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| The US Government takes advantage of the taxpayer every chance they get. |
The United States is only slightly
freer than many countries now. As our nation becomes more of a democracy (where
two people vote the money out of one person’s pocket) and ruled by executive
orders and judicial edicts, our freedom becomes rapidly less. Indeed we seem to
be specialists in maintaining the appearance of a free society without having
the substance. Such as:
(1) Free speech does not exist in
America. We all know what we can’t say and about whom we can’t say it.
(2) A republic run by two barely
distinguishable parties is in fact… a democracy. And a democracy quickly
collapses into a dictatorship.
(3) The elections allow the public a
sense of participation while having the political importance of faded bumper
sticker, while the two political parties use them to party like a Super Bowl.
(4) Large jurisdictions discourage
autonomy. If, say, educational policy were set in small jurisdictions, such as
towns or counties, you could buttonhole the mayor and have a reasonable
prospect of influencing your children’s schools. If policy is set at the level
of the state, then to change it you have to quit your job, marshal a vast campaign
costing a fortune, and organize committees in dozens of towns. It isn’t
practical. In America, local jurisdictions set taxes on real estate and
determine parking policy. Everything of importance is decided remotely.
(5) Huge unresponsive bureaucracies
somewhere else serve as political flywheels, insulating elected officials from
the whims of the populace. Try calling the Department of Education. Its
employees are anonymous, salaried, unaccountable, can’t be fired, and don’t
care about you. Many more of them than you might believe are affirmative-action
hires and probably can’t spell. You cannot influence them in the slightest. Yet
they influence you.
(6) For our increasingly centralized
and arbitrary government, the elimination of potentially competitive centers of
power has been, and is, crucial. This is one reason for the aforementioned
defanging of the churches: The faithful recognize a power above that of the
state, which they might choose to obey instead of Washington.
Similarly the elimination of states’
rights, now practically complete, put paid to another potential source of
opposition. Industry, in the days of J. P. Morgan politically potent, has been
tamed by regulation and federal contracts. The government becomes the only game
available.
(7) Paradoxically, increasing the
power of groups who cannot threaten the government strengthens the government:
They serve as counterbalances to those who might challenge the central
authority. For example, the white and male-dominated culture of the United
States, while not embodied in an identifiable organization, for some time
remained strong. The encouragement of dissension by empowerment of blacks,
feminists, and homosexuals, and the importing of inassimilable minorities,
weakens what was once the cultural mainstream.
(8) The apparent government isn’t
the real government. The real power in America resides in what George Will once
called the “permanent political class,” of which the formal government is a
subset. It consists of the professoriate, journalists, politicians, revolving
appointees, high-level bureaucrats and so on who slosh in and out of formal
power. Most are unelected, believe the same things, and share a lack of respect
for views other than their own.
It is they, to continue the example
of education, who write the textbooks your children use, determine how history
will be rewritten, and set academic standards—all without the least regard for
you. You can do nothing about it.
(9) The US government consists of
five branches which are, in rough order of importance, the Supreme Court, the
media, the presidency, the bureaucracy, and Congress.
The function of the Supreme Court,
which is both unanswerable and unaccountable, is to impose things that the
congress fears to touch. That is, it establishes programs desired by the ruling
political class which could not possibly be democratically enacted. While
formally a judicial organ, the Court is in reality our Ministry of Culture and
Morals. It determines policy regarding racial integration, abortion,
pornography, immigration, the practice of religion, which groups receive
special privilege, and what forms of speech shall be punished.
(10) The media have two governmental
purposes. The first is to prevent discussion and, to the extent possible,
knowledge of taboo subjects. The second is to inculcate by endless indirection
the values and beliefs of the permanent political class. Thus for example
racial atrocities committed by whites against blacks are widely reported, while
those committed by blacks against whites are concealed. Most people know this
at least dimly. Few know the degree of management of information.
(11) Control of television conveys
control of the society. It is magic. This is such a truism that we do not
always see how true it is. The box is ubiquitous and inescapable. It babbles at
us in bars and restaurants, in living rooms and on long flights. It is the
national babysitter. For hours a day most Americans watch it.
Television doesn’t tell people what
to do. It shows them. People can resist admonition. But if they see something
happening over and over, month after month, if they see the same values
approvingly portrayed, they will adopt both behavior and values. It takes
years, but it works. To be sure it works we put our children in front of the
screen from infancy.
(12) Finally, people do not want
freedom. They want comfort, two hundred channels on the cable, sex, drugs,
rock-and-roll, an easy job and an SUV. No country with really elaborate
home-theater has ever risen in revolt. There are an awful lot of people
secretly like being told what to do
The current American public wants a king.
