by James E. Miller
In France, Minister
for Energy and Environment Delphine Batho recently proposed a
light curfew to pertain to “in and outside shops, offices, and public
buildings” between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m. beginning next July. Some merchants are up
in arms as the rule adds to existing bans such as the forced closing of stores
on Sunday and night shopping in general. If enacted, the illumination ban will
quickly disperse Paris’s reputation as the “City of Light.”
France’s Commercial Council is criticizing the
decision as being anti-business and economically damaging. However, the fact
that these assumed defenders of free enterprise are surprised at such a
proposal is the real puzzle. In a country run by a government that is happily
bloodletting the productive capacity of the people through a hike on the income
tax and a tax on financial transactions, this latest nanny-state resolve should
be fully expected. It is not a power grab but a mere reassertion of the authority
the central state has over the private affairs of society.
The “lights out” edict is just another piece of
evidence of a disturbing truth: the road to serfdom is not ahead of the West;
we have already reached its end.
Such a statement may be objected to as private
property and a certain degree of freedom still exist in the West. But
this is these just a mirage. The property tax effectively nullifies the notion
of private property. In many places, police brutes allow themselves into
your home and on your land with little recourse possible. Billions of
electronic correspondences are collected daily by
the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. In 1961, the United
Nations released the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs which
has since served as a framework for drug prohibition in all major countries.
As William Grigg points
out,
Drug prohibition is a subset of slavery – in both its philosophical premise (the denial of individual self-ownership) and its role in creating a huge and growing population of people in chains.
Ownership of one’s body and those resources to which
it appropriates itself is no longer a respected law in Western society. Through
years of indoctrination, it is accepted by the greater public that the
individual is beholden to the state- not vice versa. Personal identity is now
followed by a reference to the government. And blind patriotism is seen as a
virtue instead of a demeaning attribute.
Radical individualism isn’t the only thing the
nation-state has successfully crushed. The industries which have elevated man
above subsistence living have all been co-opted the political machinery.
Today, there is no industry untouched by government.
Each and every business must adhere to an innumerable list of erroneous,
arbitrary, and contradicting regulations that makes it impossible to run in
accordance with personal preference. At any given moment, entrepreneurs run the
risk of being shut-down either through the breaking of a rule or at the behest
of a politically-savvy competitor. The idea of “pursuing happiness” that was
written so eloquently by Thomas Jefferson is no longer present in America or
the West. Before happiness is pursued, the criminal class at each level of
government must be paid off. If not, then a hefty fine or a jail sentence is
applied. Because man’s only means of survival is production, the state holds
hostage the very permission to engage. From a power-hungry perspective, the
scheme is ingenious. From the perspective of natural law, the predation through
which the political class coerces society is worthy of disgust and contempt.
As Albert Jay Nock so rightly put it,In a spirit of sheer conscious fraud, the State will at any time offer its people “four freedoms,” or six, or any number; but it will never let them have economic freedom. If it did, it would be signing its own death-warrant…
It is now best to think of business as having the
ever-present shadow of government lurking behind it. There isn’t a shred of
legal free market capitalism to be had anywhere in the Western world. The only
freedom that exists has been suppressed to the black market. For every
inspired mind that wishes to build an empire serving customers, there stands an
equal number of burglars, thugs, and cheats ready to take from whatever success
may be had. These practitioners of theft heartily announce their intentions as
being “for fairness” when in reality they are serving their own interests.
When it comes to industries deemed valuable for the
functions of a complex industrial economy, the state has all but nationalized
them. Banking, health care, roads, bridges, and education are completely under
government control; or in the very least, heavily regulated. The degree of
competition in each of these fields is humorously low. The inevitable result
has been a decrease in quality, the persistent heightening of price, and the
creation of an elite class that lobbies for even greater protection.
This can be observed in the instance of radio waves.
While media conglomerates broadcast over the medium, the medium itself is
entirely state-owned. Austere standards must be adhered to less the privilege
of broadcasting over the government-controlled medium be revoked. The so-called
“private” radio broadcasting companies are, in actuality, leashed to the state
and forced to do its bidding.
The news industry is more of the same. It is a sad but
amusing truth that the press makes a mockery out of its own profession. To
differentiate themselves from being mouthpieces for the state, it is understood
that reporters and commentators should provide, not an unbiased view of
government happenings, but a challenge to those in positions of power. Instead,
most major news outlets are one within the ruling class and make no effort to
hide it. Recently, MSNBC commentators Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence
O’Donnel, and Al Sharpton met with President
Obama for what was deemed a “messaging session.” No one questions that the
purpose of the meeting was to round up the attack dogs, pamper them accordingly
and send them out to television cameras to feed the President’s nonsensical
propaganda to the masses. Such a practice was once done in secret. Not anymore
now that the press serves the central government instead of the people.
With law, the state has not only claimed absolute
command over its authority but has also perverted its meaning to the point of
being useless and hollow. Through the outlawing of non-crimes, the locking up
of millions of individuals followed. Again, this was easily anticipated.
Without a law based on the natural organization of mankind, society devolves
into shambles. Today’s rule of law isn’t defined by reason but simply the whims
of the political class. There is no longer a concrete method to determine if
one of the hundreds of thousands of state-issued edicts becomes broken. This is
especially so in America. As former National Security Agency employee William
Binney describes it,
most Americans,
…think they are not doing anything that’s wrong, they don’t get to define that. The central government does, the central government defines what is right and wrong and whether or not they target you. So, it’s not up to the individuals. Even if they think they aren’t doing something wrong, if their position on something is against what the administration has, then they could easily become a target.”
This is not the rule of law; it is the absence of law.
When government reaches a point where it unilaterally decides what is legal and
illegal outside the constraints of basic decency, there no longer exists a
check on its propensity to expand. In other words, it is the final sign of
supreme state rule and the unstoppable degeneration of civilization.
The West has reached the point of full state
dominance. Whether this continues to be accepted or is blessedly defied remains
to be seen. This writer finds little hope in the latter. Humanity appears to be
adept at two things: protecting itself while simultaneously working toward its
own demise. Its self-imposed destruction is almost fascinating to watch unfold.
As the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius once observed, “in the ripe olives the
very circumstances of their being near to rottenness adds a peculiar beauty to
the fruit.”
Many people still believe they are free even though
virtually every movement they make is affected in some fashion by the state.
Sooner or later, it will be realized that in return for the feedings at the
government trough, the West has thrown away what promise it had in constructing
a free society. The freedom most think about in modern times is typically in
reference to the right to voice an opinion or work for whomever they wish. This
is false. Freedom today is represented only by the distance between skin and
chain.
In the end, knowing full well the challenges which
stand between man and liberty can be comforting. It means that the ills of
society are easily diagnosed and it is accompanied by a feeling of
predictability. The state will continue to swallow up large swaths of
civilization until it can’t anymore. Then perhaps, God-willing, a free society
will show its face.
The fact remains that liberty is far behind us. There
is hardly a soul left on Earth that experienced life without the gargantuan
state. The prospect of changing the impeding course is not impossible but
increasingly slim. Fooling yourself into believing otherwise is an exercise in
futility. A reminder of the central government’s endless reach will eventually cross
your path.
As Garet Garrett wrote in his great polemic “The
Revolution Was”
There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.
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