SCENE: \u00a0Mitch BERG is checking out the deli at the new HyVee. \u00a0Bill GUNKEL,\u00a0former Republican who is now chairmain of the Inver Grove Heights chapter of \u201cFormer Republicans for Ron Paul\u201d, notices him and walks over.<\/p>\n
GUNKEL: \u00a0 Hey, Merg.<\/p>\n
BERG: \u00a0Hey, Bill.<\/p>\n
GUNKEL: \u00a0I see that a bunch of you went to The Beast to beg your masters for longer leashes.<\/p>\n
BERG: \u00a0Huh? \u00a0Oh, the hearings for the Stand your Ground and Constitutional Carry bills? \u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n
GUNKEL: \u00a0You’d think with all the time you spend on politics, “Voting Harder” to try to “change things from the inside” \u00a0you’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?<\/p>\n
BERG: \u00a0Right. \u00a0Libertarians – some of them, anyway – believe that incrementalism is just a way to rationalize tyranny.<\/p>\n
Thing is, freedom rarely goes away in a single stroke, and not once in all of history has it come\u00a0back in one. \u00a0Saying “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.<\/p>\n
GUNKEL: \u00a0Derpity derp. \u00a0Eventually, when the current system becomes unsustainable, we’ll have freedom!<\/p>\n
BERG: That is such a cute,\u00a0<\/em>utterly faith-based statement.<\/p>\n GUNKEL \u00a0Are you mocking me?<\/p>\n BERG: \u00a0Not as far as you know. \u00a0Look, Bill, here’s the problem; the natural order of things is from order to disorder, from freedom to tyranny, from good to bad.<\/p>\n 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 \u00a0further, constantly.<\/p>\n GUNKEL: \u00a0So bring on the collapse!<\/p>\n BERG: \u00a0Sure! \u00a0I 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<\/p>\n And SCENE<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SCENE: \u00a0Mitch BERG is checking out the deli at the new HyVee. \u00a0Bill GUNKEL,\u00a0former Republican who is now chairmain of the Inver Grove Heights chapter of \u201cFormer Republicans for Ron Paul\u201d, notices him and walks over. GUNKEL: \u00a0 Hey, Merg. BERG: \u00a0Hey, Bill. GUNKEL: \u00a0I see that a bunch of you went to The Beast […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62363"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62376,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62363\/revisions\/62376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}