October 16, 2012
By eric
I wouldn’t have any issue with Clovers (see here for samples) if they were wiling to live their Cloverish lives as they see fit – and willing to leave the rest of us free to live ours as we see fit. But of course, Clovers – by definition – cannot abide that. The quality – the personality defect – that makes a Clover a Clover is his relentless unwillingness to live – and let live. He – or she – is the sort of person you can’t just walk away from. Because they will follow you.
Everywhere. Relentlessly.
Though you may want nothing more than to go about your business, Clover considers everything you do – anything you might do – his business.
If, say, you have a club and don’t want him as a member, he will try to force his way in (using “the law,” of course). It would never occur to him to start his own club, amenable to himself and those like-minded.
Clover can’t just build his house the way he wants his house to be built. He insists you build yours the way he wants it to be built.
If Clover decides he needs an air bag, then you must have one also. If Clover “buckles up,” then you’d better buckle-up, too.
If Clover wants a 35.5 MPG car – then you will have a 35.5 MPG car.
If Clover doesn’t trust himself to own a gun responsibly, then clearly no one else can be allowed to own a gun – since Clover assumes everyone else is as irresponsible as he is.
The same goes for “speeding” (as he arbitrarily defines it) as well as swimming – without a lifeguard on duty.
If Clover only feels “safe” when random and arbitrary searches are the order of the day, then random and arbitrary searches will become the order of the day.
When Clover decides some “public good” or other deserves to be funded, he will lobby and legislate and vote to make sure others are forced to fund it.
And so it goes. You know the drill.
For Clover, it is never sufficient to do what he wants, purchase what he wishes – and leave it at that. Much less leave others free to do as they wish (and purchase what they wish). Every Clover is a little Stalin at heart. Collectivizing his life brings no joy. He must collectivize the lives of others. Only then is he truly happy. This is the essence of Clover.
How to deal with such a creature?
Within the matrix – that is, society as currently constituted – it is virtually impossible. Because most people have been so effectively conditioned (by having had their cognitive faculties crippled or merely never awakened – mostly via government schools) to accept or at least, never to question Cloverite bromides such as “the public good.” This Clover deftly manipulates to achieve and then enforce his good. Get most people to acquiesce to the idea that there is such a thing as “the public good” - in other than purely metaphorical terms – and you can get them to accept being lorded over in the name of a Clover’s very specific ideas about what constitutes that “good.”
His good.
Make sure that most people never question the idea of “democracy” (and its political synonyms, “society” and “we”) and you have the green light not merely to tyrannize millions of individuals – but to get them to accept being tyrannized, by using morality against them.
People – most people – naturally want to be good and do good. Let Clover define “good” in his terms – in terms of the collective – and he is unbeatable. If it is accepted that good is necessarily a collective thing – and the collective is defined by Clovers – then no individual stands a chance. He is “selfish.” He is unconcerned about “the children” – or “the future.” You name it. Clover has an endless supply of proxy euphemisms for himself.
Clover also has back-up.
The state.
It can be and historically has been overtly authoritarian (less successful, as history has shown us) or subtly and much more cleverly authoritarian, such as the modern “democratic” state – and so far, much more successful. Quite possibly, longer lived, too. Chiefly because the average person labors under the delusion that his freedom remains intact, that he is governed by representatives freely chosen and so with his consent. All of which makes him quiescent – even if he grumbles every now and then about the ever-tightening invisible straight jacket he wears. Even if he is opposed to this or that new law. The person who would never tolerate a king or Duce or Fuhrer will almost always tolerate – even respect – a president. So long as he is permitted every so often to choose a new one, he does not notice that he is never offered the choice to be free of them all. (See here for more on the “democratic” con.)
Clover understands all this, if not intellectually (the rank and file type of Clover) then instinctively – at the emotional level that is a Clover’s normal level of functioning. Clover feels. He believes. He “just knows.” His irrationality is his most formidable weapon – because it end-runs reason, logic, principle – and thereby, morality based on natural law. It is much easier to say, for instance, that “the children are the future” than it is to question the propriety of using organized violence (the state) to eviscerate the very concept of property by imposing an endless, potentially limitless, tax on property to “finance” said children’s future. Just mewl about “the children” – and anything is possible.
Including mass murder, given time. And we are nearly out of time.
When the individual’s rights are no longer inviolate, any violation is not only theoretically possible but inevitable. Once you understand this, you will understand why we are on the path we’re on right now. Why the onslaught of collectivism and authoritarianism seems so irresistible. It is because we – “we” being most people – have accepted collectivism and authoritarianism.
We only quibble about particulars. How much to tax (that is, steal) from our fellow man. Not whether to tax at all. About “reasonable” restrictions of formerly unalienable rights. We argue among ourselves about the nature of the “public good” – and how best to achieve it. That is (shorn of euphemisms) how best to impose it at gunpoint.
But there is no “public” – except in the abstract. There are, however, millions of very real individual human beings, each possessed of exactly the same right to be left in peace to pursue happiness as they see it.
And that is the only good which matters in this life.
The galling effrontery represented by Clover’s lust to impose his notion of good - to control other human beings’ lives – to micromanage their precious, transitory existence on this earth – must be shorn of euphemism, laid bare for what it is – and anathematized by all decent people. Because there is nothing in this life more indecent than the urge to dominate and control other people. It is the primal sin, if you like, from which all others follow. Every theft, every assault, every murder – including mass murder – derives from the urge to control. Every Fuhrer – and every elected Fuhrer, from Lincoln to the current strivers – depends on general acceptance of the idea that it is acceptable for one person to control another. Because it gives one person the power to control millions. Which means, to tyrannize and even enslave millions.
It will not end until there is a re-awakening. A rebirth of natural morality. I am not a believer, but I find admirable the Christian teaching that each individual must “come to Jesus” of his own volition – which implies that he must have free choice.
Which implies he must be free to choose.
Taking away freedom of choice has given us an onslaught of horror on an institutionalized, mechanized scale. Whatever pains may result from the errant (or even evil) actions of millions of free-choosing individuals, they can never rise to the level of the wholesale slaughter of entire populations, the imprisonment of nations and populations, made possible by the acceptance of Cloverism. By acceptance of the idea that some may permissibly lord it over others by presuming to act in their name – “for the public good” – and with the backing of organized force (government).
It must be disassembled and deconstructed – then, rejected.
It may take generations to recover our senses – or rather, to discover them. But there are green shoots here and there, if you know where to look.
Nothing will change overnight. But it may just change for the better, given time.
Link:
http://ericpetersautos.com/2012/10/16/end-running-clover/
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