Winning Our Enslavement

By Robert Ringer

As much as I admire his intellect, I must say that I believe the great Thomas Sowell was being a bit unkind when he said, “Democrats are the only good reason to vote for Republicans.” Democrats may be a hair lower on the Moral Meter than their buddies in the Republican wing of the Demopublican Party, but at least they provide humor.

Take, for example, the latest Democratic “debate” … please, take it. First, there was Johnny “Pompadour” Edwards coming up with a really original idea: Putting an end to racial profiling. Then, there was Osama Obama coming up with another original idea: a “universal health care plan.”

But it took Hillary to come up with the most original idea of all: the invention of rights. Out of thin air, she created two rights without blinking an eye: “labor rights” and “environmental rights.” I won’t deny that her words brought a smile to my face.

Nevertheless, as embarrassed as I am to say it, I didn’t even know that labor or the environment had any rights. I naively thought that all rights were inherited at birth — by humans. No constitution needed, thank you.

But, getting back to CNN’s Thursday version of Saturday Night Live, a lady in the audience got a rousing ovation when she asked the frothing-at-the-mouth presidential hopefuls, “What do you plan to do to assure that Social Security and Medicare will be available to us baby boomers?” Gee, I’ve never heard that one before, either.

I don’t know why, but I just had this gut feeling that Ms. What’s In It for Me never got around to reading Etienne de la Boetie’s The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude. In his modest sixteenth century offering, de la Boetie wrote:

"It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say … that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement.”

Isn’t it amazing how the more things change, the more they stay the same? In fact, with the shrill voice of the Loony Left getting louder every day, people seem to be trying harder than ever to win their enslavement. How, exactly, is enslavement won?

Through a combination of fabricated “crises” and an insidious phenomenon known as “gradualism.” Create the crisis of your choice — global warming, education, Big Oil price gouging, home foreclosures … ad nauseam — then milk that fabricated crisis nonstop until gradualism is able to take hold and convince the brain dead that the only solution to the crisis is for government to step in and pass more laws to save us from imminent peril.

The underlying theme of all this is equality … as in, communism. Under communism, everyone is equal — equally miserable, that is. Except, of course, the thugs who happen to hold power. Or, as George Orwell put it in Animal Farm, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

The harsh truth is that freedom and equality are mutually exclusive objectives. Will Durant pointed out that “…freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies.”

I would humbly suggest that you not vote until a candidate is willing to step forward and clearly proclaim that he or she is adamantly against any form of government action whose aim it is to bring about equal results among citizens. To cast a vote for anyone who is unwilling to do so is not a vote to lose your liberty. It is a vote to win your enslavement.

… just something to think about when you watch the next political comedy show — regardless of which wing of the Demopublican Party it features.