Friday, May 18, 2018

The Myth of "The Right Kind of Ruler"



Comedy Central's John Oliver took on the disaster happening before our eyes in Venezuela and manages not to mention the word "socialism other than to specify that it's not socialism's fault".
The American left never seems to associate the consequences of creating powerful collectivist/socialist states with collectivism/socialism itself. If anyone points it out, they always fall back on blaming the consequences themselves. It was "greed", "corruption", mismanagement, the "wrong people" were in charge, they didn't do it right. Always there is the assumption that it's something else that's the problem and never socialism itself.
 
The difference between socialism and an actual free market democratic republic like America is that for socialism to work you have to have "the right leaders". Where socialism fails, socialists always chalk it up to not having the right leaders. It's exactly like medieval reasoning - there are good kings and bad kings, but we must have a king!

American style republics don't depend on having a "good" king. We depend on the vote of the people and the checks and balances of our three part government. We don't have to have a "good leader" and we can survive bad leaders (see Barak Obama). The republic, because of it's structure, tamps down the depredations of bad leaders. So long as power in this nation remains diffused and decentralized, we remain safe. But if we create a great deal of political power that is housed in one individual, the corruptible will be drawn to that power like moths to a flame.

That is why socialism inevitably fails. The collective depends too heavily on the "natural goodness" of man. Man is NOT naturally good and because of this, there will always be an abundant supply of evil, power-hungry human beings to rush to seize power over their fellows and it always turns out badly at some point, despite everyone's best intentions.

The checks and balances of our democratic republic assume that too much power in any one man's or party's hands is fatal to the natural rights and liberties of our nation's people. It was an incredible piece of wisdom on the part of our founding fathers and just at the right time as the powers that ruled the Old World were busily trying to root out the sort of troublesome people that actually believed they should be able to speak, write, worship, and defend themselves without the permission of human authority. Scripture talks of a place near the end of time where the children of God might seek refuge from persecution by the powers of darkness. Well, America is it. We are a nation of refugees from religious and economic persecution, As it turns out most of that economic persecution was against people because of their faith. Nothing like America had ever been done before.

I believe the devil hates this place that God has given us and seeks to restore the authoritarian power of the Old World, here in the New. Karl Marx and Charles Darwin offered the Old World elite a justification for a revival of the ruling classes. The fittest were by right our rulers and we must serve the states represented by these smart, special people for the "good of all". 
 
I do not hold to that. As my favorite spaceship captain has said, "I aim to misbehave!"  We must not go gentle into that good night as Welsh poet Dylan Thomas advised his dying father. We must rage, rage against the dying of the light. A fight is coming if we are to hold on to the gains our country achieved. As a favorite president of mine once said, "We are a shining city on a hill."  Someone out there is trying desperately to extinguish the lights.

We know how it's going to go. Revelation is full of the dire warnings as to how badly it will go toward the end of time. We will have to fight with our backs to the wall for what is right and good. And just when we think that all is lost, it is then we will see our salvation coming in the clouds. Remember this. The Second Coming is not a conquest, but a rescue mission. Sin and evil must finally destroy itself. For the first time in history, man has the power to turn the Earth into a lake of fire and destroy himself utterly.

I don't think God will need to kindle the fires of hell. Men like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hugo Chavez and others have shown that sinners are quite capable of wreaking fire and desolation and destroy themselves utterly all by themselves without God's help. But we shall return and upon the ashes of evil, we will rebuild this beautiful world one day, but the end must be what it is, for the wages of sin truly is death and it must come to it's own sorry end if it is never to rise again throughout eternity. The universe must see it for the lesson to sink in. It's the only way to inoculate the future against the disease that is evil.

Just sayin'.

© 2018 by Tom King

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