Creeping Totalitarianism Part 2: Present And Future

“Romney didn’t win, did he?” – The Dishonorable Harry Reid

     Yesterday’s emission was one of many that started from the David French article about Wisconsin’s persecution of conservative activists. The DextroSphere is generally up in arms over it; grass-roots conservative activists were the targets, so grass-roots conservatives everywhere sense the dimensions of the threat.

     The big guns are lining up as well. Hearken to Rush Limbaugh on the subject:

     I mean, it's incredible. They could literally set out to destroy you, and the only thing standing in the way of it is the honor system. If you have a corrupt prosecutor (which this story has), and if you have a corrupt judge, (which this story has), and if you have a police department that is also corrupt (this happened in Milwaukee, mostly), then you can pull this off.

     There's even a quote from a couple police officers who were forced to participate these midnight raids on innocent people who had not done a thing other than support Scott Walker. That's all they had done, and cop car after cop car, cop after cop, SWAT teams, you name it, show up with battering rams to break into these people's homes! They're kicked out of their homes at midnight, at one o'clock in the morning. They're not allowed to take anything; they're not told why.

     They're not allowed to explain to anybody that this has happened besides the neighborhood which can see it. Years after the fact, mothers are reporting their young kids that were at home when this happened are still traumatized. People are reporting today that they get scared and traumatized and panicked when they see a uniformed police officer just walking a beat. They hightail it away.

     It is the fear that I think a lot of innocent people experience when law enforcement is pursuing them. I know. I've been there. I know a number of things. Law enforcement's never doubted, other than the civil rights community. The media doesn't doubt them. Law enforcement can leak anything they want about anybody, and the media writes it, and it becomes fact. Even average, ordinary Americans say, "Why would the cops lie? Why?" I mean, they take it on faith.

     However, there has still been no notice taken of this atrocity by the Main Stream Media. Worse, the Democrats have rallied to defend such practices:

     One of Texas’s acute corruption problems is the fact that the Travis County district attorney’s office, which prosecutes corruption cases, is absurdly, comically corrupt—by which I do not mean the “Hey can you get my dopey kid into UT law?” level of corruption that is commonplace in Texas, but Boss Hogg levels of corruption. You wouldn’t know it from the typically witless and servile reporting of the Austin American-Statesman, but the drunk-driving conviction of Travis County district attorney Rosemary Lehmberg is the least of that office’s problems—much more significant is the fact that is she recorded on camera threatening legal retaliation against the police who booked her. She is as explicit as can be about this: “You’re going to be in jail,” she said.

     The same prosecutor is trying to put former governor Rick Perry in jail for having vetoed funding for her office. Why did he veto the funding? Because the corruption prosecutor is grossly corrupt and a convicted criminal to boot. She went to jail, for pity’s sake.

     The Texas state house understandably has passed a bill that will curtail the Travis County district attorney’s special role in prosecuting ethics and corruption cases against elected and appointed officials. Instead, those cases will be investigated by the Texas Rangers. (Old punishment: jail. New punishment: Ranger roundhouse kick! Okay, not really, but that would be kind of awesome.) Naturally, Texas Democrats have sought to block that reform. And a handful of Republicans have, to their discredit, joined them, which is inexplicable.

     Please read the entire article; it’s brief (which Kevin Williamson seldom is) and piercing (which he always is). But don’t stop with being outraged. Do something Democrats and other leftists seldom do: think about second-order effects.

---

     You cannot have social stability where there is privilege for the rulers and subordination for the ruled. That’s a Society of Status (Isabel Paterson, The God of The Machine), in which the “Emmanuel Goldstein dynamic” will operate until it collapses:

Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other.

The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives -- is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that throughout history there has been no progress of a material kind. Even today, in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better off than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer. From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.

[George Orwell, 1984]

     When the High’s brazenness about their special status leads to the outright dismissal of the laws they claim to have passed “for the general good,” while they simultaneously exercise the full weight of their powers to oppress and silence their critics, the conditions for their overthrow have been established. The sequel is likely to be extremely unpleasant:

     [America is] becoming a nation where an elite that is certain of its power and its moral rightness is waging a cultural war on a despised minority. Except it’s not actually a minority – it only seems that way because it is marginalized by the coastal elitist liberals who run the mainstream media.

