An antidote for the trials and tribulations we face today is… more trial and tribulation, as found in the “Three R’s”–Reading, Righting and Revolution.
One of the biggest barriers to good governance nowadays is the ignorance of the People. The answer to that is to teach the People to read. No, not just how to read but to read. And not to read just the poisonous pap they find in Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind rags but to read history. And not just to read history but to read the actual documents of history: the documents of our nation’s roots and its founding, extending at least as far back as the Magna Carta, first and foremost.
Then we need to be serious about righting the wrongs of a government grown bloated and overbearing, that neglects its principal duties and besets its citizens with oppression. A good pruning is sorely needed.
But those two steps will take a revolution, I fear, or rather, will be a revolution the like of which our political elites–in government, Mass Media Hivemind and Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries–will not easily allow.
Think: the generation that was inspired by the Boston Tea Party had not passed when George Washington–the Father of our country, as he is rightly styled–put down the Whiskey Rebellion, which was nothing but another “tea party” protesting oppressive and unfair government taxation. (Note that George Washington’s whiskey production was, like others of his class, taxed at only 2/3 the rate of poor Western farmers’ whiskey. Therein, and in the earlier shameful response to the so-called “Shay’s Rebellion”, I fear, was the seed of Elite Oppression of the People sown even in those early days of the republic… *sigh*)
It would be a Good Thing if we were able to effect the Three R’s by means of personal influence and see the real revolution take place at the polling booth, but even then, it may well take more than JUST personal influence and voting, the way the “community organizers” of the left have devised such slick ways to steal votes.
Interesting times.
Politicians love an ignorant, apathetic public. That said, even if the masses took it upon themselves to correct the problem the time required to get up to speed would carry us to the next couple of generations. No time like the present to start. For the alternative is to fall deeper into the abyss.
I like that I am seeing more posts around da sphere addresing this topic. Perhaps this will become the conservative mantra to counter the liberal one of many… hi, I’m from the government and I’m here to help.