Are You Willing to Disobey?

Posted by Tina

A tendancy toward obedience is the human trait at the heart of a provocative piece, “Why Some People are Prone to Obey,” by Eileen F. Toplansky, The American Thinker. Ms Toplansky seeks to discover how it’s possible for the American people to deny the dreadful state of our nation. How is it that we tolerate high unemployment, mounting debt, low growth, massive wasteful spending by means of the printing press, a president prone to bypassing Constitutional process, secrecy and obfuscation surrounding Fast & Furious and Benghazi, deal-making with corporations and unions, and attempts to silence any journalist or News outlet that dares question the authority or methodology of the President. Obviously the electorate chose obedience in the last election whether through their apathy or a rabid sense of obeisance to President Obama and the big government solution.

More than one person has wondered how this president was reelected with such a terrible record of governance. Ms Toplansky offers obedience as one possible reason and cites Eric Fromm and the writer Walter Lipman who wrote:

“… the people have had it fixed in their minds that the state possesses a magical power to provide an abundant life. They have come gradually to think that their expectations may be as great as their government is powerful; that the stronger the government, the more certainly it can satisfy their heart’s desires. After a while, when the doctrine is completely dominant in the popular mind, a point is reached where men cease to feel that there is any vital connection between production and consumption, between work and wealth.

It is no longer labor, but the law, the force of the state, the might of the government, that is looked upon as the source of material well-being.

The belief in this miracle is due to an optical illusion. The power of the state, as such, produces nothing: it can only redistribute that which has been produced
The optical illusion arises because men mistake for the production of wealth the enrichment of those who take the tolls.” – Walter Lippmann, The Good Society 1936

Freedom and self-governance requires that citizens be willing to solve their own problems, find their own paths to prosperity, and challenge their leaders and government. We seem to have come to the place where too few Americans are capable of rational thought or the notion that their future is anything they can imagine. Obedience to the higher power of government is now preferable to a life lived in freedom. Jasper Becker supplies a warning to those who give up the rights and responsibilities of freedom for the security of obedience to government:

Markets can be unfeeling and irrational, [yet] without them individual life has no value. Although [Chinese] officials used every means to root out the feeblest trace of ‘capitalism,’ they failed.

… a utopia without money or private property led straight to slavery and cannibalism[.]

So much for Mao’s famous egalitarianism.

Read and absorb this article then tell me, to what degree are you obedient to the big government solution offered by President Obama and his radical Democrat cronies in Congress?

12/20/12 10.07 AM: One of our faithful pointed out a single error in this piece this morning. I’d like to thank that person and confess that I found a number of poorly written sentences. I have made corrections and beg your pardon…you deserve better than a hurried post.