The lamps of liberty are going out
Insofar as it works at all, Big Government works best in small, highly developed, northern Continental nation-states with a sufficiently homogeneous population to have sufficiently common interests. You can get by with it for a while in Mediterranean Europe, mainly because of a somewhat desultory attitude to the rule of law: In Italy and Greece, there are prohibitions against everything, but nobody obeys them and so, after a fashion, life goes on. Anglophone nations are generally disposed to abide by the law, and so, if there are a bazillion regulations, the average citizen will make a sincere effort to comply. But if you’re, say, Australia and you’re attempting to design a health-care system for 20 million people across an entire continent, it’s just about doable.
But no advanced society has ever attempted Big Government for a third of a billion people — for the simple reason that it cannot be done without creating a nation with the black-hole finances of Stockton, Calif., and the Black-Hole-of-Calcutta fetid, airless, sweatbox utility services of Rockville, Md. Thanks to Obamacare, in matters of health provision, whether you’re in favor of socialized medicine or truly private health care, Swedes and Italians are now freer than Americans: They have a state system and a private system, and both are relatively simple. What’s simple in micro-regulated America? In health care, we now have what’s nominally a private system encrusted with so many statist barnacles that it no longer functions as either a private or a state system. Thus, Obamacare embodies the strange no-man’s-land of statism American-style: The U.S. is no longer a land of republican virtue and self-reliant citizens but it’s not headed for the sunlit uplands of Scandinavia, either.
Blowback
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No, I didn’t miss either.
If, God forbid, we are forced to choose to either physically fight for our freedom or live on our knees begging favors from our masters and you run from the field of battle to hide in a foreign sanctuary you are a coward, unworthy of your birthright and deserving of the contempt and detestation of those of us have pledged “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” in the defense of our liberty.
It is you who have missed the context of Jefferson’s quotes.
The colonists were more like people in America today than you seem to realize. Most didn’t support the rebels. Most people favored the king and just wanted to get on with their lives without being inconvenienced by all the fuss and bother. (sound familiar?) Some accounts put the rebels’ support as low as 10% of the population.
The Founders didn’t start out to form a new country, but sought only to secure their rights as Englishmen. They didn’t declare independence until all other avenues of redress of their grievances had been exhausted and “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism” had become intolerable. They were forced to open the cartridge box or live as slaves.
It’s the same today. As patriots we seek only to secure our rights as Americans.
If the people choose tyranny and there is a split I won’t be watching from the safety of a foreign sanctuary. I have no obligation to submit to slavery just because others do.
single stack on July 8, 2012 at 10:03 AM
Yes,I’ve come to the same conclusion. There are certain ethical/moral prerequisites for sustainable liberty. An ethical infrastructure, a framework of certain shared values, is necessary to sustain a free society.
Since it is the culture that defines and perpetuates these values, he who controls the culture eventually controls the government.
Hence the American left deconstructs our traditional culture to overtake our government.
petefrt on July 8, 2012 at 10:05 AM
No, it was far more than that. I can’t remember where I read it, but one guy I’ve read debunked that as a meme. If I can recall, then I’ll quote him.
INC on July 8, 2012 at 12:50 PM
Exactly. Andrew Breitbart said, “Culture is upstream of politics.” But what is further upstream? Our culture flows from our understanding of God and man, and right and wrong in responsibilities and relationships. “At heart, all political problems are moral and religious problems.” Russell Kirk
INC on July 8, 2012 at 12:51 PM
I think this is the source of some of the confusion here. It wasn’t that American’s wanted to “break free” of Briton. The problem was that Americans WEREN’T full British subjects; they were “Colonists.” Their children were colonists; and as far as anyone knew, their descendents would always be second-class citizens. They realized that situation couldn’t go on forever, and that the sooner this was addressed, the better off everyone would be. Whether any individual picked up a gun or not, the vast majority of people could identify with their cause.
In 1776, the rallying cry was: “Taxation without representation is unfair.”
Today, when Communism has replaced monarchy as the main source of tyranny, the cry must be the flip side of the same coin: “Representation without taxation is unfair.”
When less than 1/2 of one percent of Americans were living at taxpayer expense, this sort of disenfranchisement was not an issue. But when more than HALF the electorate are living at taxpayer expense, and are allowed to vote on how OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY IS BEING SPENT ON THEM, only a fool could imagine that liberty will thrive.
logis on July 8, 2012 at 5:06 PM
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