What makes you think tyranny happens overnight?

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   innersmiffposted 11 years ago

   Statists on this forum and elsewhere tend to dismissively scoff at assertions that expansions in state power are 'authoritarian' or 'tyrannical' in any sense of those words. "We don't want to take your guns away" they might say, suggesting that any notions to the contrary are simply "conspiracy theories".
   
   But think of it this way: if one really did want to take all of the guns away, why on Earth would you do it all at once?
   
   We are not talking about the slippery slope fallacy here. There are actually a number of practical reasons why gradual state expansion is inevitable:
   1. Repealing a law requires admitting a mistake was made. This is political suicide.
   2. Political legacy is often defined by what a politician 'did', so a politician often gets more credit for the passing of laws than leaving society to deal with it on its own, even if the latter would result in a better outcome.
   3. Nearly every time a law is put into place, jobs are created to enforce it. The repeal of such a law means making people redundant, which is undesirable for a politician's image.
   4. Many laws were put in place through pressure by powerful special interests. They are not likely to give it up so easy.
   5. Bad government policy does not receive the same punishment as a bad business policy does. When a business does bad, it loses money. When government does bad, the money still rolls in.
   6. The passing of one law sets a precedent for others to build upon. Massive changes in policy hardly ever happen all at once but happen in a sequence of 'moderate increases' that seem reasonable in the context of the time, but on a larger scale are making huge changes. [For example, there is a common perception that the United States adopts a lassiez-faire attitude to guns. Perhaps, in comparison to other countries, yet numerous gun control laws have been put in place over decades, apparently to no avail.]
   
   We can see that the expansion of the state is no 'conspiracy theory' but is inherent in its nature. Like any corporation, it seeks expansion. This is not necessarily evil (although many within the government are definitely so), but it just so happens that apparently disparate parties have similar interests.
   
   The common perception is that we have to draw the line between 'sensible regulation' and 'totalitarianism'. However, knowing that state power begets state power, we know that there is no line that can be consistently drawn for any period of time other than a zero-tolerance policy towards aggression. You might find this an extremist position, but honestly, so what? Would you accept any 'reasonable level' of slavery, or genocide?
   
   "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
   Thomas Jefferson, to Archibald Stuart, 1791

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2. 66

   innersmiffposted 11 years ago

   I guess you're all too busy registering for the Libertarian Party to reply.

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   Sooner28posted 11 years ago

   I agree with almost everything, and I bet you can guess which one I am going to disagree with.
   
   "Bad government policy does not receive the same punishment as a bad business policy does. When a business does bad, it loses money. When government does bad, the money still rolls in."
   
   This is only sometimes true.  There's a lot of corrupt banks that are wealthy.

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      innersmiffposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      This is true, but most of them are government and Federal Reserve protected, 'too big to fail' monopolies. Without this protection they would probably not last long in the market. The fraud that is fractional-reserve banking can only survive through monopoly.

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         Sooner28posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         You know, I'm as surprised as you are no one has commented on this thread.  I feel like sometimes I put a lot of thought into trying to raise a discussion about an issue, and then no one responds.
         
         But other threads that aren't always very deep get massive numbers of comments.  It's a bit odd to me.

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   Sooner28posted 11 years ago

   http://communities.washingtontimes.com/ … -tsarnaev/
   
   Very pertinent to this thread, and from a conservative source!

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