The Big Lie: “Freedom”
Billy asserts:
In any case, people just don’t want freedom, now.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: "sure they do; this is America." But that only means you don’t grasp the distinction he’s making in that statement. He’s not asserting that people don’t think they want freedom; they most certainly do. After all; do we, or do we not live in "The Land of the Free?" You’ve heard me say it, but always in scare quotes.
What Billy is really asserting is that people no longer have a clear grasp of what freedom is. They literally can not properly define it, and I could bet my life on that with little fear. I think he’s right about that. I also think that state of affairs will perpetuate politically until such time as people, one by one, understand that they are not remotely close to being free. That happened for me nearly two decades ago, now. For most born here in the last few decades, it will be the realization that they were never fee in the classic American sense of the term. Most people alive today have never known true freedom. They have been fed two lies. The big lie from the left is that "true" freedom is to be found in reaping all possible benefit from the most productive, but on terms exclusively dictated by the least productive, non-productive, or parasitic. The big lie from the right is that we’re already — Bless Jesus and praise the Lord — "free," and putting them in power will hold the forces of [ungodly] evil in check.
Everyone in the pursuit of "freedom:" the world’s greatest-ever spectacle of the blind leading the blind. Bea asked me last night, as we walked through St. James Park, why the bums often seem happier that "normal" people. My reply was that for lack of everything in life they might desire, they’re free compared to most people. They live outside the system, so that’s not much of a bother to them, and they haven’t done all the things people are "supposed" to do like wrap themselves in a highly leveraged mortgage, take on 50% of their annual pay in credit card debt living above their means, or taking on a lifestyle that leaves them perpetually two paychecks from the streets.
Being poor and at the mercy of good will is not exemplary freedom, but it’s closer than the idea most people have in their heads.
At the end of the day, I think the only thing left to do is illustrate what real freedom is. Of course, if we were to do that, it might make it worse. I think most people would find themselves afraid of it. In fact, I’m certain of that. I think the bums are the only ones not afraid of true freedom, anymore, and that’s damn little to start a revolution.
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"I'm sure you already know…"
You have no idea.
You can add capitalism to the list of words that people can't define. I'm sure you already know how its meaning has been subverted to mean an economic system where corporations are in league with the government versus the economic system based on a person's rights including being able to trade whatever to whomever. That subversion right there has done more than its fair share of harm in the last 50 years.
PS: the article has a few typos: missing letters, etc.
Rich,
Nice post. Quite evocative: I'm reminded of Alan Moore's V for Vendetta (the graphic novel, mind you). Worth a read if you ever find the time. Incidentally, I was also reminded of The Matrix when you wrote:
Sigh.
You do make quite the case for being a bum though.
"For most born here in the last few decades, it will be the realization that they were never fee in the classic American sense of the term."
Being 23, I don't remember exactly when I began to have that realization, but it hit hard when I read Atlas Shrugged the first of 3 times (so far).
I've had to do a lot to educate myself and overcome the inertia and appeals to statism that public schooling pounded into my brain for 13 years. I'm glad I graduated college with an engineering degree and not a liberal arts degree, because I'm not sure my concept of freedom would've been intact afterward.
I remember reading my history book when it spoke of FDR and the things he did in office, and arguing with someone (back in high school) about he was an evil bastard for trying to load the courts and for the whole New Deal. The idea that Keynesian economics was "right" or "correct" or unchallengeable to the "dead' laissez-faire kept my challenges of the sacred cow of economics mild. That, and my own timidity at the time kept me from speaking up.
When you spend the vast majority of your waking hours surrounded by people your same age and exposed to almost the exact same material and experiences as you, going against the grain is a very unrewarding and discouraging experience. I'm shocked now that the "mainstream" sees nothing wrong with insulating children from the outside world, filtering the experience through the NEA, book publishers, and finally the teachers themselves. So much of history is lost when there are still living survivors of concentration camps, Stalin, Mao, etc. but the children never meet them and are thus to repeat the mistakes because all they heard about that history was that "Communism doesn't work" and they think that what we have is unadulterated capitalsm. That kind of ignorance gives them just enough knowledge to want to make it work in complete disregard for the principles of why such things are wrong. Like the cliche "Communism works perfectly/good in theory/on paper but not in reality" that's just parroted down the line and spoon fed into the squishy brains of future voters and supporters of democrazy.
I cringe when I think of children entering college now, who were born in 1989 and will hear ( or remember) even less of the fall of the Berlin wall than I did. Now everyone with control is looking more into the medium of education than the thought of what is actually being done to the future generation. Just think of the one laptop per child initiative, and how superficial such pushes for technology over substance become.
I'm sure many don't know what freedom is.
It looks like many of those will soon find out
what being a slave is.
Maybe that's The Answer.
In regards to the misunderstanding of the meaning of the word capitalist, it is not really capitalists that people so detest but monopolists. That criminal element of American society known as elitists by those not too blind to see.
They like Stalin who killed the Russian serfs because they were farmers who could feed themselves and did not want, need or desire his government or if you rather, “racket!” Elitists detest farmers because they are not readily employable in their money schemes, being not as vulnerable as workers or wage slaves are. Wage slaves must work, must have a job, must do what they are told or else starve in the unemployment lines or standing at the factory gate. Farmers have pride and as Americans and independent property owners that will fight for their freedom when they cannot be lolled into silence.
The standards of wage slavery are still the same today as they were when such owed their souls to the company store under elitists like Andrew Carnegie and George Frederick Baer! Though these tactics are better hidden now by the Federal Mob by a bigger America whose Ministry of Truth & Propaganda rein supremely over all empty headed fools.
Agriculture is the basis of every economy, and family own and operated farms historically have been the basis of every free one! Just as was so apply illustrated in Peal Buck’s book “The Good Earth.” Agriculture is the only renewable resource when not operated as historically industrial farming has been first with real honest slaves and more recently with wage slaves. Profiteers do not love and cherish the land, but only the profits that they and their minions can squeeze from it! Trading our future as a nation for their immediate gain and self gratifications.
Capitalists are not the bane of the world. Monopolists, elitists like those recorded by the late Professor Carol Quigley in his great work entitled, “Tragedy and Hope” are that, that ills the world with their selfish cares and short sightedness!
Pluribus:
Alright, but you understand how monopolies are enforced, don't you? I.e., are you talking about monopolies backed by the force of the State through laws and various privileges? And, are you confusing that with a natural "monopoly," where it's just not (yet) attractive enough, i.e., too risky, for a competitor to enter the market?
Agriculture shmagriculture. That's a conflation, too. The essence of the question is private property, which is where, I suspect, your line of thought really has a beef.
How about depriving the owners of a corporation of their corporate properties, assuming they aren't usurping (in the classical sense) the property of others?
Private property is the basis of true freedom. It is the basis of the most thriving economies. And yes, I have a beef with anyone, any corporatist that would deprive any one of such by nefarious means.