Fifty Shades of Government

[Peace]

Fifty Shades of Government

By Jeffrey Tucker

08/28/12

Auburn, Alabama – On a flight the other day, I noticed that a third of the passengers were reading a certain best-selling book. It got me thinking.

Every politically active group wants something from government, and government is happy to oblige. It’s even more obvious in the election season, and it’s only going to get worse as we approach November.

Another way to put it: Government has lots to give in the way of laws, loot, privileges, protections and punishments. Every pressure group and political party has an idea about how its power over us needs to be used.

Does it make any difference who gets the loot, really? Not really, not to you and me. Whether you are taxed to make bike paths in Palo Alto or to fund reconnaissance missions in Kabul, you are still denied use of your money so that politicians and bureaucrats can realize their dreams. Whether the regulations say that you can’t work for less than $10 per hour or that you can’t buy raw milk at any price, your freedom to make contracts is still being compromised.

We can and will argue interminably about how government ought to be used. Should government prevent *** people from contracting unions or stop private companies from discriminating against people who chose *** unions? Either way, the state is being brought in to tell people what they can and can’t do. In this sense, the left and the right have more in common than either side cares to admit: Both have a plan for how the state can better manage the social order.

Should tobacco be banned or bailed out? Should banks be made too big to fail or badgered with regulatory restrictions so they can’t do real business? Should corporations be protected and subsidized, or should they be taxed within an inch of their lives? Should fatty foods be mandated as part of a national diet or kept off the menu as a health hazard?

These are the great debates of our time. But these are actually not fundamental debates at all. Either way, the only real winner here is government, its agents, its public spokesmen, its powers and its place in our lives and the culture. This is what remains unquestioned.

Should seniors be able to rob young people of their earnings in order to enjoy a luxurious retirement, or should seniors be especially taxed and punished for using more than their fair share of society’s health care resources? Whichever way that debate ends up, liberty itself suffers, and the property rights of everybody are less secure.

Should religious people be able to control what we watch, read and smoke, or should secular people be able to impose laws that keep religious people from having too much influence over our culture? Either way, government is being granted more control over the social order than it should have.

This is the great tragedy of living under leviathan. People have different ideas about how it ought to conduct its affairs. Who should be rewarded? Who should be punished? Who gets the privileges? Who must bear the cost? It becomes a war of pressure groups, everyone seeking to live at the expense of everyone else.

What is this thing we call government? It consists of the gang with an institutional structure that makes the rules, enforces the rules, and lives by rules that are different from those it imposes on the rest of the population. We can’t steal, but government can. We can’t kill, but government can. We can’t counterfeit, kidnap, and engage in fraud, but government can. This thing called government, obviously, has a strong interest in maintaining its power, prestige, and funding.

This is true no matter what the structure of the government happens to be. Oligarchy, absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, presidential republic, parliamentary republic, democracy — all of them have one thing in common: They create a special caste of citizens that live at the expense of everyone else.

In a democracy especially, government enlists us all in its cause. So long as people are arguing about how to use the government, and not whether it should be used to achieve social and economic goals at all, the government comes out the winner. All the pressure groups are really just rewarding the political class, transferring power and money from us to them. Precisely what the excuse is — and it changes all the time, sometimes subtly and sometimes dramatically — doesn’t matter to government.

Government is a chameleon, pleased to wear any cultural or ideological cloak to blend in with its social and cultural surroundings. In a wrangling, struggling, grasping, dog-eat-dog democracy like ours, there are fifty shades of government, each suitable for a particular time and place, each adapted to purposes of the moment, all with the interest of firming up control by the ruling class.

This is what the “political spectrum” is all about. Government dominates and we submit. It puts us in bondage and we obey its discipline. There’s also got to be a good excuse or else we would never put up with this. We have to believe that the government is, in some way, at some level, doing something that pleases us. Maybe even the government is us!

People say that in the “age of faith” of the Middle Ages, religious differences led to wars. Historians who have looked carefully have noticed something different. Governments that want wars are happy to use religion as the excuse.

And so it is today. In the “age of science,” we get scientific social planning in which experts are supposed tell the people with their hands on the controls how to use them. But whether the excuse is religion or science, security or the environment, nationalism or internationalism, it doesn’t matter to the rest of us. The rights and liberties of the people paying the bill are forever being sacrificed to someone else’s political agenda.

