Freedom is a Wonderful Thing to Have and a Horrible Waste When Lost

 

Let us start our discussion today with some information directly from another article titled The Pelosi Principle by Terry Jeffrey written for Townhall. The article was about the Republican replacement for Obamacare which while not being everything many of us would want, was still a better deal for much of America. This quote though tells a lot about what has gone terribly wrong with American society and paints a dim view that this can ever change as both sides of the aisle agree that the old way must die and government prevail. The article states, “Both Republicans and Democrats have rejected the principle of subsidiarity that once governed American health care: Individuals who could not pay for their own care were covered by private, particularly religious, charities and local governments.” Despite everything else, at the base of the opposition to Obamacare was the opposition to the Nanny State and its insistence on being all things to all people. Forced government insurance was just the latest outrage where government demanded they be given the responsibility for our care and as usual their ideas left much to be desired.

 

This problem has been a long time coming and is not about to wane any time in the future without a near revolution by the American public. Not a real, grab the gun off the mantle, revolution but one where the American people take the power back from the government by selecting a whole new type of political representation, regular, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (or watch at end of article) representation. This would have to be an all-encompassing movement which will only arise when things reach an intolerable level and when failure means the end of the democratic process because the government has even assumed making the choices as to who will lead and who is subjugated. One can only hope that such a time is not quite yet upon us, though with some of what has occurred there have been claims and fears from both sides that the other is attempting to take control of the governing processes and end any true freedom of choice. History has proven that one side’s claims are merely an excuse for them to enact just such fascist governance and the other side’s claims are actually valid fears. But this article is to tell the story of how we reached this point.

 

This all started with something everybody would know from history if such was still taught in the public and private school systems. Not all schools are delinquent of such but far too many are which has made ask the average person in the street history and civics questions something which makes for great laughs while others of us just shake our heads and fear for the future. We know that a people who do not know from whence they arrived at this day will have no idea where they will be going as the tomorrows pass. The beginning of our story is the Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, especially the Bill of Rights. One should read the Declaration of Independence as it is a litany of things in a governance which should be feared and the people should ever be watchful against their reoccurrence. There is a political theory which describes the cycle of governance from bondage to freedom and back to bondage called the Tytler Cycle of Power in Governance (see below). There have been many debates in universities back in our day and hopefully these debates continue as they raise awareness and strengthen societal awareness in the upcoming generation. The debate in my day over where in the circle we stood was over which it might be; Selfishness, Complacency, Apathy or Dependence. Nobody ever claimed Abundance and a few would claim we were on the verge of Bondage and the others were completely beyond consideration. One can only wonder where the debate would go today.

 

Tytler Cycle of Power in Governance

 

We got to wherever in the cycle we actually stand from a time when faith was high and courage was felt by a strong and steady leadership and their following and from that they struck forth and gained liberty. The American Revolution was led in many communities by their religious leaders who were men of sword and musket as well as the Bible. These men made up the Black Robe Regiments and were why the British often burned churches and would hang clergy on sight if they were at all suspect of preaching about freedom from bondage and King. The Revolutionary War was fought by people of faith and courage who gained freedom and a new nation. There were few large cities and nothing even approaching a modern city with London being amongst the largest in that day and Boston, New York and Philadelphia being amongst the largest cities but still the denizens were largely self-reliant. This was the way of life in early America and this was how it remained until sometime into the mid-1800’s. The problems began in the largest of cities which would be found on the eastern seaboard, west coast and along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Within the largest cities people began to depend on certain public services. There was the water systems replacing the need to draw one’s own water, sewage replacing digging your own outbuilding, trash pick-up, and public transportation which was often bartered out to a private service whose owner often became quite wealthy as did the private purveyor of any other service which the cities licensed.

