[Originally published elsewhere under a female pseudonym.]
Given that most Americans presume one must go to school to be an expert on a subject, I'm wondering from which social engineering university boobus americanus was graduated; he certainly is an expert on what to do to people so that the world will be a better place. From the lowliest CNN anchor, to the highest man on the street, America is brimming with people who have The Solution, and desperately want it shoved in your face.
Might it be possible that the solution to America's problems is liberty? Never! Liberty is merely a word one uses on a campaign trail. It must have no meaning. Instead, the solution to America's problems is always a nightmare of networked coercive steps that will somehow ramrod a wayward populace into the correctness bottle. As H. L. Mencken said, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." The common people haven't yet put together that their penchant for bulldozing their neighbors necessarily encourages the same response in others. Boobus americanus fuels the bulldozer that grinds his own nose into the pavement, yet he is too busy participating in his destruction to notice that it hurts, or why.
Listening to Bill O'Reilly recently, I almost pulled the car over to applaud when he let loose a surprising tirade (uncharacteristically correct and concise) on the futility of government — how politicians are merely buying votes with their destructive programs, and how it will never solve anything. My enthusiasm lasted only until I recalled his tirade from the day before, when he outlined how he would be able to end America's drug problems if only he were given total control. The cheering for his iron-fisted miracle went on for quite a while. Drug dealers would be doing hard time, just you wait and see!
Are you familiar with observational humor? It's a low form of stand-up comedy frowned on by comedians, though many still employ it out of desperation. Imagine you're plucked out of a line-up for some reality TV show and told that you have 2 minutes to prepare for a stand-up comedy gig. This is no problem. Just pick a common experience and whine it up using what might best be called, continuing the Mencken theme, vox sardonicus. Take almost any topic, and you can sneer your way through 50 minutes that will have the modern comedy audience howling for one another with sidelong glances, and walking out of the comedy club emitting bubbly variants of, "That's so true!" Fast food drive-thru windows? A gold mine. Bad movies? An easy 10 minutes. Andy Rooney built a career out of the technique, once dedicating a segment to paper clips.
Just as comedy audiences have been conditioned to accept inane observations as humor, and even use similar rants to get their friends rolling, so have most Americans become conditioned to accept "problem solving" as high politics. They also recognize correctly that they are just as qualified to try their hand as well. Gone are the days when it was presumed that the job of a politician was to keep you free to do your thing, and the job of a neighbor to mind his affairs. The politician's job is now to represent you in your effort to impose your view of the world onto everyone else. Got a problem? It's not too small to warrant the application of force.
Such an occupation is sad, but how much worse is it for people to not realize the futility of the battle when ample evidence surrounds us? The process of socially engineered strife can never meet success, no matter who's representing you. Success would require universal agreement on how things should be. This is obvious, yet the problem persists because careers can be had from encouraging the game — careers that enjoy the unique benefit of being able to manipulate failure into job security. Just listen to Bush and Kerry on the campaign trail spouting the same lies and promises we've been hearing all our lives. Isn't it about time to pull the plug?
There's a pop-up Internet ad flourishing recently that uses this disease of perpetual polemic to encourage clicks. It appears with a picture and a simple poll question such as, "Was George W. Bush right to go to war in Iraq?" Pure genius. Without thinking that they're getting into something they don't want to, many people are distracted long enough by their vociferousness to forget their skepticism of pop-ups. It is a mousetrap for humans, worthy of study because it demonstrates in 5 seconds what politicians have been cultivating for centuries: You can get people to plod into self-destructive territory if you solicit their opinions. The more you make it appear that their opinions have value, the more you will win. In the warped view of today's social engineers, whether paid or unpaid, the highest value an opinion can attain is to be deemed worthy of inflicting on people. Then you have arrived. Our dilemma is that liberty cannot be inflicted.
The destructive loop of opinion politics is clear. The more people notice that the opinions of others are being used to trample how they want to run their lives, the more likely they are to want to fight back in the same way. That compulsion distracts completely from fighting for liberty — the very thing that is being lost, and the aspect that really bothers them the most. Yes, even sheeple love liberty in their way. They just aren't able to recognize how important it is.
Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged contains a tight parable in which she illuminates the ascension, decline, and destruction of a small community that embraced terminal opinion politics (socialism). I would quote from it here, but it should probably be enjoyed in context if you haven't read the book. Harold Leiendecker comments on Atlas Shrugged's Twentieth Century Motor Company:
Its founder had built the best automobile company around. But his heirs decide to run it on the basis of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Rand’s hatred for what she saw in her native Russia boils over here.
The rewarding of need motivates many employees to become victims and beggars. Those who used to celebrate births in the community, come to hate them. They become hostile toward those who become sick, and many feign incompetence in order to avoid the extra assignments that accrue to good workers. The new generation of family owners receives many public humanitarian awards, and admiration for their new, selfless administration. But one sister in the family becomes the czar of judging needs, and enjoys that power, to a fault. One brother makes himself more equal than others, and becomes dissolute. The company rots away.
These tendencies of a consuming state and its appeal to the biases of the trampled have flourished for ages. Frédéric Bastiat addressed the phenomenon plainly in a comparatively recent denunciation (1850):
As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose – that it may violate property instead of protecting it – then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious.
Social engineering is the direct enemy of liberty, and a task for which no man or group of men can be qualified. Bastiat again, on the evil pastime's inherent contradiction:
What is the attitude of the democrat when political rights are under discussion? How does he regard the people when a legislator is to be chosen? Ah, then it is claimed that the people have an instinctive wisdom; they are gifted with the finest perception; their will is always right; the general will cannot err; voting cannot be too universal. [. . .]
But when the legislator is finally elected – ah! then indeed does the tone of his speech undergo a radical change. The people are returned to passiveness, inertness, and unconsciousness; the legislator enters into omnipotence. Now it is for him to initiate, to direct, to propel, and to organize. Mankind has only to submit; the hour of despotism has struck. We now observe this fatal idea: The people who, during the election, were so wise, so moral, and so perfect, now have no tendencies whatever; or if they have any, they are tendencies that lead downward into degradation.
This game is played out every day in the US by politicians and armchair socializers who praise democracy as the ultimate solution for peace and harmony. "The will of the people!" they shout. The rest of the sentence ("...so long as it's my will.") is not shouted.
It hardly seems worth the bother of arguing that if the will of the people is sacrosanct, one need only leave them alone to go where such will might lead them. However, there are no bosses when everybody's a boss, so the United States is quickly surpassing the despots of the French Revolution in handing to slaves the keys to rule their brothers and sisters in the name of freedom for all.
I have heard from surprising sources lately the sort of socialist opinions that would have provoked embarrassing censure only 50 years ago. Marked changes are not necessarily bad, but if we have undergone a change, it seems right to ask, "In what direction are we headed?" Is it toward liberty or away from it? And if it's away, may we please dispose of the relentless talk of liberty? Should liberty be no more, let it at least live in its death, so that perhaps a worthy population may rediscover it after the social engineers are gone. And gone they will be, whether by their hands or others.
Oh, sublime writers! Please remember sometimes that this clay, this sand, and this manure which you so arbitrarily dispose of, are men! They are your equals! They are intelligent and free human beings like yourselves! As you have, they too have received from God the faculty to observe, to plan ahead, to think, and to judge for themselves!
~ Frédéric Bastiat
The Law