The Bellum Omnium in Omnia is Here
Stripping bare the perpetual, necessary and awful nexus of government and the governed
On April 29, 1962, JFK hosted a dinner for the Nobel winners from the Western Hemisphere. In his opening remarks, he said:
"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. Someone once said that Thomas Jefferson was a gentleman of 32 who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, and dance the minuet."
JFK was right. Jefferson was a polymath, once learning Spanish on on a single 19-day ocean voyage.
I think about this quote from Jefferson's 1816 letter to Samuel Kercheval and how, 205 years ago, Jefferson accurately predicted our situations today:
“This example reads to us the salutary lesson, that private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.”
That one paragraph is brilliant, incisive and revelatory - because it strips bare the perpetual, necessary and awful nexus of government and the governed.
Public extravagance: Check
Deviation from principle: Check
A taste for sinning and suffering: Check
The war of all against all: Check
Massive public debt: Growing by the day
Wretched taxation: On the way from Joe Dementia
Our governance has long left the constraints of the Constitution behind and become a Ponzi Scheme, a long con, where politicians reap millions in personal wealth from the public coffers – as they continue to kick the can down the road by increasing the burden on those they rule.
Our "representatives" are incurring debt now that won’t be paid by us or our children – or even our grandchildren – but will be borne by our grandchildren’s children and grandchildren. That is how long the structural defect we are building into our system will last – unless the system collapses. It is generational theft.
Most Americans have become mere automatons, living the senseless existence of obedience as if we are characters in Fritz Lang’s movie “Metropolis.” The fictional worlds of Orwell, Wells, Huxley and Rand are no longer fiction. In any definition, we ALREADY ARE a democratic socialist society, complete with the indentured servitude brought forth by welfare dependence of the poor, wage slavery of the middle class and tax slavery for the more successful.
Just think about it – there is not a single minute of your day that isn’t touched by a “fee”, a tax, a law, a regulation or an action that could not be subjected to some sort of review if you are unlucky enough to find yourself in front of some governing bureaucracy or agency. You are subjected to surveillance without your knowledge or approval, you are tracked based on how you handle your cash and you even are told what days you can run your sprinklers in your yard. And all of that was BEFORE "public health" laws were used to put you under house arrest. The possibility of requiring pandemic papers to move about is looming.
You are controlled. Sadly, it seems Marx was right – freedom IS an illusion.
The only winners are the central government and those statolatrists who worship it.
If we want to reclaim the liberty bequeathed to us by a class of people who fought a war because they believed death was preferable to a life without liberty, we must stop investing our futures in a choice between a stupid political party and an evil one and begin investing our futures in ourselves.
As they say, change begins at home.
The duty of every individual citizen is clearly outlined in the Declaration of Independence:
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."