WHY SO MANY PEOPLE ARE CRAZY
NOVEMBER 1, 2010. All over the world, we learn, massive numbers of people are saying their governments aren’t giving them what they need.
Or worse, governments are placing a boot to their heads.
We are presented with the prescriptive picture of governments that should be delivering benefits to enormous numbers of people.
Such populations are considered victims. They are more or less a permanent victim class.
In order to assuage and take care of this ever expanding class, governments must become bigger.
Government is looked to as the solution to a problem.
If we glance at the form and structure of the government established in the wake of the American Revolution, we see it was in no way created to solve the problem of widespread need. That wasn’t the idea. But since then, the flood has come; public needs, and their fulfillment, have become the standard by which government is judged.
And as that “modern revolution” has swept across the nation, a basic concept—in fact, the quintessential concept—has been evaporating like a stream in a drought.
Freedom. Individual freedom.
The founders realized very well that the size and scope of government and individual freedom were two parts of the same formula.
To the degree that you grant government more power and solution-making function, to the degree that government becomes the source of all gifts, freedom diminishes.
Conversely, with more individual freedom, government shrinks in size and importance.
You can wiggle and tap dance and fraudulently reason from here to the moon, but you can’t alter those fundamentals.
Of course, that hasn’t stopped people from trying.
They haven’t had a difficult time of it, either, because they don’t care about freedom. It isn’t one of their concerns. In fact, many of these charlatans believe freedom is an illusion; it’s simply a con that was established to allow the powerful and greedy to overwhelm the masses. It was never important.
The original American Revolution had two phases. The first was declaration of independence from the British crown. The second, accomplished by the drafting and ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, broke open the egg completely; and marvelously, it revealed the most profound idea: the individual was free.
This second phase built a government that, by law, would not be able to infringe on that freedom—because government was seen as the most dangerous intruder.
Now, in America, things have deteriorated to the point where government is seen as a parent. The child wants to be able to do whatever he wants to, and he also wants to be financed in that endeavor.
To cap this approach, the child wants to position himself as an eternal victim, unable to sustain his existence by his own efforts. With this story in tow, the child is able to make endless demands on the parent. The child’s official status as victim ensures that “right.”
Under the arrangement, freedom becomes distorted beyond all recognition. It becomes the outraged twin of the victim.
“I want what I want when I want it, and I want to do whatever I want to when I want to.”
The advent of psychology as a legitimate and respected profession has added a further piece to the twisted prism. “Victims are really only people whose present can be explained by their past.” It’s so simple. To end up in great need only the parental government can satisfy—to be a victim—means that what happened to you since birth conspired to put you in a situation where your options were drastically limited.
Anyone can cook up such a personal history. And if the stated goal of therapy is to liberate a person from his past, well, it turns out that most people use psychology to remain in their mythical lock-up.
Note that the fairy tale which explains how the past shapes the present puts up walls against the pure notion of individual freedom. Such freedom doesn’t really exist; it couldn’t exist. The links in the chain of past-to-present causation preclude it.
Consumerism, the vast mall of body, mind, and spirit, really takes hold when the advertising industry can tap into the individual’s perception of his own well-deserved need for thing after thing after thing after thing after thing, in perpetuity.
“I want what I want when I want it.”
Consumerism, beyond a certain point, has nothing to do with freedom. It has nothing to do with an individual who knows he is free and is acting from that basis to forward large goals.
Massive and unending material consumption is the territory of the person who has lost track of the fact that he can be free.
Now we get the conjoining of: victim; perpetually hungry consumer; and a government whose job it is to supply the means for acquisition by the children under its care.
Loans don’t have to be repaid. It’s up to the government to figure out how to structure credit and money so this can happen.
In the future, everyone should have a boat, an island, and a plane. If not, there will be war.
There are other myths and their spin-off consequences. Because there are growing numbers of people who can’t secure the essentials of survival, the government must solve that problem. It must solve it today, tomorrow, and forever. In order to accomplish this, government must become larger and employ more helpers.
And if the retirement age for these government helpers is moved back two or three years, their pensions postponed, that justifies a national riot. Because the government helpers are themselves victims.
When you come right down to it, we’re all victims. And we have to give each other whatever we say we need. Now.
On and on it goes.
Government, the great solver.
“To satisfy the victim-children, we’ll take your money and give it to them.”
“Wait. I might be a victim, too. Let me think about it for a minute. I believe I can come up with something.”
JON RAPPOPORT
Jon Rappoport has been working as an investigative reporter for 30 years. He is the author of a unique course, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, for homseschoolers and adults. For inquiries: qjrconsulting@gmail.com