Trick or Treating like it's 1984 - The Rule of Law in Progress or Regress pt.9a

Trick or Treat
I began this series of posts at Halloween last year, with the point that the 1st Monday in October (opening day of the Supreme Court) was a far more frightening day, for adults, than Halloween was for their children. For the adults, our 'Trick or Treat!' gives us shocking sights of the Rule of Law being replaced by its evil twin, the Doppelganger's Rule of Rules, and if that's so, and it is, how much more frighteningly true has it become of our Presidential elections? But to understand which candidate is truly the most frightening this year, you can't simply judge from the candidates, their campaigns or the reporting on them - you have to understand what ideas will guide their use of political power over (and in) our lives, and that takes a wee bit more time than saying 'BOO!' - which is about all the media wants to tell you.

In the last few posts of this series, I've been sticking to the nature and development - the progress - of Law, but in order to see where, under a Pro-Regressive ideology, the Law is both leading to, and being generated from, we need to look over in the direction of Education. Why? Because The Law is but a means of binding, and giving order to the use of power in a manner that reflects the philosophy of the times, and on its own it will range somewhere on a scale between judicious restraint and savage barbarity. What informs the direction which that will to power takes, however, mostly enters our past, present and future lawmakers heads through our schools - they are the drinking fountains of philosophy, and directly or indirectly, that is where our culture cultivates itself from.

What is being cultivated is on display in these videos, but keep in mind that these aren't simply a charming new addition to the genre of late night comedy show's 'Stupid Student Tricks'. Take a closer look at these college student videos with an eye, not to laughing or dismissing these people as fools or pansies, or to taking aim at Millennials (as if your generation would've looked better if smart phone video existed then. Please. I actually think they're more likely to outshine us all), or to mock the ignorance that's been educated into them - we do a disservice to ourselves, and to them, when we look at videos such as these and dismissively chuckle at them in that way. Instead, try looking at them as evidence of seeds that are and have been germinating across our land for over a century - and just imagine the harvests that are soon to come. Do that and I think you'll see that laughter is less warranted than a cold chill of fear.

In some ways the outrageous Social Justice Warrior videos are less alarming to me, than those of the more coolly 'reasoned' responses such as these "Georgetown students who say that the Constitution is outdated, overrated’", as they are surer indicators of the shape of the coming establishment, who seemingly have no sense whatsoever of the dangers inherent to the holding of power, or of the need to restrain its use by those who would use it to 'do good, to help you!' even, or especially, against your will. Even worse, they seem so well versed in justifying the abandonment of restraint and of justifying the exercise of political power over others, with little awareness of either the best, or most dangerous methods, of managing and restraining political power; something which used to be one of the central themes of a college education - how is that absent from their minds - yet these students are in college, and no matter how little respect I have for the content of what they are learning, they are there because they are deemed to be the least foolish, stupid or laugh-at-able members of American youth.

I repeat, you should be chilled, not amused, by these videos.

You're going to be tempted to laugh though. Way it is. Don't. These aren't funny. At all. Seriously

Ok, the first video opens with a young lady at Georgetown University stating that:

"Yeah, they definitely take it too seriously. it's not... 250 years ago... when the constitution was about written... I'm not sure what that date is..."

There are several things that come to mind to say to that, on a scale ranging from grammar nazi to chronologist, but what I'd really like to say to these students who are pursuing 'higher education' has more to do with their demonstrating what one of her fellow students unironically states, later on in the same video:

"I feel like sometimes, people use the 'Constitution' as an excuse to not... think."

, with which I completely agree... though in the reverse of what he intended it, of course.

These students, as most students over the past ten+ decades, have had their heads pragmatically
stuffed full of doubtful notions of what thinking is, and is not, instilling in them the notion that such matters can be, and are bound by, time and place; that things are true only in so far as they seem to work at the moment - if it doesn't work later, don't bother worrying about why, just try something new; that people in the past had different 'needs' than people today, and that our thinking should not attempt to have anything to do with what some - such as the greatest thinkers in history - might call 'timeless truths'. An implication which she reaffirms, BTW, at the conclusion of the video:

"It's now 2016, it's not 1776".

