their freedom they really lost until it’s too late. Then push them over the cliff and have someone waiting at the bottom with a shovel and a pile of government Grade E dung.
An ideological set that doesn’t believe the general public can be trusted to tie its shoes right, certainly doesn’t respect its political choices. Something we see on display every time that set loses an election. The only justification for perpetuating the current system is that it’s too difficult to just take over and dismantle it in one night, the way the radical left would like to. Instead they replace it, bit by bit, sideline elected officials into the pork delivery process, assign more and more power to unelected officials. All in the name of saving us from our own incompetent selves. Through crises that are caused by us.
Childhood obesity, global warming, extremist rhetoric and every crisis that the left digs out of its back pocket always has one thing in common. We are the source of the problem. Which means that the solution has to be applied to us, whether we want it to be applied to us or not. Those are the “Us” crises. And they are the left’s favorite kind.
In her speech, Michelle Obama declared that childhood obesity was a national security problem. (Janet Napolitano has already declared that Global Warming is a national security threat.) To be clear about this, we have an administration that insists that America could survive another 9/11. That doesn’t care about the impact of repealing DADT on ground troops in combat. Which actually tried to move the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed into a civilian court. But considers kids who eat too many Twinkies to be a national security problem.
We have an administration which has chosen to grope little kids, rather than profile Muslims. But heaven forbid if little Billy has an extra snack before bed. Then the alarms will go off in the Department of Homeland Security, because little Billy might not lose weight on his own. And then he becomes a problem for the mandatory government health care system. With every American now a factor in a national health care monolith, it’s important to force Billy to lose weight in order to cut costs. Just as it will be important to cut off his treatment and encourage him to choose euthanasia when as an adult his health care costs rise too high.
As the Great Nanny State which beams down upon us all grows, like every private enterprise, it will treat people like numbers. Government does not exist outside the laws of economics, it only ignores long enough to get much deeper into debt. And when it does the math, there will be no appeal. The reasoning is obvious. The government has too many people to take care of. And the bigger the system, the more individuals become expendable within it.
The Total Integration of the government and the people means not only the end of freedom, but the end of the individual. And at its root is that fateful question, are the American people fit to govern themselves. If the American people fail to elect leaders who do believe that, then they will indeed cease to be able to govern themselves.
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