Same as the old boss after all

“How can you write about Neil Sedaka and being silly when there’s a war going on?” I heard the voice from a little corner of my consciousness, but the death of Neil Sedaka was on my mind Saturday, so I wrote about him for Sunday, and Mary and I were silly on Sunday, and I preferred to write about that for Monday.

I have little to add regarding the latest war against Iran anyway. The great battle in this world is not left versus right, but the state versus the individual. The left favors one version of an all-powerful state, and the right favors another version, but neither side is particularly interested in protecting individual rights.

And war is the state’s favorite tool. The left is criticizing the right-handed president’s war actions, but it had no problem when a left-handed president took similar actions. This president has said a lot of pretty things about ending wars, but in the end it’s another case of “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

As a result I have little to say about the war against Iran. War is a function of the state, and I have no interest in the state except to find ways to reduce its size and power. Peace, on the other hand, takes concerted efforts by individuals, one individual at a time.

And so I offer, once again, my Declaration of Peace, from this individual to each individual I meet.

A Declaration of Peace

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to step back and ask, “What in the world are we doing?” and consider a different approach, it behooves us to explain what in the world we are doing, and why.

These truths ought to be self-evident — that all humans are created equal, endowed by our Creator with rights that are certain and unalienable, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — but then governments are created to tinker with those rights, to abridge those rights, and eventually to trample those rights.

Ostensibly governments are created to do those things that individuals cannot do, but there are many acts that individuals will not do and should not do, and they are no less heinous when committed in the name of government, and among these are theft, extortion, blackmail, and murder.

As a free and independent human, therefore, I declare that I am at peace with my fellow humans and that I will not initiate violence against them. This I pledge by my life, my fortune (such as it is) and my sacred honor, so help me God.

Words have meaning

There is another side to H.L. Mencken’s wonderful quote that I often cite — “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” — and that is that some of the hobgoblins are real, not imaginary. And most of those, of course, are practical politicians.

There’s another side to Tom Petty’s wonderful quote I use all the time — “Most things I worry about never happen anyway” — and that is that some things I worry about do happen sometimes.

Zig Ziglar said that when his guy did not win the presidency, he would give himself 24 hours to feel miserable, and then he would pick himself up, dust himself off, and say, “Well, this man is my president.”

Consider this my 24 hours.

A man who fantasized publicly about putting bullets into a political adversary and his children was elected attorney general of Virginia on Tuesday, as was a liar who promised a socialist utopia in New York City.

Words have a way of frightening me, because I think scary people choose their words carefully. The words the Third Reich employed were especially frightening, because they hypnotized otherwise reasonable people into condoning unspeakable horrors.

I have never said out loud or written down how uncomfortable I am about the agency named Homeland Security, because its name scares me. The word Homeland in that context is too similar for my tastes to “Fatherland,” the Reich’s appellation for Germany.

Similarly, I wonder why anyone would embrace a label like “democratic socialist” as if that was a good thing to be. The phrase is too close to “national socialist” not to give me pause. It was the national socialists of Germany who wreaked such havoc in the 1930s and 1940s. No nation should aspire to go there again. The greatest horrors of the 20th century arose from the embrace of socialism and its cousin, communism, but it seems that time has taken the edge off that terror and made those terms acceptable in civilized company again.

These thoughts are off-brand for a guy who wrote a book called Refuse to be Afraid, but I must admit I am afraid of history repeating itself as Powers That Be work to make our Fatherland secure and national socialists draw huge crowds. It will be different this time, the socialists promise. They always make that promise, history shows, and just like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown, once in power they yank the promise away to reveal their true nature. Perhaps those mesmerized by socialist promises are even too young to know who Lucy and Charlie Brown are, and they need instead to hear the old fable about the scorpion who hitched a ride across the river.

Of course, the point of Refuse to be Afraid was not that fear isn’t real or that there is nothing to be afraid of; the point was that we should not let our fear control our actions. And so I’m giving myself these 24 hours to fret — taking no action except to write down these thoughts — and tomorrow I’ll pick myself up and dust myself off. My only solace is that that man is not attorney general of my state and that man is not the mayor of any city near me — yet.

Happy Non-Election Day

Every two years, Wisconsin has a wonderful first Tuesday in November in which there is no election. Although there are monster elections elsewhere, as in New Jersey and Virginia, Badgers get to stay home today.

