--- begin forwarded text Resent-Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 23:21:30 -0700 Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 22:13:20 -0800 (PST) X-Sender: vin@dali.lvrj.com Mime-Version: 1.0 To: vinsends@ezlink.com From: Vin_Suprynowicz@lvrj.com (Vin Suprynowicz) Subject: Oct. 29 column -- twilight of an era Resent-From: vinsends@ezlink.com X-Mailing-List: <vinsends@ezlink.com> archive/latest/578 X-Loop: vinsends@ezlink.com Precedence: list Resent-Sender: vinsends-request@ezlink.com FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED OCT. 29, 1998 THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz Twilight of the Gods We seem to be entering the twilight of an era. Changes in our society -- consider the erosion of personal liberties, and even the notion that sticking up for our personal liberties is a good thing ("He wouldn't give his Social Security number when he tried to register to vote? He owned an unregistered firearm? He wouldn't volunteer any information on his tax form? Then he deserved whatever happened to him. I'm sorry they burned up the wife and baby, too, but he brought it on himself") -- have been occurring incrementally over the past 86 years. Hence, the popular notion that future change will continue to be equally gradual. Even "legitimate" Libertarian Party political candidates now patiently explain to me that since the current police/welfare state took 60 to 90 years to put in place, there's no sense alarming anyone by shouting radical ideas about legalizing heroin or machine guns. No, no. These "modern" Libertarians -- respectable middle-aged entrepreneurs in respectable coats and striped ties -- patiently explain that they only wish to move us back toward slightly less government, slightly lower taxes, and the restoration of a few personal liberties at a time. Nothing for anyone to get frightened about. The problem is, neither human nor geologic history seem to bear out this notion of a pendulum swinging steadily back and forth. The era of the swamp-dwelling dinosaurs seems to have continued for hundreds of thousands of years without much change. But ice core samples and ocean sediments now indicate the freeze that killed them may have taken as few as five years. Social and political change in France was pretty gradual from 1480 to 1780. Would one thus have been safe in assuming that things wouldn't be likely to change much from 1780 and 1795? A whole lot of folks went to the guillotine based on that assumption. Our ability to sense the imminent end of an era is seriously hampered by a part of human nature modern psychiatry calls "denial." The loss of familiar things -- even if we know in our hearts they are rotten -- is frightening. Thus, we tend to hope the signs are wrong, and to cling to what is familiar. Is this another one of these rants about how the inability of our computers to process the date "2000" is going to cause an instant reversion to the Stone Age? No -- though such computer malfunctions and shutdowns certainly will occur, creating pockets of panic and accelerated uncertainty about just how reliable our "foolproof" government and economic "systems" really are. But the number of things that are rotten in America -- and thus in "Western civilization" -- has simply grown too large. And as each one fails, it will help to pull down the next. Large dams do not develop small leaks. We could talk about the imminent collapse of the largest, most profligate, most unproductive and socially poisonous make-work social engineering scheme ever devised, the mandatory government youth propaganda camps (you may call them "public schools.") When the cost of things that don't work exceeds what people can pay, they just walk away. That's why the stone temples of the Maya were abandoned long before Cortez showed up, and why most of the nuclear submarines of the Russian Navy now sit rusting at their piers. There was never any popular vote to "shut down the Soviet Navy." Everyone just went home. We could talk about the inevitable failure of the little Dutch boy sticking his fingers in the financial dikes of Mexico, Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Brazil -- the International Monetary Fund, the failure of which is likely to soon bring down another 20th century institution which we have come to assume could never fail, the vast leveraged Ponzi scheme known as "government chartered fractional reserve banking." (Imagine an evil wizard made the stock market disappear, along with your stockbroker and your bank. For awhile, you might wonder what you would live on in your "retirement." Then it would dawn on you: What "retirement"? "Retirement" at a fixed age was a notion introduced by the 19th century socialists, who believed there was a fixed number of jobs in the world (duh), and that the only way to guarantee work to the young was therefore to "pension off" the oldsters. "Retirement" is a completely artificial invention.) I could talk about the schools or the banks, scrambling around insisting it's not their fault; it's our fault for being too "greedy" to hand them ever-larger "bailouts." But I won't. Instead, since it's election time, I will talk about why the great experiment called "participatory democracy" is failing. Next time -- interviews with virtually every candidate in Southern Nevada produced five or six outstanding prospects this year: Why voting for them isn't likely to make a bit of difference. Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin@lvrj.com. The web sites for the Suprynowicz column are at http://www.infomagic.com/liberty/vinyard.htm, and http://www.nguworld.com/vindex/. The column is syndicated in the United States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas Nev. 89127. *** Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. -- John Hay, 1872 The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases to discriminate between good and evil. He becomes a slave in body and soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don't adjust! Revolt against the reality! -- Mordechai Anielewicz, Warsaw, 1943 * * * --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'