Ten Mile Island

I happen to believe that we are meant to work together.

I happen to believe, that if we were to find ourselves without government, due to some unseen cataclysmic event, that most of us would behave exactly as we had behaved, before this cataclysmic event. We wouldn't steal, we wouldn't lie. We would look our for each other. We would talk about how to handle the aftermath of such a cataclysmic event. We would bind up the wounds of the injured, and attempt to heal the sick.

The divisions that currently divide us would disappear. Our racism, class awareness, our bias against the stupid, our envy of the smart, looking stylish, nerdiness, inability, ability, would all be subsumed by the moment. Every one of us offers a resource that we cannot dismiss out of hand. As a race of beings our urge is to survive, to create, to find ways to be beneficial to our contemporaries.

A great deal of the negativity of political opinion seems to rely upon some of the seminal works of progressivism; works like The Prince, and The Leviathan, or An Essay on the Principle of Population. That is, to simply state the proposition, progressives have declared a space on the human experience that has never been proved to be true, and yet the proponents of these beliefs have always ended up being among the greatest mass, serial murderers of generations. But, when left, simply, alone, people get along just fine.

Edmund Burke wrote some stuff. At the time, what he wrote was seen as threatening to the status quo. What he said was, that given our own head, we would treat each other well, and the problem was, how to keep government from meddling in the affairs of men? You and I experience this every day. Walking along a sidewalk, most of us give way to little old men and little old women. When we come to a door, look behind us and see another coming, we're willing to hold the door for a stranger. If you walk your dog, you know to keep a baggy in your pocket, since relying upon your neighbor to clean up your dog's poop is really silly, lazy, or rude, isn't it? And these little things are the things upon which people rely upon each other to do the simple, right thing.

The empirical proof exists. It's provable every day. In Connecticut, more than a million homes lack electricity. Is there a crime-wave rolling through CT? No. Cataclysms don't change human nature. Instead, it re-enforces human nature.  Neighbors are pulling out chainsaws, cutting trees, clearing electrical lines. The costs of rebuilding the electrical system of Connecticut isn't the sole expense of the power company. A lot of the costs are being absorbed by normal, average guys. Hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars are being expended, in time and labour. A lot of that time and labour is voluntary, and won't be counted in the cost. No insurance company will get a bill. No governmental agency will be called upon for re-embursement. The costs are internal costs. The external costs will be played up, the internal costs will be ignored. The point is, we do what we feel we must do to help our friends and neighbors, not because we must, but because we choose.

From what I see, most of what government spends money on is stuff we don't need.

What do we need?

I don't hear any discussion of what we need. Not health care, not our sexual tastes, not respect for stupid ideas. We have health care. We have sexual tastes. We have stupid ideas.

What are the things that we, ourselves, can't provide for ourselves? These are the things that governments should be worried about. Thankfully, the progressives have entered the conversation and now we're engaged in conversations about things we don't need, and the relative costs of those things, and how we can't stop funding those things because...it would be unfair to those who benefit from those things. Things we can provide for ourselves.

And we're currently in a national debate over which unnecessary things we can't give up. If you disagree with me about the things you lack, and therefore look to me to make up the slack, and if I look at you and the things you lack, and hold you accountable for your own inability to provide for yourself, you hate me for not giving you the things you want to have. Sometimes I wonder how, or whether, some people learn how to wipe themselves.

And, I guess, some people never learn how to do this.

The crustiness would be a clue for most.

Taking care of yourself isn't that hard. If you wish to learn, ask. You would be amazed at how easy it is to learn how to take care of yourself. Give me a call. I'll figure out a way to help you, give you some basics, give you a chance. It isn't a sure thing that you'll learn how to take care of yourself. You'll need to give up some ideas, perhaps, and adopt some ideas, perhaps. Learning how to take care of yourself isn't really all that hard. Trust someone to teach you, adopt the lessons, and then, exceed the expectations of the teacher. You'll find you're successful.

Take up victim-hood? Whatta path.

The funny thing is? You've got to be taught to be a victim. You have to be taught to depend upon others. You have to be taught to fear responsibility. And finally,
you have to be taught to hate.



By the way, Patinkin is the shit, isn't he?