Revolution In America
What would it take to overthrow the U.S. government? The question may seem academic, but all governments fail. The U.S. government will too, for the usual reasons: its ever increasing size, rapacity, and attempts to control all aspects of life; the corresponding shrinkage of its constituents’ liberty; imperial overreach; welfare-state bread and circuses; debt; spreading poverty; crony capitalism, rampant corruption; widening income disparities, and oligarchic arrogance. As clearly odious as the government is, shouldn’t we do all we can to move it towards its inevitable rendezvous with failure?
What concerns me is, if and when it fails, what will replace it? Look at the majority of the population right now - you're not going to get an objective, rational, and freedom-loving nation; you have a basket of over-ripe fruit, in the guise of the sheeple, and enough scum in the earth waiting to exploit it.
We - the greater American populous - is NOT the same as those that beat back and eradicated the menaces of the 30's and 40's... or overthrew the tyrannies of the late 18th and early 19th century... They're too busy playing their video games, worrying that their smartphones don't have enough apps or connectivity, and letting others make decisions for them and tell them what to do, how to think, and how to act. When I hear people saying if cell phones ceased to work everyone would die, almost immediately and the world will end - disastrously - it's apparent we're already doomed.
If - when - our nation collapses, what will fill the void? Pretty sure it's not what we, the rational, objective sub-minority, would hope.
If not you (gulchers and those who value liberty) then who?
All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.
This is not what Ayn Rand advocated as a means to create a better society and no kind of disaster or collapse would do any of us any good. If there aren't enough people to reform government by peaceful means within Constitutional processes, what makes you think there would be enough such people to implement another government out of chaos?
If anyone actually thinks he can bring down the government, at least have the common sense to not advocate it on an internationally public forum, drawing the wrath of both government agencies and leftist anarchists threatening those of us who are innocent. At the first excuse they will be attacking any of us who have peacefully spoken out against them. They are already accusing many kinds of innocent people of being potential "terrorists".
Denouncing most of what government has done in the last 33 years does not justify the violence and chaos of a revolution and does not make it possible in reality, let alone achieving in the aftermath. This is fundamentally a matter of understanding and spreading the right ideas, and no one is "waiting until this nation is completely ruined" for "discussion".
But Ayn Rand made a distinction between revolution bringing down a government and when to worry about breaking laws. It was Ayn Rand who observed that a point is reached where there are so many contradicting laws regulating behavior that it is literally impossible to live in even ordinary ways without violating something. That is not revolution.
It also doesn't occur all at once across the board: Different laws in different realms affect people in different ways and have to be contended with in different ways. Some people in some professions are adversely affected more than others, and some property owners are impacted more depending on where they are (and what the viros are after).
Ayn Rand once wrote that she paid more taxes than she legally had to in order to avoid being accused of tax evasion because with her outspoken views the government would ruthlessly go after her with the slightest excuse. In another kind of example, when she was asked (at Ford Hall Forum in Boston) her advice on how those threatened by the military draft (at the time for Vietnam) should contend with it, she replied that it would be illegal for her to answer the question.
In any example, it is not sensible to run around advocating violating some law if you are concerned with government oppressing you. Contending with these and other ugly situations, as well as theoretical discussion of the nature of revolution and what justifies it, are much different than advocating the overthrow of the US government.
I incorporated one assumption in my article: on current trend, the government will get larger, more powerful, more rapacious, and more corrupt, and correspondingly, the liberties of its constituents will continue to diminish. Certainly no one appreciates the power of ideas and discussion more than I do, but ask yourself if that trend slowed, much less reversed, after publication of Atlas Shrugged in 1957. I would argue that it accelerated, especially since 9/11. If my central assumption is accepted, (even for argument’s sake, although I am convinced it’s correct), then the question presents itself: what can be done? If one waits until “continue to diminish” is replaced with “vanish,” it will indeed be obvious to all that the government has become totalitarian. It will also be far too late to do anything about it.
