October 22, 2016

On Usurpations and the Plague of Locusts

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“The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” – Lincoln

Whenever a class of people, self-anointed, seek to impose Utopia on the world, evil ensues. Whenever a group of people seek to arrogate the power of the people to themselves, evil ensues. It is not merely that power corrupts but that some people are compelled to corrupt democratically distributed power through statist centralization. If the age of kings was the age of rule by one monarch, the current age drifts towards the rule of many smaller kings acting in unison. This is the age of the Multi-Monarchists; of rule by the faction of “Little Hitlers.” Their accoutrements are not uniforms and stark symbols, but cap & gown, press passes, and union cards. Their collective policy is plague.

All faction, no matter its origin or ideals, is in the end Fascist. The Founders knew Faction and feared it. Much of the Federalist Papers is taken up with the problem of suppressing Faction and the Constitution is the carefully wrought attempt at a solution to it. Of course, the Founders also knew that Faction as Facism is never finished except by fire and fire alone. This is why, in the Founders' founding document, The Declaration of Independence, they included this provision,

"... when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

As the Founders knew from their own experience, this is much easier said than done. It requires the blood of patriots and tyrants. And the Founders knew that sustaining such a government was even harder. Benjamin Franklin at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation:

“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”
“A Republic," Franklin replied, "if you can keep it.”

Every day I read of new usurpations of power as the current matched set of “ruling elites” takes a new section of the Constitution into the outhouse and emerges without it.

Usurpations of powers previously reserved to the American people in multitudes, swirling over the land like a cloud of locusts. These usurpations come in sizes large and small; from taxation disguised as “fees”, to legislative legerdemain in which bills of economic attainder will be "deemed" passed without a reading and, inside the cancerous towers of bureaucrats, a vote, to meddlesome intrusions into trout fishing in America.

Indeed, it seems that there is little in American life that has not of late had some appointed and malign Faction assigned to it for purposes of some dubious transformation into some off-brand stealth-socialist utopia. And in doing their work of transformation these Fascist Factionists devastate the public purse at the same time they feed at the public trough. The party that struggled for decades to “Keep the government out of your bedroom,” now seeks more and more ways in which the government can wander your home and your body and count your cups and calories.

H.L. Mencken, no stranger to realpolitik in the United States, put it this way, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

An American president during the shooting phase of our first Civil War put it this way:

"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
-- - - Lincoln: 2nd Inaugural

Looking deeper still into history we can remember another time of great plagues when men who thought themselves God sought to enslave people in perpetuity:

And Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt, and the LORD brought an east wind upon the land all that day, and all that night; and when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts.

And the locust went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt: very grievous were they; before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such.

For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt. -- Exodus 10

In both instances the only solutions that could be found was not greater control of the people by the faction, but greater freedom for the people from all faction. Until they found that freedom again, until they managed to disenthrall themselves, the plagues only continued, and continued, and continued, and continued.

“The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

Posted by gerardvanderleun at October 22, 2016 9:54 AM
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"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

"We must disentHrall ourselves *individually*, and then we shall save our selves.”

============================

No charge for the editing. This time.
next time I'll send an invoice, payable in 30.

It must start individually, nothing else will work.

Ignoring the power of the individual is where the US is right now. Most think of themselves as a small part of a we. I never did. I was always just me, and always will be. So subordinate yourself to the bigger picture, I will stay right here with the smaller one and won't interfere at all. And when you finally come for mine, I will lay to you a waste you never imagined. It is the destiny, the journey, the legacy.

Posted by: ghostsniper at October 22, 2016 11:56 AM

It remains unclear to me who's side Lincoln is on in 2116. Maybe somebody can elaborate.

Posted by: james wilson at October 22, 2016 2:10 PM

Lincoln practiced Lincolncide...he was always after more power and more control. Like the present day despots there was no limit to the number of people he would kill, incarcerate, or coerce to get what he wanted...obedience. Like the Kennedy Camelot there was the Lincoln Camelot and neither has faded at the hands of the progressive narrative.

Posted by: indyjonesouthere at October 22, 2016 2:48 PM

My feelings about Lincoln have changed - the dogma when I was a child was that he saved the Union, but it now looks like he destroyed a big part of the Constitution in the process. To end slavery he introduced the draft, which really looks a lot like slavery to me.

Posted by: Old Surfer at October 22, 2016 3:07 PM

"Their collective policy is plague,"
And the present cures are elimination of the inviting environment, elimination of disease germs, development of immunity.
The first and third approaches require adequate healthful education.
The second is least likely; unhealthful ideas will always grow like mushrooms -- manure-fed and masqueraded as goodness.
The 1st and 3rd require OUR dedication and perseverance.
How many of us are on school boards?

Posted by: Howard Nelson at October 22, 2016 3:37 PM

Two years into my gov't job and I can testify like this is church. It is gospel truth. The only thing I can really say, however, is that the people in the administrative tasks of power have no clue. They can't fire people and can't figure out how to get things done with the intractable stupidity, sloth, or downright intentional slow-jamming of the gears. The budget in my State is "broken." That means that no one knows how much money is actually where. Millions. In one state agency. Just one, in a poor state. Imagine that...

Posted by: JoanOfArgghh at October 22, 2016 7:15 PM

Lincoln, to win the Civil War, laid the foundation of the administrative state. Over the next 80 years Congress was slowly emasculated. First came in Interstate Commerce Commission, then the Food and Drug Administration, then the Federal Reserve Bank, then the Income Tax. By the time of the next crisis (Depression and WWII) Roosevelt knew exactly what to do: flood the zone with new administrative agencies. Eighty years later we are drowning in bureaucrats; they are everywhere. And it matters not who we elect to the Congress; as an institution, it has no power. It is only for show. And a piss poor show it is.