 

The services provided through public/private contract or by the government directly such as police forces, judicial systems, street maintenance, street lighting, gas lines, fire departments and as time went more and more provided by the cities. Then there were the specialty services which cared for services which many of the people either found distasteful or were simply incapable of doing for themselves. Some of these services had always required a professional but many had also been performed by the average person before the advent of large cities with a professional core of providers whose prices were controlled by demand and number of people providing such services. Examples include the obvious such as shoeing horses, blacksmithing, locksmith and others and then ones we have forgotten in our modern world such as chimneysweeps, milkman, ice deliveries and other such services. Some still exist in smaller towns or rural areas or as specialty service in cities. What these specialty and general services started was the first stages of dependence which as long as it is kept to essential services is fine, but it did not remain this way. There used to be a safety net which provided for those people who were down on their luck or simply had fallen from the normal routines of the society and were dependent on the good graces of others for their sustenance and other needs. These people were served by religious groups, the churches, synagogues and other religious congregations and charitable organizations. This was the way of things for over a century until the onset of the initial takeover by the government which began with unemployment insurance which was not any form of insurance as much as it was a tax and spend means for government to reduce the power of people and increase the power of the government. This was followed by Social Security and soon thereafter adoption services were slowly subsumed by the government.

 

This continued with the government granting college scholarships first through grants for veterans through the G I Bill and then loans and Pell Grants. The largest expansion of the government came under Lyndon Baines Johnson and his Great Society which enlarged or created such programs as Welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, National Endowments for Arts and Humanities, Public Broadcasting, Cultural Centers, Homeless Shelters and a plethora of other programs all based on a simple principle, the government was going to save people from being preached to just to receive help as the religious institutions were forcing people to suffer. They were saving the world from religion. In time the governments also provided the cities with transportation funds to assist public transportation in an attempt to replace the personal vehicle, environmental assistance and codes, consumer protection because people were incapable of not buying substandard goods, public housing so those on welfare could live without shame in any neighborhood where section eight housing was declared which was anywhere except the most exclusive neighborhoods, labor regulations and it continued into every realm of life even eventually to include the water permitted to be flushed by a toilet.

 

The government did not stop there and they are currently working on the next and near final stage of their plans to completely control all of society, the replacement of the children from parenting by amateurs. That is the theory behind the plan proposed by Hillary Clinton with her claim that “it takes a village to raise a child.” She made an entire book from the idea, It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us in which she gave examples of such as African villages and spent most of the book encouraging new programs and government controls over ever more of people’s lives. Some of the programs and ideas coming out from her writings include Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, Community Policing, the Brady Bill, Amber Alerts, immunizations, State Children’s Health Insurance Program, financial regulation, expanded Child Tax Credits, Minimum Wage increases, and the one making so much of the news of late, Universal health care. Government appears targeting even more of our lives and taking from us every choice as to how we live our lives, what we teach our children, what we are allowed to drive, where we are allowed to drive and how we can raise our children. Some schools have told their students that their parents do not have the power to deny them use of a telephone, forbid them access to a computer, refuse them their rights to watch what they want on television or other means of punishment including spanking, grounding or forcing them to eat foods they dislike and told students as early as first grade that they can report any violations of these rights by their parents to the school and then the school will report their parents to the government and the problem will be taken care of and they will have their rights respected. That is true, the child has inalienable rights which a parent may not infringe and amongst these rights is anything they desire. Of course once the parent has been duly punished for ignoring these rules, the child will just love the foster home and the parenting they will receive there.

 

One can only wonder where this will end and many will tell you it will not end, or at least not end well. There is actually no limit any longer as to how far into your life government can impose. Already the wild stories that the government can turn on the camera attached to your computers, the camera attached to your phone (always keep them camera facing the table), turn on the microphone to your computers or phones, and have microphones and cameras spread all over your town or city and can also monitor any cameras which are electronically monitored despite what you have been told by the security company, every keystroke made on your computer and a log of every web location you have visited, and darn near anything else with soon coming to any electronic device bought new will also be able to report the amounts of electricity used as well as your electric, water, gas or other meters reporting your use and any notable changes such as a guest visiting (additional use especially during times you are not usually home) but all this only if you reside in the United States or are under suspicions by the NSA, CIA, FBI or any other intelligence agency including allies of the United States as the intelligence services of the Western World are capable of collecting every electronic piece of information on virtually every person within the United States, its protectorates, any ten nations the United States chooses with the exceptions of India and China (really way too many people) all with some abilities to spare. The problem is calling up the data on any one person unless specified in advance is a bit tiresome but then there are numerous government employees whose tiresome job it is to extract exactly just such data on demand, lucky them, or on their own whim if they can cover their tracks. The claims by President Trump that his phones were being listened to are true but then so were probably mine and yours and your best friend, worst enemy, and the past five-thousand people you have passed on the street because everybody has had their information gathered because it is far more simple to gather all the information than to choose whose you actually need. With the NSA’s new data center in Nevada outside Reno (pictured below) that is a simple deed and they can store all of it to be retrieved as required at any time. It simply requires the personnel to do so and that they also have.

