Freedom To Leave May Stop Oppressive Government

"When they persecute you in this city, flee into another"

By Lawrence Hunter

The United States of America is in the early stages of a government-induced crack up.  Stress has begun to create structural failures in the interstices but, as yet, has produced only surface cracks on the social facade.

As the stress of oppressive and tyrannical government increases, however, and as its destructive by-products corrode the social edifice—abusive government actions mount, profligate and destructive policies bring economic ruin on the country, corruption becomes endemic, imperial war abroad, class warfare and civil upheaval at home plague the nation, cities decay—structural cracks will appear and become visible even to the most stupefied American.  More and more people will become aware of the extensive damage that oppressive, albeit democratically elected government has inflicted on American society.  At that point, people will be roused from their stupor to ask, “What happened” but by then, it will be too late.

What is to be done to stop oppressive and tyrannical government?  How might people stand their ground in self-defense against oppressive and tyrannical government?  Can they succeed?  Should they try?

What are the options (“strategies” in game theoretic terms) available to people when a government threatens to become intolerably oppressive? There are six that I can see:

    1. Take no extraordinary action, remain in the country and suffer until the system collapses of its own weight;   

2. Try to correct the situation through democratic means—use the system to fix the system by electing different people to office and changing policies;

    3. Try to overthrow and transform the system through non-violent political confrontation and defiance—use devices such as nullification, state-government defiance of federal over-reach, secession and constitutional amendment or constitutional convention to create essentially a new system out of the old;

   4. Try to throw off oppression by means of peaceful rebellion, using non-violent civil disobedience to undermine the oppressive regime the way the American Civil Rights Movement did;

    5. Try to overthrow the system by violent means: insurrection, revolution, armed rebellion, guerrilla action and terrorism; or

    6.  Flee—exercise the basic human right of freedom to exit and leave the country before the government slams the door on emigrants.

A winning strategy almost certainly would require people to converge early on to some mixed strategy among these alternative pure strategies (say #3 and #4) to cope with and try to put the devil called government in chains. History demonstrates, unfortunately, that rather than adopting a mixed strategy early in the game, which might stand a chance of success, inertia trumps logic and people tend to proceed serially, progressing through each pure strategy and staying with each one too long before moving too late to adopt a sophisticated mixed strategy combining two or more pure strategies at once.

Strategy Number One, call it the German Jew strategy (also one of two New Testament strategies), is guaranteed to succeed, eventually—oppressive regimes always bring about their own destruction, eventually—but at what cost?  The problem is that getting stuck on suffering too long allows the oppressive regime to gain sufficient strength that it becomes impossible for people to move beyond passivity to alternative strategies. It means suffering all the way to the end.

Strategy Number Two, the Democracy Strategy, is guaranteed to fail. The first problem with it is that by the time a critical mass of people come round to it, the politicians and establishment bureaucrats have rigged the game so that the so-called democratic process is totally ineffectual in bringing about change.  Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.

But, there is a deeper flaw with the Democracy Strategy: Democracy, if not foreign invasion, is likely the very means by which the modern-day transformation from freedom to slavery occurred in the first place.  Since it is largely the internal contradictions of democracy that bring about tyranny in the modern world, it is illogical and empirically unfounded to believe it is possible to walk the cat of tyranny back along a democratic path to freedom.  Unrestrained democracy is a one-way ratchet to oppression of the people, for the people, by the people.  It is fantastical to hope democracy, a common source of tyranny, can undo the damage it wrought or shore up the foundation it undermined.

No matter who is elected, things get worse than under their predecessors. By the time people realize the election game is a racket, the power of the state has become so overwhelming that when people begin shifting to strategies Three and Four in some mixed combination, the government is able easily to withstand and counter each move on the board. At that point, the people come face to face with the Hobson’s choice:  Strategy Five or Six: Fight or Flight?

Once government oppression passes a certain point, no combination of peaceful options will reverse the situation and restore freedom, yet violence is corrupting, counterproductive and ultimately self-defeating.  That doesn’t mean Leviathan will reign permanently.  Leviathan, remember, is a parasite.  It can only live by sucking the life force out of its hosts. The bigger it grows, the more slave blood it requires to survive.  Its insatiable appetite will eventually be its undoing as it diminishes the vitality of its host and eventually enfeebles it and starves itself.

Before it self-destructs, however, parasite Leviathan will seek to expand the host population through imperialist wars abroad.  That is a long and painful process.  But, parasite Leviathan’s situation is terminal.  Like any gluttonous parasite, Leviathan is self-destructive. It will suck the life out of its tax slaves and deplete the testosterone pool of cannon fodder. Eventually, it must fall; it is just a matter of time—but, again, at what cost?

Is there, then, a realistic chance that the people will come in time to a successful sophisticated mixed strategy of peaceful resistance, non-violent political confrontation, steadfast defiance and civil disobedience?  Unlikely.  More likely, the vast majority of people will deny the true situation and delay action beyond the point of no return.  And at some point, they will come face to face with the choice between taking up arms and fleeing.

Unless the Christian Church becomes totally corrupted—infused with so much fear and bloodlust, hypnotized with a false fixation on compliance to authority under any circumstances—there remains hope that a critical mass of people will begin to adopt Strategy Number 6, the Flight Strategy.  As Jesus instructed in the Book of Matthew—“When they persecute you in this city, flee into another”—and in the Book of Mark directing the people to “flee to the mountains” when they “see the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not.”

Time will tell.