In the story, a totalitarian and centralized state — it seems to be some kind of unelected autocracy — keeps a tight grip on its colonies to prevent a repeat of the rebellion that occurred some 75 years ago. They do this through the forced imposition of material deprivation, by unrelenting propaganda about the evil of disobedience to the interests of the nation state and with “Hunger Games” as annual entertainment.

In this national drama and sport, and as a continuing penance for past sedition, the central state randomly selects two teens from each of the 12 districts and puts them into a fight-to-the-death match in the woods, one watched like a reality show by every resident. The districts are supposed to cheer for their representatives and hope that one of their selected teens will be the one person who prevails.

So amidst dazzling pageantry, media glitz and public hysteria, these 24 kids — who would otherwise be living normal lives — are sent to kill each other without mercy in a bloody zero-sum game. They are first transported to the opulent capitol city and wined, dined, and trained. Then the games begin.

At the very outset, many are killed on the spot in the struggle to grab weapons from a stockpile. From there, coalitions form among the groups, however temporary they may be. Everyone knows there can only be one winner in the end, but alliances — formed on the basis of class, race, personality, etc. — can provide a temporary level of protection.

Watching all this take place is harrowing to say the least, but the public in the movie does watch as a type of reality television. This is the ultimate dog-eat-dog setting, in which life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” in the words of Thomas Hobbes. But it is also part of a game the kids are forced to play. This is not a state of nature. In real life, they wouldn’t have the need to kill or be killed. They wouldn’t see each other as enemies. They wouldn’t form into evolving factions for self-protection.

The games provide that key elements that every state, no matter how powerful or fearsome, absolutely must have: a means of distracting the public from the real enemy. Even this monstrous regime depends fundamentally on the compliance of the governed. No regime can put down a universal revolt. The plot twist in this story actually turns on a worry among the elites that the masses will not tolerate a scripted ending to the games this time.

So here we see the first element of political sophistication in this film. It taps into the observation first recorded by Etienne de La Boetie (1530-63) that all states, because they live parasitically off the population on an ongoing basis, depend on eliciting the compliance of the people in some degree; no state can survive a mass refusal to obey. This is why states must concoct public ideologies and various veneers to cover their rules (a point often raised by Hans-Hermann Hoppe in his work). “National traditions” such as the Hunger Games serve the purpose well.

The political sophistication of this film doesn’t stop there. The Hunger Games themselves serve as a microcosm of political elections in modern developed economies. Pressure groups and their representatives are thrown into a hazardous, vicious world in which coalitions form and reform. Survival is harrowing, and hate is unleashed as would never exist in normal life. Candidates fight to the death knowing that, in the end, there can only be one winner who will take home the prize.

Slight differences of opinion are insanely exaggerated to deepen the divide. Otherwise irrelevant opinions take on epic significance. Lies, smears, setups, intimidation, bribery, blackmail and graft are all part of a day’s work. All the while, the people watch and love the public spectacle, variously cheering and booing and rating the candidates and the groups they represent. Everyone seems oblivious as to the real purpose of the game.

And just as in The Hunger Games, democracy manufactures discord where none would exist in society. People don’t care if the person who sells them a cup of coffee in the morning is Mormon or Catholic, white or black, single or married, gay or straight, young or old, native or immigrant, drinker or teetotaler or anything else.

None of this matters in the course of life’s normal dealings with people. Through trade and cooperation, everyone helps everyone else achieve life aspirations. If someone different from you is your neighbor, you do your best to get along anyway. Whether at church, shopping, at the gym or health club, or just casually on the street, we work to find ways to be civil and cooperate.

But invite these same people into the political ring, and they become enemies. Why? Politics is not cooperative like the market; it is exploitative. The system is set up to threaten the identity and choices of others. Everyone must fight to survive and conquer. They must kill their opponents or be killed. So coalitions form, and constantly shifting alliances take shape. This is the world that the state — through its election machinery — throws us all into. It is our national sport. We cheer our guy and hope for the political death of the other guy.

The game makes people confused about the real enemy. The state is the institution that sets up and lives off these divisions. But people are distracted by the electoral and political mania. The blacks blame the whites, the men blame the women, the straights blame the gays, the poor blame the rich, and so on in an infinite number of possible ways.

The end result of this is destruction for us but continuing life for the Gamemakers.

And of course, in both elections and Hunger Games, there is a vast commercial side to the event: media figures, lobbyists, trainers, sign makers, convention-hall owners, hotels, food and drink businesses, and everyone and anyone who can make a buck from feeding the exploitation.

