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(Most) Americans Do Not Want Freedom
Ask a kid to choose between chocolate and vanilla, and the answer will come immediately. Offer them 32 flavors of ice cream, and they are locked in indecision.
Adults are no better.
Most Americans – and the vast majority of humanity – like to be told what to do. They invariably prefer to work in a “plug-and-chug” job rather than one that requires initiative and the risks and responsibilities that come with them. Initiative is hard and it is scary.
This is why most people go-along to get-along. Why they follow masking mandates and vaccine mandates. Why they are content to be miserable in the herd.
As I have written many times, this is a basic problem for libertarians: most people are terrified by choices.
The only saving grace is that, in times of crisis, the majority is irrelevant. The only people that matter are those who are willing to put their energy where their mouth is. Hitler and Lenin never won a majority – but their followers were more committed. The American Revolutionaries could not count on the majority of the colonists to be enthusiastic about the cause: they led, rather than followed, the majority.
Right now, we need passionate leadership for a new direction in America. We need it desperately. And we do not need it to be backed by a majority – just an energetic and risk-tolerant minority. Because the majority just want to be told what to do.
Published in General
No King or Emperor in the History of Mankind had anything remotely approximating the unlimited power that the American Presidency claims and commands over the American People from the Revolution forward. The imperial Presidency of Wilson made it worse, but it was always bad. In America, politics are entertainment not sovereignty.
Swing and miss, Jerry – reductio ad absurdium. The OP didn’t express any such absolutes, but maybe there’s a history here I’m unaware of. The OP certainly makes the distinction between liberty and security, i.e. comfort in following orders. But the OP leans into the nuance of human nature: the innate desire to be led among a myriad of choices, instead of risk-inducing leading from an unpopular, meaning the minority, position. In many ways this leads to mob rule.
I took the point to be today’s trend toward security, unquestioning the majority opinion no matter it’s ethical, moral and unreasonable deficiencies, is troubling to say the least and is on the verge of destroying any rational concept of liberty (we can debate the intricacies of this word another time). The proffered solution, as history has shown, is ‘strong’ leadership from an opposition, as you later pointed out with Adams and Washington. iWe seems to be asking – where are these voices arguing the value of liberty among the masses when we need them most?
However, you nailed it here:
Human beings are most comfortable making a binary decision, the proverbial black-and-white, even understanding that most decisions are in that ambiguous grey area. These trade-offs are always present- thank you Thomas Sowell, one of my heroes! It’s hard work doing this ‘cost benefit analysis’ so it’s easy to pick a side with no self-criticism. What I call being intellectually lazy. It also devolves into tribalism, today’s political and cultural trend, and becomes very dangerous.
If I’m getting back the money I paid into SS, am I still receiving government benefits? I’ve got about 5 years to go before my account runs out of money.
No, Jerry is right. If the definition of safety is broadened to include “taken care of”. Most laws are about taking care of everyone. At least that is what the proponents of those laws tell us.
The problem is those laws, why they may have some short term benefit to some people, ultimately benefit the ruling class by giving them power and money.
Not sure I agree with underlying principle of ‘laws’ are about taking care of everyone, at least if we are considering it in terms of constitutionality. Maybe, as you point out, that is where we are today as laws seem to benefit the lawmakers more than the citizenry…or at least excludes them from the negative effects (i.e. Obamacare, lockdowns, social security, retirement, etc.). This brings us back to Jerry’s original point of trade-offs – what level of personal security (larceny, rape, murder, drunk driving, etc.) do we elevate above liberty? Of course here liberty does not include licentiousness – the freedom to do whatever our appetites drive us to do.
What I am saying is that those who are proponents of these laws want them because they see them as taking care of people.
My personal view is that the only time we should pass a law requiring or banning a thing is when that thing directly impacts the natural rights of other people. But the progressives don’t see it that way.
Boom – 1000x on point and the repercussions have devastating effects. It has proven time and again to be the bane of human existence…especially from a governmental/power structure. C.S. Lewis said it best:
That comment has probably been posted on here a couple of dozen times. In this context, all you have to do is reference CS Lewis, and everyone will know what you’re talking about.
This is why I think Lucifer the bringer of Truth to the first Jews was the good guy in the garden of Eden. Humans want a daddy-god to protect them, give them stuff and tell them what to think. Freedom is too much for most people.
