For The Umpteenth Time, You Cannot “Fix” The Federal Leviathan, You Cannot “Fix” Politics, You Must Secede

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – As far as your third party, I don’t have the answer to your political question, because I don’t think that politics is going to solve or is capable of solving any of this.  If it were, then I would think since the Roman polis was created, or if you want to go back to the Athenian republics of ancient Greece, I would think over the ensuing almost 3,000 years, man would have figured this out, don’t you think?  I would say that politics is not something that solves anything.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Pat in Pennsylvania is next.  Pat, how you doing?

Caller Pat:  Very good, how are you?

Mike:  I am well, sir, thank you.

Caller Pat:  First thing real quick, off the topic, could you recommend a book on the French Revolution and on Woodrow Wilson without the liberal spin on it?  Number two, further to your point, I really don’t see how there’s an endgame here that’s positive in terms of for the republic.  People are so disengaged and so far away from the founding and the founding principles.  I really don’t see how you can rely on the Republican Party to do anything at all that would be benefitting republicanism.  At the same time, it’s the classic argument, if you vote libertarian or independent, you’re diluting away from the ones that will maybe possibly once in a while fight the good fight.  It seems there’s no good endgame other than total collapse where you would have an opportunity to right the clock, so to speak.   I’m really concerned because I really don’t know where to place votes, if the votes really even matter anymore, and at what point they could matter, I think the country will be so far gone and irreparably harmed that the time you have to reset your watch, it’s going to be too far gone, if we’re not already there now.  How do you inject a third party that would be something that would be representative of classic liberalism or even right the Republican Party, which I consider to be way too far gone to be righted.

Mike:  Such a rosy outlook, Pat.

Caller Pat:  Please, educate me as to why I’m wrong.  I can’t figure out how I am.  I don’t want to be right.

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Mike:  Just going one thing at a time, if you want to read the best book ever written about the French Revolution, read Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution.  I’d say there is no other book to read.  If you want to read one of the most interesting stories about the French Revolution, go to my website, MikeChurch.com, click on the Project ’76 tab, and one of the last posts I made, read about how Thomas Paine went over to France thinking his newfound French buddies were all going to be about liberty and establishing a new republic with freedom and republicanism and all that stuff, and how what he found was a violent mob that was out there trying to kill everyone they didn’t agree with, including Louis XVI.  Thomas Paine went into the French Assembly and begged Robespierre not to kill Louis XVI.  What did they do to Paine?  They threw him into the freaking Bastille.  He was scheduled to be guillotined.  They got some other guy named Tom and not Tom Paine, and in the interim, Paine was rescued and whisked out of the country, narrowly avoiding having his head cut off.  That story, as I said, is in Project ’76 if you want to read it.

As far as your third party, I don’t have the answer to your political question, because I don’t think that politics is going to solve or is capable of solving any of this.  If it were, then I would think since the Roman polis was created, or if you want to go back to the Athenian republics of ancient Greece, I would think over the ensuing almost 3,000 years, man would have figured this out, don’t you think?  I would say that politics is not something that solves anything.  Politics is like eating, sleeping, breathing, and all those other things we do that I won’t mention that make up our human existence.  It’s just part of life.  If you’re going to have government, then you’re going to have politics and politicians.

The other part of the question about how to restore the republic or republicanism, that is something that I think actually can happen, but it’s not going to happen in the current scale that it’s in.  It can’t happen in the current scale that it’s in.  We’re not going to be able to make a dent in the out-of-scale nature and shape of things until we can re-acclimate people with what republicanism is, why they want what’s called home rule or local rule, and if you want that, why you have to participate in it, and further than that, why you don’t want the political class making decisions that ought to be made by the living class, by the people.  You can construct, I think, a republican form of government.  There’s a blueprint for it in David Hume’s brilliant, beautiful essay that every one of you ought to read a couple times a year called Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth.  This is what inspired Taylor of Caroline and other republicans of the time.  It is possible to do.  I think it’s even probable that it can happen.  It did exist for a little while here.  As soon as what Taylor called the paper system, as soon as the paper system went into effect, the degradation begins.