     Today in America, we have a liberal president refuses to recognize the majority sent to Congress as a reaction to his progressive failures, and who uses extra-Constitutional means like executive orders to stifle the voice of his opponents. We have a liberal establishment on a secular jihad against people who dare place their conscience ahead of progressive dogma. And we have two different sets of laws, one for the little people and one for liberals like Lois Lerner, Al Sharpton and Hillary Clinton, who can blatantly commit federal crimes and walk away scot free and smirking.

     Today in America, a despised minority that is really no minority is the target of an establishment that considers this minority unworthy of respect, unworthy of rights, and unworthy of having a say in the direction of this country. It’s an establishment that has one law for itself, and another for its enemies. It’s an establishment that inflicts an ever-increasing series of petty humiliations on its opponents and considers this all hilarious.

     That’s a recipe for disaster. You cannot expect to change the status quo for yourself and then expect those you victimize not to play by the new rules you have created. You cannot expect to be able to discard the rule of law in favor of the rule of force and have those you target not respond in kind....

     What is the end game, liberals? Do you expect these people you despise to just take it? Do you think they’ll just shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, I guess we better comply?” Do you even know any real Americans? Do you think you’ll somehow be able to force them into obedience – for what is government power but force – after someone finally says “Enough?”

     Kurt Schlichter and I are asking the same question.

---

     The Party in 1984 strove to cement itself into permanent power by exerting that power to the utmost. The conditions to which the proles (“the Low”) were subjected were so crushing that they couldn’t even conceive of rebelling. The Outer Party (“the Middle”) was kept almost as poor materially as the proles, was regimented to the hilt, and was watched continuously for the merest hint of deviation. The few Outer Party members who dared to deviate were remade psychologically, in a fashion that would break them of the will to resist. The Inner Party (“the High”) was composed entirely of fanatic loyalists willing to do anything whatsoever to retain their hegemony. Thus the Party attempted to solve the age-old problem of political stability.

     1984 is fiction, of course. But at least one element of it has crept into American reality:

     [C]onservatives already do outbreed the left — which is why the left is so determined to maintain its iron hold on education, K-through-12-through-infinity. If they can’t (or won’t) breed more lefties, they know how to make them.

     That’s why homeschooling frightens them so much. That’s why they fight so hard against their own strongest constituents in the effort to prevent school choice and teacher accountability.

     Twelve years of endless harangues about “social justice” and the like will leave a mark on a child that’s near to indelible. It lacks the intensity and focus of O’Brien and Room 101, but it compensates with duration. Many parents find themselves helpless against it.

     Winston Smith wrote that “If there is hope, it lies in the proles.” A few moments later he added, “Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.” The proles of our place and time are utterly dependent on the State. The State is their father: protector and provider both. they will never even imagine that their protector / provider is really their owner, to be overthrown if they are to advance. There is no hope in them.

     We are the Outer Party. Not in material matters – even a “poor” American lives a life of riches undreamed by emperors of old – but in the view of the political elite. They don’t have the technology to watch us continuously, though with their drones, license plate readers, and the proliferation of “smart” appliances” they’re advancing on it. They haven’t yet disarmed us, though they’re working on that as well.

     The political class, regardless of Democrat or Republican affiliation, is our Inner Party. It uses its tools to subjugate where it can, and to propagandize where it cannot. With the recent, unabashed resort to political prosecutions to destroy its opponents, its consciousness of itself has become complete. Do not doubt that it will go on as it has begun, and to ever greater intensity.

---

     Somewhere in the future lies a point of no return, at which all prospect of deliberately ejecting the political class will have vanished. Somewhere nearer to the present lies a point at which the possibility of doing so non-violently will have been extinguished. The Spoonerites waited too long, and were forced to flee. Unless there’s a planetoid wandering through that I haven’t heard about, we won’t have that option.

     It’s not enough to complain to one another. It’s not enough to vote. It’s not enough to support this or that promising-looking candidate. We’ve tried all that.

     What, then, must we do?

Creeping Totalitarianism Report

     This disturbing article from David French demonstrates factual reporting as it was once practiced:

     “They came with a battering ram.”

