As we reflect on the past year, we are faced with a difficult question: are Americans trustworthy? That is, should the American populace be trusted to make decisions for themselves? Can we rely on the average American to make the proper, moral, responsible choice?
The ruling class in America would respond with a resounding "NO!" After all, the elites think very little of their subjects. Every public health order issued drips with disdain and assumes that hell itself would break loose if average citizens were given liberty. Government bureaucrats and wealthy tycoons, together comprising our unofficial aristocracy, seek to protect us from ourselves with an almost religious fervor.
Given the behavior exhibited by many throughout COVID, it seems that most Americans concur with this assessment of the common man. They do not want freedom. They do not want liberty. They handle responsibility, that indispensable concomitant of freedom, like the proverbial hot potato. They want to be told what to do and when to do it. They long to be told what to wear on their faces and what to inject into their bodies. As poorly as our government education system has performed over the last 50 years, one can be sure that progressive education has accomplished its true goal.
As those with libertarian tendencies survey the scene, they are almost forced to concede that this is the sad reality of mankind. The ruled and their rulers equally prefer the status quo. What, then, are the few libertarians to do but idly watch our liberties be crushed? If people prefer security to freedom, how are we to dissuade them? If people will not take personal ownership of their future, how are we to convince them to fight for their rights?
If people are so quick to abandon their own freedoms, should we trust them to make their own decisions? If men, given their freedom, so quickly relinquish it, then perhaps libertarian reasoning is self-defeating. Maybe the sheep, so eager for slaughter, are not capable of self-determination!
Or maybe the policies that are being created to support the feckless, dependent populace are necessary only because of previous policies that fostered dependency. Maybe we are so domestic because we have been domesticated. Perhaps we are soft after years of bread and circuses doled out through the zeal, sometimes well-intentioned and sometimes insidious, of our social engineers. Maybe we are so comfortable living in fear because of the incessant, strategic fearmongering of crony capitalists, corrupt politicians, and their jackals in the media.
What if people had to be responsible? What if people were forced, against their will, to be free? What if, as in the seminal days of our nation, self-determination was the only option? I suspect people would be stronger, wiser, and more resilient. People would rely on themselves if they could not fall back on Uncle Sam. They wouldn't assume that government bureaucracies were necessary to accomplish the minutiae of public life. Communities would come together voluntarily to support those in need, unfettered by the corruption and inefficiencies of civil institutions.
Necessity is the mother of invention, they say, and comfort is the enemy of progress. Perhaps the solutions being presented by government architects are actually the problems. If Americans are unreliable and untrustworthy, perhaps it is because they have been forced to be little else.
As a criticism: I'd argue that people are not choosing security over liberty, they are choosing the *illusion* of security by believing nonsensical promises of statist politicians.
ReplyDeleteGenerally agree, and I do not believe the merits of liberty have changed; though this does pose an interesting question:
It seems the circumstances surrounding the founding of the nation naturally lended themselves towards power & responsibility being in the hands of the people.
Given that power has, in many ways, been seized from the people by the state, the "status quo" is no longer aligned with empowering the citizen.
Given also that a possible majority would sooner relinquish liberty before sacrificing leisure and identity to take responsibility, is the argument that liberty might need to be *forced* a hypocritical position, since it is no longer the status quo?
You're absolutely right. Just as the threat is mostly illusory, so is the promised safety.
DeleteThis is the paradox with which we are confronted right now. How do we force people to be free? If people want to be coddled by the State, does that prove that the statists are right and that people can't be trusted with liberty?
I certainly don't think it means statists are right by any means.
DeleteIn retrospect, I suppose I have made an erroneous assumption that seems all too common: that freedom means shelter from all consequences, whereas in reality, it means the ability to make your own decisions and reap the natural consequences, with only a minimal number of decisions yielding consequences from the government.
Thus, I do not think that it is hypocritical to advocate liberty: because just as I cannot speak to the interests of other people, so too can they not speak for my own: and the advocation of liberty therefore may not only justified because of what they want, but because of of what I, everyone else, and anyone who has yet to be born, wants.