Posted on 08/10/2014 11:03:39 AM PDT by cornelis
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a government that has the power to dictate whether or not your kids can sell or eat cupcakes as a result of late local bake sale is a tyranny. It is a government way, way out of power, out of sync. And it's gonna get worse. It's not gonna get better.
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No matter how you slice it, this is tyranny. When I first came to my corner of New Hampshire, one of the small pleasures I took in my new state were the frequent bake sales – the Ladies' Aid, the nursery school, the church rummage sale. Most of the muffins and cookies were good; some were exceptional; a few went down to sit in the stomach like overloaded barges at the bottom of the Suez Canal. But even then you admired if not the cooking then certainly the civic engagement. In a small but tangible way, a person who submits to a state pie regime is a subject, not a citizen – because participation is the essence of citizenship, and thus barriers to participation crowd out citizenship. A couple of kids with a lemonade stand are learning the rudiments not just of economic self-reliance but of civic identity.
I mentioned one of these stories on Rush a year or two back and some guy responded, "Why are you talking about this? It's not important." That's why I'm talking about it. Because if you won't push back against the small-scale stuff, by the time they come for the big things you'll no longer know how to rouse yourself. In old, settled societies, tyranny starts at the edge and works its way inwards. And the essence of tyranny is its capriciousness. It's easy to say, "Well, I don't go to bake sales, so what do I care?"
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
"Why are you talking about this? It's not important." That's why I'm talking about it. Because if you won't push back against the small-scale stuff, by the time they come for the big things you'll no longer know how to rouse yourself. In old, settled societies, tyranny starts at the edge and works its way inwards. And the essence of tyranny is its capriciousness.
Frog in boiling pot of water story!! We are being boiled right now and it’s too late to jump out.
Auction halls are in a panic to get anything with ivory out of their halls or warehouses for fear that armed fees will come in and confiscate and destroy anything they declare illegal
This includes such things as antique Steinway pianos with ivory keys.
Friends with booths at antique malls have been sent emails giving them a week or two to get anything with ivory out of their booths or the management will remove and destroy it
Importantly, the lever the feds you is the school lunch program. And for decades they have demanded that schools must follow their rules or be cut off from the lunch program.
However, there are now hundreds of requirements all threatening the same thing, so states are seriously considering allowing school districts to opt out of the federal program, if they can provide their own program at greater efficiency, that is, lower cost and more meals served.
This makes sense, if say, the feds offer $1 per student per day, but demand $3 per student per day back in unrelated compliance costs. If the school can raise $1.50 per student per day, they can actually save lots of money by canceling all the other federal demands.
This is how liberty dies, with a thousand cuts, day after day after day. Bill Clinton famously said, "The age of Big Government is over". And in a sense he's right: This is an age of small, itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny government, in which nothing is too inconsequential and trivial not to command the attention of the federal enforcers - until, cumulatively, all the itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny government adds up to the biggest government ever seen. linky
Bttt.
5.56mm
Steyn ping ...
I used to get greatly encouraged reading Mark Steyn’s commentary. Now I just want to weep for my country.
Steyn is a great writer
When Caesar feeds you, you will eat what Caesar gives you. And you'll do whatever else Caesar wants you to do, too ... even if it means bending over and kissing your own @ss.
Sometimes the problem is too distant--easy to write about, too difficult to do anything about. What you can do is build a family.
But we might still be able to shoot our way out.
Today's jobs situation, for instance, is the result of departure from our constitutional foundations. It has been brought about by the so-called "progressives'" takeover of the reins of government.
As for "job creation,"--just think about it. The most successful "experiment" in job and wealth creation is the one which began in 1776 in America, was protected and "secured" by a written Constitution that severely limited government, and it thrived for over two centuries. It provided an example of more liberty and opportunity, more productivity, and more goods and services than the world ever has seen.
It happened under what James Madison called "the benign influence of a responsible government."
While Europe struggled with oppressive government intervention, the genius Founders of America recognized enduring truths about human nature, the human tendency to abuse power, and the possibilities of liberty for individuals. Richard Frothingham's 1872 "History of the Rise of the Republic of the United States," Page 14, contained the following footnote item on the condition of citizens of France:
"Footnote 1. M. de Champagny (Dublin Review, April, 1868) says of France, 'We were and are unable to go from Paris to Neuilly; or dine more than twenty together; or have in our portmanteau three copies of the same tract; or lend a book to a friend: or put a patch of mortar on our own house, if it stands in the street; or kill a partridge; or plant a tree near the road-side; or take coal out of our own land: or teach three or four children to read, . .. without permission from the civil government.'
Clearly the government of France laid an oppressive regulatory and tax burden on citizens, robbing them of their Creator-endowed liberty and enjoyment thereof. Frothingham observed that such coercive power constituted "a noble form robbed of its lifegiving spirit."
Thomas Jefferson warned Americans:
"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39
Note Jefferson's very last thought here. He declares that when government taxing and debt have reached certain levels, in order for individuals to survive, then their chosen "employment" becomes "hiring ourselves to rivet their (the government's) chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers."
Consider: in 2009, where are America's levels of employment highest? Is it in the once-thriving private sector, or in the ever-increasing government sector?
Have we reached that final phase of what Jefferson described as a logical end to what begins as letting "our rulers load us with perpetual debt"--a state where we actually become participants by "hiring ourselves" to make slaves of our fellow citizens?
Where to, America?
We've already done that once. Now we're working hard helping our kids build their own families. Those grandchildren are the ones we weep for the most.
Bless you. I sometimes forget to do my part.
Trickle Down Tyranny.
If Obama doesn’t have to follow the Constitution, why should the police, or any other government official?
We’ve all seen it. Everywhere.
The threat of taking away school lunch money is almost certainly how Michelle Obama enforces her dictates. It is how the feds have manipulated local school policies, though only now, with Common Core, are they planning the national takeover of school curricula.
The amount of garbage added to schools solely on the back of the lunch program are just obscene, having nothing to do with food or education. Student psychological and cultural questionnaires, teacher reporting requirements, tons of administrative paperwork, again, that has nothing to do with food... You name it, the schools are forced to do all of it, always with the same threat.
A bit of soliloqy from Richard III came to mind when I read your comment. They both point to events that, cough, may prove "interesting".
And I,--like one lost in a thorny wood, That rends the thorns and is rent with the thorns, Seeking a way and straying from the way; Not knowing how to find the open air, But toiling desperately to find it out,-- Torment myself to catch the English crown: And from that torment I will free myself, Or hew my way out with a bloody axe.
Mark Steyn ping.
Freepmail me, if you want on or off the Mark Steyn ping list.
Thanks for the ping Servant of the Cross.
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