Every a group called Freedom Festival gathers 5,000 to 6,000 elementary school students at the BYU stadium in Provo where they stand in the formation of the US flag and sing patriotic songs.
I admit. It is kind of cute.
The video claims that this is the biggest youth rally of its type in the US ... which is amazing when you consider that Utah is a sparsely populated state in a desert.
A lot of work and training goes into this production where people sing songs of freedom while dressed in uniform and engaging in group think. It is a paradoxical experience. People engaged in this type of overwhelming group process develop a mantality where they try to push out the people who do not belong in the group. (This group project is but one of many that go on in the Beehive state where everyone who is part of the state religion is kept busy as bees by the state's religion.
The next video shows the same demographic group at a college game. People in spectator sports these days wear the same uniform and try to make really loud noises. There are people who coordinate and record the noise to judge crowd reaction.
This group think is not just a Conservative Utah thing. Who can forget the rally in Madison in which public schools organized tens of thousands in support of the right of a small unelected group of union leaders to dictate its whims on the people. Again ... notice the singing songs of liberty to enforce group think.
For the last several months, Occupy Wall Street has been trying to build this group think paradigm into a full life style where people actually live 24/7 in compounds that occupy city parks.
I admit, I am more into individual discovery and personal advancement. I am uncomfortable with group rallies on both left and right. I love ideas and people actively engaged in thinking.
When I am confronted with a problem, I like to think about it and discuss solutions. For the last several years, I've been trying to argue that our health care woes are the result of group funding of individual consumption and that a better form of reform is to create a funding mechanism built around the individual. This is the goal of the Medical Savings and Loan.
What I've discovered in Utah is the people weened on group think (both left and right) are adamantly opposed to talking about the health of individuals. They are not responding to the freedom songs, but the power of the group.
The conservatives raised on the group think of the freedom festival simply say: You are not part of our group and slam the door the second they realize that I am talking about substantive liberty.
The left is even more irate when I opine that individuals (and not their precious unelected bureaucrats) should have control of their own body.
The classical liberal ideals of freedom really start with Jesus's sermon on the mount (Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself) and Aristotle's distaste of absolutes and the reflexive paradox.
A free society cannot allow people the right to deny others their freedom. This concept extends to groups. This game of forming groups to lock out the people they don't like undermines the freedom in the society.
When I look at the Conservative/Progressive split, I simply see two political camps playing the same game of using freedom rhetoric in their attempts to take control of the group.
The progressive/conservative dialectics which has dominated American politics throughout my life is not advancing the cause of freedom. It is has all been about which political party captures control of the group that will suppress the people.
So far, the 2012 election has not been about restoring health freedom. It has been about which group will control the socialized group health pool. ObamaCare wants the group controlled by progressives at the Federal level. RomneyCare wants socialized controls returned to the state level and no one is willing to talk about returning control of health to the individual.
For one last video ... let's go to the birthplace of Democracy and see how the modern Greeks do group think:
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