Just How Bad Is It?
Feb 27, 2016 8:25:10 GMT -5
Post by Michael Downing on Feb 27, 2016 8:25:10 GMT -5
bastionofliberty.blogspot.com/2016/02/just-how-bad-is-it.html
Just How Bad Is It?
Things are bad enough that there’s talk of secession, of massive civil disobedience, even of revolution. Trust in government and the political system has evaporated. Police forces and other law enforcement agencies are viewed with increasing suspicion – often a fully justified suspicion. People are building disaster stockpiles. Middle class men are arming themselves and banding into cadres for the defense of their neighborhoods against an anticipated wave of racial and ethnic violence. Women are becoming fearful of being alone in public. Parents of minor children seldom allow them to be alone outside the family home.
That’s how bad it is.
There’s a lot of truth in that. Yet the problems delineated above aren’t all soluble in gunpowder. We have surrendered meekly to several of our most difficult problems, as if we individual Americans had no responsibility for taking part in their correction.
Consider the collapse of American education. This is a multi-pronged problem, to be sure, but at one level – the government-run “public schools” – local control was once a reality. Yet American parents, the very people who should have stood firm against the removal of that control, acquiesced to its loss. That loss is the principal cause of the dilution of the schools’ educational mission. Don’t take my word for it; study the history of special-interest intrusion into primary and secondary education and decide for yourself.
A related problem, the explosion of real-estate taxes to the extent that they often exceed the mortgage payment, is another case. Those taxes are set by school boards, town, and county governments, all of which are directly within the control of the localities they albatross. Where were the voters who had it in their power to “throw the rascals out” and install a fresh, hopefully better set? The majority of them didn’t even bother to show up at the polls.
Those things, and others I’m sure any Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch can enumerate, were within Americans’ control. We simply failed to control them.
There is no Last Graf. Things are bad. They might not be reparable by peaceful means. That often unarticulated sense is what propels the burgeoning disaster stockpiles, the accelerated purchases of arms and ammunition, and the informal neighborhood-defense militias. It also animates a great deal of conservative sentiment as it’s expressed on the Web.
Of one thing I am certain: the political system as it stands, having been massaged over the decades into a servant of the interests of political elite against those of the citizenry, will be of little use to us in correcting our social, economic, and political maladies. More will be required of us. It was not always so, but then, this is 2016: a year the Founding Fathers would surely look upon with sadness.
Just How Bad Is It?
Things are bad enough that there’s talk of secession, of massive civil disobedience, even of revolution. Trust in government and the political system has evaporated. Police forces and other law enforcement agencies are viewed with increasing suspicion – often a fully justified suspicion. People are building disaster stockpiles. Middle class men are arming themselves and banding into cadres for the defense of their neighborhoods against an anticipated wave of racial and ethnic violence. Women are becoming fearful of being alone in public. Parents of minor children seldom allow them to be alone outside the family home.
That’s how bad it is.
There’s a lot of truth in that. Yet the problems delineated above aren’t all soluble in gunpowder. We have surrendered meekly to several of our most difficult problems, as if we individual Americans had no responsibility for taking part in their correction.
Consider the collapse of American education. This is a multi-pronged problem, to be sure, but at one level – the government-run “public schools” – local control was once a reality. Yet American parents, the very people who should have stood firm against the removal of that control, acquiesced to its loss. That loss is the principal cause of the dilution of the schools’ educational mission. Don’t take my word for it; study the history of special-interest intrusion into primary and secondary education and decide for yourself.
A related problem, the explosion of real-estate taxes to the extent that they often exceed the mortgage payment, is another case. Those taxes are set by school boards, town, and county governments, all of which are directly within the control of the localities they albatross. Where were the voters who had it in their power to “throw the rascals out” and install a fresh, hopefully better set? The majority of them didn’t even bother to show up at the polls.
Those things, and others I’m sure any Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch can enumerate, were within Americans’ control. We simply failed to control them.
There is no Last Graf. Things are bad. They might not be reparable by peaceful means. That often unarticulated sense is what propels the burgeoning disaster stockpiles, the accelerated purchases of arms and ammunition, and the informal neighborhood-defense militias. It also animates a great deal of conservative sentiment as it’s expressed on the Web.
Of one thing I am certain: the political system as it stands, having been massaged over the decades into a servant of the interests of political elite against those of the citizenry, will be of little use to us in correcting our social, economic, and political maladies. More will be required of us. It was not always so, but then, this is 2016: a year the Founding Fathers would surely look upon with sadness.