In The Name Of The People

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I learned at an early age that anyone who claims to speak “for the people” or do things “for the good of the people” is usually wrong.

In fact, the honest and earnest zealot who thinks he’s improving everyone’s life by doing x y or z if more of a danger than your average, run of the mill venal corruptocrat who merely wants to line his pockets and move on. (Note the current crop of corruptocrats are different. They explicitly seem to want to destroy everything while lining their pockets. I have theories about why this is is, but expounding on them would explode the post to five times its size.)

But there is a brand of “the people” that tends to get under the defenses of our side of the political spectrum aka those to the right of Lenin.

That brand is “the people don’t want freedom, they want to be looked after.”

Um… okay. Cozy belief you’re parroting. But why are you parroting it? And where did you get it? And didn’t your mommy never tell you not to put things in your mouth that you don’t know where they came from?

I know that right at this point some of you are inflating, puffer-fish style, ready to blow me out of the water with “history shows that people mostly want a leader on a white horse.”

Does history show that? Does it really? And have you accounted for the different conditions of those epochs, and the way the story was recorded?

Yes, history in general is a parade of various dictators and pseudo saviors, and some of them seem to have been beloved by the people.

Were they beloved by the people? Were they really? Even for the last 100 years mostly we know they were beloved by the press. Before that? How do you know?

Also, until recently in historic terms, people assumed those who were born with the right to rule them would rule them, and the best they could hope for was a semi-decent human being as leader.

Let’s leave history out of this, because at most it shows us what people are willing to tolerate, and not what people want. And history also has the tendency to hide the circumstances of people quite sternly opposing things that they’re supposed to be quite happy with. Not only is history a threadbare cloth over fractious peasant revolts, but those peasant revolts happened at all levels, from local to national.

I.e. people aren’t willing to put up with as much as you think they are. It’s just they didn’t tell you when they could sweep sometimes quite bloody revolts under the rug. Guys, I’m a student of history and until about three years ago, I wasn’t aware of the fact the Dutch had eaten their prime minister. And if you say “Yes, Sarah but that means you didn’t study very far” bah. I’ve spent years reading up on the history of Europe, sometimes under the color of research, and sometimes just because I wanted to. You often don’t stumble on these things unless you’re looking at some specific year or some specific and often odd incident.

So, history while in general an indicator of things that failed spectacularly, is not a good indicator of what people want or fail to want. Just of what they put up with, and the range of the possible at that time.

After that, how do you know? Well, sure, surveys, polls, etc. etc. etc.

But mostly — hear me on this — you “know” the common people want to be ruled by their betters because that’s what you’ve been told.

Because honestly the times we live in, it’s no wonder the price of gas is so high, they are gaslighting us 24/7 with the light of a thousand galaxies. I.e. if you believe 34% of the people in the land love them some FJB brand of governance, you might want to put down the pipe and stop toking. Yeah, he does have some who “approve” of him. I suspect around 24% of the people who are crazy or otherwise benefiting from his grift. It might be impossible to go below that.

If you believe that everyone likes and adores beloved leader, you probably also think that he got the most votes in the history of presidential elections. You might also have failed elementary school math.

Look, the truth is that since Obama they’ve been desperately trying to keep up the facade of “everyone loves this person.” And failing.

The reason they’re failing is that they already have lost control of the narrative. Their narrative is so stupid and bizarre that the only way they could push it is when they had control not only of all forms of mass news dissemination, but full control of the academia, and full control of entertainment with all the storylines following what the regime wants.

The truth is that it’s always been that way for totalitarian ideologues (and ours are as fully totalitarian as those of the old USSR, just not as coherent and not in command of the armed forces.) The old horrors of the USSR were brought down by fax machines and typewriters. Think about it a moment.

Now, while blogs and our little discussion groups on line seem totally ineffective to us, they are enough that under the greatest effort at mass brainwashing — the covidiocy — and with all the celebrities shilling for Joe Biden and accusing Trump of horrible crimes, people hunched their shoulders and went out and voted for Trump in such numbers that they ended up having to fraud at the last minute, implausibly, and in front of G-d and everybody.

