Some Truths

Not quite a Box of Rocks post, but you can see it from here:

It is late Friday, around 6pm as I begin this entry. I've cruised and surfed the internet, visited my favorite blogs and news sites, and thought that perhaps I should update my Usual Suspects list with two more -- but that's for another day, I suppose. Or tomorrow.

In any event, it rained a good portion of the day. Sitting upstairs, I can see the drops shaking the green deciduous leaves. My mind wandered and I thought: it's time. Time for my friend Frederic:

(Claude) Frederic Bastiat, born June 30th of 1801 and died of tuberculosis on December 24th, 1850, was a young French man of massive proportions -- mental, not physical.

I was introduced to Bestiat when I read this quote one day in passing:

The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.

My attention was captured then and there. A short time later I order his small book entitled "The Law" from Amazon.com. It was one of the best orders I'd ever made, and $6.00 well spent. You need not spend this cash; merely go here to have the complete text of The Law.

Bestiat was something of the theorist, an economist, a libertarian, a man who believed in the greatest of freedoms. He railed against socialism and those non-workers who would plunder the good works of those who labored.

He asked: What is Law?

What, then is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. Each of us has a natural right -- from God -- to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties?

If every person has the right to defend -- even by force -- his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right -- its reason for existing, its lawfulness -- is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force -- for the same reason -- cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?

If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.

Can you think of a more appropriate summation of all that you believe in terms of Law? I myself cannot.

What do we have, then, when we abrogate law? What do we have, then, when we allow the lawbreakers -- or the lawless -- to rule? And then make the rules?

What do we do as a nation, as a United States, when we allow ourselves to be fractured, to be divided, to be wedged, to be pitted one against another on as many levels as possible? What do we do as a nation when we are told that, as masses, there are those select few who by dint of their source or origin are allowed to break The Law whilst we, we who labor, we who form the backbone of this country, who built this country, who have its history in our hands -- yes, we who are the source, the fount of all monies -- are told that we cannot? That we must look the other way when some select few break our laws? And to shut up and fund them? With smiles on our stultified faces?

And then why do we not ask: if our laws are inapplicable to only a select few, and those few are newcomers, they are not invested in this nation, they will not speak our language, they will not immerse, they instead attempt to make this country into a carbon copy of that which they left -- this nation which we built with our blood -- then why is it that we only are tasked with obeying? With paying?

Why should we obey?

Why should we pay?

I wrote in a previous post about my decision to vote for a GOP candidate come 2008 -- essentially, anyone other than a Demorat.

I wrote yesterday about the excesses of the Demorats and what one can expect with a Demoratic president come 2008. I reflect now upon some of the comments I proffered to that post:

I can actually only see two ways out: 1. Violence thrust upon us again via terrorism from within, or 2. Violence upon the government by the people OR a national united revolution in terms of tax refusal, non-compliance with certain laws or strictures. Absent those very two shocking and critical actions I don't see the Quiet Citizens, those who OBEY laws, who PAY the freight, having the ability to perform sufficient actions to enact a major change. We are, in truth, too BUSY doing one primary thing: WORKING so that those in either GOVERNMENT or those parasites who suck from our labors and give back NOTHING may BENEFIT from our labors. And I really do not know how much longer we can keep this country on its current path of fiscal irresponsibility -- on both sides. The ONLY politician I've EVER heard speak OPENLY about budget cuts, restrictions, paring back, is Fornicalia Senator Tom McClintock -- who was running for Governor against Arnold and lost majestically.

I continued further in response:

I still want to think that Conservatism stands for something, but I'm just not sure such an animal can exist publicly and acquire votes. The electorate simply wants too much mollycoddling, too much "gimme," too much of what it wants when it wants it. And LAWSUITS drive a MASSIVE amount of what we do in this society in terms of corportions and in terms of how we live and account for our day-to-day lives. I WANT to say I can reliably vote for someone on the GOP side but -- I am forced to, as Fred rightly acknowledges -- I must consider the person closest, despite any number of failings, CLOSEST to my own core beliefs.

No one mostly wants to compromise; we all wish to live in our ideal.

But.

Day by day, I watch as my country -- as my very own party -- seems to grow so very far from me -- yes, in inches -- but day-by-day -- away from me and my ideals. From Conservatism.

Motivated by cash. By cash. How despicably base. Have we learned nothing? Are we doomed to repeat history because we are indifferent or -- even worse -- purposeful?

The cartoon seems apropos, does it not?

It pains me to write this.

BZ