In all these ways, this dystopian plot line illuminates our world. I’m not suggesting that this is the basis of the appeal, though its uses as political allegory are real enough. More disturbing is the possibility that the story suggests to young people today the limits of the life opportunities for the generation now in its teen years. They have a darker worldview than any in the postwar period.

If The Hunger Games help this generation understand that the real problem is not their peers or parents or anyone other than the Gamemakers, maybe they, too, will plot a revolt. Democracy is indeed the god that failed.

I’m told that we have to wait for the third film for that.

Regards,

Jeffrey Tucker

Elections Are Our Hunger Games was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

What is the logic, the driving force, the agent of change?

Yes, the software works fine, and yes, the managers and owners have entrepreneurial minds. But the real secret to Facebook is its internal human gears — the individual users — which turn out to mirror the way society itself forms and develops.

The best way to see and understand this is to compare the workings of Facebook with the workings of the democratic political process. Watching Facebook’s development has been fun, productive, fascinating, useful and progressive. The election season, in contrast, has been divisive, burdensome, wasteful, acrimonious and wholly confusing.

That’s because Facebook and democracy work on entirely different principles.

Facebook is based on the principle of free association. You join or decline to join. You can have one friend or thousands. It is up to you. You share the information you want to share and keep other things from public view. You use the platform only to your advantage while declining to use it for some other purpose.

The contribution you make on Facebook extends from the things you know best: yourself, your interests, your activities, your ideas. The principle of individualism — you are the best manager of your life — is the gear that moves the machine. Just as no two people are alike, no two people have the same experience with the platform. All things are customized according to your interests and desires.

But of course, you are interested in others too, so you ask for a connection. If they agree, you link up and form something mutually satisfying. You choose to include and exclude, gradually forming your own unique community based on any selection criteria you want. The networks grow and grow from these principles of individualism and choice. It is a constantly evolving, cooperative process — exactly the one that Hans-Hermann Hoppe describes as the basis of society itself.

Democratic elections seem to be about choice in some way, but it is a choice over who will rule the whole mob. It provides the same user experience for everyone, regardless of individual desire. You are forced into the system by virtue of having been born into it. Sure, you can choose to vote, but you can’t choose whether to be ruled by the voting results.

In this democratic system, you are automatically given 220 million “friends” whether you like it or not. These fake “friends” are given to you because of a geographic boundary drawn by government leaders long ago. These “friends” are posting on your wall constantly. Your news feed is relentless series of demands. You cannot delete their posts or mark them as spam. Revenue is not extracted from advertising but collected as you use the system.

Nothing is truly voluntary in an election. You are bound by the results regardless. This creates absurdities. This is incredibly apparent in the Republican nominating process. If people under 30 prevailed, Ron Paul would win. If religious families with several kids prevailed, Rick Santorum would win. If chamber of commerce members prevailed, Mitt Romney would be victor. It all comes down to demographics, but there can be only one winner under this system.

Therefore, an election must be a struggle between people, a fight, a wrangling around, a push to assert your will and overcome the interests and desires of others. In the end, we are assured that no matter the outcome, we should be happy because we all participated. The individual must give way to the collective.

We are told that this means that the system worked. But in what sense does it work? It only means that the well-organized minority prevailed over the diffused majority. This is about as peaceful as the kid’s game “king of the mountain.”

Facebook has nothing to do with this nonsense. Your communities are your own creation, an extension of your will and its harmony with the will of others. The communities grow based on the principle of mutual advantage. If you make a mistake, you can undisplay your friend’s posts or you can unfriend him. This hurts feelings, sure, but it is not violent: It doesn’t loot or kill.

Your friends in Facebook can be from anywhere. They “check in” and plot their journeys. Whether your friend lives in or moves to Beijing or Buenos Aires doesn’t matter. Facebook makes possible what we might call geographically noncontiguous human associations. Language differences can be barriers to communication, but even they can be overcome.

Democracy is hyperbound by geography. You vote in an assigned spot. Your vote is assembled together with those of others in your county to produce a single result, and therefore, your actual wishes are instantly merged. They are merged again at another geographic level, and then at the state level and, finally, at the national level. By that time, your own preferences are vaporized.

Sometimes people get sick of Facebook. They suddenly find it tedious, childish, time wasting, even invasive. Fine. You can bail out. Go to your system preferences and turn off all notifications and take a sabbatical. People might complain, but it is your choice to be there or not. You can even delete your account entirely with no real downside. Then you can sign up again later if you so desire or join some other system of social networking.

