Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market blog [9],
There are two types of people in this world; those who worship the ideal of centralized command authority, and those who do not. Those who value freedom regardless of risk or pain, and those who value slavery in a desperate bid to avoid risk and pain. When I consider the ultimate folly of man, in the end I look to the meek and unquestioning masses who strive to avoid risk, because it is they who always end up feeding the machines of war, despair, and tyranny. The power thirsty halls of elitism surely instigate and manipulate the tides of this wretched ocean of quivering souls, but ultimately, the weak-hearted and weak minded make all terrible conquests possible.
They live by the rule of fear, and their fear drives them to seek control; control of their environment, control of others, and by extension they believe, control of the future. They attempt to mitigate their overwhelming fear by containing the world and sterilizing it of everything wild, untamed, and unknown. They dream of a society of pure predictability, and zero responsibility. They are willing to sacrifice almost anything to attain this position of artificial comfort.
The concept of “big government” appeals to such people for many reasons…
Government in most cases is nothing but an abstraction. It is merely a tool that serves the interests of a particular group of people at any given time. Modern politics is an expression of the foolish cat fight between factions of people to decide who gets to wield the weapon of government and impose their ideology on the rest of us. At least, that’s what it almost always devolves into. The great illusion of the system, though, is that ANY group of average people ever actually wields any power. The truth is, big governments are always operated by very small and exclusive clubs of root beneficiaries out of the sight of the population.
The smaller this dominant group becomes, the more corrupt and criminal the government generally is. A government reaches a state of despotism whenever its functions are twisted for the sake of an elite few to the detriment of the common man, and when it ignores the natural inborn rights of the individual for the sake of some fabricated collective . If one were to closely examine the birth of every iron-fisted oligarchy throughout history, they would find a cyclical pattern of centralization; the removal of checks and balances, the removal of legitimate public involvement in the political process, a dependent and infantized citizenry, and the rise of a “bureaucratic class” which regards itself as superior and born to lead. All steps taking place within Western societies today.
Unfortunately, the masses tend to view big government as an inevitability of life; as a natural extension of culture. Rarely if ever do they ask what tangible purpose it serves. Are they really getting what they want out of their government? Or, is the government taking what it wants from them?
I have always found the worshipful attitude that some citizens ascribe to government simultaneously fascinating and disturbing, because these people are not bowing down to a wise and benevolent entity. Rather, they are bowing down to their own delusions of what they believe that entity to be. The most dangerous and insidious of governments present themselves as a kind of social vanity mirror. They allow the citizenry to project their collective desires, biases, shortcomings, and fears, and reflect back an image that entices and placates the majority. The lies and manipulations of big government are designed to satiate our basest fantasies, but what we see as a concrete edifice of political and legal might, in the end, is a mirage mired in the fog of our own naïve expectations.
So, the question again arises; if the structure of big government is built upon deceit and misrepresentation, what tangible purpose does it really serve?
The answer is no purpose…at least, no purpose that elevates and enriches the public at large.
Big government is not a “necessary evil”. It is just evil. Like the ring of Sauron, it lures in the weak with promises of power, but this power is a ruse. Each side of our false left/right paradigm, Democrat and Republican, thinks that if only THEY were the bearers of the ring they would “finally use it for good”. But once in their possession, they are overtaken, overwhelmed, and corrupted by personal temptation.
The Democratic Party, with all of its proclamations of humanism and respect for civil liberties, is a perfect example. How quickly did the rank and file Democrats turn away from their anti-war, anti-torture, anti-banker, anti-surveillance, anti-tyranny stance once Barack Obama, a self proclaimed Democrat, was placed in office? Very quickly!
And what about the common Republican? How many of them utterly abandoned their ideals of limited government, reduced spending, Constitutional rights, and Christian understanding as soon as Bush and the Neo-Con regime was installed? Most of them!
