Reality For Radicals
Excerpt:
As the disaffected cacophony rises, radical autocrats turn to repression and violence. Lenin died before he could completely terrorize the Soviet Union’s population; Stalin had to finish the job. The danger for America is as Obama’s failures mount, and especially when the depression resumes in full force, he too will turn to repressive violence. The portents are obvious. The revelations keep coming about the extent of the surveillance state. Around the country, police are becoming militarized. Any department of the federal government worth its salt has its own heavily armed police force and SWAT teams (see “The Fully Operational Police State,” July 29, 2013). The Department of Homeland Security buys a lot of ammunition, supposedly because 70,000 civilian public employees need three to four times as many rounds per year as soldiers in the military.
Robert Kennedy once said: “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why...I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” Kennedy’s first question is that of the scientist, who attempts to discover the answer, and the engineer and the inventor, who devise something useful from that answer. Kennedy’s second question is that of the dictator, who believes reality can be governed by his or her dreams. Statists from Lenin to Obama have claimed their dreams confer morally superiority over the world’s scientists, engineers, inventors, and entrepreneurs—the doers who in some way make reality dance to their tune. The statist dream has been a nightmare of death and destruction. Free minds and free markets have created realities far more wondrous than anything statists have ever dreamed or governments produced, and will continue to do so.
As the disaffected cacophony rises, radical autocrats turn to repression and violence. Lenin died before he could completely terrorize the Soviet Union’s population; Stalin had to finish the job. The danger for America is as Obama’s failures mount, and especially when the depression resumes in full force, he too will turn to repressive violence. The portents are obvious. The revelations keep coming about the extent of the surveillance state. Around the country, police are becoming militarized. Any department of the federal government worth its salt has its own heavily armed police force and SWAT teams (see “The Fully Operational Police State,” July 29, 2013). The Department of Homeland Security buys a lot of ammunition, supposedly because 70,000 civilian public employees need three to four times as many rounds per year as soldiers in the military.
Robert Kennedy once said: “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why...I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” Kennedy’s first question is that of the scientist, who attempts to discover the answer, and the engineer and the inventor, who devise something useful from that answer. Kennedy’s second question is that of the dictator, who believes reality can be governed by his or her dreams. Statists from Lenin to Obama have claimed their dreams confer morally superiority over the world’s scientists, engineers, inventors, and entrepreneurs—the doers who in some way make reality dance to their tune. The statist dream has been a nightmare of death and destruction. Free minds and free markets have created realities far more wondrous than anything statists have ever dreamed or governments produced, and will continue to do so.
