Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market blog [5],
If there is one concept on Earth that has been the absolute bane of human existence (besides global elitism), it would have to be the concept of the “majority opinion”. The moment men began refusing to develop their own world views without first asking “What does everyone else think?”, they set themselves up for an endless future of failures. We are, of course, very social beings, and our natures drive us to seek those of like mind and spirit in what some might call a “tribal imperative”. However, this imperative to organize is often manipulated by those who understand the psychological mechanisms behind it. Oligarchs and tyrants abuse and exploit the inherent social natures of the people in order to fool them into abandoning their individuality for the sake of the group, or some abstract and dishonest ideal. When successful, the organization of a culture becomes bitter and twisted, changing from a tribe or a community of sovereign individuals, into a nightmare collective of soulless sheep.
Human beings desperately want to belong, but, they also desperately want to understand the environment around them. Often, the desire to belong and the desire to know the truth conflict. In some societies, in order to be accepted, one must give up on his search for truth and avoid eliciting the anger of others. This causes a severe mental and emotional disturbance within a population. In order to reconcile their conflicting needs within a system that does not nurture their quest for transparency, they tend to unconsciously cling to the “majority view” as if their very existence depends on it. The idea of the majority view or the “mainstream”, gives people the sense that they are a part of a group, and at the same time, gives them the illusion of being informed.
Their rationale is:
If most of the population believes something to be true, then, by “statistical law”, it most likely is true. Those who do not share in the majority opinion are therefore in opposition to statistical law; meaning they are behind the times, social deviants, or just plain crazy..
The problem is, history has shown that at pivotal moments in a society the “majority opinion” is usually WRONG. Any progress we do enjoy as a species is almost always due to the actions of tireless aware minorities, or even a lone man or woman who saw what the rest of us could not.
The greatest discoveries and truths have always been the product of individual thought and effort; numerous individuals working on parallel paths to generate new pieces of knowledge or more balanced and principled methods of living. There has never been such a thing as a collectivist realization, or a collectivist truth, and there never will be. Collectives do not think creatively or honestly. Their only concern is the survival of the system at all costs, and usually this requires a foundation of lies.
As a nation or culture edges towards collectivist tyranny, the battle-cry of the “majority opinion” will drown out all other reasonable voices. It has happened before, and unfortunately, it will happen again. In America today, I believe we are nearing the moment where the mass view becomes the only acceptable or legally sanctioned view. With the 2nd Amendment issue alone, the most common argument by anti-gun proponents is that “the majority opinion is on their side”. I’m here to point out that the “majority opinion” is, in fact, an illusion, and completely irrelevant. Here is why…
Most “Majorities” Are Fake Majorities
A recent poll on gun rights touted by Reuters stated that over 74% of the American public supported new and stricter gun laws including a ban on “automatic” (do they mean semi-automatic?) weapons:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/17/us-usa-guns-poll-idUSBRE90G1B120130117 [6]
Reuters pretends as if the poll is a sweeping vindication of anti-gun advocates, but what is the deeper story behind the poll? Reuters waits until the very last line of the article to mention that only 559 people participated, which hardly seems like a large enough pool to determine the overall position of the entire American public. Who were these people who were polled? Where were they polled? What questions were they asked and how were the questions posed? All of these factors can be manipulated during polling to produce a desired end result.
In April of 2012, a similar poll stated a somewhat similar case, but also relented that a “majority” of Americans supported most pro-gun positions, including conceal carry, and the need for civilians to intervene during a criminal event:
http://www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=5586 [7]
What the polls do not outline is the fact that many people are undecided on a number of details, and that there is no clear “majority” on any of them. Polling methods are indicative of the mainstream farce. In most cases, when a mass of people are presented as a “majority”, we do not know exactly how that conclusion was arrived at. Who decided these people were of the same mind and how?
Beyond this problem, those people who claim to be a part of the majority, are sometimes ill informed and do not have all the facts at their disposal. If there is indeed such a thing as any majority, it could only be the majority of people who do not know what to think! So, instead of the gun issue, for instance, being a fight between a “majority” of anti-gun advocates versus a “minority” of pro-gun advocates, we are actually looking at a fight between two educated MINORITIES, pro-gun and anti-gun, pro-liberty and anti-liberty, with an uneducated and oblivious public in-between.
To gun control propagandists I would point out that being able to lie to the unaware and con them into parroting your talking points is not the same as “having the majority on your side”. There may be some utility to retaining an army of bleating sheep, but in the end what do sheep really do beyond bleat, except eat, sleep, watch, and wait to see which way the winds blow…?
