Archive for the “George Orwell” Category

Orwell, unsurprised.

On October 17th, there were two near-simultaneous protests in downtown Boston. One, at which I spoke, was in opposition to increased government intervention in the provision of health care, staged by local tea party activists. The second was in opposition to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Address to the Boston October 17th Tea Party

Like all goods and services that are created by one human being and consumed by another, medical care is not a right; the use of government force to provide medical care is therefore morally wrong, and tantamount to theft.

I am not going to scrutinize the details of the various pieces of healthcare-related legislation that are making the rounds in Washington. I haven’t read any of them – and to tell you the truth, I don’t see much of a point in doing so. As we have seen, many (if not most) of our congressmen don’t bother to read these bills; and if they won’t do the job we pay them to do, I’m certainly not going to do it for free. Perhaps we shouldn’t blame them for failing to fulfill their responsibilities! After all, what’s the point in reading a bill, when the text could be altered, in the dead of night, only hours before the final vote is taken? If you’re like me, you don’t have time to read a thousand pages of lobbyist legalese – because you’re too busy simply trying to make ends meet.

In this era of big government, laws are no longer general principles applying equally to all citizens: rules enabling free individuals peacefully to regulate their social affairs. In the words of Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek, today’s so-called laws are in fact “instructions issued by the state to its servants concerning the manner in which they are to direct the apparatus of government and the means which are at their disposal.” Laws do not apply equally to all, because they are not intended to. The TARP, the stimulus package, and all of Obama’s central economic planning measures divide the American people into a variety of castes, so that money can be taken from some and given to others, whether those others are bankers, trade unions, or too-big-to-fail corporations. We also must remember that government, in the words of Mises, is but the “social apparatus of coercion and compulsion” – and that behind its every action lies the threat of force, however veiled and indirect.

We no longer live in a democratic republic. The system of government you learned about in 8th grade civics class no longer exists. The trappings of democracy have of course been retained – but no matter who is in office, the imperial goose-step continues. Every few years, we elect a new dictator, who presents the American people with his all-encompassing “vision,” and instructs the Congress on how and when it shall be carried out. In effect, the president writes the laws; and the powers that he cannot wrest from the legislators he simply wills into existence, by executive order. It is nearly impossible to argue with the proponents of statism, because they see nothing wrong with such a system – or do so only when it is controlled by the leader of the opposing party.

Still, we must strive against the plans of the statists. But when we do, we must also remember that they do not believe in freedom. They do not wish to live in a world where men are independent and take responsibility for their own welfare. They have no use for economics; and though they do not understand capitalism, they are not interested in learning about it from the likes of us. I have found that policy discussions are useless, unless they begin from a point of principled agreement, however small. To the libertarian, health care is a good like any other – and we all prefer inexpensive goods to expensive ones; we all favor quality over shoddiness. The left, however, has long claimed that health care (as well as other goods like education, housing, and now even the internet) is a right. Until they realize that no one can have a right to the product of another person’s skill and labor, they will continue to espouse their tangled and false philosophy.

I know that I cannot win an argument with a collectivist. Their minds are equipped with an override mechanism, an Orwellian “faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought.” All we can do is make simple points, and hope that one of them penetrates the fog of contradiction, allowing a faint ray of truth to illuminate the shoddy ideological patchwork to which the statists cling. Truth begs no argument: a right is something that one is entitled to by virtue of one’s very existence. The violation of a right is by nature an act of aggressive force, and it is for this reason that we are allowed to use force in defense of our rights. No leftist, no matter how radical, will assert that his “right” to medical care means that this care can be forcibly extracted from the doctor or nurse whose time and ability the provision of such a service requires. When the statists recognize that the theft of a man’s labor is equivalent to the theft of the income derived from that labor – when they embrace non-violence as a means and not merely as an end (albeit one that is indefinitely deferred in the name of some arbitrary notion of “social justice”) – we may finally have something to talk about. Until then, we must hold fast to our principles, and suffer the consequences if necessary.

October 17, 2009

Last night, a friend and I went to see the new Oliver Stone film, “W.” As we made our way across Shaker Square to the theatre, we came upon the “Local Field Office” for Barack Obama’s campaign for Dictator. A huge portrait of Obama’s face covered an entire side of the one-story store front. In Cleveland, especially in some of the poor black neighborhoods, it is common to see entire blocks of shabby stores and abandoned buildings emblazoned with similar propaganda. I am no fan of John McCain. But unless you’ve been snared by Obama’s appeals to some of your more basic human instincts, you can’t help but notice that there is absolutely no message of any substance attached to these posters. They are, to put it simply, part of a phenomenon that has always been present in American politics, but is now being exploited blatantly: this is a personality cult, pure and simple. They want you to LOVE your leader, not simply to agree with him on policy positions, or political philosophies more generally. Emotions are a suitable underpinning for personal relationships, but should play no part in our relationship with the government.

