The Way Out

Imprimis ^ | November 2021 • Volume 50, Number 11 | Larry P. Arnn

[EBH]

The following is adapted from a speech delivered at a Hillsdale College reception in Overland Park, Kansas, on November 18, 2021.

Here are two questions pertinent to our times: (1) How would you reduce the greatest free republic in history to despotism in a short time? and (2) How would you stop that from happening? The answer to the first question has been provided in these last two disastrous years. The answer to the second has begun to emerge in recent months. Both are worthy of study...

In answering the second question, I will tell two stories that are suggestive.

The first took place in the small town of Jonesville, Michigan, five miles north of Hillsdale College. In our state, as in most places where the lockdowns were enforced, businesses were crippled or destroyed en masse. Restaurants were chief among them. One of our local restaurants is a 30-year-old diner called Spanglers Family Restaurant. Mitch Spangler is the proprietor. The business was founded by his late father, and Mitch was purchasing the business from his mother. The payments to his mother depended upon the revenues of the business, and his mother’s retirement depended upon the payments. The life’s work of two generations was at stake. Mitch was also helping to support a daughter in college.

This is not to mention the more than 20 employees whose livelihoods are dependent on Spanglers. “Our employees are moms who have kids,” Spangler told the local paper. “One of our employees is pregnant; another is a 19-year-old kid. This is his first job, and he just bought a car.” Our leaders in Washington treat it as a small thing when trillions are being thrown about....

Mr. Spangler was not prepared to surrender all this.

[Flavious_Maximus]

The way out?

I say with full guns blazing, that’s how! Ten more months and then it’s payback time baby!

[Sans-Culotte]

Bump

[Badboo]

Really? Oh yeah you mean with those hyper vicious fighters? McCarthy/McConnell?

You are on drugs. GOP = Cowards.

But “never lose hope”. May you find comfort in your delusions.

[Badboo]

Having traveled a similar educational path, with many of the same teachers as Mr. Arnn, I have to disagree on end results.

Oligarchic tyranny can only be overcome with the violent death of the oligarchs. Any cursory examination of history shows this to be true.

The oligarchs have the means and the will to bring national and hired military and economic pain and destruction to those that oppose them.

This means the overthrow has to be extremely brutal. The resulting order, or what is left of the population and resources, will result in another dictatorship of one form or another.

The reason is simple. The failure in representative or “republican” democracy to reign in the oligarchs to begin with proves there is no such nexus sufficient to reestablish it after an overthrow.

In sum Americans ain't what they use to be, not by a long shot. The populace that could read and respect the wisdom of the founders, and men of the founders quality that could build freedom structures and respect the liberty of the people, are both never coming back.

So please Mr Arnn, aside from your cute but trite stories, tell me exactly how you will defeat not one or two oligarchies but a vast host of them that currently exist:

The political oligarchy
The big business oligarchy
The educational oligarchy
The military oligarchy
The media oligarchy
Various international oligarchies

Perhaps you might reflect on Churchill's teachings on what to do in the face of an implacable opponent who wishes to curtail your liberties and has the means to do it.

Or as Professor Jaffa might say, study is hard, perhaps you should try harder.