Mark America

Afraid to Know?

I’ve received a few emails asking me if I’m so angry as it seems on the surface.  I’ve politely responded that I’m actually much angrier than the printed word permits me to express.  I’ve made mention of something else on that score, and in so doing, you’d think I’d crossed the Rubicon.  Maybe I should.  I’ve admitted openly that I am not only angry at the Congress, the President and the Court over this Obama-care monstrosity, but that I’m likewise furious at my fellow Americans who aren’t equally furious!  I’ve been asked what I expect the anger to get for me, and the truth is that I don’t know.  I’ve never been quite this angry before, and I’ve never muttered so many oaths under my breath, and within the confines of my own head as I have these last few days.  I’ve asked this question in other forms before, but few have seemed willing to take it up.  One of the reasons the statists continue to do things like this to us is because we’re peaceful, law-abiding people on the whole, but just as in the case of the contraception mandate in Obama-care, I am beginning to conclude that perhaps we are the problem.  They seem to poke at us like a moron prodding a grizzly with a stick, safely from beyond the bars of a cage at the zoo.  We never seem to grab the stick, pull them close, and rip their faces from their thick skulls, and it is this that makes them all the more smug each time they poke at us:  We hold the key to the cage.

I’ve been asked too how it is that we can express this anger.  I suppose we could resort to pitchforks and torches, but I expect that’s precisely what the statists want.  In the mean time, we’ll wait peaceably for them to ban pitchforks and torches.  They’ve already made incandescent light-bulbs illegal.  How long can it be before torches are banned both as a matter of public safety and as a matter of environmental concern?  Pitchforks may require a better excuse, but I’m sure they’ll do something like limiting their length.  No, the way to express our anger comes down to something simpler, but even this, I’m afraid most people are too timid to attempt:  We can simply say “no,” and mean it.  Ayn Rand put forward the solution in Atlas Shrugged, but since few can be bothered to read a book of that epic length any longer, I suppose I had better give a brief summary: Those who work, and earn and build are convinced to simply stop, leaving nothing to the statists from which to subsist.  All the little moochers, and all the crony capitalists find they cannot survive without those who produce, and they quickly move to a post-Apocalyptic society where anarchy reigns for a time, until the looters ultimately reduce themselves to insignificance.

The basic idea is this:  All of this is done by our consent.  The ghastly welfare-state, the crony-capitalism, the corruption, all of it, every piece, because in part, some of us are corrupted by it, and in part because we are too fearful to simply say “no” and thereby undergo the temporary misery of a rapidly collapsing society.   Only our productive endeavors keep this monster alive.  Each time we go to work, invest our money, or shove some of it into a savings account, we’re feeding the beast.  We’re keeping it alive.  It is by behaving as a parasite on our life-blood, our productive enterprises, our labor, and our jobs that this is all kept going.  Without our daily/weekly/monthly/annual ‘contributions’ to their system, their system would quickly starve and die.  The idea of leaving this all behind has come to be termed “going Galt,” a hat-tip to the book’s hero, John Galt.   In Rand’s novel, he was the first to abandon the society to its own devices, determined that he would no longer to provide it any form of support, material, or otherwise.  He then set about the task of convincing others to join him.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am on the cusp of “going Galt.” Being as this site is named “Mark America,” perhaps the act would come to  be known as “going America,” and that would be fitting, indeed.  Our country has fallen into the depths of a sickness from which the only recovery will be when we decide to impose it.  We have the power to treat this disease.  We have the ability to starve it of nourishment.  Do we have the courage?  Somehow, while I would love to credit Americans with the courage of the ages, still, I get the nagging impression that too many among us would be comfortable as slaves so long as the bellies are full, the roofs don’t leak, and the rivers don’t rise.  It’s a depressing state of affairs.

Are there any willing to starve the beast, even at the cost of their own temporary, although probably somewhat protracted discomfort?  None can say.  None dare say.  Meanwhile, let’s be angry.  Without corresponding action, it doesn’t fix much, but it sure feels good.