In the circuits I traverse there is often heard what is called "a working definition of insanity": it is to keep on doing the same disaster-provoking thing over and over again expecting different results. A simple illustration: you get awful hives when you eat strawberries, so you keep on eating strawberries. Result hives. Or you always get stinking drunk whenever you start to drink. So you keep on drinking expecting to learn at last how to do it nicely. Result: drunk again.
The thing applies to hives, booze, and what is called, charitably, government. The Mises Institute Daily Article for June 16, "Fleeced by Anti-Drug Ads" by Paul Armentano, points out the sheer raving insanity of the way the Feds are prosecuting the anti-drug propaganda war. Because it has notably failed of its purpose, as a whole string of expensive and impartial studies have proved – Armentano cites the studies in detail – the solemn solons of the land, gathered in high purpose in their Mighty Congress, have decided to UP THE $$ APPOPRIATION for the propaganda agencies. Give 'em an extra $90 million!
Since the ad campaigns are not working, pile on the coal, forwards! Let none lag, steady as you go, all ahead flank speed, we stand at the crossroads, hey there, fella, give that there money to that there fella with the three legs, and tell him to keep dancing, jig a jig jig, not a thing wrong with any of us.
It is the insight dominating my days that we are powerless and voiceless, "as one under the nightmare," and we are able to put none of the insanities to term that are presently ordered up by "our" government and paid for by our (involuntary) taxes.
We can not adequately shame or impeach our Maximum Leader for having lied us into war; we cannot get our "representatives" (ha ha) to make the first move toward deconstructing the Federal Reserve racket and returning us to honest money; or get them to do anything about the ruinous depredations of the IRS, or persuade them in any way to heed the voice of the people, who have long since clearly indicated they do not support affirmative action, gay marriages, gun control, various feminist and egalitarian insanities, unlimited immigration, or abortion (partial-birth or otherwise), etc, in sufficient numbers so that an honest appeal in referenda on any of these issues would support the current government's stands. So we can't have such referenda; we are only permitted the options allowed us by our masters, and they oppose us, the people, in virtually every serious problem before us today.
Okay, the elites, our masters, win, but are we supposed to like it? Yes indeed we are supposed to like it and are assured of that by all manner of solemn asses who parade before us in the press and are hauled up before the TeeVee cameras, washed, coiffed, and perfumed in a manner that would do any taxidermist proud, to puff out at us through pursy lips their lies du jour.
It is, as Amos or Andy, in "Amos and Andy," or anyway (I think) one of the characters in that old show, used to say, "Regustin." Horrible regustin in fact. We are now waiting for the ancien regime we are saddled with to crumble and decay. We await our own perestroika, our own liberation from insane government that wants to make, in our case, not New Soviet Man but New Order Man. Wonderful New Order Man (and women will then all be men, too, thank Darwin) who will have in a marked degree those wonderful characteristics Alexis Carrell cited so long ago when he said, "Modern man is soft, sentimental, lascivious, and violent."
Well that's the negative of it, but you don't have to believe a word the current gang are pushing out. You do I suppose have to go on paying taxes, because it is just too damn inconvenient and time-consuming to attempt to opt out. At least one has good company in all the other slaves lining up to pay. We are all slaves now, what the hell, and it is a great comfort to me to realize that the religion I subscribe to was initially pitched to slaves (of high and low estate) in the old Roman Empire. It should prove durable in the bumpy times ahead. I'm counting on it.
June 18, 2003
