There are only two kinds of government. Limited Government (LG) which limits the powers of the people at the top, which limits their ability to corrupt the system, and Big Government (BG) which is designed so a small elite group at the top reap all the benefits of a society and there is no limit on what they can do with their power.
All the names for forms of government like socialism, communism, fascism, etc. are merely definitions of style. BG systems all eventually drift toward some form of tyranny until they collapse from their own corruption or revolution. The most successful and stable form of government in modern times is the LG federalist model of the United States. But that has been corrupted, and now is changing into a BG system where it is doomed to fail unless events change it back.
I’ve tried to cover the history as much as I could in the limited space I had, but today I want to explore what it all means. First I highly recommend two documentaries that will help put a lot of things in perspective if you haven’t seen them. They were both made by Adam Curtis, a British film maker. The first is The Century of Self which talks about how elites have used psychology to help manufacture consent. The other is The Trap which talks about how liberal thinking helped create the nightmare bureaucratic world we live in today. Curtis has a leftward tilt, but he’s even-handed. The information he relates is well worth your time.
To understand the world we live in, you have to understand the root nature of human behavior. Just as there are only two basic forms of government, human beings are motivated by only two basic drives: the desire to have something and the fear of losing something. We all are born with the desire to be loved, to eat, to own, to love someone else. We desire and desire drives us. But we also fear losing what we gain. We fear losing our loves, our money, our health, our life. Elites know this and they constantly seek to manipulate us through our feelings. They’ve made a science out of it. And the battle is between two opposing forces for control. Both think they are the good guys, because few people believe they’re evil. But all are really motivated by self interest on some level. As with anything, it’s the degrees that make things good or bad.
The proponents of big government think that human nature can be contained and controlled by laws administered by a wise elite. They believe a utopia can be achieved by “educating” people to think differently and behave as the elite wants them too. The fallacies of this argument are many. It assumes that the elite are wise. They rarely are, if ever. And because they’re human, they’re as flawed as the people below them. Since BG systems rely on bureaucracy, there are more people to delegate the authority which means there are more flawed humans to screw things up. This is why all bureaucracies turn corrupt and inefficient. Furthermore, if you change people so they are longer motivated by their natures, they aren’t human anymore. And since a non-human society is the stuff of fantasy, this entire premise is based on dreams not reality.
Humans need a comfortable reality to operate in, so they find an ideology to use as the basis for the way they look at the world. The BG philosophy sells the idea that we can reach paradise as long as we can get people to behave according to “the correct way” thinking. But if you look at the people making these claims they’re often perfect examples of why human beings are flawed. They cling to their philosophy because it gives them hope that they can get to heaven by playing a game rather than paying their dues.
True limited-government thinkers have an opposing view that comes down to this: “We accept that human beings are flawed. So how do we deal with it and create a society that works?” This is a philosophy that accepts reality rather than promotes fantasy. The US Constitution, the LG framework of our times, is the greatest legal document in history because it the founders figured out a way to checkmate every tendency of people who govern. It is not perfect, but it has worked for well over 200 years. It has the feature to evolve with society, but it wisely makes it incredibly hard to change, which prevents radical, quick fix alterations.
The reason I named this series “The New Fascists” isn’t to insult the progressives by calling them names. It’s to show that while everyone may operate under the assumption they’re the good guys, many people don’t understand that the ideology they live by eventually will lead them and others toward a dark and bitter end. The only way to make the world a better place is to deal with reality. And the only way to deal with reality is to stop following other people’s lead until you figure out what’s really going on. Too many people follow without really asking themselves why. You should always ask yourself why.
BG is the system is for followers, not individuals. It promotes group-think. It punishes individual thought. That is why they attack and vilify anyone at variance with their beliefs. They want to keep people in line so they’ll do what the elites want. The elites have gamed the system by infiltrating the right and the left to produce the synthesis. Each side tells their followers what they want to hear (the thesis and the anti-thesis) but they keep marching them in the same general direction. The synthesis.
The old Fascists used group think to make their citizens march in the direction they wanted. Anyone who dissented was shot or sent to a camp. The new Fascists use a more subtle approach by demonizing those who don’t follow their agenda. Anyone who believes in individual rights over group rights, anyone for national sovereignty or who talks about things like liberty and freedom are painted as crazy or evil. Anyone who disagrees with the BG elites, are painted as stupid or villains. Anyone who believes in Christianity, which is a competing ideology, is made to be a fool or a sex criminal. There’s a reason for all this. They’re operating out of self interest and they want to win at all costs. They want to crush the opposition and make people embarrassed or afraid to talk back.
The character of a person is revealed under pressure. We can see what our leaders are made of in these hard times. What’s revealed is repugnant to anyone who understands that they are supposed to be our servants not our masters. There is a blatant contempt for the public’s will. And they are trying to force us to accept more control and bureaucracy whether we like it or not. They are the new fascists and rest assured more power only makes them uglier.
The new Fascists don’t shoot people yet. They aren’t powerful enough to get away with it. Only when they have complete control can they do that. But look at their words, look at their actions and you can see that they have no problem with doing away with those they can’t use. They freely talk about the need to reduce the population. They freely talk about how people need to be controlled and their behavior modified. They use rationales they invented, based largely on manufactured crises that they conceived.
Understand that their followers are not the enemy. They’ve been fooled. Some of them may dream of joining the elites and doing bad things to others. But many of them are just people who think — or who have been brainwashed into thinking — that they’re on the right side of history. They think they’re trying to make the world a better place and that conservatives and libertarians are trying to stop human progress. They haven’t figured out that they’re actually helping the side that’s against human progress and freedom. A side that wants to take the world back to the era of rulers and edicts.
I started this series with the quote that the greatest trick the devil ever played was to make people think he didn’t exist. The new fascists want you to sell them your souls by convincing you it’s really for your benefit.
Even if the elites themselves think they’re working for the public good, unless they’re willing to surrender their egos and understand that the rule of law starts with a limit on authority, things will always creep back to the big government system and true human progress will be stalled or even ended.
Some of the greatest advancements in thousands of years of human history happened in the last 200 years. Coincidental or not, those were the years America left its imprint on the world. American exceptionalism is a reality. And those who would deny it are dooming us to failure.