The truth is a hurtful bitch

[Pat K]

Here is some of it. the rest can be found here.


Arto Bendiken   http://ar.to/2009/04/delusional-freedom
 





   
 


You see ever-larger government, ever-greater concentration and abuses of power, ever-increasing regulations and taxation, ever-worse infringements of your supposedly inalienable rights, and you still think it's all going to, somehow, be all right. Well, what if it isn't?

Happy endings are features of fairy tales, Hollywood movies, and massage parlors, not of politics. If we look to historical examples (you know, like actually read some of those dense old-fashioned things called books), we are at present following a well-trodden script and this chapter does not conclude with a happy ending.

Wishful thinking does not dictate reality. If you think essential liberty once lost can ever be regained within the scope of the political process, you are living a pipe dream. If you think your vote counts for anything but legitimizing the process by which you are enslaved, you are delusional at best.

The reality is that human freedom peaked in the West at the end of the 19th century and has been in decline ever since. You are now living through the penultimate stage of that decline, yet you still cling to the notion that you are free. Pray tell, do you even know the meaning of liberty?

Did you even blink when the checks and balances finally failed altogether, when individual rights went out of fashion and were replaced by arbitrary privileges? Privileges your government graciously grants you, it can also take away at a whim — and so it inevitably does, one at a time, when it serves the interests of those who wield power over you.

You continue taking for granted something that no longer exists in anything but name only. It has not substantially existed for several generations; yet you still buy into the lip service given it.

If you truly believe you are still free, you are either ignorant of what freedom is, or living in denial. The poorest, most wretched farmer at the onset of the Dark Ages was freer than you are. Indeed, his descendant the medieval serf, two dozen generations later, was still freer than you are. Needless to say, the subjects of the Thirteen Colonies were freer than you are, both prior to and after their historic revolution.

Government today expropriates half the product of your labor, meaning you don't work on your own behalf for, typically, five or six months every year, and you have the nerve to tell me you are free?

[dalebert]

I think that's an excellent exploration of a topic I've been exploring in my blog in a series of five related posts. He touches on a lot of aspects that I failed to address like how we confuse technological advancement for advancement of civilization.

http://anarchyinyourhead.com/2009/01/26/seize-the-white-knob/
http://anarchyinyourhead.com/2009/02/02/the-slave-test/
http://anarchyinyourhead.com/2009/02/09/who-will-build-the-slave-roads/
http://anarchyinyourhead.com/2009/02/23/slavery-equals-death/
http://anarchyinyourhead.com/2009/03/30/is-ignorance-really-bliss/

[bigmike]

I think that's an excellent exploration of a topic I've been exploring in my blog in a series of five related posts. He touches on a lot of aspects that I failed to address like how we confuse technological advancement for advancement of civilization.

http://anarchyinyourhead.com/2009/01/26/seize-the-white-knob/
http://anarchyinyourhead.com/2009/02/02/the-slave-test/
http://anarchyinyourhead.com/2009/02/09/who-will-build-the-slave-roads/
http://anarchyinyourhead.com/2009/02/23/slavery-equals-death/
http://anarchyinyourhead.com/2009/03/30/is-ignorance-really-bliss/

Excellent analogy regarding roads and slave quarters.

[Pat K]

I always assume everyone on here is
reading Dales brilliant work and
enjoying his fine comics, so I don't post them here.