And when all is said and done, who has reaped profits and gained dominance during both disastrous administrations? The corporate high priests and international banking cartels, not the oblivious participants of the fake political theater. Yet, a masochistic cycle of misplaced trust in the system on the part of the masses continues...
If these latest signs of big government corruption aren’t enough to make the public question the validity of the establishment, I’m not sure what will…
The Rape Of Cyprus
Even in the face of unmitigated government theft, I still hear the occasional rationalization of the Cyprus debacle. Defenders of the bailout measures (which the EU demanded) allowing the confiscation of private citizen savings to pay off government mismanaged debt, argue two things:
1) The banks that were targeted contained “Russian blood money” and hidden funds, so confiscation really amounted to a “punishment of rich criminals” rather than the Cyprus public.
2) It is “better” that the citizens go along with the confiscation of a percentage of their accounts, rather than lose everything through collapse.
Just to be clear, any sizable Russian funds being stored in Cyprus were removed before the bailout measures were instituted. Therefore, the assertion that such people were “punished” is a lie and a distraction. The Russian scapegoat was merely being promoted by global financiers and political elites in order to con people around the world (not just those in Cyprus) to accept the concept of government theft of private funds as being “moral” under “certain extraneous circumstances”. When a government wants you to set aside your conscience in support of an immoral action that serves their interests, they will almost always conjure a false villain and engineered consequences for you to direct your fear and anger at. Once they can convince you to abandon your own principles to smite an imaginary enemy or avoid a manufactured threat, even if only one time, it will be much easier for them to convince you again a second time.
Large and corrupt governments love to use the magic of the false choice. For instance, “…it is better to sacrifice some of your money and your principles to the establishment than it is to live through total collapse of the nation…” This false choice process, though, never ends. The offending government will demand more property and more freedom from the citizenry everyday while constantly warning that if we do not submit, the alternative will be “far worse”.
The truth is, Cyprus is not the issue. What the disaster in Cyprus reflects, however, concerns us all. It is a moment of precedence; an action which sets the stage for the final destruction of the idea of private property. It dissolves one of the final barriers to total government control. Governments and elitists have always stolen from the public through misspent taxation and rampant inflation, but with Cyprus, we see a renewed feudalistic paradigm. The EU and the banking hierarchy are sending a message to the Western world: You are now their personal emergency fund, and nothing you own is actually yours anymore.
When an institution confiscates property and capital at will from a subdued and frightened populace without consent, they are essentially exploiting the labor of that populace. In any culture or language, this is called “slavery”.
Private Corporations Openly Dictating The Law
As most in the Liberty Movement know, the seeds of Fascism germinate in the soil where the corporate world meets the political world. This is one of the primary reasons why we will stop at nothing to eliminate entities like the Federal Reserve; a privately run banking cartel that mingles with government yet answers to no one, including Congress or the people. The Fed has existed since 1913, and has dominated the value and circulation of our currency ever since. However, today, they are taking on new powers…
As a part of the recent bailout bonanza and the legislation surrounding it, the Fed has begun writing operational policy for other private banking institutions:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/26/us-citigroup-moneylaundering-idUSBRE92P0OO20130326 [10]
The transition has been subtle but the implications are dangerous. The Fed is becoming a regulatory body with expanding influence outside of the electoral process. It is preparing the ground for other private central banks to become fully unaccountable governing structures. Right now, they are limited to the banking sector, but eventually, this dynamic will poison every aspect of the financial world until every economic decision will be made without any oversight from the public.
Moving in a slightly different direction, the Federal Government is beginning to establish law which removes the ability of the public to have any means of redress against particular corporations. The ‘Monsanto Protection Act’ hidden within the pages of the HR 933 spending bill creates special circumstances that protect the GMO producer from litigation and public examination over the dangerous genetic products it markets. This legislation, in essence, builds a coalition between Monsanto and the government, and even allows Monsanto in some cases to dictate what the government can and cannot do when dealing with GMO’s.
The Obama Administration’s support of this bill should be a shock to any environmentally inclined Democrat, and any Democrat who is still willing to defend Obama after learning of this legislation, in my opinion, is a lost cause.