Posted by: Chuck at October 23, 2016 4:53 AM

Lincoln mightily professed that his cause was to Save the Union. Well By God, he did and what a mess we've got on our hands today.

But, maybe that mess was headed our way regardless of the war and regardless of his untimely death. It is known, to some extent, that he was working on plans to send the darkies back to Africa and elsewhere and that repatriation would have been a wonderful thing.

I would love to know how things would have worked out had the Great Emancipator been able to fulfill Act II.

Posted by: Jack at October 23, 2016 5:49 AM

"Intentional slow-jamming of the gears." Nicely put. Saw evidence of that in the private sector at a large corporation I worked for. Regulations and the govt regulators creep in and strangle productivity,you know,to keep things fair and make a "better working environment." No,the purpose is to keep the unemployable employed. At our expense.

Posted by: Nori at October 23, 2016 6:35 AM

A nitwit at the building dept made a copy of my building's site plan from the BACK SIDE of the sheet, which made it unable to be read.

Another nitiwit then sent me a $15 certified letter that took 8 days to reach me informing me that my site plan was not acceptable and would need to be resubmitted.

By now it has been 31 days since I submitted the plans for a building permit.

I submit 7 more copies of the site plan after acquiring engineering seals at additional expense, and waited another 2 weeks to pick up the building and zoning permits.

Almost 2 months have passed and my client is paying construction loan interest during this period on a home appraised at $800k. No small sum of money.

And what do we have to show for the money?

Don't say oversight, myself and all of my people are already required to have the proper licenses and certifications to create buildings anywhere in the country.

Further, because I routinely design buildings in 11 different jurisdictions with 11 different types of codes I must be an expert at all of them, and the constant onslaught of *upgrades", that are so numerous that the authorities themselves can't keep up nor do they have to.

I, however, deal in the free market everyday and MUST be expert in my profession if I expect to succeed - I HAVE to know the codes. Building, zoning, ADA, life-safety, FEMA, corp of engineer, fire safety, flood, etc., etc.

The gov't automatrons however get their pay at the end of the week whether they do anything worthwhile or not.

At least 50% of my yearly efforts are not because my profession requires it but rather because of the bureaucracy that is magnetized to EVERYTHING in the entire country.

This is why 80% of all new businesses fail within the first 3 years and it is why all businesses are stumbling right now.

This rotten assed gov't has created an environment where it is almost impossible for anyone except the gov't itself to succeed and it succeeds through it's monopoly on force.

It's also why EVERYTHING costs at least 3 times as much as it should (nevermind the inflation).

NO ONE would deal with the gov't at any level if they were not forced to do so. I have never seen any good in any of it.

Encourage it anyway you can toward failure, sooner = better.

Posted by: ghostsniper at October 23, 2016 7:24 AM

& it's amazing we the people accept things such as the EPA declaring farming furrows as “mini mountain ranges” in order to regulate them.

Posted by: Jim O'Neil at October 23, 2016 10:00 AM

It's not acceptance Jim.
There is nothing we can do about it.
Bureaucracy has many, many layers and the layers we have access to do not have any direct connection to the layers that make the rules which may be located in another state or even DC.

Jumping on the grossly obese minority female with 3" purple fingernails and knotted hair at the counter serves no purpose and is beyond her capacity to even understand.

If the head of the building dept was found lying in a rural ravine gutted and on fire at 3am with a sign close by stating "This is what happens to tyrants!" the message might start to sink in to others that work there.

Short of that sort of thing, there is nothing else to be done about the furrows to mountains.

Posted by: ghostsniper at October 23, 2016 11:57 AM

So said the guy whose decisions killed 750,000+ American soldiers and civilians and began the Federal Tyranny that is now only coming to a head.

Posted by: H. Jones at October 23, 2016 2:46 PM

Interesting to me that a Kentucky man should get his reverence in Illinois,back in the day. What Is it about Illinois,to this day?

Posted by: Nori at October 23, 2016 8:23 PM

In the state of Washington, bureaucrats own the water under ground:
https://www.wethegoverned.com/hirst-decision-by-supreme-court-unleashes-wrath-of-futurewise-upon-property-owners-by-taking-their-water/

In Oregon, they own the water coming from the sky:
http://www.ncsl.org/research/environment-and-natural-resources/rainwater-harvesting.aspx

I fully expect them to regulate the food you can eat next.

Posted by: Teri Pittman at October 25, 2016 9:56 AM

Ghostsniper - I like the way you think. I have to agree that there is precious little an aware citizen can do in order to get any sort of justice. The automatons in the bureaucracies do get paid whether we get our permits or not and there is no incentive to improve gov't services. Worse yet is the highly visible flaunting of authority by Obama, Clinton, the DOJ, FBI and IRS, etc.. Such flagrant abuse of power emboldens the petty bureaucrats at the bottom to be even less diligent, responsive or responsible. The ravine solution may be closer than anyone thinks. How else do we effectively "withdraw our consent to be governed" by these corrupt criminals?

Posted by: Mike Fuller at October 26, 2016 5:45 PM

Its like you read my mind! You seem to know a
lot about this, like you wrote the book in it or something.

I think that you could do with a few pics to drive the message home
a little bit, but instead of that, this is
excellent blog. An excellent read. I will certainly
be back.

Posted by: Georgia at October 26, 2016 10:41 PM

You can bet Lincoln was prepared to lose the life of his sons nor his own nor his fortune.

He was a role model for lberals and fascists.

Posted by: Veritas at October 29, 2016 4:07 PM