Cindy Archer, one of the lead architects of Wisconsin’s Act 10 — also called the “Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill,” it limited public-employee benefits and altered collective-bargaining rules for public-employee unions — was jolted awake by yelling, loud pounding at the door, and her dogs’ frantic barking. The entire house — the windows and walls — was shaking.

She looked outside to see up to a dozen police officers, yelling to open the door. They were carrying a battering ram.

She wasn’t dressed, but she started to run toward the door, her body in full view of the police. Some yelled at her to grab some clothes, others yelled for her to open the door.

“I was so afraid,” she says. “I did not know what to do.” She grabbed some clothes, opened the door, and dressed right in front of the police. The dogs were still frantic.

“I begged and begged, ‘Please don’t shoot my dogs, please don’t shoot my dogs, just don’t shoot my dogs.’ I couldn’t get them to stop barking, and I couldn’t get them outside quick enough. I saw a gun and barking dogs. I was scared and knew this was a bad mix.”

She got the dogs safely out of the house, just as multiple armed agents rushed inside. Some even barged into the bathroom, where her partner was in the shower. The officer or agent in charge demanded that Cindy sit on the couch, but she wanted to get up and get a cup of coffee.

“I told him this was my house and I could do what I wanted.” Wrong thing to say. “This made the agent in charge furious. He towered over me with his finger in my face and yelled like a drill sergeant that I either do it his way or he would handcuff me.”

They wouldn’t let her speak to a lawyer. She looked outside and saw a person who appeared to be a reporter. Someone had tipped him off.

The neighbors started to come outside, curious at the commotion, and all the while the police searched her house, making a mess, and — according to Cindy — leaving her “dead mother’s belongings strewn across the basement floor in a most disrespectful way.”

Then they left, carrying with them only a cellphone and a laptop.

     Disturbing? Indeed, terrifying. But why?

     Wisconsin, the cradle of the progressive movement and home of the “Wisconsin idea” — the marriage of state governments and state universities to govern through technocratic reform — was giving birth to a new progressive idea, the use of law enforcement as a political instrument, as a weapon to attempt to undo election results, shame opponents, and ruin lives.

     That’s why.

     To the best of my knowledge, the Gestapo-like raids above, all of which targeted conservative activists in Wisconsin, have not been reported by any major media organ. There’s been no mention of them in the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Philadelphia Enquirer. Why?

     I’m afraid you already know why.

---

     The raids above were conceived by Milwaukee district attorney John Chisholm, a highly partisan Democrat whose wife is a shop steward in a Wisconsin teachers’ union. They were judicially approved by Judge Barbara Kluka, another Democrat. And of course, they were carried out by unionized Wisconsin police.

     The motivation could not be clearer. Democrats only believe in free speech for Democrats. They’re particularly disturbed by the ascendancy of conservative Republican governor Scott Walker. That Walker has rationalized the state’s budget, turning a habitual deficit into an annual surplus, and his actions to reduce the bargaining privileges of Wisconsin’s municipal and state unions, have enraged Wisconsin Democrats beyond all description.

     God help the conservative who dares to challenge the power of Wisconsin unions.

     Will district attorney Chisholm face any legal penalties for his utterly unfounded “John Doe” investigations and the terrorization of Wisconsin conservatives by use of police power? Will Judge Kluka face any penalties for facilitating those SWAT-style raids? What about the happily cooperative Wisconsin police? For that matter, now that National Review has publicized the affair, will the Main Stream Media take an interest in this blatant use of political power to suppress the free speech and organizing rights of Americans?

     Don’t bet the rent money on it.

---

     I’ve written before about the evils attendant to prosecutorial discretion and sovereign immunity.