When “general censorship” is imposed, if past totalitarian practice is any guide, it will be part of a package of measures that may include: nationalization of important businesses, suspension of habeas corpus, suspension of elections, outlawing political parties, martial law, summary detention of all those known to have anti-government views, seizure of the internet and news media, seizure of private firearms, the mandatory exchange of precious metals for the government’s currency, and bans on people and money leaving the country. My guess is that it would be in response to some egregious “terrorist” incident, possibly a false flag. Under such circumstances, people might make a break, in their minds at least, with the government, but that will be the only kind of break possible.
You say that, “Denouncing most of what government has done in the last 33 years does not justify the violence and chaos of a revolution and does not make it possible in reality, let alone achieving in the aftermath.” Yes, revolutions are almost always bloody, but the blood spilled in all the revolutions in human history is a drop compared to totalitarian governments’ oceans just in the twentieth century (an estimated 100 million deaths). Faced with a choice between “violence and chaos” and abject totalitarian slavery, I’ll choose the former.
One of the things our government has done the last 33 years is to acquire what can only be described as the apparatus for a turnkey police state. As Edwin Snowden and subsequent revelations have made abundantly clear, the government has the ability to monitor virtually everything we do. You worry that my post might “makes us all further susceptible to unjust government surveillance and attack.” I think that statement is dangerously naive. I think anyone on this site should assume they are on a government list somewhere, and have been from the moment they signed up. That’s how governments operate as they descend into totalitarianism. As I stated earlier, I don’t know what incident will prompt the government to turn its key and initiate the police state, but my bedrock assumption is that sooner or later it is going to happen.
That is why I wrote my article, to suggest an offensive strategy while we the people still have some sort of capacity to implement such a strategy. As I said in my concluding paragraph: “It will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to persuade sufficient numbers to take that initiative, but in passivity lies ruin. By the time that ruin is obvious to all, it will be far too late.” Victims of totalitarian regimes are victims, in large measure, because they were unable to project trends and to conceive that those trends’ continuation would result in their imprisonment or death. Ayn Rand was lucky to get out of the USSR; most did not. Many Jews in Germany only realized that the Nazis would kill them when they boarded the cattle cars for the death camps. In America, I believe that it is much later than most people think. Do I believe that Americans will revolt while they have a chance? Probably not, but if nobody raises the possibility and suggests a strategy in a public forum, while we still have public forums of which we can avail ourselves, that small likelihood goes to zero.
"They" already can proclaim anyone as 'domestic terrorists' for being different in religion, security, humor, constitutionalism, anti-speeding ticketers, anti-food stamp, etc, etc. Objectivists oppose nearly everything big govt advocates really stand for (as opposed to what they claim as their goals.) Any minor non-violation will suffice for the dictatorship in the Dark Center and their puppetmasters on Wall St, London, Brussels.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
The anarchism in the latter is the common lawlessness as a means to attack the government, commonly called anarchism (like the leftists rioting over the World Bank), not the 'theoretical' version in the form of the floating abstraction sometimes improperly equated with Ayn Rand's ideas. Those kinds of discussions on the nature of government are at least not illegal advocacy of revolution.
This isn't something that Ayn Rand knew or wrote much about, and how to do it has to be independently explored. Ayn Rand was a novelist and philosopher who dealt in principles and their application and communication, not how to persuade snakes and people with brains in their feet of clay. After experiences with politics in the 1930s she was so disillusioned with it as a means for practical accomplishment that she chose to put her efforts where she could accomplish much more and lay the necessary intellectual groundwork. But you can make a significant practical difference if you are sufficiently motivated. It is generally very narrow in scope, and for the most holds back the onslaught more than making forward progress, but you can make a difference.
I applaud sill's essay and ideas as well as his daring to voice them, not in defiance, but in a true exercise of his Natural Rights to express the uncomfortable and unpopular.
-1
Ayn Rand did NOT advocate reforming the government and society either by "shrugging" or by illegal means such as revolution or tax evasion. She explained emphatically that the "strike" in the plot in Atlas Shrugged was an accelerated, fictional device to show how man's survival depends on the mind and what happens when it is withdrawn. It was not a blueprint for a military or political campaign strategy.
