What We Can Know versus What We Can Do

“Well, the solution is obvious.” No, it’s not.

Just because we can see harm, we should not assume we know the actual cause. Much less should we assume we know how to fix it. We see poverty as people unable to offer anything in exchange for food, clothing, shelter, etc. Simply putting money in their pockets is not the answer in every case. Much depends on how they got there, the system around them, and a host other factors we often cannot see. We might be guilty of rejecting the existence of those factors, especially if something we do contributes to them.

Some could be familiar with the propaganda trick of painting the scene of poverty with such rich sorrow as to presume a solution which is not spoken. “Don’t think! Just react! Oh, and I’ll tell you how to react.”

It’s the same flaw in the propaganda on the other side.

We can easily see how government agencies tend to act as if the humans they govern are mere property. We can see how government people speak and act as if all that we need to know is whatever they wish to tell us. If there is a notion they didn’t tell us, it is by definition a lie. And those who dare to speak that lie require silencing, even if it means death. So we have this agitation which says back to the government figures it is they who require silencing, even if it means death.

We have all this grand theorizing and explaining how the current ruling regime is far, far from the US Constitution. Correctly we note that fact is self-evident. But what can we do about it? Is there any reasonable hope of steering the system back on its proper course? What would it take?

Get enough voters to support the right people — people with the right theories and plans — and we win, right? I have serious doubts that can be done. Did the will of voters stop the TARP bailout? Nope. We can prove with firm legal certainty Congress was derelict. Did the voter support get Ron Paul his nomination for President under the Republican banner? Nope. We can prove in a court of law the criminal actions which combined to deny him that fair chance. Not only did he simply fail to win, he never was allowed to compete because key individuals broke their own rules, and even federal and local laws, to make sure of it. But the system has been slanted to make it too hard to even address that. Instead, we are offered a steady diet of candidates who are always thoroughly unfit to serve in any position, people who will never tell you the truth they are hostile to what we want, nor what is required by their oath to the Constitution.

Okay, so the system is fixed against truth and right actions. Do we find some other path? Isn’t that the obvious answer? Honestly, that is a legitimate question. Given the broad sweep of human history, it’s not just fancy words when we note those governments which reject peaceful change are demanding violent change. Is there any question change is necessary? Regardless of your particular persuasion, you surely believe things must change one way or another. So maybe we come up with some forceful action short of armed revolt by which we replace the evil army of elitist thugs running the country. What has changed?

Not much. First, those who permitted things to go so wrong are still the dominant life form in this country. Can they be persuaded to support a reinvigorated Constitutional government? Not on your life. While individuals vary widely, the bulk of the citizens together don’t understand what it even means. Further, they lack the means to understand, and are too far gone to get it. Just making that claim — which claim isn’t that hard to prove — will be rejected in the first minute after we begin to act on it. The bulk of Americans aren’t just ignorant, but have been conditioned to reject the facts. You can’t fix that, not even in one full generation. I know this because I have worked in education on several levels. Can’t be done.

Instead, we will have a mass of idiots who remain vulnerable to the same manipulation which got us into this mess. In just a matter of hours after setting things right, the agitators will be pumping up the crowd to demand things be wrong.

Okay, so maybe if we just outright killed everyone who is making things so difficult — armed revolution to “take back our country.” That would be an awful lot of killing. Then you would have to oppressively force people to do what is in their own best interest. How is that different from our current oppressive regime? What if the bulk of the US citizenry really don’t like living under a truly constitutional government? Frankly, they won’t. They aren’t intelligent enough to know, so they reject it and a lot of other things they don’t understand.

For example, take the aforementioned poverty issue. I can prove it is utterly impossible to end poverty in this world. Can’t be done. Humor me, because it would take a large book to prove it for most folks. No power on this earth can manipulate conditions to the point everyone will have their “fair share.” The very idea assumes things already proven false. You personally can voluntarily alleviate poverty within the limits of your resources, but there does not exist in this world the means to persuade the rest of humanity to buy into such a thing. Furthermore, the kinds of action and the system necessary to produce material advancement precluded even results. The moment you try to even things out, the very means of bringing that material into existence goes away. Fact. If it weren’t for greed and evil desires, there would be no material improvement.

But Americans as a whole still carry around this residual belief — in their fractured and inconsistent mental frame of reference — that we simply must do something about poverty. It’s a matter of sentiment divorced from reality, but it’s very solid. And an awful lot of them, if not entirely conscious of it, assume when things are bad for themselves someone darn sure better pony up to alleviate their misery. Never mind how utterly impossible it is in the long run, they demand it due to several generations of false civic religious training. They even have the audacity to blasphemously insist this is what God says.

Do you understand these things? Then perhaps you also understand you cannot, utterly cannot ever, conceive of an honest political solution to human misery. You cannot possibly tweak it and reform it and improve it until it covers all the bases, nor even most of them. The moment you begin to adjust, the conditions will change and make it invalid. It all comes back down to one literally damned notion: Central government is a good idea. God demanded under Noah there be government, but He promptly thereafter destroyed the Tower of Babel. Obvious that was heading the wrong direction, was the wrong type of government. What’s left, then? Family, clan, tribe.

Read between the lines. Ask yourself: What is the one greatest threat to bad government? Competing loyalties. What is the one primary feature of “government” within a household? Competing loyalties. While it makes ruling a household difficult, you at least have a bond of love to make everything negotiable. Under non-family government, there is no room for that, neither love nor honest negotiation. At the Tower of Babel, Nimrod demanded loyalty and control which was not his. At the very least, his rule was a symbolic attack on God’s authority.

Can we really return to the dictum: No one has any business controlling or ruling you who isn’t related to you by blood or marriage? God demands it, so there must be some level at which it is valid. We can know this. What can we do about it? We can expect the human civil government to seek to crush every effort to bring that back. But God has promised when we aim for that ideal, He will bless it, even if we don’t perceive it easily. By no means should we dream we will displace the modern state, though we should surely expect it to collapse periodically. Indeed, entire civilizations will collapse cyclically. But the basic Law of God regarding human government by kinship ties is built into our very instincts, and will always return even as civilization collapses around us.

Don’t expect to win, just try. That’s the standard.