Relieved of the Pressure

As both of you have duly noted, postings on this blog recently have been "sparse" to say the least. Surprisingly enough there is a reason, and it goes something like this: I have been trying in my own retarded way to compose my thoughts on the descent of my native land into the abysmal conditions which now obtain here in the former "land of the free".

Last Tuesday we were visited by an agent of the imperial federal government identifying herself as a "census" inquisitor worker. Having previously received the "census" document, filling in the constitutionally required data and returning it, I was not, however completely surprised by the visit. You see, Article I, section 2 mandates an "enumeration" for purposes of apportioning legislators and collection of direct taxes. Those data are all that were answered. I advised the "census worker"  that the census form had been marked and returned late in March 2010. Her (lying) response: "we did not receive it." She asked how many lived at the address as of 1 April 2010 to which I replied "2". Her next question was: did I "wish to state my name" to which I replied: "no". Her next question was regarding the race of the residents, to which I replied: "human being". At this time she stated "I'm wasting my time." whereupon she turned and departed without asking any further questions. Somehow I suspect that we have not heard the last on this subject from the ruling clique. Stay tuned.

Returning to the subject of the first paragraph of this posting I will reproduce in full the entry today by my esteemed co-conspirator Fran Porretto at Eternity Road who says it ALL. Get thee hence and read the comments:

Making Amends: A Mini-Manifesto

By Francis W. Porretto

Fran here. This will be in first-person, as I have some hard things to say. Forgive me, Gentle Reader, but I don't think you'll like them much.
One caveat: When I use the pronoun we in what follows, I don't necessarily mean all of us alive today. I'm using we in its political application: to the polity we call today the United States, to the polity and society it has been in the century past, and to whatever emerges from the chaos I foresee.
Please read carefully, and with attention.


***

"When a man dies, he does not just die of the disease that he has; he dies of his whole life." -- Peguy

We stand, God willing, at the end of the Progressive Era in American politics and political thought. One way or another, the edifice will shortly come crashing down. The only questions that remain are whether a recognizable United States of America will rise from the rubble.
Many Americans, however, will not. That's guaranteed.
Our current political order does not resemble our Constitutional basis in any way. Every stricture of the Constitution has been abrogated. Most states treat their own constitutions as palimpsests, from which any clause may be deleted and to which any permission might be added, entirely at the will of the rulers. As for county and municipal charters...do I really need to go on?
The prevailing order compounds Corporatism^[1] with Social-Welfare Fascism.^[2] Under such a scheme, persons will flow steadily away from the "economic means"^[3] and toward the "political means,"^[4] in obedience to the established incentives. As the current state of affairs has obtained for nearly a century, a terrifying number of Americans and pseudo-Americans have made themselves utterly dependent on the State for their sustenance. They own no means of support -- no skills by which they could create value for others.
The key phrase in the paragraph above is "made themselves." Reflect on it.
When -- not "if" -- the Corporate Social-Fascist State exhales its bloody final breath, the economy that results will not have provisions for those dependents' support. As they will be unable to support themselves, their continued existence will depend wholly upon the kindness of others. But, given the immense damage that's been done to our economic foundations by Progressive policies, the crash is overwhelmingly likely to be massive. Many of us who can support ourselves on our own abilities will be hard pressed. Many others will disdain to succor of persons they deem complicit in their own fates.
There will be suffering. It will be massive. Some will die.
Yet the reckoning is at hand. It cannot be delayed much longer: even if the rising some foresee should fail to materialize, our current profligacy and laissez les bon temps roulez insouciance cannot last more than a year or so from here. No matter how well politically connected you are, you cannot consume what no one has produced.
Americans' charitable impulses and capacities, even if nominally quantitatively adequate to the demands that will be placed upon them, will fail to reach some persons in time. That, too, is guaranteed.
As one who holds notions of collective responsibility in low esteem, I dislike to proceed from here, but intellectual honesty requires it:
We brought this on ourselves.


***

America is a rich society because its people are nearly all nearly always honorable. -- Me

Honor is a necessity to a polity quite as much as to an individual. The honorable nation must stand its ground, abide by its given word, pay its debts, and answer for its responsibilities, just as must the honorable man. At this point in America's history, our nation fails the test on all four counts.
We have incurred a burden of atonement. We will face a harsh schedule of penance. If we wish to resume an estate of freedom, prosperity, and justice under objective laws, we will be required to pay.
No, we won't have to face a tribunal of some sort. What nation or nations, even in our current deteriorated state, possesses the power to enforce its will upon us? The laws of this Universe are self-enforcing, most particularly those that pertain to the ways of men:

• For having shown weakness to aggressors, we will be required to defend ourselves, against both invasion from without and predation from within.
• For having reneged on our promises, we will lose the credibility upon which we've become accustomed to rely.
• For having incurred the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the world, we will forfeit all credit, and will henceforward be unable to borrow.
• For having scamped our duties to those we promised protection, we will be denied the comfort of alliances and the protection of our extraterritorial assets.

