This is what passes for heroism these days: finding new and creative ways to avoid reality; exploiting and empowering the inner 'victim' of people who don't want to deal with the real world by changing their own behavior.Gagdad Bob: The left worships the anti hero, the authentic nihilist "who sees through the sham of hierarchy, eternal values, and first principles. The left worships these monsters . . . ."[2]
I know all about this because I deal with people like that every day in my profession. They don't want to change their behavior, they want a pill to make themselves feel better so they can keep on doing what they have always been doing no matter how destructive or irresponsible or counterproductive it is.
* * * *
Of course, it goes without saying that instead of recognizing the problem is their own behavior and their denial of reality, the statist will continue to insist that more regulation, more government, more telling people what to do and how to live their lives is the solution to all problems.[1]
Now, the Framers of our (now lost) Constitution were well aware of the dangers of faction and devised a scheme that more or less kept the factional fingers at the throats of other faction members rather than the factional boots on the necks of the sovereign people. Whether they foresaw the virulence of Marxist class warfare or modern nihilism (and the addled adulation of bloody revolution as the cure for life's little irritations) and thought of their coming under the rubric of faction (or sedition) I do not know. Certainly, they understood that unchecked faction would always go somewhere bad, but felt no need to speculate on how bad it could get if but the right checks on faction were devised.
Those checks were defined and limited powers for the Congress, federalism, and regular episodes of political sobriety enforced by a knowledgeable electorate jealous of its sovereignty. In particular, the Framers contemplated that even if pure factional politics prevailed at the federal level, the extent of the damage that could result would only be within the strict boundaries of Article I, Section Eight, which listed the only areas within which Congress could legislate.
That scheme led to an unparalleled period of personal liberty never before seen in the history of man but, as some understand, it was not to persist in its original form. Thanks to the Supreme Court the original Constitution was interpreted out of existence so that the Interstate Commerce Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment ballooned out like a star that becomes a red giant and consumes the planets that had before orbited at a safe distance from it.
Now federalism is virtually nonexistent with the states mere lap dogs to the Federal Government. States are mere administrative appendages to the Sovereign Unitary Goverment (SUG) who chase deadbeat dads, enforce parking ordinances, and provide emergency medical services to the illegal aliens who flood the country due to the studied indifference of the SUG. The entire spectrum of political power is now available to the factions and – given the sickness underlying our current redistributionist and anti-Western politics -– the danger to our liberty is immense.
Separation of powers is still a viable check on faction but, like an extension cord with too many other appliances attached, it is unlikely to be able to carry the full burden of limiting deleterious faction.
The electorate still has vast theoretical power but I doubt that the Framers contemplated the extent to which the press, at least until the advent of the internet, would have such high barriers to entry and be dominated by the same faction so in love with statism and so hostile to the European culture of the nation.
Notes
[1] "Heroes And Villains." By Dr. Sanity, 5/13/08.
[2] "The Cluelesscide of the West." By Gagdad Bob, One Cosmos, 12/18/07.
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