Resistance is Futile

by Jonathan Taylor
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Exclusive to The Libertarian Enterprise

           It's always a good practice to put yourself in the place of your enemies. In most cases, placing yourself into an adversary's shoes can lend you insight into not only hiS next move, but also the reasons behind it, and the means by which it shall be made possible. Someone gifted at this tactic can often figure out the means, motive, and move of an opponent before they know it themselves, or at least simultaneously.
           Trying to put myself into the position of the fascists currently running our government scares me far more than anything they actually do.
           And what a vicious cycle it is. The steps are so incremental, so seemingly harmless, that no one becomes afraid of them. It is only when we sit down and examine where these steps actually lead that we become afraid. (A noted exception should be made for those people who know what these signs are, and are afraid from the first sign of the camel's nose.) The less vicious the steps seem to be, the more insidious I assume that they actually are. The less it seems I should be afraid, the more I actually am.
           I will not claim to have an exact grasp on why these things are being done. I can make a few educated guesses -- the purely selfish, the statist ... nope, that's about it. And purely selfish seems to me to be stretching a bit, considering this slide towards statism in America has been operating for nearly 140 years, as near as I can reckon. Possibly more.
           Neither will I claim to know exactly what path the progress towards statism will take over the next year, the next ten, or even the next one hundred. Sometimes knowing simply that you're heading south is more important than whether you take the left path or the right to get there. For a less sarcastic analogy, consider a chess game. Often times, there are multiple ways to achieve checkmate in the same number of moves. The path chosen is important, but not as important as the end reached.
           One thing I can foresee very clearly, however, is the end to which all this is heading. The fascists picked the wrong country. There is a limit, a point at which no more incrementalism will be tolerated, no more erosion, no further infringements nodded at and shrugged off. And all this buildup? All this careful sneaking the government has done, the slow and silent buildup to a totalitarian regime? All this will have served to do is create a large group of people just like me.
           There is a large constituency, which grows larger every passing day, with every move made toward tyranny, which will accept no compromises because they see what compromising for this long has done. The government has shown us their worst weapon - the slow erosion of a culture of freedom, the incremental decline of our Constitution. They have reached their peak - consider this: how many people have you heard of who were lifelong libertarians, and then decided to become flunkies for the republocrats?
           Compare that number to the new converts to our cause - and if you doubt that they exist, check the "Draft L. Neil Smith" petition. Look at the number of comments indicating the person was a republocrat, but supports Neil for president. Every day, more and more people wise up to what the government has been trying to perpetrate. Every day, their strength continues to decline as more and more people decide they are tired of watching their rights stolen away in the night.
           They're losing. And you know what? The simple fact that they are losing, the fact that they have created a growing constituency of people who will no longer quietly abide their tricks, the fact that they've undermined culture, demonized anyone who opposes them, burned and shot people as examples, threatened, bullied, stolen, and generally tried everything within their power to make America the type of state where this is commonplace -- the fact that they've done all this, and haven't succeeded, scares me the most.
           We -- that core of opposition that only grows in number every day -- may win in the end, but I fear greatly for what the last gasp of this demon will bring. Any animal ever made fights harder when cornered, enraged, and injured, and I fear the unholy beast of statism is feeling the bricks at its back. It is ironic, but true -- in these days and years to come, as the tide continues to slide our way, we must fight harder than ever. Whether this, the last act of a desperate man (or even the first act of Henry the Fifth), will overcome us is entirely in our own hands, for the very enemy we all despise has created among us the will and the knowledge to win.

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