An Exceptional Article Worth Reading

As I have often said, there are many who say it like I wish I could have said it. The following article, found on American Thinker January 11, 2023, is an example. J.B. Shurk expertly lays out the case for “we the people” pushing back on government. I strongly urge you to read the full article which can be found here. Some excerpts:

“Ordinary people have extraordinary power. Don’t believe me? Watch what happens if tens of millions ever decide to close their bank accounts all at once. Or critical sectors of the workforce decide to stay home for weeks. Or a sizable percentage of the population refuses to obey arbitrary and capricious government orders. When citizens become fed up enough to take matters into their own hands, those with government-bestowed titles learn quickly how little power those vaunted titles actually have.”

“Nothing is so certain as death and taxes,” the old proverb goes, but it might just as accurately be said of almost all governments throughout history that those in charge will extract from those under their thumb either death or taxes — and often both. Force is the only language most governments know, although that force is often disguised as being performed for the people’s “own good.” As it turns out, force is generally sufficient for corralling humans into their government-controlled pens, especially if there are carrots or other treats inside to keep them content, if not particularly happy. When those pens have nothing attractive to offer and become overrun with filth, however, then those doing the corralling must resort to more and more force in order to make their captives obey.”

“It is not the American way, however, for citizens to live higgledy-piggledy under the ambiguous reign of one government dictate to the next. It is not American for an unelected bureaucracy to create rules out of thin air and enforce them upon the people through agency prerogative and regulation. It is not American for presidents to legislate through executive order.”

“It is not American for congresses to conduct show trials against American citizens or to demand that tech companies censor points of view. It is not American for courts to scribble over the Constitution whenever expedient. It is not American for the Department of (in)Justice to persecute citizens for their political beliefs or for the FBI to act as a lethal enforcer against the regime’s political enemies.”

“It is not American for there to be so many criminal statutes that no American could possibly know them all, let alone confidently act without fear of sanction. It is not American for there to be so many government agencies and divisions that no American could capably draw a diagram listing their roles and functions.”

It is not American for the government to champion its secular religion over the moral tenets of Americans’ spiritual faiths. It is not American for the government to ignore the will of its citizens and subvert immigration law by leaving its borders unprotected and wide open. It is not American for an amorphous Intelligence Community to spy on American citizens with neither warrant nor probable cause. It is not American for the news media to be so co-opted by the State that they almost universally support the government’s talking points — no matter how ludicrous and unsupported — while taking aim at dissenting citizens’ debate.

It is not normal for a “government of the people” to regularly denigrate its citizens as racists, extremists, deplorables, terrorists, misogynists, bigots, and rubes. It is not normal for any government claiming to be “for the people” to declare half the nation “enemies of the State.”

“These are the acts of a government committed to using intimidation, violence, and other forms of coercion in order to get its way.”

How to Recover from a Stall (or Why Sometimes Letting Go and Doing Nothing is Best)

(Don’t try this at home!) Flying a small plane like a Cessna 172 Skyhawk is a hell of a lot safer than a 737 Max. Why? For a lot of reasons, but one is that for every 1000 feet of altitude the plane will glide 3 miles without the engine running! But there’s a another, more topically current reason…

A Skyhawk properly trimmed for straight and level flight (that means all the controls in the right position) wants to stay straight and level.

Let’s say a flock of birds appears in front of you and you pull up suddenly and accidentally stall the plane. Basically, that means that it starts to fall out of the sky. The nose points straight down and you’re in a dive headed for a rather abrupt landing.

With you and the nose looking straight down at the ground rushing up, your immediate reflex is to pull back on the yoke (or stick) to bring that aircraft nose back up. Unfortunately, if the plane is in a stall, pulling with all your might will do precisely nothing.

In fact, pilots are trained to do the exact opposite of what everything is screaming they should do. We force ourselves to push forward on the stick, restoring correct air flow over the wings and the horizontal stabilizer, and then pull out of the dive.

For sake of argument, let’s say you just can’t bring yourself to push forward when every part of your anatomy is screaming pull back, pull up? You know what? If you LET GO of all the controls, chances are the plane will right itself on its own and all by itself seeking to return to straight and level flight.

What does this have to do with anything? Often, when the economy is in free fall, legislators keep trying to pull back on the stick, to DO SOMETHING, when, in fact, were they to just let go, the economy would most likely right itself!

At another level, I’m talking about about control vs. freedom. The LEFT wants to control everything. For them, in their warped world view, if they have control over the sources of production as well as production itself it can be equitably divvied up among everyone. History proves that this communist/marxist/socialist approach to society results in the worst possible outcome (think Venezuela, North Korea, the U.S.S.R.).

In fact, letting go of the stick, i.e. giving more freedom to individuals, the Traditionalist approach to organizing society, results in growth and prosperity for EVERYONE.  One of the great truisms is that ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’.

Reagan was dead on right…government is not the solution. Government is the PROBLEM! If we can just figure out a way to get government’s hands off the stick, the plane will right itself.

But then why would we need politicians?