She recognized that when people are punished for their productivity they will often naturally respond by doing something else, or by quitting or by cutting back, which is their right and is legal, but never confused that with a means for reform. Above all she advocated understanding first and then speaking out with the right ideas as the only means to attain cultural change. If anyone decides to "shrug" to some degree, it is for the benefit of his own personal quality of life, not social change, let alone some kind of revolution attempting to bring down the government.
Anyone can see that urging revolution to overthrow the US government to achieve reform is both futile and suicidal. I fear for those who may try it, mistakenly thinking they are operating on the proper principles, and fear the consequences of their associating innocent people with their illegal and destructive acts. But I also fear our own government, especially when it is already looking for scapegoats and "dissidents" who speak out and don't show the required mindset of dhimmitude: psychological submission to statism, the Bureaucratic Mission, and collectivism. That does not mean that one should surrender one's own self and become submissive and stop thinking and speaking. Go where you have to to live and stay out of their way the best you can. Provoking them with threats or advocacy of illegality is not a good idea.
In my reading it was showing that things got bad enough, even diehard producers would give up. It was not, IMHO, saying that was a good thing.
Humans seem to have this innate narrative of an apocalypse washing away a decadent world with a better world rising from the ashes. It crops up everywhere. Maybe it keeps us going when things seem hopeless. But it's dangerous IMHO when people try to get that better world by hastening the apocalypse.
People do often give up, cut back or go into something else somewhere else when confronted with constant punishment for their success, but yes, that does not make it a good thing, only a realistic moral possibility for your own benefit -- in a bad context limiting what should and could be your choices -- as a way to cope in your own life the best you can under bad circumstances. It's no grand victory over the statists and not a way to achieve positive social change. A naturally occurring cutting back where one has to was secondary to the plot and could not by itself have made the theme of Atlas Shrugged possible to illustrate. To illustrate her theme in a finite work of fiction she needed both the acceleration and the tension -- between those who organized the withdrawal and those who kept morally struggling until they recognized her moral point in accordance with their own struggle.
_Some_ people do have a tendency to see apocalypse as a cleansing leading to a 'do-over' presumed to successfully spring from the sky. But it's not an innate human characteristic and I don't believe it is what keeps us going. Those with the tendency you describe are the anti-intellectuals who completely miss the point of the philosophy of Atlas Shrugged with its emphasis on ideas as the cause of social and cultural change, with no short-circuit possible there or anywhere else in life, and its emphasis on the role of causality in moral choice with no remnants of a duty to "wishing makes it so" (the whim-worshiper banging his spoon on his high chair, augmented in this case with Wallys flamboyant rhetoric and dramatic histrionics about spilling other people's blood for the Glorious Revolution).
What keeps rational people going is an understanding of what is proper and possible in human life and its potential, and what is required to get there no matter how small or great the scope of the goals. As Ayn Rand put it "Those who fight for the future live in it today", which requires understanding the full context and its meaning for the specifics of what is and isn't possible in your own life, while never loosing site of the ideal.
I will offer that a life of fear under slavery is not a human life as I understand it. Your suggested approaches to the issues discussed on this site are those of a lap dog that accepts occasional kicks in the ribs as the cost of free meals of scraps and dares to think that all the other dogs should do the same in order to spread the kicks out.
Now with Paris, all we're hearing on the news is how much danger we're in--guess what comes with that. More war, more loss of rights, more control, more, more. At what costs??
Don't know why you got dinged for the post but +1 from me.
But more to the point, we live in perilous times, and I see more to come this year and next.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC3vZmdj...
Posted by samrigel 4 days, 17 hours ago
Tuco: It doesn't matter, I'll kill them all.
Peter Schiff's dad took a stand on taxes and after a show trial they threw him in jail, which is where he still is. Very sad and it makes me very angry. I personally decided that I was not willing to go to jail or put myself at inordinate risk for that. I also have no military skills, so I would not have been much help in Nevada (it was too bad the guy was so inarticulate). However, the founding fathers had to put their lives on the line eventually to win their freedom.