What do you suppose she, they, think that means? Presumably they don't see themselves as being the bigoted examples of temporal provincialism (which I do see them as) but it's difficult to shake the impression that what she means to say - keeping in mind my warning that they aren't laughable - is something more along the lines of:

'Like, look, our clothes are TOTally different today, there's no way we should take them seriously. And, seriously, they transmitted words by PAYper, we use the INTernet - like we're like a TOTally different species today, than what people were way back in 1776!'

Now I can understand it if you think I'm mocking her or being unfair here, but I'm not so much mocking her, as trying to make more clear the implications of her own words - to say that such ideas are, and can be safely dismissed as passing fashions. What can really be meant in saying that our Constitution was written for a different time? She obviously is not referring to what is True across time, but to what were merely popular sentiments of the day, fleeting fashions and fads. As such, she is either elevating the notion that the management of political power over human nature can be safely dealt with as the trite stuff of fleeting fashion, or she's ignorantly reclassifying the weighty ideas of our Constitution downwards to the status of simplistic and shallow fare.

Why?

Do you suppose that she and her classmates have actually gone through the process of deeply thinking and reflecting upon these issues, and so have eventually, inevitably, come to the conclusion that the dangers inherent in placing power in the hands of men, needed to be taken more seriously in the past than today, because... they didn't have advanced technology? Are they willfully thinking that we as human beings, are somehow substantially different today, than from 229 years ago? How does someone who presumably enthusiastically and wholeheartedly believes in Darwinian evolution, believe that?! Have the cell phone and Internet short-circuited the evolutionary process and changed human nature, rather than simply speeding and intensifying the implications of it? If not, then what is it that they are counting on, so that such matters don't have to be taken so seriously in our time? Or are they rather avoiding such thoughts as that, so that they can rest easy in the belief that their easy answers and unchallenged fashions are the very bestest fashions of all time?

I suppose she might answer me by saying that

'No, but what was found acceptable then, is TOTally unacceptable now, like women couldn't even vote! And slavery! That's what I mean, it was a TOTally different time!'

Yes I'm putting words in her mouth - but look how well they fit! How else should we treat the notion that such profound questions and ideas should be treated as the changeable garments of fashion that are easily put on, and taken off, as the mood of the moment strikes you? Truly, that is barbaric - and they are taught to see it as enlightened! What arrogance and hubris - it's difficult to shake the sense that Nemisis must surely be feasting upon these words and cuing up an historic response (unless of course you've never been taught the concept, or worse, were taught "What a silly old timey myth! What thoughtless fools those Greeks were!").

Listen to the next students, as they, with just as much thoughtfulness and confidence, assert that,

"When it was written, we were considering things that absolutely don't apply today."

Really? So issues of individual rights and the exercise of power, and the tendency of men to abuse power, 'absolutely don't apply today'? So then issues such as this from Federalist #51:

"But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."

, are now, what, thanks to the Internet and ObamaCare, are no longer an issue for us today? Do you suppose that their professors have discouraged, or encouraged, such thoughts in them? Do you think that if the interviewer were a govt agent and hauled off and punched them in the face for saying such things (and if they imagine right-wingers in the White House, that shouldn't be too hard for them to imagine), do you think that our Founders would consider that such an action anymore right or wrong then, than we would now? Bonus Points: Who do you suppose that our Founder's era would be more shocked and surprised at the actions of, Nixon/Clinton/Trump, or these students? (if you said "Nixon/Clinton/Trump" you might want to read a bit more of what the Founders actually said and did and dealt with).

Timeless Truths vs Fashionable Barbarisms
What does it mean to say that such issues of right and wrong 'absolutely don't apply today'? What can that mean?

It's not enough to point out what they don't know, without taking note that they are being educated to not know it!

What does it mean to say that their 'time' was so different from ours? That because the customs and technology of the time are so very different from ours, that such issues of time and habit somehow make our time, so very different from theirs? That we, in our time, have Progressed beyond their primitive limitations, and because we're more modern, their old timey ideas and concerns no longer apply?

Because... fashion?!

