I Want My Freedom Back
Earlier this week, edweaver submitted a post, "Does a person have to die to be free?" In it, he asked: "Is death the only way to rid yourself of government?" I submitted a response keyed to that question, and the response developed a thread. However, I wanted to submit what I said to the entire Gulch community to see what everyone had to say about it. Here goes:
One realization that has come to me, far slower than it should have, is that it is not enough to be against statism and government, one has to be for something, to have a vision of where one wants to go. The Fountainhead sounds the tocsin against the encroaching state, and Atlas Shrugged painted the dystopian future after that encroaching state has smothered everything in its path. However, Rand never presented a vision of a world in which the things she was fighting for—liberty, limited government, rational self-interest, and capitalism—had triumphed. One of the reasons I wrote The Golden Pinnacle, which you read, Ed, is to, if not show a world where those ideals had triumphed, to at least show what America was like when we approached the pinnacle of freedom during the Industrial Revolution. It is the first of a trilogy, and the third novel will offer the ultimate utopian vision.
You can look at the current nightmare and despair. You ask: “how do ever get the government out of our lives?” Reformulate your question: “how do we restore freedom in America?” It may seem a trivial point, but the first question is akin to: “how do we get the cockroaches out of our kitchen?” It’s a valid question, and the cockroaches have to be eradicated, but it’s mundane and uninspiring. Restoring freedom, on the other hand, inspires, and freedom’s proponents aren’t left just pointing out the deleterious consequences of statism and coercion (even, or especially, for the so-called beneficiaries), but can instead frame the issues in terms of people building better lives for themselves and their families, unobstructed by the state, reaping their just rewards, and rediscovering respect for themselves and their fellow citizens. People need to strive for higher goals than cockroach eradication. (Even that task sounds more palatable if you reformulate it is a part of the job of making your kitchen sparkling clean.)
If we Gulchers frame our goal as restoring freedom, then that can be done in ways large and small. Realize that like all corrupt, overreaching, overextended, overly indebted governments, ours will fail. A big part of our job will be done, but if all we can offer is: “told you so, told you so,” it will not matter. Winston Churchill said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.” After the collapse, many Americans will be ready to try the right thing: restoring freedom. The government will be bankrupt and continuation of the welfare state and foreign adventurism will be fiscally impossible. But intellectual revolutions always precede actual revolutions, so it is now that we must make the case not just against current arrangements, but the positive case for restoring freedom, in every way that we can. That’s what leaders do.
Thoughts?
One realization that has come to me, far slower than it should have, is that it is not enough to be against statism and government, one has to be for something, to have a vision of where one wants to go. The Fountainhead sounds the tocsin against the encroaching state, and Atlas Shrugged painted the dystopian future after that encroaching state has smothered everything in its path. However, Rand never presented a vision of a world in which the things she was fighting for—liberty, limited government, rational self-interest, and capitalism—had triumphed. One of the reasons I wrote The Golden Pinnacle, which you read, Ed, is to, if not show a world where those ideals had triumphed, to at least show what America was like when we approached the pinnacle of freedom during the Industrial Revolution. It is the first of a trilogy, and the third novel will offer the ultimate utopian vision.
You can look at the current nightmare and despair. You ask: “how do ever get the government out of our lives?” Reformulate your question: “how do we restore freedom in America?” It may seem a trivial point, but the first question is akin to: “how do we get the cockroaches out of our kitchen?” It’s a valid question, and the cockroaches have to be eradicated, but it’s mundane and uninspiring. Restoring freedom, on the other hand, inspires, and freedom’s proponents aren’t left just pointing out the deleterious consequences of statism and coercion (even, or especially, for the so-called beneficiaries), but can instead frame the issues in terms of people building better lives for themselves and their families, unobstructed by the state, reaping their just rewards, and rediscovering respect for themselves and their fellow citizens. People need to strive for higher goals than cockroach eradication. (Even that task sounds more palatable if you reformulate it is a part of the job of making your kitchen sparkling clean.)
If we Gulchers frame our goal as restoring freedom, then that can be done in ways large and small. Realize that like all corrupt, overreaching, overextended, overly indebted governments, ours will fail. A big part of our job will be done, but if all we can offer is: “told you so, told you so,” it will not matter. Winston Churchill said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.” After the collapse, many Americans will be ready to try the right thing: restoring freedom. The government will be bankrupt and continuation of the welfare state and foreign adventurism will be fiscally impossible. But intellectual revolutions always precede actual revolutions, so it is now that we must make the case not just against current arrangements, but the positive case for restoring freedom, in every way that we can. That’s what leaders do.
Thoughts?