Ayn Rand removed herself from communism, she took her mind and major future earnings and left. That's a shrug.
Withdrawing support from something you disagree with says nothing about what you are for and what you do about it in active pursuit of values. Ayn Rand was no drop-out, did not advocate it for one's personal life, and explained why it is not a strategy for positive social change.
She did recognize that people do not and cannot be expected to work for punishment, but that leaves open what else they do instead, about which she had a lot to say. She wrote extensively about that. Her focus was _not_ on 'shrugging'.
There is a common confusion -- among some of the public not familiar with her philosophy -- between a fictional plot device in the novel versus the theme of the novel and the content of her philosophy.
But this is a different topic than misusing this forum to advocate illegal activities like violently overthrowing the US government.
Your sense of justice in rejecting the 'looters' and not wanting to help them is very correct and completely understandable. But whatever any of us do personally to cut back or otherwise try to avoid punishment for success, neither Ayn Rand nor we could or can base a life on withdrawing from society or expect that to change the culture for the better.
Now, how to even begin to illustrate and popularize the concept with the working faction of America, and maybe a few other countries?
Some examples of successful revolution would include the US, Chile in the 1970s, Poland and a number of eastern block countries in the 1990s. There have been a number of countries that have turned away from socialism, but not all the way to true freedom including New Zealand, Australia and even Canada.
That is precisely correct!
To win intellectual battle requires failure of the media propaganda business. A tall order, but possible.
Agree completely that revolution usually ends badly for all except the high level looters, banksters, con-men.
Not pretty.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure." Thomas Jefferson
A lot of research packed into a very no-nonsense writing style.
http://www.johntreed.com/hyperinflationd...
In the time of the founding of this country there was a prevailing cultural endorsement of individualism and freedom. Overthrowing a government like the British Crown could be presumed to be on behalf of something better. The kind of oppression that Americans resisted then was predominantly ordinary corruption, not a culture ideologically corrupted on principle by widespread acceptance of collectivism and statism. Even if you could bring down the US government, which you can't, and survive it, which you would not, it would make things even worse, not better, as the ideological vultures come home to roost.
Changing the course of a culture and a nation requires spreading ideas, not shooting at bureaucrats with imagined romanticism of muskets. "Brave words" are needed now more than ever, and they do not consist in suicidal threats against the US government.
What is still possible and how long it would take is another matter, but there are no shortcuts bypassing the role of ideas in human action and its consequences. Please don't make it worse than it already is through suicidal acts that would be used as an excuse for persecuting anyone who continues to speak out.
"What Can One Do?"
Then read, read, read. Then take it from there.
The existing party will prevent any popular non-party candidates from being able to participate in public debates and they will be ignored by the controlled media. (Ron Paul is a good example.) If that doesn't work then dirty tricks and innuendo will be used to discredit. If that fails then threats to family will be used. If that doesn't work then there will be a 'horrible accident killing the candidate and his closest friends.'
Power corrupts and the US political system is as corrupt as it is powerful.
Suppose Goldman Sachs is "doing God's work."
Suppose I won $190 million in the lottery and used it to build Atlantis' infrastructure.
Oh, and WRT those pigs, a little bioengineering should do the trick. Goldman Sachs is simply acting in its own self interest (an odd thing to have to point out in this forum). And finally, I call dibs on half your winnings as it was predicted in my thread.
:-)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015...
but seriously I understood where she was coming from, I've never been able to stand by and watch something I hate happen or watch something I love crumble, in the case of our country its both I can't help but fight it
When you say you have read all of Ayn Rand's books does that include the non-fiction? One of her essays, directed explicitly to your question, is "What Can One Do?" Closely related and written around the same time is "Don't Let It Go". She was very well aware of the trend in the country and these exact questions of what to do.
