When Enemies Are Revealed As Allies

     You may have already heard about this offer of assistance:

     U.S. officials have offered to help the Trudeau government end an anti-vaccine mandate protest blockade that is sending ripple effects through the American economy and causing increasing concern in Washington.

     The White House says U.S. officials had multiple conversations on Thursday with their Canadian counterparts about the blockade on the Ambassador Bridge, a major trade artery which connects Windsor, Ont. with Detroit.

     The White House said Thursday the U.S. federal cabinet and senior administration staff are now seized with this issue.

     “[They] have been engaged around the clock to bring this to a swift end,” the White House said in response to questions from CBC News.

     How interesting! An authoritarian regime – which is definitely illegitimate – is offering to assist a totalitarian regime in quelling a nonviolent protest of its policies. From one perspective, it’s perfectly understandable. Bad guys see other bad guys as kindred spirits. And there is that old saw about honor among thieves, isn’t there?

     But let’s look at the thing from another angle. Why do men accept that governments are “necessary?” What dispreferred outcomes are governments supposed to thwart?

     The two major arguments for governments are and have always been:

  • Only government can maintain domestic peace and public order.
  • Only government can protect us from other governments.

     Well, gee. Here we have the U.S. federal government offering to use the powers of the U.S. federal government to aid the Canadian federal government in ending a peaceful protest. That protest is against Canadian federal policies that are harming thousands upon thousands of Canadians. Who’s protecting whom, and from whom, and why?

     The facade has crumbled, Gentle Reader. We are staring at the naked face of evil.

     For anyone who’s been having trouble with the tenor of my recent essays, I’ll reduce it to fundamentals. Governments are instruments of power: power over others. Ergo, governments are always hostile to freedom. Even a government that exercises its powers solely to protect life, liberty, and property is a potential threat to all those things…and you may be sure that there will be factions inside even such a government that seek to turn its powers to evil ends. It’s in the nature of the power-seeker. And as power-seekers tend to have no other items on their agenda, they are also monomaniacal and relentless. They persist until they are dead.

     You may be equally sure that the supply of power-seekers is bottomless. They will always exist, because Man is fallen. Destroy one group, and the Hydra will produce another…unless you lop off the Hydra’s head with a sword fresh from the forge, one hot enough to cauterize and sterilize the wound. There is only one forge that produces a sword hot enough for the purpose: the forge of absolute and unqualified freedom. That forge says that to pre-exculpate and indemnify any organization for its uses of coercive force is inherently evil and not to be borne. Engraved upon its sword is the maxim that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

     This is the hour. Freedom is the theme. Are we the people for it?

4 comments

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  1. “We are staring at the naked face of evil”

     

    This would make a great abstract.

  2. Are we the people for it? It remains to be seen.
    Many of us are.

    • mrpink58 on February 12, 2022 at 8:55 AM

    Give me a credible leader and I will follow.

    Hint: The name of that leader is not Donald J. Trump.

    • Rod on February 12, 2022 at 11:25 AM

    Why do men accept that governments are “necessary?”

    Interesting that you would write this on a day that you are giving away free copies of a book about a planet with no functioning government. Planned or a happy coincidence?

    BTW: Download the book! Great Sci Fi, and as with everything Fran writes, not your regular story.

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