Our blogs and our little discussion groups are enough that Facebook is banning images in the sharing of my blog and I remain throttled on Twitter. (TBF I believe Musk that if he tries to dismantle the architecture of censorship the whole thing will fall apart, but Mr. Musk, it’s time to get doing with a parallel architecture you can switch the service to. Build under, build over, build around!)

(For that matter not having a social media platform under their complete control is so scary that overnight they switched from Musk fans to trying to make him the world’s worst arch-villain.)

Our blogs and our little discussion groups are enough that the would-be masters of the universe of the WEF rated censorship as their vital necessity right now.

Let’s face it, guys, we: the hobbits, the deplorables, the contrarians are winning this fight and the other side is on the run.

Even in Europe, with their almost complete control of the news and information structure — they’ve managed to keep ebooks and self-publishing unobtanium and blogs out of the question, through mostly draconian speech laws — they are facing mass revolts of farmers and working people.

Do people want “freedom” as some abstract ideal? Maybe not, because “freedom” as an abstract ideal can be pretty insane. (Look at Oregon recriminalizing drug use.) “Freedom” can be interpreted as a total absence of police, for instance, which might sound great, until you find that this means citizen patrols have to learn the three Ss. (And are, in places in this country, I bet you.)

But people do want the freedom to go about their lawful occasions, defined as earning a living, establishing their own livelihood, raising families, determining their own fate.

Every person does. And once the “ruler” interferes too much with that, you get revolt.

Sometimes you get the loud in your face revolt. And sometimes you get wearing your mask with the nose hanging above it. Or leaving every other pew in church empty by ADDING EXTRA PEWS between the existing ones.

And in either case, you won’t hear about it, more than likely. If you hear it’s likely to be the first one not the second. In your face, not hooves firmly affixed and refusing to do as told. But most of the time you won’t hear at all, outside the small group be it region or professional. Even when you hear about it, you don’t hear when the rebellion wins. (The trucker revolt in Canada. They got all their demands met. Yes it cost them horrifically. Because liberty is so valuable, it must be dearly bought.)

Yes the people want freedom, or at least individual liberty. No, they don’t want to be ruled and commanded. They want liberty enough that the left is going to hurt us very badly trying to fight their final rearguard action to stay in control.

If you believe only the enlightened, or educated or whatever want liberty and everyone else wants “security” or “to be ruled” you are victim of a deception that plays on your sense of unearned superiority.

And your parroting this nonsense plays into the enemy’s hands. Because it is foundational to Marxism that the workers are too stupid to know what they want or need and must therefore be led by intellectuals.

Stop picking up opinions you find lying about and putting them in your mouth because they taste so good.

You don’t know where they’ve been, or where they’ve come from.

And most of them are poison.

132 thoughts on “In The Name Of The People”

  1. There is a quote somewhere about the worst tyrants being those who are doing something for your own good.

    something along the lines of the following

    the tyrant doing it for power may get tired, one doing it for greed may finally have enough, but someone doing it for your own good will never be satisfied

    Liked by 1 person

    1. “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
      ― C. S. Lewis

      https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/19967-of-all-tyrannies-a-tyranny-sincerely-exercised-for-the-good

      Liked by 1 person

    2. It’s from C. S. Lewis’ “God In The Dock” and I’ll post the essay that it’s in as soon as I find it. (IE The essay’s name and part of the essay.)

      Liked by 1 person

      1. It’s also available read aloud on YouTube.

        Lewis also restated the argument concisely and effectively couple of times in That Hideous Strength, which also includes his insights in The Abolition of Man.

        “It is with your approval that criminals — honest criminals whose hands you are unfit to touch — are being taken from the jails to which British judges sent them on the conviction of British juries and packed off to Belbury to undergo for an indefinite period, out of reach of the law, whatever tortures and assaults on personal identity you call Remedial Treatment.”

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      2. But the Fairy pointed out that what had hampered every English police force up to date was precisely the idea of deserved punishment. For desert was always finite: you could do so much to the criminal and no more. Remedial treatment, on the other hand, need have no fixed limit; it could go on til it had effected a cure, and those who were carrying it out would when that was.

        Funny: when I first read That Hideous Strength (years and years ago, when I was far more naive and liberal) I thought it was a ham-fisted, unrealistic, paranoid screed and an embarrassment from an otherwise-talented author.