Although I have never gone as far as my late lamented friend-I-never-met Wally Conger, who refrained from voting altogether, I tend to agree with him that voting is a futile exercise that “only encourages the bastards,” in that it lends an air of legitimacy to the corrupt enterprise responsible for most of the misery rampant in the world, most significantly the horror of war.

Freedom does not depend on choosing the right ruler — no political leader cares about you or your loved ones anywhere near as much as you do. A friend I see in the mirror regularly once wrote, “Freedom means understanding that I am the boss of me.”

One man I gladly cast a ballot for, Lee Sherman Dreyfus, once said, “Government should defend our shores, deliver the mail and leave us the hell alone,” and that’s where I stand most days. I can think of no task that government assumes that the rest of us couldn’t do better and more efficiently. Any politician who wants my vote needs to be committed to liberty and ending war — as a result, very few politicians earn my vote.

My ideal world would be one where we all voluntarily buy into what Jesus called the two greatest commandments — Love God and love your neighbors, understanding that by “neighbors” we mean every human being on this speck of dust in the universe.

Alas, it is not an ideal world, but I for one do buy into those two laws, and my soul has been more at peace ever since I made that decision. Therefore, I heartily commend the idea for your consideration.

In the meantime, I plan to very much enjoy this bi-annual Non-Election Day.

Declaration Day

This is the day when folks in the good old U.S. of A. stage parades, grill and consume all kinds of meat, go to festivals, and scare dogs by setting off fireworks of all shapes and sizes.

The occasion is the 249th anniversary of the release of a little document called the Declaration Of Independence, which changed life as we knew it — and by “we,” I mean the people who were alive in 1776. I am apparently considered old now, but I’m not that old.

That little document made a number of statements that shifted people’s perspectives in significant ways. For one thing, it asserted that human rights were not a human invention — that things like the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were God-given and self-evident, not something granted by a king, a congress or a constitution.

It even suggested that if those manmade institutions fail to protect those God-given rights, the people have a right to dissolve those institutions and form a new government that will.

Holy moley, what a concept.

So saying, the signers of the Declaration broke off ties from the tyrannical British government and established 13 new nations that organized a loose confederation called the United States of America.

Great Britain, as all centralized governments are, was not inclined to give up power willingly, and so it waged war against this upstart confederation, but the spirit of liberty was more powerful than the spirit of tyranny, and the new states won the war.

After a few years some members of the loose confederation grew nostalgic for the tyrannical central government, and they persuaded their colleagues to form a new central government and bind their partners under a constitution. Leaders who were leery of the idea lobbied to amend this new arrangement to clarify that the reorganized government still could not infringe on those God-given rights, and they included a couple of clauses that any powers not specifically designated to this “federal” government were retained by the people and their respective states.

I could go on from there and discuss how the more central government grew and metastasized into something the signers of the Declaration might not recognize — or maybe they would recognize it and say something to the effect of, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

But July 4 is the day we celebrate the fact that wise people once endorsed the idea that we are created equal, endowed by the Creator with rights that must not be alienated, including the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — not to mention the rights to assemble, to say and publish what we please, to worship in the manner that we choose, to own weapons, and all of the other rights that God has given us, and woe to anyone who would dare to re-establish tyranny across this beautiful land.

I’m proud to live in the country where those concepts were first declared and, if you listen very hard, sometimes are still practiced here and there.

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.

Connected and simultaneously alone

What have we lost since we all began carrying little TV sets around in our pockets? A little attention span — maybe a lot of attention span — an ability to sit and think and contemplate — an ability to enjoy being alone and quiet. Entertainment and knowledge and all the rest at our fingertips — we are connected and simultaneously all alone in our little hive mind — we are the Borg. We have been assimilated. Resistance is futile.

Orwell was prescient, except the telescreen is a pocket device, not a TV on the wall.

I confess I do enjoy being able to call up an old song seconds after remembering it. I knew the world had changed in 1999 (I think it was) when I helped our sports editor find the season stats for the third-leading scorer on the Eastern Illinois women’s basketball team in less than two minutes. We figured this internet thing was going to change our lives. Little did we know!

If — or perhaps when — the web ever collapses, generations will be lost, anxious and confused.

Interesting words: A web is a trap spiders use to capture their meals. A screen is something that blocks our view.

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.