So come November, we will drag ourselves to the voting booth and look at the names and try to remember what these various people promise to do for us and to us if we ratify their right to rule. Having done so, we are told that we’ve made our choice and now we must live with it.

But maybe it is not really a choice at all. Maybe it is time to let go of our dependency and reject the entire master-slave relationship that is the whole basis of the system itself. Fifty Shades of Government has been the best-seller for hundreds of years. It’s time that the governed write an entirely new book.

Regards,

Jeffrey Tucker,

[dog53]

SMACK that a$$ baby !!!!!! hahahahahahahahahahahahaha WTF

[Peace]

SMACK that a$$ baby !!!!!! hahahahahahahahahahahahaha WTF

Dog53,

I'm still trying to figure you out.

Is this a positive statement or a negative statement

[pragerbabe]

Brandyclark, you bring several good articles to the table, I salute you for that.

Now, what are your plans? To just bring the articles to the open, which yes, needs to be done, or to act on them? Are you in a spot that says we are on a course and it can't change?

I see you are from Texas. I am always claiming how good it is here because we "seem" to be more free. But we have to fight just like everyone else. Examples: Trans Texas Corridor (Gov Perrys baby) was defeated because it was not popular with the mass of land owners it would have effected. He and his cronies lost. Illegals recieving college tuition at Texas taxpayers expense. We lost, this one resinated with me personally due to the fact I graduated high school across the Louisiana border and started college in Texas. I had to pay a higher tuition, yet illegals from other countries get the credit for being here; illegally?

Our government does take us for granted, and consider us as a means to their endgame. But the current populus has woken up due to the mass of information on the internet. I now take the time to act instead of research. (I spent a lot of time researching and it just became depressing) I meet with like minded people and we have made small changes. I wasn't for Ted Cruz at first but as soon as it was him vs Dewhurst I took a stand, no more career politicians. The Tea Party got Cruz elected in the primary. Cruz was a speaker at the convention as well as Mike Lee, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio. They all say they support the idea of smaller government. And guess what, if they start voting against that, we will vote them out. Of course we have to have people step up to the plate and run for office, and that is costly and if you have any bones in the closet you have it even harder. (unless you are Obama and the media likes you)

As I stated, you bring a lot of good articles, and waking people up is part of the fight. This is still a fight. The US was created against the worst of odds. Strong minded, caring, moral driven people created something from nothing. Yeah, we took land from the natives but who would have been the ones to do it if we hadn't. Would they have been treated differently by the next invader? The NWO has been coming for a long time, the UN tries everyday. But the American people fight it everyday too.

Please don't give up hope that this is the way it is and all is lost. There are more people fighting today than politicians sitting in Washington, I do not fear them but I do fear the voters who do not see it coming.

Finally, I am voting Romney/Ryan, not because I think they have all the answers. I have read Gov Romneys bio as gov of Mass, not great by all means but he is not for expanding government when we are broke. If he does expand government, I will do all I can for the next candiate who says they are for less, but we are under a specific election process here. Third parties have been trying for several decades. The general election is not the time to make your stand when this much is at stake.

Start Nov 7, get support for the candidate of your choice or change the electorial process or broaden a specific third party but this election, please review Obama and Romney on what they stand for as govenors of citizens and know that this election is between these two and these two only.

May God continue to Bless the USA and the people who continue to strive for a free society.

I'm sorry, I had to step away from post to take care of something, came back and finished and sent then reread and caught my spelling! On the college line no doubt: receiving.

[Peace]

Brandyclark, you bring several good articles to the table, I salute you for that.

Now, what are your plans? To just bring the articles to the open, which yes, needs to be done, or to act on them? Are you in a spot that says we are on a course and it can't change?

I see you are from Texas. I am always claiming how good it is here because we "seem" to be more free. But we have to fight just like everyone else. Examples: Trans Texas Corridor (Gov Perrys baby) was defeated because it was not popular with the mass of land owners it would have effected. He and his cronies lost. Illegals recieving college tuition at Texas taxpayers expense. We lost, this one resinated with me personally due to the fact I graduated high school across the Louisiana border and started college in Texas. I had to pay a higher tuition, yet illegals from other countries get the credit for being here; illegally?