        These days I’m quite humbled (not to mention embarrassed myself) as I go back and reread it again and again while seeing Lewis’ unheeded warnings play out in real time.

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  3. I think… and have no real evidence to back up my opinion but – TPTB don’t understand that they have already lost the majority of ‘the people’ and are only beginning to see what that will mean to them. 

    An example: It’s a dumb one but works – Women’s NCAA basketball has been sort of ho-hum until last year and then it broke out in popular ways nobody expected. Now this year we have Iowa (Iowa for goodness sakes??) and their star team pulling in tv ratings that beat out the world series and have ignited a ground swell of fun. A bunch of sportscasters and sports “experts” have tried to minimize the impact of a slender white girl from the mid-west who is so apple-pie and traditional it’s like a 1960 Chevy commercial (See the USA in a Chevrolet…)! 

    They have failed to derail the popularity of the game, the players and it’s outcome. Even if Iowa doesn’t win the championship (final four on Friday Go Hawkeyes) the impact on the sport and the ripple effect is already there and spreading. When the average sportsball guy/gal is spending time watching college basketball and it’s making national and even international news it has to unsettle all those trying to be in charge. https://www.kcci.com/article/childvoice-african-refugees-uganda-inspired-by-iowa-hawkeye-basketball-star-caitlin-clark/60310858

    Kids like Clark and her team are the real future and all the “others” will pale in comparison. So, fan or not I think we’re getting a glimpse of what can be and who real leaders are. 

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Also note the LSU team decided to sit out the national anthem and got whopped, to applause.

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    2. Oregon State Girls went to the Elite 8, lost to South Carolina. But stayed in longer than their former (or rather soon to be former) Pac 12 teams, including Oregon.

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    3. A link from this article headlines that an Iowa bike race ‘may be the hilliest ever’. Wait – Iowa has hills? 😁

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      1. When we moved to Kansas, we were surprised to discover that Lawrence has hills. I was used to Baum’s image of Kansas as totally flat and gray.

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      2. Iowa has hills. They’re about 10 miles long, and you will notice them if you’re pedaling a bicycle. Iowa also has wind. When it’s at your back, it’s great. When you’re heading into it, it’s Hell.

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  4. Thoughts of the Ekpyrosis.

    Assume Trump wins the election. Given what all of the Democrats and the Regime DNC Media have been, and are, saying — that he *will* end democracy if not STOPPED — do you not think they will never allow him to take office? In order to “save” democracy?

    Remember: They *believe* this. FERVENTLY.

    I’m not sure how they would do this. But I’m convinced they will.

    Armed conflict probably ensues. *sigh*

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      1. I hope you’re right, because I fear that if he somehow beats the massive voter fraud, you’ll have the Dems openly conspiring with foreign powers to undermine him and Antifa types setting off bombs in churches to “fight fascism”.

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        1. The Democrats are already conspiring with foreign powers to destroy Trump and any who dare to support him. The whole Democrat party is floating in bribe money, much of it from foreign sources.

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        3. The speculation I have seen involves the Rs self-destructing (a usual) before the election, with RINOs bailing out timed so they cannot be replaced easily. Thus, the House goes back to the D’s, and Congress refuses to certify the election.

          Rope, tree/lamp-post, politician: some assembly required.

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          1. The Republicans manage to be so consistently incompetent I have to wonder if they’re being run by their opposition.

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            1. It’s easy to be consistently incompetent when any failures are complete and eternal, and any successes are really failures because the result was anything other than exactly what the pronouncer-of-failure wanted, and if the result is exactly what the pronouncer-of-failure wanted, then it’s STILL a failure because it ever had to be worked for in the first place.

              Same way that progressives are all knowing, all powerful, and unbeatable. You just ignore absolutely any example that suggests otherwise.

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                  1. Their beliefs are inherently evil. Also unfalsifiable. BUT it’s important to NOT buy into their delusion that they’re masterminds. They’re not.

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                    1. At best, the Left is generally directed by midwits. The whole schtick of the Left is “comfortable to midwits and peabrains”. Those folks then get to believe they are actually an aristocracy of merit, or a self-selected elite.

                      “You have to be Educated to understand this!”