If you are somehow tempted to believe that, please recognize that that idea, that 'the constitution was written for an agrarian time', and so is outmoded and outdated in our time, because 'technology !', was most visibly first expressed by people such as Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, in what these students would consider to be a 'very long time ago', at the close of the 1800's... a time in which they, by virtue of their superior technology in 'Modern!' telegraphs, railroads, industrial production lines, new fangled talking telephones, horseless carriages and moving pictures, technology which the Founders era couldn't possibly imagine, somehow managed to justify them in rejecting the applicability of the Constitution to their time, and that it should instead be considered as more of a 'living document' - a phrase, btw, which one of the students in the video actually uses:

'When in reality it's a 'living document' and changes with the times'

The fact is, that the 'Progressives' notion of possessing a 'temporal superiority' over the Founders Era by virtue of the number of years elapsed between them and the technological differences separating the Founders Era from T.R.'s and Wilson's time, relegates these Progressive's time and their ideas - by virtue of those very same arguments (number of years elapsed and technological lack) - as being far more drastically removed, primitive, and different from us in our day! If you accepted their arguments for rejecting constitutional law and individual rights as 'outmoded' for such 'Modern!' times as these, how can you presume to accept their central idea of a 'living constitution', when the differences between the 'Progressives' time and ours in terms of technology, fashion, customs and the sheer quantity of years that've passed between the respective periods, make T.R.'s and Wilson's time comparatively even more backwards and further removed from our time, than they were from the Founders Era?!

Do you get that?

If you support the argument which they made, that: '80 or more years ago + less technology = expired ideas', how can you possibly ignore that same argument while accepting their 'living constitution' idea , which is decades older to us, that the Founders were to them, and whose technology is even more primitive in comparison to ours, than the Founders era was to them?!!!

 Shouldn't we jettison their old 'living constitution' notion as horribly out of fashion?

Seriously, why are our young students being taught to cling to notions when their own arguments for selecting them, discredits them?! Hmmm?

In their view, History, 'is history!' and is dismissed because 'old' ideas allegedly have no more permanence than fashions. Why do you professors and students cling to them so?

What are you, a reactionary?!

Psst! Would you like to learn an uncomfortable and timeless truth that actual history can help you discover?

Do you dare to?

Here's ya go:

People resort to comfortable pretexts to justify their passions, when valid reasoning doesn't give them what they want. 

True in Thucydides' day, true in ours too, because it is a timeless truth about human nature, and natural to all humans, especially those who aren't informed about and on guard against it. Just imagine what else we've been taught not to know.

What these students, and more pointedly, their professors, are using such thin pretexts of 'outdated' ideas to try so hard to avoid thinking about, is the fact that what they really hold against the Constitution, are not those matters that are constrained by time and place, but those which have to do instead with its timeless ideas, ideas which are just as demonstrably true and applicable in our day, as they were in theirs, and which will continue to be so in our grand-children's futures; and their fear of those ideas show that their own passionately held positions, are intellectually baseless - at best.

History, is not irrelevant because it is history - history is relevant because the history tells us the truth about ourselves here and now, good and bad, through an examination of the past and present; and one of the patterns that become visible through it, is how eager we can be to excuse and feed our most passionate desires, and how reluctant we naturally are to recognize and abide by the 'hard' and timeless truths that an honest reading of history might expose us to. That is Natural to us. It is only through deliberate, reasoned reflection, that we can see beyond our natural inclinations.

But that doesn't happen when your natural inclinations are soothed, flattered, and encouraged.

The precious politically correct (and oh so politically useful) positions which so many today are so excited to think of as being so significant, are themselves, in fact, little more than the fleeting fads of a political correctness, highly specific to our own narrow time and place.

AKA: Temporal Provincialism.

To approach a challenging idea with the intellectual equivalent of a school yard bully saying

"Your clothes are so 'last year' and so stupid, soOo... you're a loser!".

, is miserably small minded, and thinking otherwise can only be accomplished by those who've been taught to accept, rather than to think and reflect. Keep in mind that these students in these videos are very likely going to get a college degree, or two, in exactly that form of mental processing, a skillful training in the flow-charting of fashionably popular and acceptable positions, which they will have been led to believe is the actual action of 'Thinking'.

IOW:

"I feel like sometimes, people use the 'Constitution' as an excuse to not... think."

The consequences of that lack of understanding, fueled by an excuse to believe the seemingly urgent issues of the moment, rather than to think upon what is true in all places and times, is what can be seen on display in this next video.

