“More and more, this society feels like a tacit civil war between the state, with its armies of employees, and the few of us still left who are not involved with it in some way, whether in making up the rules or implementing them. No shots are fired, but it is a conflict nonetheless.”
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Indeed.
One has to accept the establishment (state is almost too narrow a word) narrative, even if only subconsciously, to begin to be successful in the New Regime.
Ultimately, as in Soviet Russia, it will spell its own demise as it enforces the untrue and the unworkable. Which will be very uncomfortable for everyone.
Or perhaps some common sense may begin to prevail and people with an edge for freedom will start shaping events and drag us back from the doom of stupidity?
“No shots are fired . . .”
Not yet.
Well, ok, this society “feels like” a civil war. In fact, it is a civil war. But how have the fundamentals of the civil war changed during, say, the past few hundred years?
I don’t think that they’ve changed at all. Not one jot. Statism by its very defintion requires a war against anyone not involved with the state or who wishes to cut himself away from it. It starts as a war of a few against the many and draws in more and more people as time passes. (Hobbes, bite your tongue, please.)
What changes is one’s awareness and understanding of the civil war. Sure, this or that faction of warring statists gains the upper hand for a time and is later displaced by another faction. Policies come and go. Rafts of new laws are added to lawyers’ bookshelves every year, and on occasion a miniscule number of laws repealed. The ill effects of the civil war multiply and accumulate.
But the fundamentals aren’t changing. So if you feel more and more as if there’s a civl war, it probably means that you were profoundly benighted and are still not facing the light directly. Or the statists are winning and increasing in numbers as a percentage of all people. Or the statists are become more fundamentalist, like any cultists might.
Well it has felt like a Cold Civil War between the right/left for at least 10 years now.
I have grown so tired of their Totalitarian Ideology of Hate [FN1], that I long for the day when it breaks out into a Hot Civil War.
I’d love to see the guillotine in public square, even if non-Leftists die on it, if it only exposes The Leftists as the little Pol Pots they really are.
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.
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[FN1]
“You can’t shop there it is a Red store!”
I have had jobs sabotaged because I have mentioned that I didn’t want to deal with politics that are outside the scope of the job.
I have seen people get their car’s keyed for voicing a non-PC opinion in a college class. Also, their “participation” grade is mysteriously lower despite heavy participation (just the wrong kind of participation).
And of course you have the incessant accusations of racism.
I like Billy Beck’s version: “You have always heard it here first: All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war.”
http://www.two–four.net/weblog.php?id=P4692
Tassano is way behind. I have been positively asserting the fact of this civil war for a long time. Here is the first reference that I can find at my blog (seven years ago), but I was saying it in Usenet before that.
Classical liberal class theory (18th and 19th century) – tax payers versus tax eaters.
What “Ed” Miliband was trying to deny yesterday – because it is a threat to his own form of class theory, “workers” versus “capitalists” (the fact that he has never done a stroke of work in his life does not bother him – Marx, “Lenin”, Comrade Ralph Miliband and so on all got out of that one with the idea that “true intellectuals” lead the “the workers” – the Soviet dictator called it “the Vanguard doctrine”).
As for “civil war” – the establishment still deal in illusions.
Whether it is “conservative” (actually New York Times whore) David Brooks talking on Bloomberg television (I watched him in a team debate with his pal A. Huffington) or any other establisment voice the message is always the same…..
“We must come together to solve our problems”.
As if the two sides had the same OBJECTIVES and only differed on the means to achieve them.
Nothing could be further from the truth – the collectivist society desired by (amongst so many others) the employers of Mr Brooks at the New York Times want to create, is the polar opposite of the society that Founders believed in and that real conservatives (and libertarians) believe in now.
The conflict between civil society and collectivism may show itself in terms of specific policy issues – but the conflict is not a policy debate about means, it is a conflict about ends (objectives).