Try doing that to democracy. You can’t unsubscribe. You are automatically in for life, and not even changing your location or moving out of the country changes that. It is even extremely hard to delete your account by renouncing your citizenship. The leaders of the democracy will still hound you.

We can learn from Facebook and all other social networks that the Internet has brought us. These are more than websites; they are models of social organization that transcend old forms. Make the rest of life more like a social network and we will begin to see real progress in the course of civilization. Persist in the old model of forced democratic community and we will continue to see decline.

Regards,

Jeffrey Tucker

Why Facebook Works, And Democracy Does Not was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

Americans long ago settled for convenience over freedom: Paved roads and more commercial space per capita than any other nation on earth… to go along with various prohibitions on personal behavior, expanded domestic spying by police, the TSA and the biggest prison population per capita in the world.

Why be concerned with the prison population? Because the state is caging a lot of people who have neither killed, nor raped nor stolen. According to Wikipedia:

Perhaps the single greatest force behind the growth of the prison population has been the national “war on drugs.” The number of incarcerated drug offenders has increased twelvefold since 1980. In 2000, 22 percent of those in federal and state prisons were convicted on drug charges.

But don’t drugs get to the enduser by criminal means that often involve violent cartel conflict somewhere along the line? Absolutely, but only because the state makes drugs illegal, resulting in extralegal black markets. The state says it’s for own good, but we can’t help but notice that it also serves to increase the power of the state to monitor and to police.

It’s bad enough that inflation-fueled nationalizations have become the norm in the U.S., that the government crowds out real job growth by stifling small business while bailing out failed big ones.

But what about the other legal indignities, all the other ways the authorities remind you that you and your property aren’t really yours?

Why can’t we drink on the sidewalk? Or smoke in bars? They manage to do it in other parts of the world without civilization collapsing around their ears…or even an increase in violence or cancer rates!

In Acapulco at night the streets are crowded both with parents, their young children, the elderly and tipsy young men holding bottles of Corona. It is lively but peace reigns. Perhaps people are just nicer when they aren’t constantly stressed out by being over-regulated.

People smoke in restaurants and as long as the air is circulating, no one else seems to be bothered.

Since 2006 it has been legal to possess varying amounts of “hard” drugs for personal use–though, comically, selling these drugs technically remains illegal.

Prostitution is also technically illegal, but pretty open. Every strip club doubles as a bordello, and of course there are the actual bordellos!

A mark of true civilization is civility. The people peacefully seeking their own enjoyment are able to mingle with people raising their families, all without discomfort or conflict. Sure their officials are all probably to a one thieving criminals–this is still Latin America–but the people of Acapulco themselves live blissfully free of the state’s heavy handed interference in their personal goings-about.

“All well and good for the rest of the world,” says the American conservative who claims to love “freedom” (as long as it’s done his way), “but I don’t want to be surrounded by drug use and prostitution!”

But, dear conservative control freak, you already are! This stuff goes on all around you anyway. It’s probably going on in at least one house within a couple miles of yours as you read this. And it manages not to bother you because it really isn’t any more your business than other habits and pleasures your neighbors may have.

No amount of “war” on the arbitrarily declared vice crimes (alcohol is okay, but marijuana is not?) by the state with your blessing will end practices you don’t like…unless maybe you turn the joint into a theocratic tyranny of the Middle East variety.

Criminalization just drives the behavior underground while giving the state the authority to regulate more and to seize property and cage any of us in an effort to fight “wars” against personal practices. Such laws are just prejudices backed by guns.

And in the U.S. we get it with both barrels, both financial and personal interference a la the state. They overtax us, steal from us by means of inflation and then tell us what we can do with willing partners and with ourselves. The liberals cheer on the seizure of property for redistribution while the conservatives cheer the government’s ownership of our bodies.

Yet Americans are still convinced that they love freedom. Personally we scarcely know anyone in the States who has a clue what that particular word means. And most of that small number who do are heading for the exits so they can experience it.

When they leave they leave the white, white world of Western Civilization entirely. They head for Asia…or Latin America. The latter seems to be especially popular.

Maybe it’s something just basic to the essence of the West. It’s the West after all that prides itself on being the birthplace of democracy. As if that’s something to crow about! Democracy is just a system of mass mutual slavery. Everybody owns everybody else and this power of ownership is represented by the vote. Woe be to the people–and their property–in the minority group when it’s time to count those votes.