Like I was talking earlier with Sam who called from Louisiana, should it be part of the endeavor to participate in what you know to be a corrupt system, knowing that the system itself is inadequate and not up to the task, and can never do what it’s advertised to do or what people think or have perceived or have been told that it can do, or is it better to remain in opposition to it, always counseling that there’s a third way?  I’d say the third way is decentralize, decentralize, decentralize.  Divide that power so that its abuse is far less likely.  What do you say about that, Pat?

Caller Pat:  I love the idea of decentralizing down to the local level, but I don’t foresee the federal government ever allowing that to happen.  The only way they would allow that to happen is you have a whole other host of problems if we were in a position where the federal government returned control to the state level, let alone the local level.  I’m sorry for the pessimism.

Mike:  Who says they have to restore?  They’re not going to restore anything.  They’re not going to give up their $3.8 trillion gravy train ride.  Would you?  It’s got to be taken from them.  They have to be told.  They’re like a small child that wanders into the theater in the middle of a movie.  They have to be told no.  This is why the people of northern Colorado and what they did Tuesday last are so important.  The smaller version of Mordor on the Potomac — I don’t know why people are not getting this.  Why don’t people get this when I say this?  I don’t understand it.  Maybe I’m not explaining this correctly, using Tolkienian metaphors.

Mordor on the Potomac is from the Tolkien Lord of the Rings trilogy novels.  The Washington Monument serves as one of the two towers of Sauron.  When it wasn’t lit up at night, when it was covered by a scaffold and only had a red light at the top so planes wouldn’t hit it, it looked like one of the two towers.  Mordor on the Potomac is the evil.  It is the place where the Orcs are made.  It is the place where the Orcs get their orders to go out and cross the countryside and destroy.  We’re told that no state is ever going to break away from Mordor because [mocking] “We settled that question back in the 1860s.  It’s illegal.  It’s unconstitutional.  It’s unheard of!  It’s immoral!”  Really?  It’s immoral to stay in the corrupt system and then to commit your children to stay in it.  That’s what’s immoral, but we’ll deal with that on a different day.

Since we’re not going to do that, maybe we can break this down to a smaller, more manageable, similar act: Colorado.  Instead of Mordor, their capital is Mount Doom, the Mile High City.  All it needs is a smoldering volcano at the top and a couple intrepid hobbits to be trekking their way up to throw the ring into it.  What did the citizens of the five northern Colorado communities do?  They told Mount Doom no.  They told Mount Doom: No more!  You will not tyrannize us any further.  You will not purport to share our common concerns because you don’t.  You will not tax us as if you do share our common concerns.  And you will not alter our way of life.  Screw you guys, I’m going home (to throw some Eric Cartman in there).  Those five northern Colorado counties then told Mount Doom to go pound sand.

This is why the reaction to the election, those five counties’ affirmative decision has been so muzzled.  No one wants this to get out.  You’re not supposed to be able to leave a political arrangement if you don’t like it.  You’re stuck in it forever.  Just ask old dishonest Abe Lincoln.  Just ask all the promoters of Lincolnism since.  You can’t leave.  You’re stuck.  Isn’t it amazing, in a culture that values diversity and we prize so highly our freedom of choice, [mocking] “I don’t have to stay in a rotten marriage relationship if I don’t want to.  I can get a divorce.”  So you can leave every situation that is humanly imaginable if you live in the freest country in the world, we’re told, including the situation where you have a living child inside of you.  You can secede from that.  You can secede from your marriage.  You can secede from broken relationships.  You can secede from every human endeavor imaginable, but you can’t secede from your political affiliations.  Why not?  Why not?  Isn’t secession then basically the act of seceding, whether it is done by five counties in northern Colorado, or done by an entire state, or done by an entire portion of a state?  Isn’t it the next great civil rights struggle then?  Who will be the leader of that struggle?  Who will say: Mordor, let my people go.

That’s what it basically boils down to, folks.  All of this wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth and clamoring over whether or not there’s going to be a war and [mocking] “If you try and leave, they’ll come in and kill you.  You can’t do that.  It’s just unthinkable.”  So were many other things.  Isn’t it amazing, in our evolved sensibilities, that we can imagine every barrier to almost every human taboo has been eviscerated.  Why?  Because people cannot be made to feel uncomfortable about it.  What if you’re made to feel uncomfortable about your right to govern yourself?  Why isn’t that a civil liberty?  Why isn’t that covered by the 14^th Amendment, the miracle amendment?

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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