Would you consider starting your own post. Tell us a little about yourself...what books you've read, you're opinions about them...whatever else you want to share. We don't get many young people in here and lots of think that your generation is key to getting things back on track in the freedom department. :)
however in my experience young people don't care that's what I'm scared of
Manipulating the laws and the court system is more pragmatic for them than overt force in front of cameras. They saw this firsthand from the reputation they earned from the Frontlines documentary For the Good of All on the National Park Service http://www.landrights.org/VideoGoodOfAll..., as one notable example.
The difference seems to be that radicals in power like Holder and Obama have more difficulty restraining themselves and did not anticipate what would happen in Nevada. The government agencies don't often make that mistake since they generally grasp that the public has not yet been made ready for what is in store for us. Some of the progressives are so ensnared in their own propaganda and ideology that they have less such understanding. It was not that government agents stopped out of physical fear of the ranchers. They have more than enough fire power to take what they want.
This is the significance of the Clive Bundy incident; it was not a new escalation in government plans and policies. The ranchers out there know very well what they have been put through for many decades, though most of the public does not. The temporary withdrawal of government agents in Nevada changes none of it.
After much thought I have to say that I cannot accept the premise of your article, that it is inevitable, that the US government is doomed to fail. However, I also cannot say where I would draw that line and so I have no reasonable argument against that premise and so I am still examining mine.
With all that said, the best I can do is copy a comment I posted in reply to this comment http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/2a... on this post http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/2a...
"My biggest fear is that you may be right. But that would mean that our only option to regain (achieve is probably the better word) our freedom is through bloodshed. That bothers me because I will soon be too old to be worth much in any kind of battle so the sooner it happened the better and that means giving up on any other options sooner, rather than later.
But then what? We lose, history is recorded by the winners. We win, what then? I believe it was Ayn Rand that wrote (though I haven't been able to find it again to verify) that the Constitution of the United States could not have been written at any other time in history. Never prior to nor since then have all the conditions been right to accomplish what the founders did. The opportunity, the geography, but most importantly the philosophy. And that is what doesn't exist now, at least not in great enough numbers. Yet. If we had a war now, and we managed to survive, we would not even be able to rebuild what we have much less the free country that we so desire. There are just not enough people that can agree upon how it should be rebuilt.
But I think we have another option. And we are, in a way, doing it right now. Or we should be. Discussing the ideas, educating ourselves and others in the philosophy that is the root of the freedom that I think most people want (can't say all) but so many don't understand it's cause. This is the movement that must grow in order to save the good ol USA. It's the only way. And if there were enough people with the proper philosophy to rebuild the country after a war then there wouldn't need to be a war in the first place."
Edit; Lost my Permalink virginity. Hope it works.
One misconception about the American Revolution that I've seen repeated numerous times is that it was the product of some sort of majoritarian upheaval. It was not. It was led by a small group of patriots who were willing to risk everything they had to overthrow British rule of the American colony. While nobody can say for certain, I would be suprised if a majority of colonists supported revolution when it began. Fortunately, the British had the same problems that always plague occupying powers trying to fight insurrections in far away places, and enough colonists joined the cause, that the British were defeated. However, the impetus for violent revolution, and for the subsequent formation of the government, came from a small group. If that small group had waited for an overwhelming consensus among the colonists as they patiently explained to them the virtues of freedome and limited government, there would have been no revolution, and many of them might have been hanged for treason.
It bears repeating: if you're waiting to get "enough people with the proper philosophy," good luck. I see no way the omelet of liberty and constrained, limited government will be restored in America without breaking the eggs of civil disobedience and more probably, violent revolt. I wrote my piece to suggest a methodology of the former, and do not yet advocate the latter.
" I wrote my piece to suggest a methodology of the former, and do not yet advocate the latter". That's the first methodology I've seen of the former, I really appreciate that. I do worry that the latter will be something that happens TO us before I'm ready though.
Paraphrasing what you replied to another commenter; "Someone's gotta have the balls to start talking about it."
And let's not assume all people are corrupt, whether through "original sin" or stupidity, in a malevolent Universe. You would not include yourself among them, would you?
And never sacrifice a greater value for a lesser value--your life for uncertain martyrdom. "Give me liberty or give me death" is a great quote, but it's better to live to fight another day. While there's life, there's hope.