 

National Security Agency NSA Utah Data Center

That is where freedom now stands in the United States and much of the world today and that is the real problem we all face. But do not worry; most of us are of little concern so as long as we behave as expected we are safe. We hope that reading Beyond the Cusp is not a triggering exercise for which your data would be pulled up, but why worry as too many things likely will do the trick anyways.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

 

 

 

The Fascist Playbook is Being Repeated Now

 

There is a reason why the modern education system no longer teaches Civics or History and the classes they teach in these areas are tainted and deceitful. They decry the Founding Father of the United States as slave-owning white-privileged oppressive supremacists. They teach that the Constitution is not specific in its wording and must be interpreted for the modern age because they could not have imagined telephones and cars and jet planes and modernity. The Constitution is outdated and must be replaced with modern ideas. These ideas are the liberal playbook with the rules which are now ruling many universities. Ask students in many universities about the First Amendment and its guarantee of freedom of speech and you will hear that free speech is outdated and needs to be limited as much speech needs to be banned as some thoughts need to be silenced and no longer permitted. As the indoctrination system continues to replace education the rest of the Constitutional rights stipulated in the Bill of Rights will be eroded until they will disappear totally from the codes within the American culture. But the reasons go deeper as without knowledge about the true history and the processes used by previous totalitarian takeovers, it allows the opening for it to be repeated yet again. George Santayana was dead on correct when he stated that, “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

 

What history is the United States heading towards at a breakneck speed has struck many places before throughout human history. The technique has been utilized repeatedly and the first signs are already appearing. The initial step is for small bands of the party which is seeking permanent power to foment distrust and the legitimacy of the governing system. They claim that elections are tainted and that the current office holders fixed or tampered with the election often by using outside assistance from a perceived enemy power. This is followed by violent demonstrations which begin as localized often in areas controlled by those seeking to realize permanent power. The protests continue and soon become an expected and almost routine occurrence mostly in the largest cities. The authorities tend to allow the protests and allow some degree of violence which unfortunately is permitted. The criticism of the leader, the president, monarch, prime minister, any elected or appointed leader simply to denigrate respect for the ruling government is one of the main tactics utilized for overturning a government. Claims will be continued that the elections were rigged and there will be calls for a new election or simply the placing of a new appointed leader. The protests will grow and the attacks on the government will grow more and more pointed in the media controlled by the subversive elements. They will demand their rights while silencing all opposition. Much of the original demonstrations and violence will emanate from the Universities where the administrators and professors will be seen to stoke the emotions and lead the students to believing they are rescuing the nation from interlopers. This will continue to grow and soon the violence will become far more disruptive. This is when the escalation will become serious and those who have been planning the coup will start the real disruptive behavior even to the point of disrupting life for regular people who have nothing to do with the protests or the government and are just trying to get on with their lives.

 

Trump Demonizing Editorial Cartoon

 

The protests get to the point where people can no longer live their lives or the government needs to crack down and this brings forth accusations that the government is oppressing the people and must be replaced. There will be increasing attempts at disruption and the masses of protesters will become more difficult and violent sending raiding parties armed to fight when a new group will arise from the opposition of the ruling party promising they can end the rioting and demonstrations if only they are granted their rightful place as leaders of the government. They propose a new governance where they are granted extrajudicial powers and absolute power. These will be the leaders of the protests but will have remained removed from the protests and far from the violence. The people will be desperate and will demand new elections and will give this interloper and their core group the powers they demand. They will then turn on their own protesters, especially the rioters as they are considered expendable and actually now a danger to their maintaining power. They will send shock troops out and those who lead the rioting will be killed as will many of their followers and once this purge has been completed there is a new government and elections are a thing of the past. The new government is all about order and ridding the people of those who were truly responsible for the revolution which they saved the people from. The problem is it was their revolution from the start and it was executed just to give them power. This brought Generalissimo Francisco Franco to power, Benito Mussolini to power, Adolph Hitler to power and was how Lenin took power and Stalin after him. This has been the playbook of the fascists throughout history and it will be no different today because the youth they will use to take power never learned from the history they were never taught. The warning signs are all there but there are so few who will see them and those who will are those old people who are so stupid and from back then in the evil times and know nothing. That is how they will be excused and there is a distinct possibility that the older people will be rounded up and placed where they can be taken care of by the new government for their own safety.