     The combination of grand jury biddability and prosecutorial discretion has given rise to an assembly-line character in the criminal justice system. Prosecutors tend to be as ambitious for advancement as anyone else in "public service," and in their case the road to higher positions is paved with copious convictions, whether or not those convicted deserve their fates. Inasmuch as the luxuriance of criminal law has created a state of affairs in which every one of us, whether wittingly or not, is "guilty" of something, an aggressive prosecutor can "rack 'em up" by pursuing a simple strategy:

1. Look around for "suspicious" behavior -- i.e., behavior on the part of a private citizen that can be made to appear suspicious;
2. Ruthlessly probe every element of the "suspect's" life, using the effectively infinite resources of the State, until enough "suspicious" behavior has been amassed;
3. Assemble a huge list of charges to place before a grand jury;
4. Present the case in such a fashion as to promote the more plausible accusations and obscure the less plausible ones, thus securing a grab-bag indictment;
5. Offer the indicted person a plea bargain that will spare him centuries in prison and complete pauperization at the bargain price of a few years and/or a few thousand dollars.

     There is no brake to this strategy. Excessive law plus complete prosecutorial discretion plus a competent prosecutor's ability to lead a grand jury by the nose combine to put even a simon-pure citizen at the mercy of the criminal justice system. And what a system it is! Had it been consciously designed to put the maximum number of persons in prison regardless of guilt or innocence, it could not have been done better.

     Those evils are on vivid display in David French’s article. Yet it would be foolish to expect any correction to them. The State never willingly surrenders power. It only takes; it does not give. And when persons whose ideology tells them that:

• Their politics makes them morally superior to those who disagree; and:
• The ends justify the means; and:
• They will face no penalties for whatever they do;

     ...have the opportunity to wield State power for their political benefit, no Earthly force is sufficient to restrain them.

     I’ve ranted about this more than once:

     Prosecutorial discretion, when coupled to sovereign immunity -- doctrines absolutely anathema to the Anglo-American legal tradition -- make it possible for statists to conceal evil motives behind a cloak of righteousness. No one can come out against "law enforcement" without exposing himself to pillory as an "anarchist." Worse, when the evil motives are revealed and the pressure is removed from the statists' targets, no remedy is applied and no restitution is offered to the victims.

A long time ago, in commenting on a similar case that occurred in Florida, the legendary Russell Baker wrote that "When the government says it is going to get you, it is going to get you." It appears that nothing has changed since then, except for the identities and political orientations of the prosecutors and their targets.

     Need I say more?

---

     A number of the bloggers who entered the fray around the time I did have gone silent or near to it. Consider Mike Hendrix and Emperor Misha, two old favorites of the DextroSphere. Several others have gotten by mostly on reposts.

     I miss their regular emissions, but I can understand the trend. We’re tired. We’re getting old. And we’ve been repeating ourselves rather a lot.

     That’s what happens when outrage follows outrage with neither redress nor remorse. We’re still angry, but we’re beginning to feel that there’s little point to continuing on. And we dislike to think we’re huddled in an otherwise empty room, with no one listening to us but one another.

     The American people appear to have been enervated to the point of surrender. The Howard Beale character in Paddy Chayevsky’s screenplay for Network captured my sense of it perfectly:

     I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.

     We know things are bad — worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'

     Is it really this way? Are we unwilling to rear up on our hind legs and roar defiance into our oppressors’ faces?

     Do you want your freedom back? Do you want to feel reasonably safe from “your” government? Voting every two or four years ain’t gonna do it, people. It will take actual resistance to the tyrants by persons brave enough to do so – and staunch support of those brave ones, political, legal, financial, and moral, by the rest of us.

     I know, I know: Who bells the cat? It’s the old question, the one we use to paralyze ourselves. It’s more effective than ever. The State in our time can target individuals with frightening accuracy, and can bring overwhelming power to bear against them, as David French has told us. The Redcoats didn’t even have rifled barrels on their muskets.

     Is there a Patrick Henry in the house?

     Never mind. Forget I said anything. I’m just an old man who claims to remember what it was like to be free. We didn’t even have color TVs back then, so how good could it have been, really?

     All rise for Flag salute. Here are your internal passport, your work permit, and your ration card. Now sit down and pay attention to the political officer. He’s here to serve!

A Tale Of Two Totalitarianisms

The esteemed Ace of Spades makes a striking observation this morning:

One problem with liberalism has always been that those promoting it are, and largely have been, cowards.

The creed is not inherently cowardly; in fact, most of it is brave....But a lot of the people championing it are morally uncertain and physically weak types. This has caused liberalism to be associated in the world with vacillation, compromise, and cowardice.