Maybe it’s genetic. The typical American comes from European stock and though he reflexively yells “liberty” and “freedom”, he has a hard time letting go of slavery. He stopped thrusting it on imported Africans, but seemed to miss it so much that he started inflicting it on himself and his kin.

He enslaves the unborn to debt, the worker to the unproductive, the hedonist to the moralist, and so on.

Yet it’s this same set of hypocrites who gave us a higher standard of living due to technological innovation in robust free markets. It was their European ancestors who gave the world most of the advances in the hard sciences in the first place.

We’re not entirely sure what to make of it. It warrants further consideration. We suspect this would best be undertaken on beach somewhere south of the U.S. border.

Regards,

Gary Gibson
Managing editor, Whiskey & Gunpowder

Slavery, A First World Tendency was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

I consider voting today only as an avenue that allows one group to legally plunder another, and a process that fully legitimizes a corrupt political system. Those who vote are obviously supportive of the political process and the political actions taken in this country, and are responsible for those they elect, and for what they do in office. This is why I think the old adage that “those who do not vote have no right to complain” is backward. Those who vote to allow the political carnage are the ones responsible for the problems, while those who don’t vote have nothing to do with electing criminal politicians. Therefore not voting is in and of itself a political statement denouncing the system, while voting shows favor of that same nefarious system.

One of the major problems of voting as I see it is that those who vote for this, that, or the other, are setting policy that affects all those who voted differently, and all those who did not vote at all. This is democracy or mob rule, the first step toward a socialistic and collectivist system. The reason this is so is due to the fact that we live in a forcibly run dependent society where one can vote to benefit at the expense of another. This truth is overlooked by the “I Voted” crowd, but nonetheless is the lynchpin of redistributive politics.

So who are the big winners due to this scheme called voting? Who benefits the most? The government and all its corporate sponsors, including the banking system, are the real winners of the voting process. They are the controllers; they are the takers and users. They use force in order to gain power, and to steal via extortion the honestly earned wealth of others. They gain the “right” to rule over the country and us, and are legitimized by this scam. By selling the notion that voting gives everyone a say in politics, little is questioned after the fact. The politicians controlling the government sit back and revel in the notion that they have been chosen the new Caesars by the people’s vote. They were properly elected in a democratic process you understand. They are the people’s choice. The dust has settled, and the people have spoken!

How can any sane individual believe that this political process is not fatally flawed? How can any not understand that voting leads directly to one group ruling over another, this regardless of whether a minority or majority wins the day. Either way, those elected to power rule over all others when voting is the method used to choose, and this type of rule ultimately eliminates liberty and leads to tyranny.

While the government benefits most from this procedure, the supportive public is just as responsible for the harm caused. Their votes authorize government action, and give willing consent to the elected king and his court. This group consent determines our individual lot in life, thereby destroying our individuality. If our society were based on self-reliance and self-responsibility, if our laws were based only on our natural rights to life, liberty, and property, if the individual were sovereign, would voting be necessary or would it even exist? Would we need “rulers” in a truly free society?

Politics breeds corruption, and voting supports that corruption. The masses in this country have been force-fed the notion that voting is their sacred right.

They have been brainwashed into believing that the vote is what sets them apart from slaves. The exact opposite of course is true. They have been taught to ridicule all those who would question this “sacred” right, and are not embarrassed to do so. Voting in the “minds” of most in other words cannot be questioned.

Consider the recent Rasmussen Report highlighted on Lew Rockwell’s Political Theater showing that over 83% of the lemmings in this country believe that one person’s vote really matters. In a country of well over 300 million people, how in the world could anyone think that their single vote counted? Even if they thought this possible, how could they accept that this voting was moral, when that same voting legally allows for one to be abused for the benefit of another?

The act of voting has become so entrenched into this society that its validity cannot be questioned without rebuke. It is considered by many to be the rock of democracy, the literal cornerstone of liberty. While this thinking is nonsense, it is still the mainstream position, and therefore important because our lives are ruled by this dangerous and asinine process. Even if the current system we live under were not present, would voting then be more legitimate? Would the fact that one could not benefit at another’s expense be enough to justify voting? I don’t think so, because the act of voting would still always pit one against another in deciding the outcome of life. These things should be based only on natural and inherent rights, and all disputes should be handled privately. This way, one part of society is not constantly at odds with the other.

I can think of only one instance in which voting could be considered legitimate. That would be in a system where all those who wanted to vote acted voluntarily, and accepted the outcomes of their own actions, while all non-voters ignored the entire process. In other words, all who did not participate in voting would be completely exempt from all decrees passed down by those elected by the voters. There would be no consent given, and therefore none granted. This is a just way to eliminate the rule of one over another within a corrupt system. It is a way to stop rule by a majority, or even a minority over those who disagree.