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                3. Sarah, the error I see daily is that every success is all encompassing and any failure is a fluke, or not significant because we can just put in a little shortcut to get around it. Never mind that it breaks something tweaked earlier, because no one will use that old method once the “new and improved” one is available.

                  “Why do you keep insisting on testing old stuff we know works? “

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            2. Codevilla put forth a rather well researched book, The Ruling Class, that would seem to confirm that. Certainly the observed pattern of events would.

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            3. We just reorganized our town GOP committee to combine with our historical twin town as a regional one. First thing we did was ask if anyone was a Democrat, and if so, to please leave. Then we had everyone introduce themselves (which allowed us to check the voter rolls for veracity.)

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          2. Not credible – it involves congresscritters

            A: Doing things in a coordinated fashion

            B: keeping their yaps shut

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            1. Hmmm..

              JohnS has put forth a hypothesis.

              You have put forth a counter-hypothesis.

              The scientific method demands observational data to confirm one hypothesis or the other. All the currently observed observational data, on the pattern and timing of Republican resignations would seem to support the JohnS hypothesis, and not the Matthew hypothesis.

              QED.

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      2. There seem to be rumors or fears of “something happening,” Monday along the eclipse path. I suspect this is partly fueled by cities like Indianapolis declaring, “states of emergency,” for Monday and people going, “Oooh, do they know something they’re not telling us?”

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        1. Celestial (in the non-divine sense) events tend to trigger anxiety in people. I think that persists even when so many of these events have been explained by science.

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            1. I recommend sacrificing federal bureaucrats using a ritual involving cement overshoes. It might or might not work to prevent catastrophe, but do you see any downsides?

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              2. I am old-fashioned. Throw them in an active volcano.

                Mauna Loa is just sitting there.

                (grin)

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        3. People in the region have been advised to stock up for several days at home and stay at home if feasible and to expect long wait times for non-emergency services as emergency services will be prioritized (as it should be) and i guess they are expecting an awful lot of emergencies. Almost sounds like what the 2 weeks was supposed to have been … sigh …

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          1. In Texas we’re preparing for traffic snarls, lost drivers, more wrecks, and the usual “unfamiliar with the roads and in a hurry” but more so.

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            2. We live two blocks from a large park on the path of totality. Were told expect to be trapped in your neighborhood on Monday…

              I blame the media for blowing this up along. NWS calls for clouds.

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        4. Trolls gonna shitpost, too.

          My everyday normal wariness is sufficient to the day. Not even going to carry an extra magazine or bandage.

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        5. Biggest issue of the eclipse will be traffic. I’m heading into Vermont with the missus to get our piece of totality. I’ve seen a couple of partial eclipses, I figured I’d like a total one for the bucket list.

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    2. Unless *they* do a mass casualty event, where they decapitate the government, won’t happen. Two reasons. If nothing else President Trump has his own security, paid by him, loyal to him. Second, from all reports, Secret Service actually like President Trump and his family. The former opens a can of *Oh Sx* that no one will want to see. I guaranty that an immediate reply won’t be wanted against the probable suspects, guilty or not. Not guilty? Oops. Too late, so sorry.

      Liked by 1 person

  5. I think it’s not unfair to say that most people want to be ruled, but only in the sense that most people don’t want to have to care about politics or the government at all. So long as the average person is free to say what he likes, worship what and where he likes, work a steady job that pays for the lifestyle he thinks he ought to have, and not get harassed by government officials or public safety officers, he couldn’t care less whether he was in a direct democracy or an enlightened autocracy or anything in between. Self-governance is a means to the end of good governance, not an end in itself. (It is, however, the best means to good governance known.)

    I recognize and share our Hostess’s dislike of the hard men/ hard times cycle. But I think there may be a similar cycle: bad governance leads to engaged citizens. Engaged citizens lead to good governance. Good governance leads to uninvolved citizens. Uninvolved citizens lead to bad governance.

    Beware the citizens who didn’t want to care about politics being forced to care. They will not appreciate it.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. People are lazy, and have a bad case of normalcy bias.
        That does NOT imply they wish to be oppressed.

        I still see some normies with their metaphorical fingers stuck in their ears singing LaLaLa.
        But there are fewer every day.

