The Polygonal Battlespace: Who Isn't A Collectivist?

Having played a bit in the public outcry space since the Atlanta Tea Party on April 15, 2009, the same question has been repeating over and over in my mind:

Who here actually believes in and accepts the exercise of individual freedom?

As I reluctantly engage in local and state grassroots politics, I am struck by the huge number of folks who phrase the current crisis in terms of the Obama Administration and the 111th Congress.

Bluntly -- I call horsesh*t.

And no, I also don't start the clock with GWB and the Congresses of the first decade of the 21st century, despite Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, the Patriot Act and the $4.899 trillion dollar increase in Federal debt from 1/19/2001 through 1/20/2009.

The situation is far more grave than that.

To demonstrate my point, how many readers support:

- The progressive income tax?
- Local property tax assessments to fund government schools?
- Medicare?
- Medicaid?
- Social Security?
- Unemployment "insurance" payments?
- Reinstitution of the draft in times of national emergencies?

This list of collectivist schemes at the local, state, and Federal levels could go on and on, but I think you see the point.

Americans have been consenting to and/or actively supporting the establishment of the collectivist Leviathan since at least FDR's first administration. For an excellent contrarian's history on how the foundations for today's crises were laid in the Thirties, please read Flynn's The Roosevelt Myth; see also this background article on Flynn.

And to be candid, the right time for the armed constitutional restoration movement was seventy-five years ago, not after three generations of so-called Americans have been hatched and raised to see programs such as those above as normal.

This "fellow citizen" problem is non-trivial.

It's one thing to dump well-deserved scorn on the race-baiters, the wealth redistributionists, the watermelon enviro-maniacs, the MSM stooges, the Muslims, the Communists, the Nazis, and the remainder of the usual suspects.

It's another thing altogether to realize that one's spouse, parents, children, and business/social acquaintances are largely part of the OpFor -- largely passive to be sure, but nonetheless at least implicitly supportive of theft-by-force schemes, especially if they benefit by or are dependent on same.

As I noted in a comment over at Washington Rebel:

Would you agree/disagree with the following:

The “state” is the vehicle by which foes of individual freedom have
- institutionalized their social preferences (in the face of default by supporters of IF) and
- seek to impose those preferences upon all?

I ask not to engage in freshman bull session navel-gazing, but instead in hopes of defining the proper target of resistance.

I mistrust folks on the nominal right side of things almost as much as I do the Bolshies. Too many Tea Party types are of the belief that socialism that benefits them is OK because they have counted on it.

I keep coming back to “you can’t make me, unless you are willing to kill me – and I will fight back” as the basis for righteous resistance.

Or phrased alternatively — those who seek to impose their will by force on others are the enemy, regardless of the color flag they fly or uniform they wear.

The three hard facts with which I am dealing are these:

a) The means of civil engagement urged here by Spartacus are dominated by those who have used that mechanism for the past 70+ years to abridge the Constitution, expand government in all areas and at all levels, and to institutionalize theft-by-force as a way of life;


b) Those wrongs have been and continue to be perfectly acceptable to the bulk of our fellow Americans, who now see the continuation and expansion of those programs as a matter of life and death; and


c) Most of those collectivist sympathizers/collaborators see themselves as either righteous citizens (e.g., the "Greatest Generation", the "Boomers") or aggrieved parties (e.g., slavery reparations supporters, "we were here first" ethnic activists), and hence are beyond the reach of rational discourse about property rights and constitutionally-limited government. 


In other words, I was dead wrong in estimating the OpFor here at under three million.

Actual aggregate domestic OpFor -- including Looters, Moochers, and Opportunists from each major party, plus dependents of each -- is likely well in excess of 70% of the voting American public.

For those of you keeping score, the voting American public in the 2008 Presidential election was 125 million.

If I am anywhere near right, the use of peaceful political means to fix the current situation is therefore almost certainly magical thinking.

Do your own arithmetic.

Engage in the political process if you deem it worth your time.

But please -- be coldly realistic about the potential for success by the electoral route.

Your life may depend on it.