No one who had any belief in freedom could ever have come up with the idea of voting. Voting by definition and design eliminates the individual in society for benefit of the collective. Individualism epitomizes freedom, while collectivism epitomizes slavery. Voting then is simply mob rule, the bane of freedom, and the fodder necessary for a society based on servitude!

“What ass first let loose the doctrine that the suffrage is a high boon and voting a noble privilege?”
~ H.L. Mencken

Regards,

Gary Barnett

Gary D. Barnett is president of Barnett Financial Services, Inc., in Lewistown, Montana.

Voting: The God That Failed was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

~ Fischer Ames (1805)

Remember the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy? It took place last summer in New York City when some people – with no sense of how a democracy works – had the foolish notion to build on property they owned an Islamic cultural center to worship God as they pleased. In both Constitutional law and simple humanity they were well within their rights but their proposed location was, unfortunately, just two blocks from where the Twin Towers once stood. Crushed under a wave of populist indignation, the Islamic center has yet to be built.

Admittedly I hadn’t thought about it in some time, and would gather that most New Yorkers hadn’t thought about the “Ground Zero Mosque,” either, since the tabloids stopped telling us to think about it. The angry mobs that once gathered outside the proposed location have taken their pitchforks and torches and run off toward other distractions. (Call of Duty: Black Ops was released, for one.) Now emotions lay at low tide, all is calm. So it’s time to take stock of what it cost us.

The fact that a most basic human right – to worship in peace as you please – came under blatant assault in America, in our greatest, most liberal city no less, is tragic but predictable. This is what you get from nine (and counting) years of living under endless war, breathing the harsh, poisonous air of an increasingly militarized society, and the effects were shown in the tepid defense my great state’s political grandees’ offered in response to this populist rejection of religious freedom.

The political leaders of New York were, with but rare exception, either outright scoundrels or mealy-mouthed cowards. Steve Israel, my local House representative, took a few moments to defend our Constitution in a fuzzy, kind of, sort of way that characterizes those without any spine. “While they have a constitutional right to build the mosque,” he began (and history would be kinder to him had he stopped there), “it would be better if they had demonstrated more sensitivity to the families of 9/11 victims.”

So there we have it. Our Constitution, Israel laments, is too insensitive. Freedom isn’t free, the saying goes, and here Israel is unwilling to pay even the price of hurt feelings. Mr. Israel’s feeble gesture sums up all that New York’s timid Congressional representatives could muster in defense of religious freedom; highlights how bereft our leaders are of any courage to stand up to a howling mob.

The farce deepened as the one politician who came out the hero of this sad tale was none other than the Golden Tongue himself, Barack Obama, a man not exactly known for political courage. “In this country we treat everybody equally and in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion. I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding.” For once I applauded the man and realized I was wrong about one thing – he has read the Constitution.

The entire sad episode of the “Ground Zero Mosque” gave warning that democracy is no bulwark for liberty; it never has been and cannot be. I look at America today and see the wisdom in Bertrand de Jouvenel’s assertion that democracy is “the time of tyranny’s incubation.” (de Jouvenel, 1978, 15) Americans have forgotten to remember that Hitler – who was elected – is not only a symbol of the vile Holocaust but of sweet democracy, too.

Like many of our ancestors these newly arrived Muslim immigrants pinned their hopes on America’s reputation as a nation of law and not of men but found, in this case, that reputation to be far short to its reality. Today, America’s reality starts for the Muslim immigrant as soon as they disembark onto freedom’s golden shores.

Where once our forefathers, upon entry into New York harbor, came up from steerage to gather on the ship’s deck and watch the Statue of Liberty slide by, today’s immigrants come through an airport. What do they think when they first spot a line of freedom-loving Americans, standing meek with shoes in hand and pants around the ankles as surly TSA agents bark orders and jam their hands into our crotch? Do any of them take a moment to think about the lawlessness they had fled and wonder, “Why did I bother?”

Don’t be alarmed, new Muslim-Americans, all you see and hear about you is from what democracy is made! As H.L. Mencken noted long ago, a citizen of a democracy will be met everywhere by “an assumption of his disingenuousness and dishonour.” (Mencken, 2009, 156) So take off your sandals, lift your robe, and wait for Uncle Sam’s frisk.

