Here we are in election season. As with the last election and the election before that one this election is most notable for having the worst candidates imaginable. Cock us, err, caucus season is upon us. Right now the headliners of this political mascaraed are a fascist and a socialist:
Senator Bernie Sanders and Donald J. Trump have opened up solid leads in Iowa less than two weeks before the state’s caucuses kick off the 2016 presidential nominating contests, according to a poll released Thursday.
The survey from CNN/ORC shows Mr. Sanders, who was trailing Mrs. Clinton significantly in early December, erasing her lead and overtaking her. Likely Democratic caucusgoers now back the Vermont senator over Mrs. Clinton by eight percentage points, 51 percent to 43 percent. Last month she was ahead of him by 18 percentage points.
Because I know I have intelligent readers I’m sure many of you are wanting to point out that fascism is a form of socialism so the competition is really between two socialists and you would be right. And that brings us to the point of this post (yes, there is a point, I wasn’t going to waste your time with meaningless politicking): the United States has reached its inevitable outcome.
When the Revolutionary War was over and the colonists decided to replace one king with another they put the people of the United States on a collision course with collectivism. Statism in any form is collectivist in nature. It deemphasizes the individual in favor of an abstraction we often use for convenience: the people. The State, we’re told, reflects the will of the people. But the people don’t have a will, only individuals do, and each individual has a unique will. There is no way to reflect the will of the people by the simple fact that every individual living in a country doesn’t share a common will. To get around this inconvenience the very human desire to fit in is exploited by means of statistics.
Voting, like the people, is an abstraction. When you go to your polling place you’re not voicing your opinion, you’re participating in a statistical survey. One, I might add, that reinforces the State by providing you a curated list of candidates. In this statistical survey the decision is based on the majority. Whichever name on the curated list gets the most responses from the sample gets to be in office. Everybody who either wanted somebody else in the office, to abolish the office, or something else entirely different is ignored. Their wills are set aside.
The problem with collectivism is that it’s self-reinforcing. It tricks individuals into thinking about the good of the people (i.e. the State) through propaganda. We’re told to think of the greater good and that acting on our personal wants is selfish. Voting is used to reinforce the propaganda. The statistics show that the people wants X so anybody demanding Y is selfish. Since a great many humans desire to fit in they would rather be with the majority (a statistical majority in this case) than be selfish.
It’s no surprise that the greater good is whatever is best for the State. And nothing is better for the State than socialism. Under the ultimate ends of socialism everything is collectivized under the State. There is no need to steal through taxation, citations, civil forfeiture, etc. The State declares ownership over everything and doles out what rations is believes necessary to individuals.
So here we are. Through more than two centuries of collectivism reinforced by statistics individuals have played their part in their own executions. Individuals have been conned into considering the greater good, which is whatever is good for the State, over their own. In so doing they’ve handed the State increasingly more power. Now the United States is at a point where the State is so powerful the biggest election in the country is between two socialists. Even if one or both of the two candidates don’t receive their party’s nomination the other eligible nominees are all socialists as well. No matter who wins individualism loses and with it goes freedom.
Speaking only of that time immediately following the Revolutionary war, what would you have done?
Not established a government and let people rule themselves.
As in all events, they do not exist in a bubble. Each event can be thought of as a result of what has come before. The founding fathers were well aware of the avarice of human nature. Even the Puritans had indulged in practices dating from medieval times (‘just price’, ‘wage ceiling’). The American experiment in socialism was dead long before the RW.