There is an old saw that says foul times call for foul measures. I, for one, do not agree with that exact formulation, but there is a fairly close analog of my own contriving - one that many others have also concocted that is indeed valid.
There are times when cultures wander beyond the metes and bounds of repairability. When such excursions occur, the remedies normally available to people via "the system" such as courts of Law, for example, are no longer within reach. The so-called "system" is broken beyond normal repair capacities. When such a condition arises, the immediate effects are the erosion of life quality along various lines such as those of economics, liberty, and proper governance. When courts no longer respond properly to criminality, police run amok and roughshod, criminals get away with murder, legislatures run wild in curtailing and denying men's rights, and economies go erratic at the hands of scoundrels, the populations so affected are then presented with the choice of accepting their lot passively, or taking measures to correct that which has gone awry. The choice is ultimately there's, especially in a nation such as America where the population possesses more arms than all the rest of the world and its armies, combined.
Free Men are ultimately responsible for their status as such. Sitting idly, expecting the cavalry or some knight in shining armor to come riding to their rescue is not remotely realistic. It just doesn't happen. Such men must be their own cavalry, but in order to become it, the people comprising the corps must have several items firmly under their belts. First and foremost is the clear understanding, acceptance, and embrasure of the Principles of Proper Human Relations, for that is the corpus of atomic values to which all Free Men must adhere in their daily affairs in order that all men may become and remain free. Secondly, and pursuant to the first condition, there must be a plan such that the cavalry will know which corrections to make. Some are easily identified, while others may not be so obvious, largely due to the nature of the deeply held, tacit assumptions that so many people carry with themselves daily.
There must be a so-called "critical mass" of bodies who are willing and capable to do what is required in the face of a system that has for all practical purposes failed to function properly, regardless of the reasons for the failure. When that failure is realized, then the choice, once again, is either to meekly accept one's lot or to take extra-systemic action. Such action almost always means kinetics, which is to say, warfare. But let me not jump too far ahead of the plot here.
Under nominally normal conditions, Free Men enjoy the protections of a system of governance whose sole purpose is the recognition, guaranty, and protection of the equal rights of all people. And in order to fulfill that role, the people in whom the "People" have placed their Sacred Trust must be knowledgeable as to the specifics of practical fulfillment. Furthermore, they must be of a character that is not only capable of properly discharging the relevant duties, but one that is worthy of the trust in which they have been vested. So to be clear, men who presume to step up to assume the mantle of the Sacred Public Trust must be both competent and faithful to the oaths they swear in service to the People.
And when the system, taken as a gestalt, wanders from its sole valid purpose and regardless of the reasons, it becomes the obligation of Free Men to make corrections. Due to the nature of such systems, which are reflections of the nature of men in a plenitude of the less flattering qualities thereof, and especially when the moral fabric of the culture in general has taken a plunge into unsound thought and practice, those systems are almost always disinclined to self-correction. Nay, they tend to be strongly predisposed to furthering their own interests above those of the people whom they ostensibly serve, most often taking on the qualities of tyrants and other dangerous sorts injurious to the liberties of Free Men with monotonically increasing habit. Systems in such a state are immune to reason, often regarding anyone attempting to reason with them as security risks; but to whom? To the system itself, and the state into which it has so precipitously fallen.
And so we see then that as a system falls to corruption, one thing that arises is a conflict of interest that becomes ever more evident over time as such fallen systems dive ever more deeply into overt corruption.
The question then arises, "to what measures must we resort if the system cannot be correct using its own mechanisms?" Let us be clear now that the "system" is not a thing in sé, but rather a prescription by which the people entrusted with its administration are failing to abide. When an architect's design specifications are ignored by builders, it must come as no surprise when the edifice collapses under its own ponderous mass.
When all avenues of peaceful, noncoercive correction, whether within or outside the system, have been exhausted or rendered ineffective, force becomes the remaining recourse.
Such force might be comprised of nothing more than the threat of dire consequences if the people in question fail to straighten up and fly right. But more often, physicality becomes the necessary ingredient for ousting those who have succumbed to the broader corruptions of administration. And such action carries with it dire risk, for our history as civilized human beings shows without equivocation that such events often result in conditions worse than those that precipitated action in the first place. This is the dangerous risk, and that is precisely why men of action need to possess and embrace a set of principles a priori, and have a plan of procedure in the event they prove victorious.
In the case of proper and maximal human liberty, the Principles of Proper Human Relations is what is required, first and foremost, and the plan of procedure must be based upon and accord perfectly with those principles. Without them, the post-victory risks threaten to grow enormously when compared with men who have such plans in hand and know precisely how they shall proceed with the goal of optimum freedom in mind.
Dire conditions lead to the need for dire action, and dire action carries dire risk. Therefore, foul times to not require foul measures, but rather those which carry dire risks that can ever so easily cause conditions to go sideways in an instant, especially under circumstances of highly pitched emotions, which is a near universal phenomenon of warfare, given that people are generally uneager to be killed, the threat of which tends to get them pretty well knotted up in the panties. It is under such conditions that many people fall into grave error as to how to comport themselves and proceed. That is the danger inherent in the assumption of such risks.
Therefore, and to be annoyingly repetitive, it behooves us to have the correct moral grounding and a valid plan of action based in that grounding for the day when men must regrettably arise against their fellows and apply unequivocal force in order to affect corrections to a system that has gone wayward from its right and proper role and authority.
Speaking to the currently dolorous condition in which we find American governance, fallen wholly into rank corruption from which logic, pleading, and pretty talk cannot retrieve, the day is nigh upon us where we will be deciding who we are in truth, and how we shall be living from that moment onward. We shall each of us choose, whether positively or through the despicable path of idle default, but make no mistake that choose you will. There shall be no escaping it for you or anyone else because if you default, the tyrannies you now suffer shall pale in comparison with what shall be then forthcoming, and it is most likely that for whatever time your life is preserved, you will spend it in bitter regret, most especially if you see yourself as a lover of liberty.
Extraordinary circumstance calls for extraordinary measures, call for extraordinary risk, call for extraordinary preparation, none of which should be seen as foul.
And there is a deeper message in all of this: if perchance we one day rid ourselves of the vampires that drain away our freedoms, we as a people are behooved then to determine that never again shall we make the mistake of our pasts and those of our forebears in having allowed the Tyrant to gain a foothold upon the shores of our liberties. Let us adopt a culture of vigilant guardianship: a people who regard every breach of oath, every usurpation, and every trespass upon equal rights as an intolerable attack upon the conditions of liberty itself. Such a culture need not be cruel, reckless, or eager for violence. It need only make certain that those who betray the Sacred Public Trust understand that betrayal carries certain, proportionate, and inescapable consequences.
This cultural attitude of grim intolerance must be adopted and deeply integrated into the American spirit, lest we one day repeat the initial error of allowing those who govern falsely to avoid and evade the right and just consequences for breaking faith with the oath of good faith and competent service.
Slight aside: If, and I emphasize "if", Trump & Co. are on the level and have the philosophically correct basis for action, then this could be the best thing that has ever happened to America and Americans, including the Founding. But if not, we could be going from frying pan into the fire.
Interesting are the times.
Mors tyrannis!
Mors Tyrannidi!
Until next time, please accept my best wishes.
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