Never underestimate the power of ideas, even though it's harder to push rational ideas up a mountain than to let moribund ideas become a plunging avalanche.
Beware of acting upon unthinking emotions. Feelings are value judgments, responses to internalized values or premises, not primaries. Check your premises honestly. Know the difference between reasoning and rationalization. Recognize that ideas, like living organisms, want to live, and pernicious ones will even kill their host. Don't let those infect you.
There is no afterlife. You don't get a second chance to do it over. Get it right the first time.
Are you going to read the material at the Society Project or do you want me to sum up every point to answer your objections for you and repeat everything that's at the link that you can READ for yourself. Assuming you are interested and not just a nay saying critic with a negative attitude..
As I said, if we had honest and honorable people that operated with fealty to the word and intent of the Constitution, then we wouldn't have the problems that we do.
Since you seem to have some problem with the Constitution, please identify specific aspects which have corrupted the politicians.
The original Constitution has been changed via amendments and Supreme Court misinterpretation. And a party system has broken the separation of powers and taken away the representation of the people.
No amount of honest people will fix it, until we repeal the amendments (16th and 17th) and add a few to correct the Supreme Court's changes, mitigate Political Parties and prevent this from happening again. THEN and only then will the dishonest people no longer be attracted.
If you deny the reality that the system has been corrupted, then you are missing an important piece to solve the puzzle.
But this is all there at the link. So please read the Society Project, before you ask me more questions that are already answered there.
The rest of the answer to your final question of what's broken in the Constitution is also at http://www.TheSocietyProject.org.
READ.
Reverse the subsequent corruptions and close the loopholes and ambiguities in current constitutional law (and the rest of law) to the extent possible, with some corrections to specific procedures limiting abuses of the original concept, as now better understood from experience.
But none of that is possible without restoring the American culture to embrace American individualism with a proper moral foundation.
The corruption of so many current officials today is more than their personal immoral behavior and more than that of tolerating it as they are voted into power and encouraged. The corruption is much deeper, requiring a change in the philosophical outlook widely held across the culture.
That is much more fundamental than either a "corrupt system" or a "corrupt people" -- as "corruption" is often meant with respect to agreed on principles hypocritically ignored. It requires reversing and correcting philosophical corruption at the root. The ideas predominantly held by the people determine the course of a culture and a country, and that is all that can reverse the current downward spiral.
But people are not innately corrupt. Given a rational philosophy and the reasons for it there is no reason or honest motive not to behave with integrity, Give people a contradictory philosophy contrary to the nature of human life, making it impossible to follow in practice, and hypocrisy is inevitable, as been the case through most of human history -- people have been told to believe in miracles or mysticism, to think with faith or other irrationality, to sacrifice themselves out of duty as the essence of morality, or to live for the tribe or dominate or submit to other tribes all controlled by authorities whose purpose it is to rule. Hypocrisy abounds for some semblance of mixed survival and manipulation.
It is typically an evasive bromide that is not an agreement at all. Neither side agrees on anything. Each continues to pursue his ends despite such an "agreement". It is at best an implicit "agreement" to stop reasoning or talking at all and to instead use political means to impose one side or the other, substituting force or manipulation for reason. Such an "agreement" is an invalid concept employed as a euphemism for power politics.
The use of this bromide is especially nasty when coming from a politician who puts you off with "agree to disagree" and then forces his agenda down your throat with his coercive power. Those with no respect for reason have no difficulty either employing dishonest invalid concepts in their flim flams, or the use of brute force to shove their agendas down your throat, with or without calling it an "agreement", "compromise", or "consensus".
It's not a phrase that should be used, and any reference to futility of further discussion should be made very clear.
In this case the premise of original sin that people always are or become corrupt and that no change in the system of justice or other policies can prevent its widespread occurrence is false. If it were true than it wouldn't make any difference whether "people" or "the system" are corrupt because no one could do anything about it anyway. That kind of thinking invoking determinism does indeed prevent reasoned discussion.
shrugged into early retirement before it fell ....... -- j
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