Again, try to remember that these 'snowflakes' are no laughing matter. To dismiss these students with laughter and derision, is self-deluding and dangerous. Yes, they are whining, and no, their 'ideas' don't make sense, but you should take notice of something far more important than that - and that is that they are neither turning away nor running away from what they dislike, instead rather than simply criticizing an argument, or even just complaining about what they dislike, they are attacking those who hold opinions which they disapprove of. These college students are doing their best to forbid others from having or expressing those opinions which they disapprove of; they are demanding that their victims ideas conform to what they say is correct, politically, and they are clearly willing to use whatever force they feel they can get away with using, to accomplish just that.

That should give you pause - no matter who you are. It was that very same self satisfied "I know what's best for you - agree & comply!" that was behind Stalin's assurance that,

"...We will mercilessly destroy anyone who, by his deeds or his thoughts—yes, his thoughts!—threatens the unity of the socialist state..."

To Pro-Regress is not only to go backwards in the development of justice, but to go beneath the linear bar of political and ethical development, taking the lowest lows on their way to taking control of the most dangerous weapon known to man - man's mind - while mesmerizing them with easy, shallow, and oh so personally satisfying conclusions, which are imbued with zealous fervor and a self righteous certainty that you hold all the answers you need to render judgment.

Pro-Regressivism adds a little something more, a 'new and improved!' ingredient with modernity, to the age old quest for power over others. Where the old fashioned tyrant knew that they were behaving as brutes, but didn't care, knew that they were wrong, but did so anyway, because they gloried in having power over you, the pro-regressive actually feels justified in doing evil, he feels that because 'the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few', then what he does is for the greater good, and so he can commit any evil to any number of animated water sacks (aka: people), so long as he feels that his intentions are lofty enough to justify them. And with no serious convictions about what is true or false, or right or wrong, and the most loftiest of good intentions... the sky's no limit - why would it be?

And to get control of men's minds, to prime them with such rationalizations... you need to start with kids minds. And we started with our kids minds well over a century ago, so that now we've got grand-parents, parents, teens and kids, ready for reaping.

Like I said: Stop laughing.

These videos aren't simply demonstrating the bad judgment of a few college kids, but are reflective of the heart and soul of the pro-regressive mindset - the belief in the need to accept an urgent conclusion as being of more substance and value, than a deeper and harder truth - and this is in no way confined to college campuses. Their efforts go far beyond merely abusing political power, beyond even  demanding social conformity, their goal is and has always been, to extend political power beyond the economic controls or physically abusive powers of the mere tyrant, and into the realm of each person's private thoughts and feelings and associations.

It is as true of these college students today, as it was of their brethren in the 1960's, or their German proto-hippy ancestors of the 1880's, as it was all the way back to what Robespierre first inspired into a people - another ill-informed, angst ridden, put upon people - enabling them to 'power through' and establish the first modern Fascist Power, where those ideas in your head which didn't conform to what political leaders said was correct, could, and would, cost you your own head. And just as lopping off the heads of the 'deniers' of the French Revolution delighted the crowd then, the crowd of unknown gendered folk surrounding the two guys in the last video, delight in the use of force to get their way and 'to do good!'. What principles that these students are being taught, do you suppose that you can count on, that will make them reject the guillotine, when they are unabashedly for theft and intimidation of those who disagree with them? What do you expect will restrain an aroused crowd of people who've been taught that Individual Rights and Property 'silly outdated notions' and are not worthy of being respected by them? What, do you suppose that people shouting 'take their hat!' or 'to the guillotine!' are after something different? Blood maybe?

I think you'd be mistaken.

What such aroused crowds, who haven't the benefit of those convictions our founders revered, seek after, is the satisfaction of forcing others to comply with their own passionate sensibilities. Blood is just the likely end result, and once you let the ball get rolling, you're unlikely to stop it before rivers of it are spilt.

Does that sound like hyperbole? If such a people were understood to understand Individual Rights and Property and Rule of Law, it would be hyperbole, unquestionably - but when you've expunged such concepts from your peoples' minds... what do you suppose there is residing within them, to restrain them, or even to see that such restraint is needed?