Don’t drink the socialist kool-aid, people. All it takes it to read a little history, to learn how and why socialism has always failed. The Russians, the Germans - they were no less idealistic than we are, no worse people. The were simply mistaken, bamboozled by power-hungry leaders with their big “projects,” just as Americans are today. I feel as though I have this little fascist checklist, and that every week or so, I get to tick off another box. I keep wondering which straw, which violation of our God-given right to the unfettered use of our rational free will, will be the one that finally incites a rebellion among the masses of increasingly desperate workers. How many boxes more, until they’re all checked?

But I’m beginning to realize: there will be no rebellion, not until the transition has already been finalized. Americans see the trees, but they’re not putting them together to see the dark collectivist forest we’re entering. Increasingly BLATANT acts of despotism are being foisted onto us, and we refuse to rebel! What was this $700 billion bailout, if not an act of government thievery? Remember, BOTH Obama and McCain voted for that one. What is preventing Americans from recognizing these developments as FASCIST is that they DO truly “believe.” And it’s not primarily that they “believe” in Obama (although many of the people who will be hurt worst by his policies do), and it unfortunately is CERTAINLY not that they believe in themselves (Americans have been conditioned not to do THAT, for that is what FREE MEN do). Rather, Americans have somehow strayed from our founding principles, and learned to “believe” in GOVERNMENT. Government is now the savior, the deliverer from pain, the deliverer from work, the deliverer from personal freedom and responsibility.

As the European states descended into the Fascist Jungle that was achieved definitively when their governments did away with the concept of the Rule of Law, many of their best and brightest, their most independent-minded, their future leaders came to the United States (still sort of free, though already a “mixed economy” - part capitalist and part socialist), where it was still legal to dream. America has undergone a much more gradual transition to fascism, which only makes sense, from an historical point of view. It would take a couple hundred years, after all, to completely ruin so meticulous a protection of freedom as we have in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Most of the European states had already been semi-socialist for decades before they finally decided to take the plunge. We’ve lagged behind, but you better believe we are here now, perched on the diving platform, ready to jump.

I turned to my friend, reminded him of Orwell’s vision in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and asked him, “When Obama is elected, when the campaign is over, do you think all these posters will come down? If they don’t, can we safely say that he is a new, but entirely logical form of American dictator?” It would be just so deliciously ironic if, in the America of the future, we still get to “vote” - if we “voluntarily” choose the man who will enslave us. It would be all the more ironic if the man who completes the transition to slavery, the messiah socialists the world over have been waiting for, is a black man.

The movie, to me, seemed a scathing indictment of the country’s transition to fascism. Movies like this can do a lot of good, if only by reminding us that even Bush, even Obama, even McCain, are simply men. Hitler was a man with a plan. The plan is never explicitly said to be that which is finally accomplished. Bush’s plan may be to establish “freedom” and democracy the whole world over. McCain’s plan may be to crush anti-U.S. freedom fighters (or was that Obama’s?). Obama’s plan may be to use government’s monopoly on the legal use of force (VIOLENCE) to “spread the wealth around.” What WE AS CITIZENS must remember is that any of these plans are going to conflict with the free will of MANY Americans, and that these particular Americans will have to be enslaved to enable arrogant men to achieve the grandiose plans they are naive enough to think they can accomplish, simply because they “believe.” Lefties, when you go see “W,” please remember that a leftist tyrant is just as bad, and probably worse than a rightist tyrant. Hitler was an avowed socialist. The roots of Naziism were planted in the Left.

After the movie, my friend and I went back to my apartment, had a beer, and read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution out loud, taking turns. If you’re feeling down, if you’re sad to see America turning its back on its ideals, it can help to read the inspiring words of men who, although imperfect, based their political system on a clear and universal recognition of basic truths governing human existence. They didn’t just slap a poster on a wall with the word “Hope” on it, give up their self-determination, and worship a smooth prophesizer. They stayed up all night, did their homework, and created the best system of government the world had and has ever seen. If you’ve never read their words, how can you consider yourself an American?