And it will be just and proper that it be so.
Mind you, these things will come upon us whether or not we overthrow the Corporate Social-Fascist State. They cannot be averted. They can only be delayed a little longer -- and it's questionable whether it would be wiser to hold them off as long as possible, or to face the music as soon as we can.


***

Freedom is not free, free men are not equal, and equal men are not free! -- Richard Cotten

We are responsible for putting things right. The current situation is the fruit of our wishful thinking:

• We recoiled from the hard jobs of justice.
• We demurred from the maintenance of our borders and our defenses.
• We ate our seed corn, and staked our futures on a credit-based economy.
• Rather than whip aggressors back into their kennels, we paid them Dane-geld.
• We assumed that our freedom and prosperity had become a permanent state of grace. In other words, we believed in "something for nothing."

But our recent prosperity is the consequence of our prior freedom. Our freedom is the consequence of our forebears' willingness to fight for it. We cannot have either without the willingness to fight as fiercely as they did, whether on a battlefield, on a factory assembly line, or in an air-conditioned, fluorescent-lit office.
Economically, we overlooked the First Law of Wealth:


Men must be free because nothing else can be.Politically, we overlooked the Conservation Law of Freedom and Power:


Freedom and power can neither be created nor destroyed, but only exchanged for one another.
Therefore, every grant of power to the State reduces the freedom of individuals.These laws are not repealable nor modifiable by Congress. We cannot attach riders to them, to grant exemptions to favored persons or groups.
We will be required to make good on our debts and defaults, for it is certain that no other nation will step forward to pay them for us.


***

Mei Ling translated. Eddie Lee smiled again, one eye squinting as the smoke from his cigarette drifted past.
"You think be hard to kill you?"
"Yeah," I said. "Be hard." [Robert B. Parker, Walking Shadow]

"Once you know a man deserves to die, you have to kill him. If you don't, you're committing a crime against everyone who doesn't deserve to die. If you get him down but can't bring yourself to do it, and he gets up off the mat and kills you instead, you're only getting what you deserve yourself." -- On Broken Wings

Should we succeed in throwing off the yoke of the Corporate Social-Fascist State, part of our atonement, perhaps the most unpleasant part, will be this: we will be required to be hard.
We will never, ever, put an end to the dreams and machinations of the power-seekers unless we punish those among us with proper severity. Among our current officials are several overt traitors: men who took oaths to defend the Constitution, and have done the exact opposite. Of these, I count one president, four Supreme Court Justices, and hundreds of federal legislators. Unless these are dragged from their hidey-holes as was Saddam Hussein, and executed or incarcerated for life, there will be no respite from the pressure of closet totalitarians and social engineers against our polity. Men to whom power over others is the ultimate satisfaction will seek it relentlessly, until the price for doing so becomes both ultimate and inevitable.
That's merely what will be demanded of us to cleanse the federal government. Further severity will be required of us:

• Toward nations and "non-state actors" that seek to bend us to their wills;
• Toward religious and quasi-religious, racial, and ethnic groups that agitate for special treatment and exemptions from the laws;
• Toward special interests that seek subsidies, subventions, or to impose their views upon us through the political process;
• Toward individual predators who have, in the main, eluded the proper penalties for their deeds.

The underlying message is, of course, We mean it. But it can only be expressed in deeds. Our words have become untrustworthy. We will not regain our credibility until we've demonstrated that we deserve it.
That will be the hardest price of our restoration. It will be unpleasant at best, dreadful and massively bloody at worst.
We will be spared none of it.


***

"From those to whom much is given, much is expected." -- Richard Kinane

Don't think it pleases me to write this. It doesn't. I'm an old man whose fondest wish is to finish my life in peace. But I have a responsibility.
My responsibility flows from four things: my percipience, my knowledge of history, my intellect, and my conscience. If I were to withhold what I've set down here in service to my personal tranquility, I would be derelict in the duties that arise from those things.
You may elect to disregard the warning. That's at your discretion. But the words have been spoken. If history is to gainsay them, no one will be gladder than I.
I await the fusillades, both from the Left that's the principal source of our ills and from the comfortable defenders of the status quo, to whom "freedom and justice are all very well in theory, but..."
Where do you stand?

"Brace for impact." -- Captain Chesley L. Sullenberger

NOTES:
1. Corporatism is a scheme of political organization in which certain companies and institutions receive favorable treatment from the State, up to and including the making of public policy.
2. Social-Welfare Fascism is an approach to politics that emphasizes good intentions and the succoring of the worse off as the rationale for total government control over a nation's economy.
3. Franz Oppenheimer, The State, 1905.
4. Ibid.