This move on the part of our government is striking because of its open criminality. It shows that we have entered a new stage of the totalitarian process; one that will invariably lead us to catastrophe.
Legislation By Special Interest Group
In the halls of big government, politicians do not produce major legislation. Rather, bureaucrats and think tanks fashion policy while elected officials serve as mouthpieces and middlemen.
How often do we discover after the passage of particularly nefarious pieces of legislation that the politicians who voted for them NEVER read the bills themselves?
This past week, sources within NY governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration claimed that he didn’t actually read the NY Safe Act before championing it, and blamed the vast mistakes and unconstitutional oversteps of the bill on Mayor Bloomberg and the Brady Center.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/gov_faking_care_of_business_execs_9uIcEq5lJPk96ayylaRAGL [11]
Now, I do not believe that Cuomo was not aware of the implications of the Safe Act, even if he didn’t read the bill. But I do believe that the bill was drafted purely by special interest groups like the Brady Center without any oversight from actual state legislators, who then passed it overnight without a second thought.
In a big government system, legislative wrangling is non-stop. A bureaucracy thrives on the endless introduction of new laws and new restrictions, and so it makes perfect sense that political representatives, who now act merely as mascots, never have the time to read all the paperwork. Why would they read it, when they are no longer making decisions on such policies anyway? All they have to do is vote how they are told to vote by their handlers, and trust that they will be protected by the establishment from public anger.
Legislation by proxy is rampant in our government today, and it begs us to consider this - If our government has become so oversized and complex that our elected leaders can no longer oversee the actual writing of legislation and must use private think tanks to write it for them, perhaps we should cut the system down until their work load is manageable. The alternative is a legal and political structure that is engineered entirely by obscure interest groups with an agenda, and this is highly unacceptable.
Complete Disregard For Individual Rights
In the evolution of big government, there comes a point at which the oligarchy has attained enough power that it feels safe in admitting its true intentions. Usually, this is done in the name of the “greater good”. Sometimes, they don’t even try to sugar coat it.
This past week, NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg in an unguarded moment stated the underlying philosophy behind the impositions of government control over the people. When questioned about the Constitutionality of the growing drone surveillance grid in American skies, Bloomberg had this to say:
“Everybody wants their privacy, but I don’t know how you’re going to maintain it. It’s just we’re going into a different world, uncharted, and, like it or not, what people can do, what governments can do, is different. And you can to some extent control, but you can’t keep the tides from coming in.”
“The argument against using automation, it’s this craziness– oh, it’s Big Brother. Get used to it.”
And there you have it. The new age (for Bloomberg and big government elites like him) is a place in which government is separate and above the people. The government does not exist to serve the citizenry; the citizenry exists to serve the government. Privacy is a privilege that governments can take anytime they wish. Citizens, being slaves, should not expect such privileges. And, this subjugated nightmare world is a place that we must accept as a natural extension of progress. Big Brother is the future, so grow up and “get used to it”…
I will not be “getting used to it”, and neither will millions of Americans like me. We'll tear the whole monstrosity down first.
Institutions of law and order are supposed to reflect the highest inherent principles of humanity and defend those principles regardless of the nature of the times. Honor and conscience do not suddenly become obsolete simply because danger looms, or catastrophe strikes.
Big government bastardizes the original intent of the founders, who formed a small subservient central federal structure to fulfill one purpose – as a protector of the natural freedoms of the population. The federal system was never meant to have any domestic power beyond this task, nor should it. Today, as we have shown over and over again, the centralized political behemoth we live under is absolutely unnecessary and completely destructive to the freedom and prosperity of the culture it was originally tasked to defend. It can and must be dissolved, and it is time for average Americans to deeply and seriously ponder this option rather than ignorantly assume that because it exists, it should exist. Otherwise, like a weaponized cancer, it will devour what is left of the healthy fabric of our society and destroy whatever good remains within us.