DEATH IS EASY by Russell Madden

FREEDOM,  As If It Mattered by Russell Madden

The Guardian Project by Russell Madden

RaNdoM by Russell Madden

 

"The government is on your side...The government is not out to get you. Corporations are...The government is your friend...(I)t...protect(s) you from rapacious corporate greed."

In perusing old notes, I ran across these sentiments expressed by a columnist for a major computer magazine. I daresay, these comments reflect the attitudes of a vast number of American citizens. For over a century, the tides of public opinion have risen against businesses of all types and sizes. Despite ebbs and flows, this flood of negative judgment does not yet appear to have reached its high water mark.

A complex web of factors has contributed to this alteration in the portrayal of entrepreneurs. These men and women created, expanded, and improved the products and services that have provided us with the highest standard of living in the world. Despite continuing advances in health care, transportation, housing, food production, entertainment, computers, and countless other products, many people harbor nebulous feelings of anger and resentment. This bubbling hatred is directed towards the very individuals who make possible the necessities, comforts, and luxuries that enhance their lives. How has popular perception diverged so radically from reality?

Part of the problem is philosophical. Even while some residual, pragmatic cultural influences encourage people to work hard and struggle to achieve their dreams, other social pressures denounce and demean any emphasis on enjoying the results of those otherwise laudable efforts. With the prominent exception of Ayn Rand's writings and those of others operating from an Aristotelian perspective, physical comforts, convenience, and mirthful pleasure are frowned upon by prominent agenda setters. When ascetics, philanthropists, and volunteers are held up as the pinnacles of moral rectitude, it is little wonder that those who reject the examples of Mother Theresa and her kin are, at best, tolerated as necessary evils and, at worst, vilified as purveyors of evil and destruction.

Few stop to realize or discover that without those whose focus remains firmly fixed on this world and how to tame it to serve human ends, ninety-plus-percent of the world's population would perish. Even many leaders who do recognize the contributions of capitalists to the common weal prefer that such facts be kept safely hidden from public view. If entrepreneurs and the free economic and political system under which they operate best ever received the widespread accolades, acknowledgment, and acceptance due them, many of those who thrive in the shadows of deception, distortion, and distrust would find themselves powerless and destitute.

Rather than killing the goose and its golden eggs, our society and government have adopted a strategy and tactics far too familiar in other countries throughout the world. Preemption has replaced physical confiscation. Though once we understood that government produces no economic goods, now few people can even conceive of -- let alone comprehend -- the possibility of wealth production without the assistance of government. The metaphor of the Invisible Hand has been replaced by the actuality of the Iron Fist disguised in a velvet glove.

Our manufacturing sector needs improvement? Establish an industrial policy board.

Problems with pollution and garbage? Send out a call for an agency to protect the environment.

Murder, theft, and violence a continual problem? Federalize all aspects of crime and its prevention and punishment.

Drug usage expanding as our youth lose any conception of personal responsibility, respect, and direction in their lives? Declare a drug war and appoint a czar (!) to prosecute it.

Whether the issue is poverty, medical care, education, safety, retirement security, housing, employment, business, transportation, culture and entertainment, money, or food, the Swiss Army knife of answers is that we should -- indeed must -- lift our gaze towards the beneficent visages of our political leaders and grasp their helping hands if our needs and desires are to be met.

While the slow meltdown of the social order continues like a candle sputtering towards extinction, the amorphous misgivings of concerned citizens fixate upon the organizations and people constantly held up for ridicule, reviling, and dismissal by the government and its supporters. With a skill rivaling that of the most talented magicians, the political establishment picks the pockets of the producers while creating the illusion that the source of the largess it so generously dispenses flows from its own coffers.

Though such vote-buying has operated as long as there have been office-seekers, at one time in this country it existed only as an annoying or amusing diversion from the main activities of our citizens: living lives of freedom and creating wealth. The Depression era, unfortunately, marked a sea-change in public attitudes. As the dole transformed into "public assistance" and "social security," the stigma of accepting government hand-outs gradually diminished until today it has all but vanished from the public psyche. One would be hard-pressed to unearth a significant number of individuals in the modern world who experience even a modicum of guilt at queuing up for their share of the government's stolen bounty.

Even in those instances where monetary gifts are unsought, those questing for the ear of government generally do so in the hope -- and expectation -- that they can gain control over the lives of neighbors they dislike or of those whose actions they disapprove. Indeed, for some political sycophants, cultural control looms as far more important and significant than any diversion of monetary funds.

The first few trickles of preemption seeped into the dry soil of public opinion, almost disappearing in the vestiges of individualism holding over from an earlier century. But as social security grew to include more and more groups of people, other initially small tributary streams such as mortgage assistance, educational loans, business subsidies, health care coverage, public housing, and scores of others swelled in size and joined together to form a flood. That torrent now threatens to submerge our freedoms and our economy under its restless, obliterating waves.

The conundrum of whether those who offer such blatant bribes or those who blithefully and blindly accept them are more responsible for our predicament is not an easy one to unravel. What is needed is a wake-up call that will alert our friends and neighbors to the creeping danger lapping at their knees.

While many of the issues threatening freedom are undeniable, they are anything but self-evident. The government, media, and educational systems have done all they can to polish their sleight-of-hand, rendering the actual state of affairs detectable only to those already on-guard and suspicious of deals-too-good-to-be-true. Preying on the common hope of many people that something can be had for nothing, the caring, smiling, sympathetic image government offers to those it supposedly serves holds great appeal for people unable to pierce the mask and see the menace lurking beneath. Yet ignoring a threat rarely makes it disappear. Indeed, its hidden nature provides it the time and opportunity to grow stronger and more confident. By the time the peril is exposed, the effort necessary to overcome it will be exponentially greater...if success is to be had, at all.

Cassandras have never been popular. Who wants to be told that his house is in danger of collapsing upon his head? To hear such a warning and to believe it would compel action and an alteration of long-established routines. Few willingly embrace such disruption. This is especially so when the discomforts inherent in facing present challenges is immediate while the long-term benefits are, at best, distant and uncertain.

The citizens of Troy chose to ignore the prediction that the magnificent present they received at the gates to their city harbored a concealed enemy. Perhaps Americans will prove wiser and avoid the disastrous consequences of continuing to accept a "friendship" such as that offered by those ancient Greeks.