2+2=5: Synchronizing our clocks to Central Standard 1984 Time
To Prefer what is timeless over what is fleeting, is threatening to the purveyors of modernity (and their most violent opposition is always directed at those who cling to the most timeless of principles - truth, virtue, character, etc.). To reflect upon a timeless truth, is to reject cynical Doubts, in preference to honest Questioning. But such resistance is spotty today, at best, and the growing expectation of falsehood and corruption from all quarters, encourages the student who's been taught to learn from books in order to spout what is in books, rather than to learn about their own lives, is to unquestioningly shrug away what is uncomfortable. What we've missed is that in doubting that what IS, is, is what slowly severs your life from reality.

What people have somehow missed in modernity's ever degrading regard for Truth, is that it has been accompanied by, preceded by, and enabled by, dismissing and removing from consideration that which makes Truth apparent and discernible - literature, history, philosophy, religion - and without which everything becomes both possible and doubtful, and with such a condition as that, popular positions triumph over what is true, by virtue of their popularity alone.

Once that connection is severed, for a person or a society, there there are no forces of justice that evil can't overpower, because in your culture, what you know to be true is isolated, solitary and alone in a chaotic current of passing moments - what is 'true' is only pragmatically 'true' because it 'works' for the moment, and is no longer true when it fails to 'work' (with 'works' defined as the result you want). There is no moral high ground in that landscape to guide you or to rely upon, which an enthusiastically enthroned whim can't overrun and overpower.

IOW, what was of utmost importance in 'the past' - individual rights, constitutional law, property - are now ridiculed as old and irrelevant, not because they actually are, but because you (or those teaching it to you) want them to be.

You'd think that with all of the students who have been made to read George Orwell's '1984', that some would recognize the rhyming of literature and history; that when you are being socially pressured to accept a man who ardently identifies as a woman, as a woman; when you can have govt officials behaving criminally and escaping justice by simply denying it; when students are marching for segregation while accusing others of racism... you'd think that some of those students would recognize Orwell's totalitarian ideal in action all around them. you'd think that some  would recognize that those who are being politically correct - not simply complying with, but believing and proclaiming that 2+2=5 - you'd think that they'd recognize the boot of O'Brien as being the shoe that fits on those who desire to rule over all others and are doing just that - wouldn't you?

Some may, but not many (or so we're led to believe), for just as they accept a man's preference to identify as a women to be valid and more real than 'biological gender', by those same rationalizations - pretexts -they just as easily see Justice as Injustice, Hate as Love, War as Peace, and Regress as Progress, as which is how Social Justice Warriors are living the dream of 2+2=5.

When what is Right must yield to what is merely useful, when Lies are not only not denounced, but are even cheered on as passions are permitted to overpower the Truth, that is the fertile ground for what I've called the evil twin of the 'Rule of Law', the Doppelganger, and its 'Rule of Rules' to arise and rule over you from.

What I tried to show in the previous post, is that Property and Property Rights are not simply the stuff of material possessions, but the awareness of an hierarchically integrated set of concepts which connect you to them. Far from being 'castles in the air', those ideas are what makes it possible for 'every man's home is his castle' to be a fact of life. But when you are fooled into thinking that Property is merely the stuff of material possessions, then there is no longer anything in your material reality to anchor your individual rights through you and into reality, and you lose the ability to realize or defend any of your Rights, or anything else, as being 'yours'.

If you have no property in your opinions or associations, then you will be forced to believe and stand with whoever the Doppelganger demands. If you have no property in your religious convictions, then you will be forced to believe - or not believe - as the Doppelganger demands. What you now assume is yours, is only in your possession because the Doppelganger hasn't demanded another use for - yet.

The Pro-Regressive's undoing of the nature of Rights, Property and Law in the 'modern' educated mind, is bringing the master/serf arrangement back into vogue in new and improved fashions, as the Doppleganger progressively takes charge with a vengeance. The rejection of the Rule of Law for the Rule of Rules, coupled with a resentment of its fundamental principles amongst those who are our 'best and brightest', is what is re-introducing the world to its greatest regressive leap backwards in all of history, through one of Pro-Regression's many distracting masks, that of Fascism - how did that happen to come about?

Next post....