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      2. Agreed. That oversimplification is egregious. To Amy Schley’s point, Sallust argued that what most men want is ”…a just master” (emphasis mine).

        I think Ms. Schley is on to something. Most people don’t want to be engaged with politics most of the time, rightly evaluating it as something between unproductive and immoral. (Narrator: Here we have a long digression about Franz Oppenheimer’s distinction of the “economic means” — voluntary mutual exchange for mutual benefit to achieve one’s ends — and the “political means” — use goons with guns to achieve one’s ends.)

        Alas, “the line dividing good and evil cuts through every human heart” (Narrator: *sigh* Here we have another digression rhapsodizing about Solzhenitsyn), so alas, like it or not, people have to get engaged with politics now and then as a matter of self-defense.

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        1. And most people honestly don’t care about the civil rights of others.

          I’m a public defender with a lot of child sex crime clients. In my state, trials for these crimes can introduce evidence of prior bad acts (not just prior convictions, but prior accusations) that would not be allowable for any other type of charge. Why? Because it was too hard to get child molesters convicted, so a lobby group got the state legislature to change the law. They got away with it because not many people are interested in standing up for the civil rights of child molesters. (Luckily for one of my clients, last week the judge agreed with me that the offered propensity evidence for his trials would be more prejudicial than probative.)

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  6. Or MaligNancy standing there repeating “For the children. For the children. For the children.” like a Borg drone with a glitch in its vocoder. As if repeating a lie enough times would make it true.

    Life has gotten immeasurably worse ‘For the children’ over the last 3 years, but they can never admit it.

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    1. Quote from the internet: “For the Children” is political shorthand for “We want to treat you like children.”

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      1. True. Unfortunately, in my experience, those who sneer about it generally mean that children have no rights that adults are bound to respect.

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  8. i tripped and fell hard on the way from parking garage to office building. Four complete strangers rushed up to help.

    At other times in my life, even people who I thought were close friends turned their backs.

    There have been (far too many) times I failed to help someone in need.

    May the Lord make us all Good Samaritans (Luke 10:25-37).

    God bless us every one.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. When hubby fell when we were in Yellowstone, had 4 strangers running with me toward him. “We’re registered nurses do you have a first aid kit in your rig?” (Not guarantied as could have been a rental.) We did (a big one).

      We we pulled into the campground noticed a lot of people helping one person load, and hitch rig. Someone was going to help wife get rig out of campground and to the clinic. Husband had had a heart attack.

      When son fell on his bike. He fell in front of a family. (Rainer this time.) Pediatrician.

      I don’t know how many times we helped not-in-our-group, when on a trail backpacking, whether just us, or just adults, or with the full troop.

      Okay. Medical personnel, whether actually working or not, get involved. Other examples, yes, scouting. Truth is, I am incapable of not offering help if I can. Does not mean people accept it. That is their prerogative.

      OTOH do resent the “help” when being told that my dog isn’t allowed where we were hiking. Correct. My dog is not allowed. However, my medical alert service dog is. Now if they were letting us know that a bison or other wild animal was really close to the trail/boardwalk, or one of the rare tall hot geysers were erupting, ahead where we couldn’t see the event yet, that warrants a thank you.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I’m evidently much scarier looking than I think I am.
        I’ve had people who I’ve offered assistance to, run away.
        Through teddy bear cactus.

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  9. I think – because I was brought up as a die-hard Lutheran where discussions of human imperfectability were a common topic in catechism classes — and because I reveled in reading histories … I concluded early on that any system of governance which depended on the perfectibility of humans was doomed to fail, sooner or later. Unless it was a relatively small unit of whole-hearted volunteers.

    Once the community ceased being whole-hearted volunteers … then it became a matter of coercion … and coercion means a degree of brutality. Either psychological brutality … or the physical kind.

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    1. Federalist 51: If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

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  10. Saw a recent New York Times cover: “Trump Allies Winning War Against Disinformation” (paraphrased from memory). Glancing at it, the article was whining that guys like Elon Musk (not really a Trump ally) were successfully complaining about the gov’s disinformation policies by crying censorship.

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  11. davidelange, this is the quote you were thinking about.