 

There will be another casualty this time just as it has always been. The Communists despised these people. The Nazis despised these people. This has been the target for elimination by every totalitarian system since Rome. These people have survived despite near constant persecution and have gained a strong ally in the past few centuries. The originating principles came from Judaism and were preached in early Christianity before Christianity was politicized. Rome took Christianity and for almost fifteen-hundred years the Church was used as a weapon against the people. The Church lorded over the people often warring with Kings for power. The scientific revolution and industrial revolution brought new ideas of empowerment for the people initially out of England then Europe and finally making a permanent statement in the United States. Christianity reluctantly accepted a separation between the Church and political power. The unfortunate thing and the central problem is there are still those who seek ultimate and complete power and wish to subjugate their fellow people. Those seeking such power believe they know what is right and what is wrong and only they have the true understanding and thus must be placed over the rest of humanity. They also cannot allow for the Judeo-Christian ethos which believes in the nobleness of humanity and that people should have the power over their own lives to survive as it poses a direct threat to their power. This is the reason they do not believe in freedom of speech and they will not allow for religion as it is understood in the developed world because religion believes and promotes the moral character with respect for the other and for the rights of all. The fascist only believe in their superiority and their all-knowing ideas of what constitutes a perfect society. For them a perfect society is relegated to a strict set of rules which are absolutes and are enforced almost with a viciousness which is highly oppressive. Once these people take power the media is totally censored and controlled, all information comes directly from a central source and the people are watched with suspicion that they will turn at a moment’s opportunity. The reality is that eventually the people will turn and freedom will return, just not for at least two or three generations.

 

Tytler Cycle of Power in Governance

 

Above is what is known as the “Tytler Cycle of Power in Governance” which was originated by Scottish historian Alexander Tytler who studied the rise and fall of freedom and its subsequent loss. Reading the cycle from any one point the sequence appears to make some sense. The problem is many people feel that this cycle can be broken and that in a modern society there is no way that freedom can be erased as the people would never stand for such. They would never vote in any people who promised to subjugate them. They are correct but what if the situation calls for the return of social order and a return to what they are promised is life as they knew it. The situation is as described above where societal order has been completely disrupted by subversive forces similarly to what is occurring on college campuses and certain large cities but in a far more generalized and systemized equation of violence. Then some respected political figure which the people recognize and trust, say former President Clinton or former President Obama or even someone like “name your favorite progressive political figure” takes the lead enacting Marshal Law and that is the end of freedom. Even if this candidate does not intend to imperil the freedoms of the people, there will be one who follows along soon thereafter who will subjugate the public. This might even come about through assassinating the initial public figure who really did intend to return the governance to the Constitution or whatever system was temporarily interrupted while public order was restored. The subsequent capture and very public move towards a trial will have the media blaming those who were the supporters of the former leader who was replaced to bring order. Of course the actual assassin was from the side of those taking power and never planning on returning the power to the people and they will have a second assassin who will murder the person who murdered their initial ruler. This will remove any possibility of questions being sought and answered and the truth coming out revealing the entire façade being used to steal the governance and oppress the people. This second assassin will also be suicidal and will kill themselves thus tying up all the loose ends and should they not commit suicide, well, they could always die in a shootout when they were being captured. That scenario can come about whether they are shooting or not as who is going to doubt the police when the media fully backs their version of events. Watch events and be afraid. Is the loss of freedom inevitable? We cannot truthfully answer that but history shows a very poor track record. Remember that Rome was initially a republic where the citizens voted and after the assassination of Caesar it all came to an abrupt halt and every following leader declared themselves to be Caesar, interesting. After World War I Germany was initially ruled by the Wiemar Republic, that is before it fell to the Nazis in much the steps reviewed above. To fully understand the Tytler Cycle of Power in Governance one must study history, lots of history, just as had Alexander Tytler. We never said it would be fun. Still, it will not hopefully happen soon unless the people become even more complacent and apathetic. After all, not everyone is dependent, but that is not actually required and the United States has its full share of bread and circuses, like Super Bowl anyone?

 

Beyond the Cusp