Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

This is where I came in (does that even mean anything anymore?). Something terrible happens at the hands of a “lone gunman” (in this case, five dozen innocent individuals are randomly and cold-bloodedly murdered, and several hundred are hurt, inexplicably by a rogue multi-millionaire). The usual politicians respond by threatening to punish everyone who didn’t do it, by ripping away great chunks of their human, natural. civil, and Constitutional rights. The event is quickly veiled in an impenetrable cloud of contradictory lies which will not be parted, not for decades, and probably never. We have seen this all before, over and over again.

Look: I have no idea what happened in Las Vegas, neither do you, nor does anybody else I know, but based on what we’ve seen since 1963 in Dallas (or 1865 at Ford’s Theater), what I’ve read, and what I’ve heard, and everything like it that’s happened since, I would bet good money that the person or persons actually responsible collect a government paycheck. I keep hearing talk about Manchurian candidates and MK-Ultra, and each time, I’m closer to believing it. I try to keep in mind that, the more the truth is concealed, the more people will tend to make up their own truths. I only know that future historians are going to have a field day with the 20th and 21st centuries.

I’d like very much to know the truth. I’d like to know what invisible forces and events are shaping the world my grandchildren will live (and possibly die) in, but I have given up any expectation I ever had of such a thing happening. The “real facts” about the John F. Kennedy assassination are supposed to come out soon, but again, I’m willing to bet they will only confuse and obscure things. Those future historians I mentioned will probably be swimming in their own sea of bovine excrement.

I do know one perfect, gigantic fact, and it is nothing that anybody ever told me. It is something I figured out for myself. It is this: these things happen because some people have the power to make them happen and to cover them up, afterward. (I never believed the official story about 9/11, not from the first thirty seconds it was launched.) They happen because those with power want more power, and we let them take it—from us. The craving for power and unearned wealth is a deep sickness, a severe form of mental illness, and you can see the effect it has on people. In the end, I’ll bet that Luke Skywalker would have ended up shrunken and shriveled, first like the Emperor, and finally like Yoda. Possibly green, as well. The Force does that to people, apparently.

Now, take a look at George Soros.

It remains for us, then, the ordinary people, the usual victims of accumulated power and ill-gotten wealth, to avoid seeking it ourselves, to warn our children sternly against it, and to avoid those among us who desire it. Lord Acton (look him up) famously said, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In the next breath he added, “Most great men are bad men.” Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, for examples. This is not a call for indifference, for apathy, for resignation, nihilism, or electoral pacifism. It is a suggestion that we learn to recognize bad men when they are pretending to be something else, and to recognize good men, as well.

You’d think that would be easier. I was out of the country when Jimmy Carter ran and was elected, but the moment I saw him, I knew he was (and remains) a pathetic, bumbling idiot. To me, Hillary Clinton looks as evil and corrupt as anyone I’ve ever seen. The Lizard Queen. But obviously, the other half of the country doesn’t see her that way. Every year, Charles Schumer more closely resembles the vulture on a cactus that I often compare him too. Paul Ryan is clearly a smirking jackal. My daughter says that Mitch McConnell looks like Yertle the Turtle. The list is endless. If Breitbart or Drudge, or some other part of the general freedom movement like them wanted to do something real, something useful, something lasting, they’d put the Ryans and the Schumers and the McConnells under the same magnifying glass that they’re using on Hillary.

And do it in strong sunlight.

To those historians I keep mentioning, this could be the period that features the rebirth of American journalism. It has always been bad (never be deceived about that; there was no Golden Age) but it is about to break the camel’s back.

And nobody wants a broken camel.