The Fumes of the Founding, Ron, Rand and where we are.

[Anti Federalist]

Great Eric Peters rant.


The Fumes of the Founding

http://ericpetersautos.com/2015/02/2...-the-founding/

by eric • February 24, 2015 • 0 Comments

Most people are not liberty-inclined.

Not anymore.

America has become a nation of, by and for control freaks – populated by the people I style Clovers. If they don’t like something, if they want something, if they don’t want people doing something, they will casually urge that violence be deployed to make the necessary adjustments. This has become so reflexive that it is now unconscious and people – most of them – think nothing of it. Because, truth be told, they don’t think of it at all. Which isn’t an accident. Public (that is, government) schools do not raise the question: Is it right to harm someone or threaten to who has not first harmed you? The ancient heresy resides in a box on a shelf somewhere, next to mummified mammoth remains and broken cuneiform tablets.

The easy violence of modern American society is now so pervasive, so taken for granted, so everywhere that it has become as invisible to us as water must be to a fish.

We swim in it.

The only reason some of us grew up in a country that still had a remarkable degree of liberty (cops once had to have individualized suspicion of criminal activity before they could stop and search you; there were these things called “court orders” that had to be obtained prior to filching through a person’s private correspondence; if arrested, they had to charge you with a crime in order to hold you captive – and they had to prove you had committed the crime you were charged with before they could throw you permanently in a cage, or take your stuff… ) is because the fumes of the Founding had not yet completely dissipated. Cultural inhibitions passed down by habit temporarily stifled the “safety” and “security” neurosis that has got us to where we are today.

Some of you will remember.

And what dissipated those lingering fumes of a more independent-individualist time (what I call, the “What’s up, Doc?” Bugs Bunny era)?

Among the certain factors: That ugly thing called feminism. Not (though it’s styled as such) equal rights for women (there are only human rights and everyone shares them equally). Rather, feminism was a clever way to end-run the individualist-independent mindset by smearing it as “patriarchic” and “oppressive” and “racist.” White men were (and still are) the straw men, the initial soft targets.

But they were never going to be the exclusive targets.

Note that feminism – as expressed/embodied by leaders of the movement such as Dianne Feinstein and Hillary Clinton – is about ordering people of both sexes about. With characters such as Hillary and Dianne giving the orders. Possession of ovaries will not protect you. Women, like men, will be free to do as they are told. As racial minorities are free to do as they are told. The pants suits and power blazers are merely a change of uniform; the underlying ideology – collectivism at gunpoint – is the ancient orthodoxy reasserting itself.

And it has succeeded because the ancient heresy – individualism/independence – had become by the 1960s a half-dead thing that was inarticulable by most people and so extremely vulnerable to being turned against itself. People believed in “rights” but poorly understood them. Which made them easy meat for women’s rights and black rights and gay rights. That is, for the replacement of individuals (and individual identities as paramount) with collective ones. Each a constituency with its own leaders and agendas – conflicting necessarily and purposely with those of others, who had different leaders and agendas. Fractiousness – and violence – predictably ensued, with each bloc maneuvering for power to be used to assert and impose itself on the others.

People – especially strivers for power – began to speak in collective terms. With themselves at first the merely the mouthpieces representing (oh so unselfishly!) the great “we,” the “public” and (of course) “society.” In time – today – the fuhrerprinzip is out in the open. Americans want – they demand – leadership.

Never pausing to wonder what it is that leaders invested with power tend to do. They no longer look to themselves – or even to others. They look to saviors who can “create jobs” (presto! just like that) and who will give them (to quote El Presidente Pancho Hernandez Enrico Rodriguez) This, That and The Other Thing.

All of which will simply appear – somehow – and be distributed “equitably.”

There is no longer any security except that which flows from the barrel of a gun. Those guns held largely by others, with the sole legal monopoly on their use. The only question – answered every two and four years – is in what direction these guns will be pointed.

Never whether they should be pointed.

Ron Paul tried to bring that up – and see where it got him. His son has learned a valuable lesson.

One does not obtain power by disparaging it. People want things – and they will vote for those who will give it to them.

Ron Paul had nothing to offer except his promise to leave you alone.

His son promises so much more.

[CaptUSA]

Ok, back on the Eric Peters bandwagon. Great article.

This is the great struggle of our time. Collectivism versus Individualism. Collectivism is preached in the media and indoctrinated in government schools. Even the Right, which pretends to hate collectivism, just wants to replace it with their own form of collectivism which is preached from the pulpit and on "alternative" media. But it's the same thing - us against them. Your team versus my team. That group versus this group. Even libertarians get caught up in this. Ancaps verus minarchists, etc... Libertarians just take the fractioning down to an incredibly detailed level - but it still ends up this collective versus that one. It's how our generation has come to view the world. And it's what makes individualism so hard to sell.

Rand Paul has learned Salesmanship 101 - sell the benefits; not the features.

With Ron, you had to want liberty. You already knew its value. With Rand, you just have to want something better than what you're getting right now and it's his job to explain to you how liberty can provide it.