Our government does take us for granted, and consider us as a means to their endgame. But the current populus has woken up due to the mass of information on the internet. I now take the time to act instead of research. (I spent a lot of time researching and it just became depressing) I meet with like minded people and we have made small changes. I wasn't for Ted Cruz at first but as soon as it was him vs Dewhurst I took a stand, no more career politicians. The Tea Party got Cruz elected in the primary. Cruz was a speaker at the convention as well as Mike Lee, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio. They all say they support the idea of smaller government. And guess what, if they start voting against that, we will vote them out. Of course we have to have people step up to the plate and run for office, and that is costly and if you have any bones in the closet you have it even harder. (unless you are Obama and the media likes you)

As I stated, you bring a lot of good articles, and waking people up is part of the fight. This is still a fight. The US was created against the worst of odds. Strong minded, caring, moral driven people created something from nothing. Yeah, we took land from the natives but who would have been the ones to do it if we hadn't. Would they have been treated differently by the next invader? The NWO has been coming for a long time, the UN tries everyday. But the American people fight it everyday too.

Please don't give up hope that this is the way it is and all is lost. There are more people fighting today than politicians sitting in Washington, I do not fear them but I do fear the voters who do not see it coming.

Finally, I am voting Romney/Ryan, not because I think they have all the answers. I have read Gov Romneys bio as gov of Mass, not great by all means but he is not for expanding government when we are broke. If he does expand government, I will do all I can for the next candiate who says they are for less, but we are under a specific election process here. Third parties have been trying for several decades. The general election is not the time to make your stand when this much is at stake.

Start Nov 7, get support for the candidate of your choice or change the electorial process or broaden a specific third party but this election, please review Obama and Romney on what they stand for as govenors of citizens and know that this election is between these two and these two only.

May God continue to Bless the USA and the people who continue to strive for a free society.

I'm sorry, I had to step away from post to take care of something, came back and finished and sent then reread and caught my spelling! On the college line no doubt: receiving.

Hello Babe,

I agree with you! I have been in the Ron Paul fight since 2006! Yes it's tiring:) I have donated money, time and been to countless rallies and protests...I think it's fair to say I'm involved. Like you I love our Great State, I was one of the ones pushing Ted Cruz before he was in the spotlight. It is hard work. I believe Obama needs to be kicked out, I am disgusted also with Romney, I understand your point, and it's a damn good one.

I will vote for Romney (that just turned my stomach ) if and when I know for sure he is our only option. I'm still of the mindset that something or someone is about to change the direction of this election. No I don't what it is, it's just a feeling Who knows...but Yes if it comes down to the wire I will begrudgingly kick rocks all the way to the voting booth to cast a vote for Obamney

Yes I will continue the good fight and I hope you do to. Nice to meet ya!

Edited September 5, 2012 by brandyclark

[desimo]

I like the expression that a government that wants wars is happy to use religion as an excuse. I watch government today and see how they use any excuse to get their way. I truly do not know how anyone today of ethic is able to remain in politics for any length of time and still look at themself in the mirror. I listen to the advertisements and want to hurl. Stop lying! LIke you really give a rat's left butt cheek about the middle class. They say no taxes for middle class and then slap the new health care bill that taxes the middle class. They say that it is regulation that hurts the middle class. It is all the regulation that hurts every was evidenced with the farmers not being able to water crops because of a regualtion protecting a fish. When are people going to be more important than bugs and fish? I have yet to have a bug or fish pay my mortgage. If you want jobs to stay in America then stop driving them away and blaming someone else for it happening. Our government needs to put on their 'big boy pants' and stop blaming others for their screw ups. Our government has NOT done their job. Our government should have been fired years ago. Our government needs to grow up and pull their heads out of their butts and do their jobs. Stop worrying about who will and will not get a tax break. You are NOT creating ANY jobs so stop worrying about the rich getting tax breaks. All our government is doing is creating a class war and defusing the issue. If they can get the middle class to fight each other then they sit back and smile. Our government has failed the American people. Shut up and start working FOR the American people. Either start doing your job or get your bags packed and leave. ALL OF YOU IN GOVERNMENT!