Social Impotence

I was in the process of drafting a post about a number of absolutely idiotic laws being proposed here in California.  The state is broke and dysfunctional, yet our state leaders are making political busy-work.  Most have to do with the Marxists in Sacramento jumping on the "Illegal Aliens Won't Get Deported" bandwagon that was thrust upon us by DC.

As I was formulating ideas, I was struck by an irrefutable fact:

Liberty has a key trait in common with Marxism.  Neither has ever succeeded in the long term.  Societies with high amounts of personal liberty eventually devolve into Marxist states.  And Marxist states eventually collapse and liberty emerges.

I need to accept that the liberty that was the basis for the founding of our country is all but gone.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're still "more free" than much of the rest of the world, but we've got nowhere near the freedom we had in the beginning of our republic.  Or even the amount we had 50 years ago.

Our Constitution - at first glance - has all of the proper controls in place to ensure the liberty of the individual (or the states) supersedes the power of the federal government.  It appears as though we were left with explicit instructions along these lines - via the tenth amendment.  It's so clear and unambiguous -

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

How can this possibly be misinterpreted?  Yet, you need only look at the size, scope and power of the federal government, and you see it's been wholly ignored.

[My conservative friends hate this example - that's why I it's my go-to federal abuse!]  How can we possibly have a federal department tasked with fighting "the war on drugs?"  The DEA.  It's because Congress passed federal anti-drug legislation going back to the early 1900's (Harrison Narcotics Tax Act - link) AND the Supreme Court gave it the nod when the law was passed.

Since there was now legal precedence, piling on the laws - and the bureaucracy to enforce those laws - was child's play.  Once the slippery slope is greased, resistance to the growth of government is futile.

Pick any federal agency that was not specifically chartered in the Constitution, and you'll find a similar pattern.  Get a big ranch that kills some folks with salmonella, and you get the USDA.  Have a crash of a rigged financial system, and you get the Social Security Administration.

Government uses fear and the offer of protection to grow.  They numb us to the concept that liberty has risk.  In all aspects of our lives, they want to socialize risk.  The risk of recreational drugs killing your wife.  The risk of you giving birth to a disabled child.  The risk of taking a sip of tainted raw milk.  The risk of dying poor and hungry.  The cost of this apparent transfer of risk is the loss of a little bit of liberty each time we make that deal. 

What people always seem to forget is that despite all of the government promises of protection, we're still just as vulnerable as we've always been.  The very same banned drugs that brought us the DEA are still available to anyone.  People die every single year from food grown on USDA inspected farms and ranches.  The federally regulated financial system is routinely abused, resulting in the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

The only difference is we pay for this facade of safety and protection.
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Where am I going with this?  I've once again realized that resistance IS futile.  The borg is here to stay.

Don't take that as a defeatist attitude.  It's not.  It's pragmatic.  The inertia of our growing government - federal, state and local - cannot be stopped.  Too many special interests, including the government itself, rely on the existence of big government.  Those of us who cherish personal liberty have become socially impotent.  There is nothing we can do to change our nation's course.

If I had a million readers a day, it would change nothing.  Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, Beck, Savage, et al, DO have millions hear their message every single day, and nothing has changed.  The death spiral is slowed at times, but never reversed.  We're still headed straight towards Marxism.
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I'm going to re-focus what I do here.  I LOVE bitching and moaning about the socialist bastards in California and DC.  Seriously, I love it.  But it does nothing.  No string of words I could ever type could get enough people to reverse this mess we're in.

But I can help handfuls, dozens - maybe even hundreds of folks to better adapt to what's happening.  Perhaps they and their families can come out from this in above-average shape.  Some of us may even thrive.

I want to focus on solutions, not rhetoric.  The solutions are personal and local.  The macro view is useless, the micro view is actionable.  I've come to grips with the fact that the individual cannot change anything political outside of their own community.

Think small.  Think private.  Think self-serving.  Be a quiet leader and actor.

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