I knew someone who once told me he despised liberals as cowards. So you're conservative? I asked.

"No," he replied. "Communist."

And that is the knock on liberalism. Other creeds are dark, stupid, and murderous, but they appeal to young men because they seem to be espoused by strong men, rough men, ready men.

And liberalism, meanwhile, is mostly a collection of pious platitudes mouthed by sissies.

There is some justice in this. Moreover, it helps to illuminate an important commonality between the two most important totalitarian creeds of our time: Islam and Left-liberalism.

---

It’s a common observation that left-liberals, for all their pieties about “helping the poor,” do very little of it personally. They prefer to vote for politicians who will then enact programs – preferably federal programs, so that no one can escape – which will result in armies of bureaucrats spending oceans of tax dollars, the greater part of which will pay the salaries of “compassionate” types like themselves and a piddling fraction of which will become benefits to the officially recognized “poor.” That’s left-liberal “charity:” the sort that declines to dirty the left-liberal’s own hands or distract him from his enjoyment of the Chardonnay and Brie.

As anyone with three functioning brain cells knows, in practice this resolves to a program of totalitarian control of just about everything in the name of “compassion,” “social justice,” or what-have-you. My term for this is social fascism: the drive toward a totalitarian State that has first claim on all things, and regulates everything down to the smallest detail, under a rationale of “good intentions.” (Jonah Goldberg calls it Liberal Fascism, which has more immediate political application.)

Left-liberalism / social-fascism is currently on the skids with Americans, owing to their disgust with the current regime. (What we can and will do about it remains uncertain.) However, the ironclad will that animates its allegiants cannot be denied. They are determined to have their way; they will stop at nothing. They regard no strategy and no tactic as out of bounds.

I can’t cite many overt expressions of such an unbounded, absolutely determined political will. However, I can cite one:

In the Nazi leadership’s view, Rauschning (a one-time friend of Hitler’s) reports, “the more inconsistent and irrational is their doctrine, the better….[E]verything that might have gone to the making up of a systematic, logically conceived doctrine is dismissed as a trifle, with sovereign contempt.” “To all doubts and questions,” writes Rosenberg, “the new man of the first German empire has only one answer: Nevertheless, I will!” [From Leonard Peikoff’s The Ominous Parallels]

Are left-liberal policies inconsistent? Irrational? Left-liberals don’t care any more than the Nazis did. They know what’s best for us, and we’re damned well going to swallow it...at the point of a gun, if need be.

---

If Islam’s political culture isn’t yet plain to you, Gentle Reader, you must have skipped a few of the essays here. Islam is inseparable from its political program, and that program is totalitarian:

“Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for Holy Warriors! These are hundreds of other psalms and Hadiths urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.” – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

"The minarets are our bayonets; the domes are our helmets. Mosques are our barracks, the believers are soldiers. This holy army guards my religion. Almighty Our journey is our destiny, the end is martyrdom." -- Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister of Turkey

The totalitarian mindset must be coupled to absolute will. People resist being ordered around, which is why the myrmidons of the State carry guns and forbid us to have them. (Note how many federal bureaucracies have armed themselves. Note how military hardware has been distributed to local police forces nationwide. And note how Obama’s Department of Justice has descended to the use of sub-legal means to throttle the supply of firearms and ammunition to private citizens. Do you really think that’s coincidence?) So to enforce a totalitarian program, the State must be willing to kill until the survivors have all submitted to its yoke: a program that requires the firmest will of all.

In that regard Islam is exactly the same:

The Qur’an contains detailed instructions and examples of how to meet unbelievers. The first instruction is that they should be called to Islam; in fact, the Qur’an says you cannot wage war against unbelievers until you have preached to them. The second instruction is that if they do not convert to Islam, then, they must be fought. The third instruction is that if they surrender, or convert, then you must stop waging war. The final instruction is that if they do not convert or surrender, then they must be killed. This is the optimum route for Islamist expansion: A tidal wave of war, subjugation and conversion.

