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Sometimes I think those who write and speak out for freedom on a regular basis deserve hazard pay.
Consider what one must do in order to critique modern events and communicate those evaluations to the public. First, of course, one must gather information. In today's mass media age, this covers considerable territory. As the most prominent and pervasive mass medium, television is a prime target.
Sometimes an entertainment show provides fodder for an essay. While there are some notable exceptions, many programs reflect either a direct or indirect bias against liberty in the themes covered or the language used to describe events and people. (Think of almost any drama discussing firearms.) Since such fictional episodes are designed, in part, to elicit emotional responses from the audience, they can be difficult to endure...especially when the feelings I experience are usually the opposite of those intended by the authors and producers of the shows.
News programs -- whether the networks' nightly news offerings, all-news channels, or locally produced programming -- are another rich source for insights into the thoughts and habits of many Americans. Whether the topic is yet another dreary and tiresome bond or tax proposal to build a swimming pool/school/bike path; a city "revitalization" project; or still one more link in the endless chain that neighbors construct to tyrannize the folks across the street, someone with an eye favoring independence and self-responsibility must struggle to quell the pool of acid churning in his stomach. The temptation to unleash a blood-pressure-raising (but futile) verbal assault on the oh-so-sincere-yet-implicit-control-freaks committing logical seppuku (or hari-kiri, if you prefer) before the approving nods of the reporters is also not very conducive to a calm and peaceful existence. (Where are those antacid pills, anyway...?)
Despite the electronic age in which we live, print media remain prominent avenues that must be perused for commentary or news items that reveal cultural and political trends. What is sometimes significant here is less what is covered and more what is not. Newspapers -- local or national -- rarely provide stories of people resisting the dominate statist and collectivist ideology, especially in the limited column-inches of widely-distributed papers. If such tales do happen to slip through the cracks, they will appear as object-lessons on what happens to those who dare to believe that their lives belong to them. Local papers are, perhaps, more likely to cover the odd liberty-friendly item, but by the very nature of such publications, few citizens will learn from those examples.
Magazines cover the gamut in editorial slant from outright libertarian to the polite statism practiced (if not admitted to) by the men and women who generally care little for political theory but become incensed if the issue concerns another government goody they wish to snatch for themselves.
The mental torture of reading the pile of editorials and stories in publications that will, at best, provide you three-hundred words to respond to their nonsense is mitigated a bit by the knowledge that few people nowadays read those articles and essays. Still, a steady diet of opinions and "facts" regurgitated from the State's propaganda mills requires a stiffening of the spine.
And you thought "Fear Factor" had gross tasks for its contestants to master...
The internet is a better bet for finding alternate viewpoints and for unearthing facts and anecdotes that the mainstream media hope to ignore, bury, or distort. When anyone can become a publisher, it's difficult -- though hardly impossible -- for the State to stem the tide of electrons streaming through the ether. The problem here for the dedicated iconoclast is the sheer volume of material that must be processed and weighed for credibility...even more so for a writer plodding along sans broadband.
Once a stalwart classical liberal has waded through all that information, the second task facing him is to decide what it all means. The ability to make connections among seemingly dissimilar events and, conversely, to see beyond superficial patterns to recognize fundamental differences is a skill that must developed by anyone hoping to make sense of the world.
Concrete-bound thinkers refuse or are unable to think in terms of principles. They view every action as disconnected from all others. Equally common, however, are those who never bother to think through the implications of their sweeping statements, never bother to define their terms, never bother to realize that "freedom" is not simply an abstraction but affects the lives of real, individual people.
The libertarian essayist or polemicist who manages to find an audience for himself must then contend with that fraction of his readers who inexplicably focus and obsess on the most minor points or examples he uses...while missing the basic theme of the article.
Yet perhaps the biggest obstacle -- and peril -- that a promoter of freedom faces is the natural human tendency to resist a truth that fails to match a long-held and unchallenged belief.
It's hardly surprising that most people find it uncomfortable to accept as valid some of the tales that reveal what the State has and is doing to those it is supposed to protect and defend.
Tell an average person that it is illegal to buy or install a new, high-flow toilet; to purchase or use Freon to recharge your car's air-conditioner; to obtain local television programming via a satellite dish; or that it will soon be a crime to offer top-loading washers for sale, and he will blink in amazement.
"Oh, come on!" he'll say, grinning, waiting for the punch line of the joke. "You've got to be kidding."
Tell someone that the State has or soon will have the capability to monitor his emails, his phone calls, the web sites he visits, what he buys, where he travels, and that'll he'll be required to carry a national identification card with him at all times, and he'll look at you askance.
"I don't find that very plausible," he'll say. "Besides, if you've done nothing wrong, you've nothing to fear."
Tell him that once upon a time in this country, there was no income tax, no government-funded welfare programs, no military draft registration, no zoning laws, no State-run educational system, and he'll wave his arms in denial.
"That's not possible," he'll object. "The nation would fall apart if we didn't have those things."
Tell this Doubting Thomas that in the last century, the governments of the world murdered nearly 170 million of their own innocent citizens, and he'll back away from you.
"That's ridiculous," he'll cry. "We are the government. We would never do such a thing to ourselves."
Tell this person that the State has lied to its own people, manipulated and tricked them into waging two world wars, used its own citizens as medical test subjects, put groups of them into concentration camps...and that it still does variations on all those abuses, and he'll shake his head.
"That's preposterous," he'll shout. "You're paranoid, a conspiratorialist nut case."
Tell your State-educated friend that the United States is a police state, that what he believes in and votes for is the essence of fascist collectivism and statism, that the Constitution is a nearly-lifeless shell of its former self, and he will cover his eyes.
"That's absurd!" he'll scream. "You're spouting outlandish gibberish."
Tell this lost soul that he supports a system that routinely and pervasively violates the rights of every single person in this once-proud country, that we are -- in essence if not in name -- slaves, that what he practices and preaches is deeply immoral and destructive, and he will run from you.
"You're crazy!" he'll yell. "They're going to lock you up. I refuse to believe what you say."
And that is the problem. What should be the inconceivable -- that the State has the right to do any of the many wrongs it commits -- when that profoundly warped and distorted idea becomes, first, the commonplace, then the accepted, and finally the unquestioned, a writer promoting liberty may one day soon be taking his life into his own hands by pointing out what should be the obvious but has instead been transformed into the unthinkable.
What is unbelievable to me, however, are those who refuse to believe what the State has done...and is capable of doing. That's a lesson the average citizen will -- unfortunately -- learn soon enough on his own.