    “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

    Paul (drak), Bertolt Brecht had this to say:

    The Solution

    After the uprising of the 17th JuneThe Secretary of the Writers UnionHad leaflets distributed in the StalinalleeStating that the peopleHad forfeited the confidence of the governmentAnd could win it back onlyBy redoubled efforts. Would it not be easierIn that case for the governmentTo dissolve the peopleAnd elect another?

    I’ll see you tomorrow on the John Ringo substack!

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  12. I’m not sure what’s worse, being ruled by intellectuals or being ruled by idiots. If only there were some way of telling them apart.

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    1. That would require that there be some difference between them.

      ———————————

      They’re the Experts! They only sound stupid to you because you’re not as Educated as they are.

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  13. “…because they taste so good.

    […]

    And most of them are poison.”

    Lead acetate tastes sweet. Sugar of lead, it was called. Poison.

    Ideas can be trickier than chemicals – it’s often harder to recognize the toxicity.

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  14. C.S. Lewis’s quote is a good one; I always also think of H.L. Mencken’s claim that “The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve.” I think this is almost tautological, because anyone who thinks they can save humanity will ultimately have to confront what to do when individual humans don’t want to be saved.

    The choice is either (a) leave them alone or (II) try to force them to do the “right” thing. The kind of person who sees himself as a savior isn’t going to choose option 1. And most likely they will already have rejected it before they even needed to decide.

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  15. If regime calls itself a “people’s republic” or a “democratic socialist republic” you can be certain that it is a totalitarian dictatorship.

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  16. People seem to have preferred monarchs who didn’t tax them much, kept the local nobles’ mischief to a bearable level, kept wars far away, and had an heir-and-a-spare to make civil wars among the cousins, brothers, and so on less likely.

    That combination seems to have been vanishingly rare.

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  17. I think a majority of people just want to live their lives with as little interference as possible. I base on the fact that everyone is “for” something, until it impacts them directly. Then suddenly, it becomes oppressive and over-reach and completely inconvenient.

    Sometimes that is what it takes: becoming so offensive and inconvenient for so many people for them to change. And given at least our economic trajectory, it is getting harder and harder to ignore.

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    1. “Sometimes that is what it takes: becoming so offensive and inconvenient for so many people for them to change.”

      The whole point of the 2024 election is to make the fraud so obvious that it can’t be ignored.

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    3. Not lying so much as failing to define which people they mean to be good for.

      After all, they are people and it’s good to be king.

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  19. Along similar lines, I have been thinking recently that one way of framing the current sides in society today is ordered liberty vs. anarcho-tyrany.

    Specifically, I think want people really want is ordered liberty. To be able to work and worship as we want, neither constrained by overweening dictat nor needing to guard against petty criminality.

    What really crystalized how overarching this dichotomy is was when I happened to see a news chyron a couple weeks ago for a story about how kids who have school uniforms supposedly get less exercise (the supposedly is my editorial addition).

    After first giving the mental retort of “that is because they are actually learning stuff” and second becoming very suspicious of whatever study they were talking up (since the school I worked at that had uniforms had a much more rigorous physical education than any of the no-uniform schools–specifically they had high quality dance classes integrated right into the school, complete with performing for audiences), I finally settled on being astounded at the realization that the rulers really, really hate school uniforms.

    Which caused me to really ponder, what is it about school uniforms that make them so appealing to the based, and so offensive to the Marxists? One would think uniforms making everyone look alike would appeal to those who see us as widgets.

    Which leads me back to the idea of ordered liberty. School uniforms serve as an example and metaphor. While the clothes are all the same, the orderly environment means the minds of the students are free to think and grow.

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    1. School uniforms also reduce the visible differences between students, making it less easy for them to divide into cliques, and removing the all-too-common economic motive for bullying. The peculiar blend of shunning and sucking-up known at school as ‘popularity’ largely accrues to the conspicuously rich and fashionable children. Is there any such thing as a Mean Girl whose parents are poor?

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      1. Hit ‘reply’ too soon. The Left, including our entire present ruling class, works by exploiting divisions between groups. It inflames racism in the name of ‘anti-racism’, flaunts wealth in the name of ‘anti-capitalism’, and everywhere encourages an unjustified sense of grievance against ‘society’ (that useful abstract scapegoat) and against any other group that can be accused of having some advantage over one’s own. The goal is to produce a population not of human beings, but of explosively touchy inferiority complexes, which can be mobilized and exploited for the political gain of their masters.

