Category: liberty

and the day after

The fear mongers were working overtime in the days leading up to Tuesday’s election, which is the last election in Wisconsin until next April, thank the Lord. We are theoretically free for awhile from commercials proclaiming what a dirtbag such and such a candidate is.

I remembered H.L. Mencken’s warning about imaginary hobgoblins as all this transpired: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” Little has changed since he wrote that passage in 1918. So many of us are still alarmed and clamorous to be led to safety, and the practical politician is still eager to lead us not to safety but astray.

It’s easy to forget that freedom does not depend on any government actions — in fact, government by definition acts to restrict or curtail freedom, or otherwise why would it be called government? The right ruler of any human is the person s/he sees in the mirror. No one has a greater stake in your well-being.

Mencken is often misquoted — and at one time I was one of the culprits — as saying that “all” of his hobgoblins are imaginary, rather than “most.” Some of the hobgoblins that practical politicians warns about are indeed real, not the least of which are those very politicians. We are besieged with political ads that warn an opponent is a threat to safety and well-being if not democracy itself. It behooves one to consider that all of these ads are correct and that none of the alternatives are fit to run our lives.

To the extent that they stay in their lane, keep the streets paved and plowed and defend our shores, Leviathan employees are useful public servants. When they stray into micromanaging our lives, as they inevitably do, they become very real hobgoblins.

Election campaigns have become more of a blood sport than a competition to determine who is more qualified to run the apparatus of government — and the sport takes our eyes off the question of whether the apparatus of government is even necessary. 

I try not to have a stake in the outcome because I often don’t have one anyway. I am usually a disinterested observer, like a World Series between the Washington Nationals and Texas Rangers. Neither team engages my passions.

And so when fear mongers start trying to stir up emotion, I remind myself to refuse to be afraid, free myself from the shackles of fear, and dream of a better tomorrow.

I choose whimsy

I am not at a loss for words today; it just feels like a good morning to pull this 2012 post out of the archives to start the work week.

* * * * *

I see and hear the cranky and dyspeptic political tones, philosophical arguments dressed up as a battle between good and evil, and I have seen and heard enough.

“There ain’t no good guys, there ain’t no bad guys, there’s only you and me and we just disagree,” the poet sang.

And yet the demagogues behind the curtains conjure images of battlegrounds. We don’t just disagree; you are the embodiment of evil walking on Earth. If your kind keeps/retains power, then the rest of us die.

Hogwash. I say again, hogwash. Pay no attention to the demagogues behind the curtains.

My freedom is not dependent upon someone holding or being ejected from office, and neither is yours. Human beings are born to freedom, not granted liberty by benevolent rulers. What part of “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights” is so hard to understand?

We have a choice to stew in our own bile – or in bile provided for us by willing political toadies – or to live our lives freely, joyfully and in celebration.

You may follow the path to fear and loathing and the infestation of imaginary hobgoblins. I choose whimsy.

A New Hope

Today brings something my parents never saw in their lifetimes — the inauguration of a guy who was elected president of the United States twice but non-consecutively. Grover Cleveland and Donald Trump are the only two people ever to achieve that feat.

I looked up Cleveland and found he won the popular vote three times, something that only Franklin Roosevelt also accomplished. It seems he was a classical liberal, which means he would be a political conservative in today’s environment. 

So today we again “meet the new boss.” The phrase is usually paired with “same as the old boss” thanks to Pete Townshend, but I wonder if that’s really true this time. I’d like to believe that it isn’t. Trump was not able to do much last time about his promise to drain the swamp. Certainly the swamp creatures frustrated, vilified and ultimately beat him by 2020, but this time he’s had eight years to study them more carefully, and he has the popular vote behind him this time.

I have some strong views about government and two wishes — that it become smaller and eventually go away, restoring our basic freedoms, and that it stop waging and sponsoring endless war across the planet. By recruiting the likes of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to ostensibly study ways to reduce government, and the likes of Tulsi Gabbard, an outspoken veteran who advocates for peace, Trump gave me hope.

For the past four years faceless puppet masters have been operating the machinery of leviathan behind the figurehead of a confused old man, and Trump has appointed a small army of disruptors to lead the various departments of government that have so abused us. Whether they can succeed in ferreting out the worst offenders remains to be seen, but at least the puppet masters’ ghastly efforts have been made more visible and defeated at the ballot box.

Inauguration Day coincides this year with Martin Luther King Jr. Day, celebrating a man who advocated for freedom and human dignity through nonviolent civil disobedience. Like many before him and since, he was taken from us by violent means. As always, evil triumphed for a moment by taking a good man, but it utterly failed to kill the idea. 

Time will tell if the infestation in Washington, D.C., and other halls of power can ever be eradicated, but as long as the ideas of freedom and human rights survive, we can hope and pray.