SCENE: Mitch BERG is checking out the deli at the new HyVee. Bill GUNKEL, former Republican who is now chairmain of the Inver Grove Heights chapter of “Former Republicans for Ron Paul”, notices him and walks over.
GUNKEL: Hey, Merg.
BERG: Hey, Bill.
GUNKEL: I see that a bunch of you went to The Beast to beg your masters for longer leashes.
BERG: Huh? Oh, the hearings for the Stand your Ground and Constitutional Carry bills? Yeah.
GUNKEL: You’d think with all the time you spend on politics, “Voting Harder” to try to “change things from the inside” you’d think you wouldnt have to beg masters to do things like protect yourself or buy things on Sundays, and that at least half of your income wouldn’t be stolen from you by your dear leaders…or is it all just in vain?
BERG: Right. Libertarians – some of them, anyway – believe that incrementalism is just a way to rationalize tyranny.
Thing is, freedom rarely goes away in a single stroke, and not once in all of history has it come back in one. Saying “give me all the liberty now!” is fun and satisfying, but it ignores the fact that tyranny, not freedom, is mankind’s natural state. Any freedom we have – bits and pieces, or all of it – is an aberration, not the norm, in human history.
GUNKEL: Derpity derp. Eventually, when the current system becomes unsustainable, we’ll have freedom!
BERG: That is such a cute, utterly faith-based statement.
GUNKEL Are you mocking me?
BERG: Not as far as you know. Look, Bill, here’s the problem; the natural order of things is from order to disorder, from freedom to tyranny, from good to bad.
If you don’t incrementally push the needle up – or if all you do is chant harder and withhold consent harder and snark harder, on the assumption that all you have to do is wait for “the collapse”, which will usher in freedom for everyone – the needle will incrementally get pushed down, further and further, constantly.
GUNKEL: So bring on the collapse!
BERG: Sure! I mean, provided you think there’s any evidence that in the lack of authority, it’s in humans’ nature to revert to freedom, equality, voluntarism
And SCENE
This reminds me — I really need to stop by the new Kowalski’s in Shoreview one of these days.
God I remember when the Paulbots tried to take everything over in 2008 and kinda did in 2012. Those idiots cost us a real shot at Amy’s seat with endorsing Kurt Bills over Pete Hegseth at the convention. Hopefully Pete makes another run at it next year. These are people that would rather have 35 Idealogically pure Senators because, something about values, versus 65 Senators who would actually get things done. At my core I’m libertarian but practically I vote Republican.
Tyranny can fall “suddenly” but it takes a lot of incremental things to happen. Lately I’ve spent time looking at the ’56 Hungarian Revolution (squashed), the ’68 Prague Spring (squashed) and the ’89 Velvet Revolution (freedom!) – evidence that an idea and a dream can be resilient under oppression and eventually, but apparently suddenly, come to fruition. Furthermore, it can occur globally, not just in one country, with each instance adding to momentum. Czech independence from the Soviets followed similar reversals in Hungary and Poland (while the same attempt in China was crushed the same year). Romania, too, where the people literally drug the head of state and his wife out and shot them. As fearsome as the leviathan of tyranny may appear, it ultimately can barely support it’s own weight – especially if it’s constantly being undermined by those willing to resist and push back on multiple battlefields, even if the battles seem to be lost.
I stopped by there last night, Mr. D, and it was pretty nice. We don’t have a lot of places like that in Fridley. 🙂
We don’t have a lot of places like that in Fridley.
Fridley has what we all need.