Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Barack and Michelle Obama, and the General Will

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Big Government is nothing new.  We know this.  There is nothing new under the sun, as it says in Ecclesiastes 1:9 - The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

The concept of growing a central government into an out of control leviathan, for the good of the community, is based on the age old premise of collectivism. As the government grows, we increasingly place more and more trust into the ability of bureaucrats, and bureaucracies, to make decisions that they say is best for society as a whole.  We do this with a smile, a trusting smile, as we lose more and more of our ability to make individual decisions for ourselves.  As the government increases in size, we have been taught to let go of our unique individualism, because the leaders in the government tell us that the community is more important than the individual.

The "general will" is an idea made popular during the revolutionary period by a French philosopher named Jean Jacques Rousseau. The general will, according to Rousseau, is a will not necessarily expressed by the general public in any way but is presumed to be known by the ruling elite. "No aspect of human life," according to Rousseau, "is excluded from the control of the general will. . . whosoever refuses to obey the general will must in that instance be restrained by the body politic, which actually means that he is forced to be free."

"Forced" to be free.

Big government is less about freedom, and more about imposing upon you what they think is best for you, whether you like it or not.  The desire is to herd our population into a condition of being that includes molding the citizenry into an homogeneous mass, while abolishing decentralization, and removing representative institutions.

The general will was popular with the Jacobins, which was a secular movement in France that adhered to concepts very similar to today's socialist ideologies. The supporters of the general will offered that if the general will was to become a practical reality regarding the operation of government, than all voluntary associations would be subjected to government regulation and control in the name of "the people" and their "will" - as interpreted by the ruling elite.

The desire of the Jacobins to institute such a system in France was one of the factors that led to the French Revolution, and ultimately a greater tyranny than the tyranny the revolutionaries disposed of.

History has shown time and time again that such big government concepts always leads to serfdom, and the end of individual liberty.

The concept of the general will still exists in today's growing federal government and expanding State governments in the American system.  Though the term "general will" is not in use, we recognize the philosophy in statist government acts and regulations, where for your own good the busy-bodies of government impose their own brand of what they think is good for the community. . . even if it is not.

The good intentions of the Left has all but destroyed the principles of limited government, devolving our nation into a state where the net beneficiaries of government (those who receives entitlements) nearly outnumbers and dominates the net taxpayers (the producers of society, those who pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits).  They have used government to force upon us limits on our soda intake, they have drugged our children for the good of the school community (and it turns out the drugs have no beneficial properties), Michelle Obama has forced her nutritional standards on our children (and the children have refused to eat it, going home hungry as a result), Barack Obama is trying to use children as snitches for the government, requiring doctors who has a child confess to them that mommy and daddy have guns to report it to the government, intelligence agencies have been using surveillance to know all they can about the private lives of Americans, and now that includes wherever you drive.

Liberalism kills liberty whenever, and wherever, it is tried, and in today's society the result, combined with President Obama's mercantilist policies, is the destruction of the last remnants of the American system as forged by the founders. The democrats advocate special interest politics that benefits the politically connected at the expense of the taxpayers, and support the imposition of their pet beliefs on your lives through governmental force.

Is that freedom?  Is that liberty?  

Calls for "equity" and "fairness" and the "common good" are merely a smoke screen for the real desires of these statists. The liberal democrats are pulling the wool over the public's eyes by saying that their policies are for the "good of the people," and the "moral thing to do." That is how tyranny works.  They act in a deceptive manner, because if the voters ever truly understood the tyranny the leftists in power are offering, the liberals would be thrown out of office.

The members of our society, thanks to a lifetime of indoctrination by the media, the education system, and the entertainment industry, however, have been trained to accept all of this madness.  We have been trained to embrace Marxism, in the name of progress.  We have indeed become the enemy, and we are raising the flag ourselves.

In history, the only way these tyrannies are ultimately brought down, in the long run, if not stopped early, is through bloody revolution.  I hope it does not come to that.  I hope there is still time to educate the masses about the sickening system being imposed on us in the name of the "common good."

I hope.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary







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