Most people can either be thoughtless servants of the daddy-god or they worship Fauci as a daddy-god. Only a minority of people are genetically suited to freedom. We should not let the others vote.
There’s always some new members coming along. Gotta be accessible.
Wow, you never have read the Bible, have you?
I have actually. Genesis in particular.
Or at least lack of negative property requirements.
Receiving net benefits from other people’s money makes voting a moral hazard; voting your pocketbook is reasonable, voting to get the contents of someone else’s pocketbook is not.
Yes it does.
Discretionary central banking plus democracy equals doom.
http://financialrepressionauthority.com/2017/07/26/the-roundtable-insight-george-bragues-on-how-the-financial-markets-are-influenced-by-politics/
The Communists have won because the GOP wasn’t minding the shop.
https://www.realvision.com/shows/mike-green-in-conversation/videos/is-the-golden-age-of-liberal-capitalism-over?source_collection=b8bd9d62c77143f7a39513e85d310b11
You can watch it for a dollar. It includes a transcript.
It’s just a worse version of what I keep telling you guys.
I would counter that Americans want freedom, but also want shortcuts. It’s just that the shortcuts on offer are tyrannical.
Eric Fromm has some sympathy for my interpretation of the fall of man.
I would counter-counter that most Americans want their own freedom. They want to be able to do what it is they want to do. But often don’t want others to be able to do what it is they want to do, if the party of the first part doesn’t approve. Just like they want government to cut spending…on the things they don’t think are necessary. And they want the rich people to be taxed, and the rich are those people who make, well, a bit more than I do.
So they don’t want real freedom…they don’t have limiting principles on what government can and cannot do.
Childish really – run amok until someone annoys you and then tell mom on them.
That’s about the size of it. My kids had a go-cart and they used to drive it around and around the block. Now, it was no louder than lawn mower, not very fast, but they loved it. But it wasn’t street legal. The guy around the corner called the police on them. The police showed up and were very apologetic. “Look, we don’t really care, we get it. But technically it is against the law. You can drive it your own yard, but not on the street.” I asked him “Who called, was it that guy right over there?” He didn’t say yes, he just gave me that look.
Now we weren’t bothering that fat [expletive]. But someone was breaking the law, doncha see?!
Incidentally, he’s the one guy in the neighborhood with Democrat signs in his yard every election.
He gets off on taking away your freedom and he probably likes it when other people tell him what to do.
I don’t need the visual of this guy getting off…thanks fer nuthin’!
I meant he was spiritually stimulated. Sorry for my poor choice of words.
Does anyone have a more interesting book than Eric Fromm’s The Fear of Freedom about humanity’s innate need for tyranny? The guy pretends that he can completely understand Martin Luther though the author has forgotten how to pray to G-d if he ever knew how to do it. He also doesn’t know how economics work but he assumes he has absolute knowledge of the subject. Has Lee Kuan Yew written a book about this subject?
On giving the masses political power:
“When people say, ‘Oh, ask the people!’, it’s childish rubbish … They say people can think for themselves? Do you honestly believe that the chap who can’t pass primary six knows the consequences of his choice when he answers a questions viscerally on language, culture and religion? … we would starve, we would have race riots. We would disintegrate.”
— Quoted in Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas, 1998
On valuing prosperity over democracy:
“You’re talking about Rwanda or Bangladesh, or Cambodia, or the Philippines. They’ve got democracy … But have you got a civilized life to lead? People want economic development first and foremost. The leaders may talk something else. You take a poll of any people. What is it they want? The right to write an editorial as you like? They want homes, medicine, jobs, schools.”
— Lee Kuan Yew, The Man and His Ideas, 1997
This is dead-on.
They love central planning. Central planning has to work to improve our lives. It just has to. So voting Democrat makes everything better. The borg is good. Submit to the borg and support it with positive thoughts and gaslighting.
Then the government gets centralized and you have no other option to be dependent on it or use it to steal from your fellow citizen.
Then the government runs out of money.
The government needs to provide actual public goods only.
The central bank has to stop pushing the economy around. Just back up the financial system in a punitive way.
Don’t start a government actuarial system unless you plan to keep it ***over funded*** except for recessions. Be explicit about the re-distribution within that system. Medicare and Social Security.
If you don’t do all of that, that’s when people start behaving badly and using the system to rip each other off. It constricts opportunity from honest work and risk-taking.