To complicate matters – many government employees support civil society (for example support for a Constitutional Republic, a strictly limited government, is a common political position in tehe American military – which is the real reason the left hate them so much). and many big businessmen (billionaires indeed) support moves towards collectivsm – and not just because of the drip feed of subsidy credit money they get from the Federal Reserve.
There are real ideals to be found among some of these people – I would say utterly evil ideals, but a belief system nevertheless.
And a system of beliefs with which there can be no compromise,. A collectivist is an ENEMY – he (or she) is just as much an enemy if they are zillionaire in a flash suit, or student thug smashing a shop window.
Sometimes parts (less clued in) parts of the establishment almost get it.
For example, recently Newsweek magazine (now mostly under the control of the more moderate wing o the Democrats) published a study.
The writers were honest enough to admit that they had expected the extremists in America to be ignorant and the moderates knowledgeable – but they had found the opposite.
On a test of general knowledge of the United States (especially political matters) it was the “moderates” who were ignorant (often of the most basic things) whereas the “extremeists” were knowlegable.
“Conservative Republicans” (the group most mocked as idiots by the media and the education system) tended to score the highest.
And the lowest?
“Consevative Democrats” – i.e. the moderate Demracts I believe that Newsweek is targeting as its audience.
This is all terrible (said the Newsweek article) it means that knowing more does not make you more “moderate” – so how are is everyone going to come together to “solve problems”.
So close – but no cigar.
The article still did not understand that both sides (people who support civil society, who reject the vast government that exists today – versus the “Progressive” Comrades) see EACH OTHER as “the problem”.
For example “how is America to educate its children” (one of the “problems” Newsweek cited) is an insulting (and utterly vile) question to someone on the pro freedom side.
We do not believe that nations have children, we believe that FAMILIES have children – and that education is nothing to do with Washington D.C. or any other distant bunch of politicians, administrators, and “experts”.
With the mindset that holds (“It takes a Village” style) that children should be under collective control, there can be no “comming together” – other than in battle and war.
Ditto with the question “what is the economic system of the United States” – Newsweek was astonished that more than 70% of people did not give the reply “capitalism” as in free enterprise or a market economy.
Note to Newsweek – that is because the United States has been moveing AWAY from a free enterprise market economy since at least 1913 – and now the move has gone so far that it makes no sense to call America a free economy.
The United States is not socialist (not even Britain is socialist), but it is certainly not free – it is an unstable mixture of freedom and tyranny, a mess that CAN NOT stay as it is.
“It is a house divided – I do not say that house will fall, but it will become all one thing, or all the other”.
The Comrades (the “Progressives” as they call themselves) understand this as well as we do – they want us dead (or enslaved), and I would not burst into tears if they all dropped dead.
The only people who do not understand this are the “moderates” – and as Newsweek’s own study shows, they lack basic knowledge.
When and if they get “tuned in” to politics it will not be about how everyone “comes together” it will be about CHOOSING SIDES in the struggle between freedom and tyranny.
I believe that the United States is where the key part of that struggle is and will take place.
A brilliant comment, Paul.
Excellent insight, Paul. I’ve long believed that the so-called “moderates” aren’t really moderate at all, but merely so ignorant (usually willfully so, out of sheer laziness) that they can’t choose a side. Nice of Newsweek to confirm this.
It’s only the ignorant who believe that it is somehow possible for there to be a “compromise” between good and evil (however you define those terms). At most there will be a temporary truce, but sooner or later one side has to win. It’s becoming more and more difficult to put off making that choice.
England’s own Daniel Hannan recently wrote a wonderful little book called The New Road to Serfdom. I haven’t seen it mentioned here on SI, but it should be. (It’s addressed to Americans [and everyone on this side of the Atlantic should read it], but it would be worthwhile for the rest of you, too.) In it he talks about people being “un-american” in the literal sense of that term, as in people whose views are “incompatible with the vision of the founders” and “who want to turn the United States into a fundamentally different country.” I think that term applies perfectly to the New York Times, Paul Krugman, and even Barack Obama. They are all on the wrong side of the divide.