While we were in the Mosque, the Prophet came out and said, "Let us go to the Jews" We went out till we reached Bait-ul-Midras. He said to them, "If you embrace Islam, you will be safe. You should know that the earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle, and I want to expel you from this land. So, if anyone amongst you owns some property, he is permitted to sell it, otherwise you should know that the Earth belongs to Allah and His Apostle." [ Sahih Bukhari, 53:392]

Fight against them until idolatry is no more and God's religion reigns supreme. [The Koran, Sura 2, verse 193]

The sole difference between the Islamic mindset and that of the Leftist lies in their professed intentions. Their absolute determination to rule in all things – to compel, prohibit, and expropriate without limit – is utterly the same.

---

If you need a grace note for this comparison of today’s two foremost totalitarian creeds, consider how utterly ruthless both of them are toward critics. Islam decrees death for those who dare even to differ with its dictates. Left-liberals, currently without the legal authority to silence dissenters by force, use extra-legal means: vandalism, extortion, intimidation, hackery, slander, and whatever other tools are ready to hand. That they do so under a cloak of self-righteousness doesn’t alter the totalitarian will that powers their tactics.

A Christian will reject Islamic theology reflexively, as Islam denies the divinity of Jesus. Yet that same Christian might find some of the policies of left-liberalism appealing entirely on the basis of their supposed intentions. Yet should he press a left-liberal espouser of such a policy for its record in practice, or ask what evidence would cause the left-liberal to doubt the soundness of his policy, he’ll be answered with a flood vituperation likely to exceed his expectations. Given the proliferation of such tactics, is it reasonable to doubt that the left-liberal would resort to force, were he able to get away with it?

And given all the above, why would any man of good will award one iota more respect to either of these totalitarian creeds than to the other?

That last one was only slightly in error

And I had been thinking of just linking to the one over at my site rather than crosspost. So, I'll do one of that sort of thing. Here's a little piece, if you like it go read the rest:

As I remember my history from so long ago, and quite probably why I hear so much about the degradation OF the history our children/grandchildren/great-grandchildren are being taught, we tried peaceful protest. Then we got a bit louder. Then the government started violent retribution. THEN we shot them.
Looks like that’s the route it will go again. But that’s also why we wrote the Constitution, so we wouldn’t have to go that way. But, as all supposed free societies in the past have gone, the government slowly but surely eroded the rights of the people. “For the greater good”. Piece at a time, little bit here, little bit there, until one morning we woke to find we were ruled not represented.
Well, it has taken them nearly a century because Americans were used to freedom and watched a bit more closely than today’s society. Piece at a time, little bit here, little bit there, wait a bit, little bit here, little bit there, taxation so far beyond what we rebelled against in the first place, back off some, feed it back in a piece at a time, …

Hopefully that's tasty enough for you to click it. This has gone way past ridiculous in the century it has taken to destroy American freedom, but it follows the time honored method. Death by 1,000 cuts.

The Cry Of The Left: “Eat Your Neighbors!”

First, a snippet from one of my books:

