It's the Government, Stupid!

by John Bottoms

Just in case anybody hasn’t noticed, it’s way past time to update some of the popular political catch-phrases we grew up with, or at least learned in what has replaced the study of political science in today’s PC universities.  Here’s my favorites:  

Old version: RUGGED INDIVIDUALIST

Nonsense!  Individualists aren’t particularly rugged, other than an inclination toward independent thought, but that’s just being a free thinker, which is already redundant.  You want rugged?  How about New York’s commuters who are about to succumb to wasted hours stuck in traffic carpooling just to get to work or school because the city’s socialized government transit workers are about to go on strike, as they hope that today’s not the day that terrorists ignite their WMDs in the city.  

Far more rugged are the Palestinians trying to live some faint approximation of normal lives while their homeland is occupied and destroyed by the imperialist Israeli state, which gives every indication that ethnic cleansing is on the agenda.  

Most rugged of all are the soldier-survivors of government’s many wars, stuck in freezing foxholes praying that frostbite wouldn’t take their limbs, or shelling end their lives.

New version: RUGGED CANNON-FODDER

 

Old version: DOG-EAT-DOG COMPETITION

Oh, those poor capitalists competitors who got bought out by Microsoft in its heyday (or by Standard Oil in a previous bull market).  They’re now retired millionaires if they played their cards right.  If not, they actually had to maybe get jobs.  Horrors!  Or perhaps they took the loot and started some new business venture.  The implication of the phrase is that when capitalist dog number one eats capitalist dog number 2, the opportunity evaporates.  But in a robust market economy, new opportunities are being created even faster than they’re destroyed.  It’s the healthy anarchist dynamic equilibrium of markets.  

“Dog-eat-dog” is more like Bush vs. Saddam, or maybe that’s more like “dog-eat-toad,” or “dog-eat-toad-with-delusions-of-someday-becoming-a-dog.”  Hitler suicidally attacking Stalin is history’s real dog-eat-dog event.  Unlike capitalism, which creates new wealth and opportunities as it goes along, political power is a zero sum game.  When Russian doggie Yeltsin deposed Soviet doggie Gorbachev, there was nowhere for Gorbie to go.

New version: DOG-EAT-DOG DESPOTISM

 

Old version: SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Philosopher sociologist Herbert Spencer coined that phrase in the middle of the 19th century to describe the proper operation of market competition in an industrial society.  It has since been taken over by the anti-capitalist class to conjure images of fascistic racists throwing little old ladies out into the street to starve, on the grounds that this rule must be ruthlessly and universally enforced.  

Since Spencer’s day, in places where markets have been permitted to operate, people have created such an abundance of wealth that survival is guaranteed to virtually everyone.  But as mercantilism and the politicized society replace free markets throughout the Western world, survival increasingly depends on siding with the political elite.  “If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists,” says the American dog-in-chief, and an inebriated desire to see a “burning Bush” can get you three years behind bars.  Maybe ours is the day of SURVIVAL OF THE QUIETEST, as those who speak out are branded accessories to terrorism and quietly disappeared by the iron fist of the State.  Or maybe it’s a time of SURVIVAL OF THE LUCKIEST for those not at ground zero when more terrorist blowback strikes.  But the real truth of this modern world is…

New version: SURVIVAL OF THE POLITICALLY WELL-CONNECTED

 

Old version: VIGILANTE JUSTICE

This old fearmongers’ special that people might “take the law into their own hands” is back in the news, as this week’s federal court feuds with last week’s court, asserting that only government-sponsored militias have the “right to keep and bear arms,” since surely our reasonable and responsible founders couldn’t have desired the “vigilante justice” which would surely befall a society of armed individuals, despite the fact that it was just such people who won their nation’s independence.  Clearly this court studied at the Michael Bellesiles school of academic honesty, for a willful misrepresentation of history and twisted logic are necessary to rationalize such a ruling.

New version: VIGILANTE COURTS, which take the law into their hands, and twist it into a cruel caricature of its former self in the furtherance of State power.

 

Old version: CAPITALISM EXPLOITS WORKERS

Actually, it’s the State which exploits us all, most noticeably in taxes, which we are forced to pay in exchange for the privilege of voting (if we bother), for the lesser of two evils.  We are told that there’s a social contract that binds us to the State, but try asking your poli-sci prof for objectively verifiable evidence of the existence of such a contract and watch the unintelligible drivel pour from his mouth.  

Capitalists, in contradistinction, only hire willing workers, who accept employment to better their lives.  The capitalist employer may not provide them the sun and the moon, but at least they offer more than the State’s pig in a poke.

New version: GOVERNMENT EXPLOITS