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      2. ” Is there any such thing as a Mean Girl whose parents are poor?”

        Yes there is.

        Having gone to five separate high schools due to my biological parents going middle life insane and being the worst examples of the stereotypical medicating self-centered Boomers that abandon their offspring to relatives, friends and random pedophiles, I spent a spring semester being the only white child on a inner city school bus. (Not advised nowadays…)

        The Mean Girls were usually the ones that looked like overweight college linebackers. But hey, most of the people on the bus and school could related to my predicament, so it gradually got better. Humor, properly applied, also helped.

        I learned nothing but all the lyrics to the Nucleus albums, P-Funk, and how to consistently shoot 19 out of 20 free-throws in a row.

        I escaped back to one of my uncles farms after that spring and finally finished my high school at a good school in a nearby city.

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    2. I’m a big fan of school uniforms for a number of reasons. (Not the least of which is that the right uniform makes a girl look very cute indeed…)

      It creates circumstances where an outsider is easily noticeable in a school setting. You can argue some points along those lines as being bad, but in an emergency situation, it’s good.

      It does help to break up cliques based on fashion and wealth, at least at the school level.

      And it provides fewer distractions for school children learning.

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      1. My daughter went to a Catholic high school with uniforms – and I strongly approve the concept on social and economic grounds, although she claims now to have been put off the fashion of box-pleated plaid skirts for life. I thought that it made the girls all look very proper and ‘studently’, unlike the kids at the public high school looked like they had walked through the Goodwill store while people threw garments at them.

        I laid out about $300 worth at Kingston Uniform for her at the beginning of her freshman year, and as she remained roughly the same shape and height for the following years until graduation, that set her up completely. (Although some of the blouses were worn to tissue-paper thinness at the end of four years.)

        It meant that ‘back to school’ clothes shopping every fall meant another six-pack of cotton ankle socks. Win-win!

        Liked by 1 person

        1. That’s one of the big things. Having been a teenage boy once upon a time, I will admit that I could find a girl in a uniform sexy, but it’s harder to be distracted in that way when the girls are (mostly) dressed alike.

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    3. As usual, Kipling beat you to it…..

      “All we have of freedom, all we use or know–
      This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.

      Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw–
      Leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the Law.

      Lance and torch and tumult, steel and grey-goose wing
      Wrenched it, inch and ell and all, slowly from the king.

      Till our fathers ‘stablished,, after bloody years,
      How our King is one with us, first among his peers.

      So they bought us freedom-not at little cost–
      Wherefore must we watch the King, lest our gain be lost”

      https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/old_issue.html

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  21. I see “freedom” as being left alone unless absolutely neccessary … as long as my actions do not result in harm to others I see no place for the government … and especially I see no place for the goverment in my “inactions” ..,. i.e. requiring masks on un-sick people to save”other people” … compelled anything is never good …

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  22. “FDR was beloved by the entire nation.”

    I’ve had to explain to a few folks that, no, I’ve seen and read some of the folk art that indicates otherwise. Including a two-page poem about FDR dying, showing up at the gates of Hell, and the devil refusing him entrance, because he’d take over and start bossing the devil around.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I remember hearing of a “joke” from the WW2 time period.

      Roughly, a soldier was asked why he didn’t kill a Japanese soldier who had shouted “Death to FDR” and the soldier replied that he couldn’t kill a fellow Republican.

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  23. Brilliant metaphor.

    I agree that “the people” mostly want to be left alone. There’s an element of “they came for the Jews” involved, too (both literal and figurative; who would have thought?), which is the “most people don’t care about the civil rights of others” from above.

    We’re reaching the point (have far exceeded, imho) where the crocodile is eating everything, so everyone notices, each through his own personal lived experience (Leftist terms can be coopted, but fix the grammar; “his” goes with the singular “each”). Which particular government overreach any given person notices differs, but there are so many of them these days that we all notice something.

    When I first read Heinlein’s “Politics is as important as your heartbeat”, I scoffed. I now think he was correct. (A paraphrase, despite the quotation marks.)

    I think Tristram Shandy may be an ancestor of mine.

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