In A Republic The Majority View Does Not Matter
America was established as a Republic, not a Democracy, and in a republic the natural and inborn rights of the people, as embodied in the U.S. Constitution, are not subject to the mood swings of the masses. Each individual has certain rights, including the right to firearms and self-defense, REGARDLESS of what the so-called mainstream believes. That is to say, even if 99.9% of all people decided tomorrow that the right to free speech should be abolished, this would still be unconstitutional. The .1% who retain the right to free speech are not required to adhere to such law.
The same rule applies to the 2nd Amendment and gun ownership. When shills for gun control like Pierce Morgan claim that the majority supports them, what they don’t seem to grasp in their collectivist fervor is that even if this were true, it is a meaningless sentiment. Our rights as Americans are not allowed to be held hostage by 51% of the population (or any other claimed percentage). This is not how a republic operates.
Regardless of what is decided in the near term on gun control, we as citizens, protected by the legal shield of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, are not morally required to comply, even if the “majority” says we are. Mob rule is no rule.
The Majority Is Usually Wrong
As stated previously, the majority of people are generally ill-informed until the fight for a particular issue is long over. Only when the dust has settled do the masses take a side (usually the side of the winner). When the day finally arrives where we live within a system that nurtures free individual thought and our political leadership no longer seeks to manipulate the people in subversive fashion, then, perhaps, the situation will change. However, for now, the “majority” cannot be trusted to determine the course of the future for every single one of us. They are too open to exploitation, and too easy to sway.
While many see being a part of the mainstream as a safe method for remaining “in the know”, the opposite usually holds true. The mainstream is instead a place where people go so that they don’t have to think, and such an environment rarely finds its foundation standing firmly on truthful grounds.
If the majority was really a legitimate deciding factor in the course of history, then the first American Revolution would have never occurred in the first place. That fight was won by a minority of men and women who knew they were right in the face of a malicious world power structure supported by an ignorant subsection of the populous. Generations to come would be influenced by a small group of people who stood on honor and principle in the face of the tyranny of the “majority”.
Our True Enemy Is An Elitist Minority
Elite oligarchies are notorious for using the masses as a shield for their criminal behavior. Whenever an atrocity is committed, the elite claim it was for the “greater good”. That it was done in the name of “national security”. That the “majority” is in agreement with their methods. They do this in order to artificially inflate the size of the obstacle in our path and make us feel as though we stand against “the whole world”. They do this to make us imagine that we are too small to make a difference.
This tactic is also designed to redirect our energies away from the oligarchs and towards a nameless faceless mob of people who may or may not be aware that they are being used as cannon fodder.
As much as Liberty Movement proponents and 2nd Amendment guardians may despise the naïve prattle of the so-called “Left”, and the fact that their propaganda seems to be spreading like a malignant tumor across the country, from gun grabbing to socialized nanny government, we must remember that they are not who we are really at war with. They are merely spectators in the arena, and though their chanting against us might make us feel as though our opponent has won favor, in the end all will be decided by force of will between the two gladiators, and the bread and circuses will matter little.
The fight for liberty ultimately has nothing to do with awakening a “majority of people”. Rather, our goal should be to gather a tireless and courageous minority that can weather the coming storm. If we endure the crisis and remove the anti-liberty minority from the picture, the dumbfounded masses caught with their pants down from the very beginning will in the end simply follow along as they always do.
I have heard it argued recently that the gun control issue in particular is one of wider social implications. That pro-gun advocates are too “selfish” to see the big picture, and that we do not care about the safety of our nation as a whole. This is the collectivist methodology at work, utilizing the false “majority” as a tool for oppression. The fact is, Constitutionalists are the ONLY people in this country today that see the big picture, and the only people who are not thinking merely of themselves when it comes to the safety of our society. The average anti-gun socialist is acting not out of reason as they pretend, but out of fear. They want us to relinquish our rights so that they can retain the illusion of safety.
Behind this drive for a deluded sense of mainstream “compassion” and “compromise” is a concerted effort by the establishment to destroy the last barrier to overt centralization; the armed citizen. The language for this is already being carefully implanted:
We are a “fringe element”. We are “narcissists”. We are “barbarians”. We are clinging to the last vestiges of an archaic philosophy which no longer applies to our modern and “civilized” age. The vast “majority” is against us, and we should shut up, comply, abdicated the fight, and take our seat at the collectivist table while one still remains open to us.
Okay…so we’re barbarians. We’re not interested in a “seat at the table”. We are not interested in participating in the lie. We are not interested in playing a bit part in the grand faux theater of the “global community”. If the majority of Americans really do believe that the death of the Constitution is the best course for our culture, then the majority has gone clinically insane, or pathetically soft, and has abandoned all conscience. We will remain in our little “minority”, and we will put a stop to the progression of collectivized despotism without them, and they can do what they please in the meantime, as long as they stay out of our way.