Instapundit has just put up a piece that deserves repeating in its entirety.
WHAT TO DO? In response to this piece by Angelo Codevilla on America’s ruling class, readers wonder what to do. Well, a few things suggest themselves.
First: Mockery. They are very mockable, and they are very thin-skinned. That leads them to erupt in embarrassing ways. Use their sense of entitlement against them.
Second (and related): Transparency. One-party government makes you stupid, and although composed of both Democrats and Republicans the political class is basically its own party, and these people are pretty stupid. Point it out, repeatedly. Use FOIA, ubiquitous videocameras, and other tools to make the stupidity show.
Third: Money. Codevilla writes: “Our ruling class’s agenda is power for itself. While it stakes its claim through intellectual-moral pretense, it holds power by one of the oldest and most prosaic of means: patronage and promises thereof.” The coming budget crisis — already here, really, but still largely denied by the rulers — is an opportunity to defund a lot of this patronage stuff. They’ll try, of course, to cut the muscle and preserve the fat, but that won’t work very well if they’re closely watched (see above). Cut them off in other ways, too. Don’t support the media, nonprofits, and politicians who support them with your money.
Also, make sure that money flows TO things you like: Businesses, alt-media, politicians who aren’t part of the problem, etc. Build up countervailing institutions that don’t depend on the government to survive.
Finally: Don’t act like a subject. Rulers like subjects. Don’t be one. As a famous man once said: Get in their face. Punch back twice as hard. Words for the coming decade?
And do read the Angelo Codevilla piece. It is longish (for an internet bit) but well worth your time.
Update: Instapundit has added to his piece. Go read it. And in the spirit of his additions I too have something to add.
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them. – Fredrick Douglas
And further, Mr. Codevilla has written a book:
The Character of Nations: How Politics Makes and Breaks Prosperity, Family, and Civility
Cross Posted at Power and Control
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3 responses to “You Say You Want A Revolution?”
Mr. Codevilla makes some good points, but check out his thoughts on the drug war:
http://spectator.org/people/angelo-m-codevilla/article.xml
***QUOTE***
THE DRUG TRAFFIC IS A GRIEVIOUS, gratuitous hurt, a deadly
injection that the American people are inflicting on Mexico and
the rest of Latin America. The $25 billion that honest Mexican
workers send home every year fertilize Mexican society’s
thriftiest, most decent grass roots. But the roughly $50 billion
that American college kids, yuppies, and Hollywood types pay to
Mexican drug cartels for cocaine, marijuana, and now
methamphetamines enable these criminals to corrupt Mexico’s
police and courts, to blight decency. Increasingly, Mexicans are
blaming us for this. Rightly so: U.S. drug laws are the one and
only reason why the drug cartels exist. They will continue to
thrive, no matter what, so long as these laws do.
We are doubly at fault because we only pretend to outlaw the use
of mind-bending drugs. Long ago we stopped penalizing use of
marijuana and cocaine. Any college professor who points out to
the dean that certain students habitually show up in class stoned
is likely to be greeted with a knowing smile. How many parents
does anyone know who, upon learning that their children smoked or
snorted, turned them over to the police? How many mere users are
serving time in the pen as prescribed by law?
We classify drug use by the powerless as a “disease” and send
them to “treatment programs” to words that no one takes
seriously. By paying them Social Security supplemental income, we
also relieve them of the responsibility of supporting themselves.
Since money is fungible, Social Security pays for marijuana,
cocaine, etc. Thus we enable and reward drug use. Among the
powerful, drug use no longer disqualifies anyone for high
responsibility. Whereas Bill Clinton mock-denied his drug use by
joking that he had not inhaled, Barack Obama simply admitted
using cocaine and was not blamed for it. In sum, our real laws
support rather than diminish demand for drugs. But our laws also
make sure, absolutely sure, that the drugs will flow exclusively
through criminal channels. This ensures that drug prices will be
high and that they will enrich and empower the scum of the earth.
Then we, having coddled demand, empowered and enriched the
criminal suppliers, blame Latin American societies for our drug
problem. These are the illusions of a self-indulgent people who
imagine themselves virtuous and blame others for their own
corruption.
Mexico’s failure lies in its decision to back up our stupid laws.
Its efforts to interfere with the drug trade have boomeranged and
must continue to do so. The traffickers hold all the cards. They
alone can make “offers you can’t refuse.” They can say to any
policeman, judge, prison official, or bureaucrat on both sides of
the border: “This favor we ask of you, maybe just to look the
other way, costs you little. Doing it will enrich you. Should you
get in trouble for helping us, we can help you. The legal system
has many appeals, some staffed by our people. But if you cross
us, there are no appeals, just routine beheadings and torture
killings. Refuse us, and you die. Your family too.”
Neither the Mexican nor the U.S. governments can match the
attractiveness of the incentives or the terror of the threats.
And if the Mexican government were to try fighting fire with
fire, to terrorize the terrorists, the U.S. government would be
the first to denounce its “human rights abuses.” In Mexico, some
unofficial organizations have set about beheading and otherwise
brutalizing persons associated with narco gangs. The U.S.
government has treated them the same nasty way it treated the
Colombian paramilitary organizations that took the starch out of
that country’s narco-terrorist group, the FARC.
Instead, the U.S. government’s recipe is to pay for more police
to be corrupted, more intelligence to be infiltrated, more
technology to be evaded, more helicopters to fly around
impotently, more innocent people to be push around ignorantly,
while the narco cartels kill. Essentially, the U.S. government’s
policy is to let American society finance the drug cartels
unofficially, while officially it finances the Mexican
government’s war against them. We are paying some Mexicans to
make war on other Mexicans, principally in the fragile human
ecosystem that is the U.S.-Mexico border, where some 6,000 people
were killed in the last year. The benchmark of success? The price
of cocaine may rise. But when the price rises, our darling
college kids and yuppies pay it, and the same amount of deadly
money flows south. No wonder that some Latin governments, notably
Chile, have refused to cooperate with America’s “war on drugs,”
preferring to give the traffickers free rein in their territory
rather than get their police, judiciary, and army polluted to
support American hypocrisy and tergiversation.
In short, the drug problem’s root is that lots of Americans want
drugs, and that the rest of us eschew the reasonable opposites of
truly penalizing consumption (? la Singapore) or of total,
Darwinian legalization. So long as we keep doing this, we will
guarantee to the narcotraffickers effective control of the
U.S.-Mexican border and a veto on good relations between the
American and Mexican people.
***END QUOTE***
Well of course. He is a social conservative. I sent him an e-mail when I read his piece objecting to some of the views he expressed.
But the central element – the disconnect between the rulers and the ruled is quite correct.
What he fails to get is that his brand of social conservatism (fasces vs setting an example) is just another disconnect.
The government is out of control and the problem is statist authoritarianism. I don’t think Americans want to put right-wing authoritarians in place of left-wing authoritarians.