The Time for Predictions Is Over
Recently by Karen Kwiatkowski: Bill of Rights, R.I.P?
It is fun to reflect on whether your predictions for the previous year were on target, and take a shot at calling the next one. Last year at about this time, I predicted 2012 would be a bad year for D.C. bureaucrats and the political establishment, a bad year for war, a good year for sound money and small government, and that it would be fun. How’d I do? Not very well. But if all politics is local, perhaps so are predictions. In my county and in my congressional district, it really was a bad year for bureaucrats. Our county supervisors (all Republican) were on every local conservative’s hit list for their incessant taxation without representation – or something like that. Mainly they borrowed millions of dollars for new government buildings and facilities, effectively raising taxes and/or refusing to lower property assessments, all in the face of public outcry. They had their feelings hurt, and several won’t stand for election again. But wait – isn’t that the story all over the country? In the 6th Congressional District of Virginia, our man Bob Goodlatte, a staunch "conservative," faced his first-ever primary since being selected by his progressive Republican elders in 1992 – and 1/3 of the party loyals, when given the chance, rejected the ten-term establishmentarian. This came as a shock to the congressman, to say the least. It was not his best year. After winning the seat in our solidly Republican district in November, he received an order from the district GOP unit chairs to cease immediately his support for his friend John Boehner as Speaker of the House! A bureaucrat being put on notice by the help was something different, very awkward and very 2012. The establishment didn’t see any of this coming because the paradigm has changed, alignments have shifted, and the memes are increasingly written by individuals for fun, rather than by the state, for power enhancement. I predicted it would be a bad year for war and the war machine. Financially, it wasn’t a bad year at all – every year for the Pentagon and State is bigger and badder than the year before. But with the public bogeymen largely dispatched before 2012, Americans, especially conservatives, quietly plate-shifted from flag wavers to peaceniks overnight – and Washington didn’t really notice until it was too late. Suffice it to say that Romney’s empire maintenance and "global leader" approach may have – more than anything else – fundamentally lost him the election. He was afraid to say what we all know to be true, and cowardice isn’t attractive. America cannot afford our empire, and those who lend us 50% of what D.C. spends each day, much of it on empire-related activities, are largely tapped out. All that’s left is the money printing. Empire is boring, unsustainable, and stupid – but most of all unpopular. Did we make progress on sound money and limited government? Yes we did, and instead of waiting for political leadership – we all got personally smarter, thanks to Ron Paul and millions of others working on and talking about sound money and limited government. Plus, sound money really is about as simple as you can get – because as our parents and life have taught us repeatedly, money doesn’t grow on trees, fall out of helicopters, or get created from thin air. At least real money doesn’t.
While D.C. bureaucrats salivated and worried and schemed, we paid down debt, simplified, got healthier if we could, and shifted our interest in national citizenship with genuine interest as to what our neighbors were up to, and whether we should be doing that, too. I predicted 2012 would be fun – and for me it was. I sincerely hope it was an enjoyable year for most people. But what is "fun"? What is it that makes life interesting and exciting, cursed or blessed?
Predictions, in a way, are for people who are watching from the sidelines, taking bets and choosing sides. What I am seeing, just glimpsing really, is a new emergent attitude all over the country, and the world, that is extremely good for liberty, for capitalism, and for the future. It isn’t an attitude that is unified, or particularly collective – rather, it is simple and individualistic and caustic. It is captured, for the readers of Ayn Rand, in Howard Roark’s famous answer to Ellsworth Toohey’s question, "What do you think of me?" We are becoming bored with the state, and bored with our rulers. When we watched a few years ago Jay Leno’s "man on the street" interviews and chuckled at how these "young people" could know so little about their government, increasingly we see them as strange and unerring visionaries of the respect and attention our political leaders deserve. It is captured, for fans of The Hunger Games, in the scene where the two survivors prepare to publicly eat the deadly Nightlock berries. When faced with the undeniable and public assertion of the individual’s ultimate power over the state, that is, our consent to live as subjects, the state folds. This driving need for our consent is the hallmark of all state systems, in all times, a fundamental truth Etienne de la Boetie realized, incidentally, when he was the same age as the fictional Katniss. For popular entertainment TV generations, we have as our guide the irreverent and irrepressible Honey Boo Boo – and Honey, a dollar (real, not fiat) makes me holla too!
It’s so tempting to make a prediction, and I will give in – but it’s a simple prediction. We – rich and poor, those educated about liberty and those who assumed we were free, working more or working less, those who think about human systems of organization and those who are oblivious to them – all of us are emerging from comfortable caves of false citizenship into our real lives. Like hungry bears, we are looking beyond our stale state-stamped identities and into our real lives with a new enthusiasm. We are taking risks we would never have considered in our dreaming hibernation. We are a force to be reckoned with, one that frightens the state, even as it may also frighten us a bit, in that good way we like to be frightened, like children at play. As we dance and explore and live, the unsustainable state will tremble, shudder, and begin to annihilate itself. Brother, can you spare a bureaucrat? Yes, we can, but we probably won’t.
January 3, 2013 LRC columnist Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, blogs occasionally at Liberty and Power and The Beacon. To receive automatic announcements of new articles, click here or join her Facebook page. She ran for Congress in Virginia's 6th district in 2012. Copyright © 2013 Karen Kwiatkowski
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While
Washington devised more and greater tax schemes, increased regulation
and intrusion and launched even more police state activities – we
quietly bought guns, gold, silver, and started hoarding those "37
Things You Should Hoard," for starters. By the way, as the
vast majority in this country are not professional central planners,
we didn’t need to be told what those things were, nor be limited
to 37.
For
the Facebook generation – and by the way, that is most of us in
many generations – it is captured in a million viral images and
cartoons and videos. Mothers and daughters, siblings, friends, relatives,
and coworkers all share the many memes of the