So then in other words what you are saying is that there is no hope for curtailing the infringement imposed by government on our personal liberty through any Constitutional means other than armed rebellion? That any attempt to correct government injustices is futile other than by armed rebellion? That politics is merely mental masterbation and meaningless as a way to effect governmental change? That in the end it all comes down to one man, one bullet rather than one man, one vote?
I think there's
one hope other than armed rebellion. Even as huge and powerful and oppressive as our government has become, it is still too small to force on us anything that a majority of the population is violently unwilling to accept. That means that if enough people become unwilling to accept the privileges and powers that the government arrogates to itself, our corrupt politicians can be further corrupted back into keeping their oaths of office rather than ignoring them.
I look with no small amount of awe on what was accomplished a few years ago by the feminist and homosexual-rights lobbies. They didn't truly convince hardly any politicians, and they killed very few people, but they did fix it so that one's days as a politician were severely numbered unless one mouthed the proper party line. By blackmailing them and threatening their jobs (and not directly through the voting process either), these two lobbies corrupted already corrupt politicians into supporting their causes.
So if enough people in this country want their liberty back, and are willing to do what is necessary to take it, it's quite possible that we could take it back without much bloodshed at all.
The question, of course, is the same as it has always been: how does the message of liberty reach and convince that many people? You, for example: you are under the impression that you
already live in a free country. The government perpetrates a few minor inconveniences on you, but you're convinced that it's your duty to put up with them (because they were perpetrated by what you consider to be duly-elected politicians), and, within reason, with whatever other indignities the politicians invent (provided, of course, that they're your particular brand of politicians, rather than the other kind), and that in addition to your tax money, you should support the government in other ways as well--for example, cheering on government troops in combat regardless of who or why they're fighting. You
already think you're a liberty advocate, and you dismiss anyone who says you're not as a nutcase. How can libertarians possibly wake up people like you?
The answer, I think, is not reasoned argument, but simple naked force. Most existing liberty advocates (including me) didn't get this way because one day we decided to do a little careful research into the history and the writings of the founding fathers and the great libertarian philosophers. We got this way because we found ourselves legally coerced into or out of something, and it didn't seem fair to us. (All humans have an innate sense of what's fair and what's not, that is entirely independent of custom, law, or tradition.) So we started thinking and reading and researching about what it ought to be fair for government to be able to do, and along the way we all found horrifying, appalling things that this government and others had done not because they had any right to, but simply because nobody stopped them.
I think you're the same as we used to be. For me, it was Brady II in November 1998. For you, I don't know. For now, whenever the government decides to claim it has a right to something of yours--your money, your guns, your children, your land, your car, your house, your privacy, whatever--you say to yourself, "Well, okay, they're the government; I suppose they can handle it better than I can--and besides, it's free, right?" But eventually the government will get around to claiming rights and privileges from you that even
you think are unfair, and you'll begin looking around and finding out that it's
not right, the government can
not handle it better than you can, it's
not free, and that in fact the only real difference between you and the government is that you have to do what the government says, while the government can do anything it wants because it can legally kill people.
So that's the one hope I think we have. If the government should begin trampling liberties at a little too quick a rate, or if it turns out that a little more true American blood than it had anticipated runs in the veins of the people, then suddenly there will be tens or hundreds of thousands of people demanding to know who the government thinks it is to be able to take those liberties away--and come to think of it, what about all these other liberties that have already been suppressed for years and decades? Once such a movement catches on, you could theoretically find politicians scrambling all over themselves to be the first to suggest restoring a liberty so as not to lose their jobs and have to work for a living.
A groundswell of outrage fueled by government overreach: that's my dream. But it has to happen before the government reaches the point where public opinion no longer means anything to it; once that happens, then I think we do have to kill people to get anywhere--and where we get after that will be anybody's guess. And as long as the government can keep control of itself and takes away only one small liberty at a time, and allows enough time for acclimatization before it goes after the next, that dream may never materialize.
But I'll tell you what: I'm thinking a President like Al Gore or Dick Gephardt or Hillary! Clinton might just be what we need to stimulate that groundswell of outrage.