    Patrick Wolzman mounted the dais and addressed the crowd.
    “Things have been fairly quiet around here lately,” he said. “Quiet enough that you might be wondering why I called this meeting. It’s simple enough, really. Has anyone else been following developments at Morelon House?”
    Barton started. Althea came to full alert. The crowd murmured uneasily.
    Wolzman nodded. “I thought not. I have, for several reasons. The Morelons have turned their mansion into a fortress. They’ve mounted big guns at all points of the compass. Laser cannons like the ones here.” He waved at the Spacehawk laser turrets. “It got me wondering why, and about what else they might have planned for the near future.”
    His gaze fell directly upon Barton. “I see the Morelon patriarch has graced us with his presence. Perhaps he’d care to join me up here and explain the actions of his clan, which many of us might deem provocative.”
    Barton growled “Hold hard, Al,” moved to the front of the gathering, and hoisted himself onto the dais with some difficulty. He glared at Wolzman with unconcealed anger.
    “Refresh my memory, Patrick,” he said in his sweetest tones. “Your clan is in the weapons business, is it not?”
    Wolzman nodded warily.
    “Have you had a downturn in business lately?”
    “Not noticeably, no.”
    “Well, what moves you to question the desire of Clan Morelon to develop some weapons of its own? You don’t mean to claim a monopoly over the trade, do you?”
    In the perimeter lights around the battery, Wolzman’s face darkened visibly. Yet glimmering behind the mask of anger was a well-concealed smile of satisfaction.
    “Monopolies are why we’re here, Bart,” he said. “Just now, Clan Morelon wields a trio of them. And a few of us here and a few not so nearby are getting just a wee bit worried at the trend.”
    Barton frowned. “We have no monopolies. Everything we sell is available from other sources.”
    Wolzman produced a smile of triumph. He turned to face the crowd.
    “Who here gets his power from a source other than a Morelon fusion plant? Please raise a hand.”
    No one did so. Wolzman nodded. “And what clan, whether or not it’s represented here, possesses ground-to-orbit capability and an outpost on the Relic? Please! Don’t all answer at once.”
    The uneasy rustling from the crowd became more pronounced.
    “Monopolies,” Wolzman said. “Not engineered by the destruction of your competition, I’ll grant that. But complete enough that if you wanted to ruin any of us, for any reason, you have the wherewithal, either by cutting off our electrical power or by bombarding us from sperosynchronous orbit.”
    —Don’t interfere, Al.
    It’s hard.
    —I know. Don’t.
    “What would make anyone think we plan any such thing?” Barton was maintaining his composure with an all too visible effort. “We’re merely using technology to provide electrical power—a product, I might add, that derives completely from my kinswoman’s massive investments and embrace of enormous personal risks to achieve that bastion on the Relic, where she did the research that produced it.” He waved at Althea, who had moved to the front of the crowd. “There she is, Patrick. Will you castigate her for her industry, her bravery, or both?”
    “Neither,” Wolzman said. “I’m castigating you and your clan, for not sharing her breakthroughs with the community at large.”
    Barton snorted. “And what ethical principle would compel us to do that? Oh, by the way, I’m still waiting to hear about our third monopoly. You did say ‘trio,’ didn’t you?”
    Wolzman nodded. “I did. Show the crowd your left arm.”
    Barton stared at him in incredulity. “Are you serious?”
    “Please, Bart.”
    He skinned back his sleeve.
    The arm was essentially regrown. It hadn’t yet developed to a mature girth or muscle tone; that would take time, nutrition, and a long course of steadily intensifying exercise. Nevertheless, it was complete, all the way to a hand with fingers and a nail at the end of each.
    “A brand new appendage, ladies and gentlemen,” Wolzman purred. “For those of you unaware of it, Bart lost that arm in combat with forces to which my clan was allied. Forces that came together for the same reasons I’ve asked you here this evening: to break the Morelon stranglehold on facilities that no single clan should command. Facilities that simple justice demands they be shared with all of Hope.
    “There’s the third of them, Bart. With the adoption of Claire Albermayer—”
    “It’s Claire Morelon now, Patrick,” Barton spat.
    Wolzman nodded. “As you wish. With that adoption, Clan Morelon has acquired the power of bodily regeneration. The ability to replace any lost or damaged body part, as long as the victim remains alive. Do you plan to share that with the rest of us, Bart?”
    Althea had reached battle readiness. She restrained herself from leaping onto the dais by the narrowest of margins.
    “It will be commercialized,” Barton said.
    “Oh?” Wolzman snorted. “How generous! What you’ve received as a gift from your adoptee, we will have to pay for! Shall we bow to your majestic beneficence now, or would you prefer to have our obeisance choreographed?”

[From Freedom’s Fury, the third volume of my Spooner Federation trilogy.]

Hope, a world populated by the descendants of anarchists who fled Earth before the genocidal wrath of the States, has grown prosperous and well populated...well populated enough that some have arisen who envy their fellows’ superior achievements and seek power over them. They tried, earlier in the series, to take what they wanted by force, but failed. (That’s the reason Clan Morelon fortified its two mansions as described above.) In the above, we see one of their leading lights trying the other perennial tactic of the Left: inducing neighbors to distrust one another.

Eowyn of the excellent Fellowship of the Minds notes a smaller-scale example of the tactic:

Use of snitches seems instinctive to the Left....

