Guns and Statists

Politics makes strange bedfellows. Parties routinely swap positions on issues. For example, prior to the advent of radical environmentalism, conservation was a cause of the right. The KKK was a radical leftwing movement akin to OWS.

Because partisans routinely switch positions on issues, one should always ask: What would happen if my beloved political issue is captured by the other party?

Currently, guns are associated with the freedom movement.

Imagine what would happen if statists took control of the issue. A statist gun nut would require everyone to own a gun. Even worse, such people are likely to force people into militias to march up and down the street wearing silly uniforms.

In Idaho, the gun debate has some inspired to build a Walled Medieval village to be called The Citadel. The Citadel is a top-down planned community that will demand conformity to the ideology of the group's leader. The site says:

Marxists, Socialists, Liberals and Establishment Republicans will likely find that life in our community is incompatible with their existing ideology and preferred lifestyles.

I've actually read Hegel and Marx. This Kafkaesque community seems to be a nightmare right out of The Material Dialectics. The Citadel appears to be reacting to national tyranny by creating local tyranny.

Anyway, I find the fact that the far right is interested in building medieval fortresses an interesting metaphor. The radical left put America on the road to serfdom. The far right is not the antidote to this crisis. Arch-conservatives, with an unseemly bunker-mantality, are not preventing the destruction of our nation. Conservatives, as they engage in action/reaction politics, actually accelerates the rate of decline.

The Material Dialectics works by creating conflicts. As the left and right wrangle over the conflict, the forces of tyranny move in and take control. Local tyranny is never the answer to national tyranny, however, those who are seeking political power are skilled at turning conflict to their favor.

Meanwhile, those who seek rational, free market approaches to world challenges are shoved to the side. For example, for five years I've had the simple goal of finding a "conservative" group willing to talk about free market health care and have had no success.

Health Care could be the winning issue for the freedom movement; however, the second one mentions alternatives to insurance, the debate is shutdown and people locked out.