"The Fine Print", by Michael Schrader

BEWARE THE ORDINARY, AVERAGE PERSON SITTING NEXT TO YOU

By Michael Schrader

(Written and posted 10 January 2011)

Just a few weeks ago, a gunman patiently sat through a Florida school board meeting before firing on the board. Just a few days ago, a gunman waits in line at an Arizona Representative’s meet-and-greet before firing not only at the Representative but also a score of others in attendance. In both of these instances, the shooter was not just responding to spontaneous emotion, but rather acted with cold calculation to maximize the chance of success. Each shooter knew exactly who he wanted to kill, and this truth should send shivers down the spine of every American. The intended targets were government officials. Why should this give us the chills? People who want to kill government officials just because they are government officials are anarchists, and the anarchy that anarchists crave inevitably leads to totalitarianism.

For those who are not deeply immersed in political philosophy, anarchists believe that government is so evil and corrupt that we’d be better off without any government at all. Under the anarchist philosophy, the government must be destroyed by whatever means necessary, no matter how violent or vile. If that means the public assassination of elected and appointed government officials, so be it, as long as the government is destroyed. Anarchists are not revolutionaries. Revolutionaries desire to replace one form of government with another, even by violent means; revolutionaries want order, albeit a new order to their specifications. By contrast, anarchists do not want any order, only chaos and the hedonism that comes with it.

Anarchy is absolute freedom, the freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want; complete and total societal entropy. Anarchy inevitably leads to a desire for order, at any cost. This desire then leads to repression and totalitarianism (or authoritarianism, whichever moniker you prefer, although they are pretty much interchangeable), as the loss of most liberties and freedoms is better than anarchy and chaos, and it is that fear, the fear of returning to anarchy, that allows the ruthless strongman to consolidate power over an otherwise intelligent populace.

After spending a better part of a century subjected to chaos and civil strife, Rome was more than happy to declare Octavian as Augustus, First Citizen, and give him the power necessary to bring peace and stability to the realm. It was because of the anarchists that the Bolsheviks were able to seize control of Russia, as it was the anarchists’ attacks on the tsars that led to increased tsarist repression that ultimately led to their downfall and overthrow. Interestingly, the Bolsheviks understood that the anarchists were not revolutionaries and did not like any government, and that the anarchists would not accept a Bolshevik government any more than the Tsar’s. Thus, in order to preserve their revolution, the Bolsheviks eliminated the anarchists as enemies of the state when they eliminated the tsarists and republicans.

Hitler mastered the lessons learned from the Bolshevik experience. Where the Bolsheviks were the accidental beneficiaries of the anarchists’ attempts to destroy the Tsar, Hitler knowingly and willfully used the anarchists to take over Germany. Hitler was a master demagogue who was able to convince the working classes that the German Republic did not care about them or their daily struggles to survive and that it must be destroyed. He successfully stoked the flames of ethnic and economic discontent, which encouraged the anarchists to attack the government, and used the backlash from the ensuing chaos to install one of the most brutal and repressive regimes in history.

Reflecting on these two examples, and other recent attacks on government buildings and officials across the country, we must ask ourselves if these recent anarchist activities are spontaneous and independent of other influences, such as in tsarist Russia, or are they part of a plan by a demagogue to replace our government with one more to his or her liking, as was the case in the German Republic?

To answer this question, we need to look at who these anarchists are. These are not just random people who have nothing in common; they do have something in common and that’s what makes it so alarming. Working class. Unemployed. Ordinary. Angry. Very angry. Angry at the government because, in their view, the government is not working for them but for the benefit of a select few. Throw in the inflammatory rhetoric of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and you have a security threat worse than anything al-Qaida can throw at us. There people are so ordinary that they exist every where, and it is impossible to know who they are. They are neighbors, coworkers, and classmates. But which neighbor? Which coworker? Which classmate? Your guess is as good as mine.

How can we possibly combat this threat to us? Some will tell you that the answer is to silence the Becks and the Palins and the rest of the loudmouthed demagogues. However, the experience of the Romanovs, who tried to silence the demagogues, and the German Republic, who imprisoned Hitler, show that this approach actually emboldens those who want to destroy the government by justifying its destruction. After all, how many will disagree that a government that suppresses its critics doesn’t deserve to govern anymore?

No, the answer is to look at the government itself, and look as to why people think it is biased and unfair, why people feel disenfranchised from it. When a city wants to force the local cable company to provide free high-speed Internet access to its fire stations, knowing full well that the cable company will pass the cost of this free service unto the subscribers, many of whom are working class families who struggle to make ends meet and to whom a few dollars a month can mean going without a meal, that is the exact governmental attitude that foments this feeling of an uncaring government, a government that favors the elite, a government that doesn’t give a whit about the ordinary, working-class person, the same kind of ordinary, working-class person that will patiently wait to shoot who he perceives to be an uncaring, out-of-touch government official.

We have government officials who view their positions as entitlements and who view themselves as Hugo Chavez, able to obey and ignore whatever laws they see fit, and picking and choosing which laws apply to which people. You, Mister and Missus Ordinary Citizen, cannot both work for us, your benevolent government, because that would be nepotism and we can’t have that. Must stay neutral, you know. Oh, did I introduce you to my wife and son, who both work for me? Okay, maybe not directly for me, because that would be nepotism, but work for someone who works for me, so it’s really not nepotism anymore, is it? Oh, did I mention that they don’t have the qualifications for the jobs that they have that you two do? Why do they have them, then? They are my kin, and I have to provide for my kin. Oh, that rule that I actually have to live in the jurisdiction that I work for? Well, I have a really nice house outside of the boundaries, so we will just get the rules changed so I don’t have to. You? Well, you have to, because it’s the rules, and we must go by the rules, you know!

It would be one thing if the “do as I say, not as I do” double standard were subtle; that would be bad enough. It’s quite another when it is flaunted like a badge of honor. In too many instances, biased, uncaring, and corrupt officials will publicly justify their behavior with some flimsy, transparent excuse that even the most gullible and naïve won’t buy. My daughter’s live-in boyfriend works for me, but it’s not nepotism because they aren’t married. I have a property in the city, so I meet the residency requirement, even though I don’t live there. Those firefighters have to have high-speed Internet so they can watch training videos on how to fight fires. We are building this road because once a year we might use it as a detour route, even though it is really being built to serve a ball field. We issued a demolition permit because the owner thinks it is structurally unsound, even though no one has ever bothered to inspect it to see that it is. Even though he served on the board that is buying the family property, it really isn’t favoritism as it really is his mother’s property. Somehow, government officials have this convoluted notion that if they treat those who aren’t getting the favors like complete morons, then they will accept it and won’t care.

But they do care. The more the government treats the people with apathy and contempt, the angrier the people become. The angrier the people become the better anarchy looks, as no government is better than a bad one. The more the anarchists act on their desires for complete freedom from government, the better the likelihood that some demagogue will manipulate the situation to his or her advantage to take control, and we will have our own American Mussolini, Hitler, or Chavez.

It is not too late. We can prevent our country from being destroyed by demagogues and anarchists. It is imperative that we select for our leaders those who are willing to work for the common good, not just the good of a few. We need leaders who understand that our country is diverse, that a good leader is not slavishly attached to a narrow ideology. It’s time to say “NO” to ideologues and “Good Ole Boys” and yes to Lincolnian pragmatists.

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