B. Christopher Agee reports for Western Journalism, Dec. 4, 2014, that in response to a shooting incident last week in downtown Austin, Police Chief Acevedo held a press conference to emphasize the shooting could have been prevented had someone reported the gunman’s behavior to law enforcement before his rampage.

Saying that he stays awake at nights worrying about “these homegrown extremists that are lone wolves, that are mad at the world, that are angry,” Acevedo encouraged Austin residents to report to authorities anyone “who’s a gun enthusiast or is armed with these types of firearms and they’re showing any type of propensity for hatred.”

The police chief said: “It’s important for us as Americans to know our neighbors, to know our families. Tell somebody if you know somebody that is acting pecu—with a lot of hatred toward any particular group.”

Couching his instruction with the caveat that turning in a friend or family member for owning guns “doesn’t mean that we’re going to take them to jail,” Acevedo noted that “we might want to vet these people.”

By my lights, Acevedo’s words, if they were reported accurately in the above, constitute adequate grounds for removing him from his position and barring him from ever again occupying a position of public trust. But Austin, despite being the capital of gun-friendly Texas, is rather far to the left politically, so I doubt that any such thing will occur. However, it’s Eowyn’s first sentence that’s most thematic:

Use of snitches seems instinctive to the Left.

Not only is it reflexive on their part; it’s also highly revealing. Totalitarians of all stripes are aware that they can never command sufficient police power to impose their will on a whole nation, unless their subjects actively participate in the process of oppression.

But in a free, peaceful, prosperous commonwealth, that’s a very difficult thing to do ab initio. It requires an emotional infrastructure that must be carefully designed and laid down.

It requires a pervasive atmosphere of fear.

---

Among the Left’s recent losses of more than transient importance has been its loss of two tactics of longstanding importance: racism-shouting and “women’s issues.” Note how badly candidates who leaned on those traditional pillars were beaten in the recent elections. The implication seems obvious: it’s no longer sufficient for the Left to accuse conservative or libertarian candidates of wanting to oppress Negroes and / or women. Yet those tactics have been instrumental in its rise to political power and to its grip on what it still possesses. Therefore, it must seek new weapons to take the place of those it has unintentionally blunted.

The Left’s gropings appear to have landed on an approach no man of good will would have expected: accusations of sexual predation. Consider the following stories:

• Lena Dunham’s claim that she was raped “by a College Republican.”
• Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s whole-cloth fantasy about a gang-rape at a University of Virginia frat house.
• Danmell Ndonye’s claim to have been raped at Hofstra University.
• This case, which the hard-left Sacramento Bee appears to have scrubbed from its online edition.

Each of these “rapes” was used by the Left as a tool for encouraging women to fear men – especially for young women to fear young men. If that doesn’t have you thinking about Rupert’s cri de coeur, check your pulse: you may have died and not noticed.

Pervasive mutual fear is the most fertile of all soils in which to germinate a totalitarian State.

---

Only by turning us against one another can the Left succeed in completing its campaign to extinguish all traces of freedom.

We already live under a cloud of fear, but at this time it’s principally fear of government. So many organs of government at all levels have been revealed as predacious exploiters of power and privilege that Americans’ trust in government has sunk to an all-time low. No one believes any longer in the restraining effects of the Constitution or the guarantees of the Bill of Rights. No one grants any agent of the State the presumption of benevolence. And no one with three functioning brain cells willingly allows a uniformed “law enforcement officer” into his home...especially not those of us with dogs.

I find myself wondering if there’s a wandering planetoid in our future...or perhaps, given the ESA’s recent achievements, a habitable comet.

---

The situation is grave, and becoming graver as we speak.The IRS has embraced its role as Censor of the Right to a degree even I could not have predicted. Other of the “alphabet agencies” are striving with all their power to suppress American enterprise, that the Left’s gains in reducing so many of us to dependence on State handouts not be reversed. And of course, we have the rampant use of militarized local police forces and their unConstitutional use of “civil asset forfeiture” to fund their operations and keep us all cowering behind our curtains.

Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley has several times spoken of a “tipping point,” passing which could put an end to any remaining semblance of Constitutional government. If we haven’t yet passed such a point, we’re surely teetering at the edge of it today.

Food for thought.

(Cross-posted at Liberty’s Torch.)