I don’t claim this anti-Muslim populism to be anything unusual. History tells us that all human societies need a dog to kick. Without exception every race and nationality has been through the ringer at one time or another and, also without exception, every race and nationality has behaved like a beast when given the opportunity to pummel some minority in their midst. Every dog has its day, and every society has its dog. Current dog in America are Muslims within our borders. Native born or no, these poor people now find themselves cursed to be Muslim in a land that doesn’t want them.

James Madison once looked about him at 1774 Virginia and its wave of religious persecutions and exclaimed that he had “nothing to brag of as to the State and Liberty of my country…that diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution rages among some.” Now, over two hundred years on, some Texas Congressman named John Cornyn declared of President Obama’s defense of religious freedom “the president himself seems to be disconnected from the mainstream of America.” No truer words can be said of 2010 America. Democracy has spoken; The People have made themselves heard. Freedom of religion is conditional upon the mob’s approval, the Constitution be damned.

As things currently stand any Muslim who comes to America in search of freedom is to be pitied – they are like a drowning sailor climbing into a sinking lifeboat.

Regards,
C.J. Maloney
Whiskey & Gunpowder

December 29, 2010

A Mosque, Some Muslims, and a Mob was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.

Is it just a simple matter of “voting all the bums out” — as a few signs advocated?

I don’t believe in man qua corporation as having a soul — and that’s a sticky snaggle for libertarian conversions in my book. We’ve got these corporations on our hands. Lots of them. And we’re saving them right now. Of course, we don’t wanna, because in the world according to Darwin, they don’t deserve it. And that’s what a couple of signs said.

Yet other than taxes, what pitchfork have we with which to attack this capital gains-loving Marie Antoinette of Manhattan? If one were to write Revelations today, one could send the Whore of Babylon with Roman corruption and kings at her breast into early retirement. The Whore of Manhattan, we’d make, with Blankfein and Vikram, sucking away.

Examine this pseudo-biblical snatch from Network and its corporate demon, Arthur Jensen:

“Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little 21-inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx?…We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that…perfect world…in which there’s no war or famine, oppression, or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.”

You see, tea baggers, We the People are not the Geneva-loving Rousseau’s Corsica or Poland, starting with a new constitution afresh. We have no democracy. We have only the media, chattel of the corporations that are hoping to eek one last ounce of profit from the old dead horses called newspaper and broadcast TV. Why do you think we see so much of Obama on our late night and Geithner on our sacred Sunday mornings?

How do I know that Mr. Jensen’s speech is not what pure libertarianism would look like if thrust atop this ugly, brutish state? Would I be happy there? Would I be tranquilized?

I’m thinking the best you and I can do, dear reader, is defect…make nice paper-dollar profits on the IBMs and Dows and their tiny brethren…and depart after turning it into gold. Go somewhere with cheap land…and buy cattle, sheep, goats.

After all, who among us really has the nads, the arms, or sufficient belief in mankind to rewrite the social contract of these United States?

(Hush, Texans like Rick Perry, we hear your clamor…but do we believe it?)

How the Rest of the World Sees Tea Baggers

Always ask: What do our fellow nation-states make of all this? After all, what is diplomacy but a massive PR campaign? And how will we know which country will harbor us gold-bearing exiles the best?

Here’s a headline courtesy of Agence France-Presse: “Anti-Barack Obama ‘Tea Party’ Protests Mark U.S. Tax Day.” The article juxtaposed the words “modest crowds” with “several thousands.” It admitted the protest had a “catchy theme,” but questioned the strength of the “mostly Republican forces” whose party has “been in disarray since Sen. John McCain lost the White House” — a party whose senior figures “appear lukewarm” to the tea parties.

Maybe that’s just because they have issues with verbal jokes that mix them up with “tea bagging” — the sex act — which we all laughed about the morning after. Strategically, there’s no reason for the Republicans to ignore the voice of the Ron Paul fringe, which is getting louder…they’re still doing worse than Obama in Gallup polls, and they’re up for re-election first.

We all know it’s good to ride the faux-populist express…Just look at who ran it straight up to the door of the White House last year.

I know die-hard Dems who voted Reagan into office his first year…for fiscal conservatism, and fiscal conservatism alone. Look how well that turned out! Running from one platform and party to the other is as dizzying as a dog chasing its own tail.

Americans need to stop being twits first and foremost. Posthaste, Patriot…keep your brain for yourself!

Regards,
Samantha Buker

April 21, 2009

Why Tea Won’t Work This Time was originally featured on Whiskey and Gunpowder. Visit Laissez Faire Books for the best selection of libertarian book titles.