Coming To A Boil

My friend, Pete, calls it the Frog in the Pot method.

If you try to put a frog in a pot of hot water, he'll freak and jump out.

But if you put him in a pot of cold water, and gradually heat it, by the time he figures out he's getting boiled, it's too late.

And that's how we're losing our rights and our countries: a degree at a time. Until one day you wake up and you can be arrested for stating your opinion. Or being rude. Or smoking on the beach. Or defending your property. Or owning a gun.

Personally, I call it the Creeping Crud.

They could never have gotten away with this shit in our parents' day. But they've softened us up. They started by mutilating science and statistics; by using our emotions and our fear to pass anti-smoking laws, and motorcycle helmet laws, and seatbelt laws, and baby car-seat laws.

If we thought the aims were beneficial, we didn't complain that the laws themselves were infringing Liberty. We believed that OUR liberties were safe...it was just the "bad" people with bad, dangerous and stupid behavior that were being controlled. So we didn't mind.

And so the Crud Crept. And now we have become so regulated in every facet of our lives, that there is almost nothing we can do that does not have some law regulating, forbidding or requiring it.

And so we sit in the pot. Getting very warm...but still clueless.

The problem is we've been manipulated to the point that we don't remember what freedom is. Freedom was smoking in the supermarket, at a restaurant, at the movies...remember? Freedom was biking down the highway with the wind in your hair, remember? Freedom was holding your baby in your lap on a road trip, remember?

Oh sure, some of it might have been dangerous. Ooooooooooo. Scary. How did we every survive? And no one REQUIRED you to smoke, or ride, or hold your kids in the front seat...remember? Adults could make up their own minds. Remember?

It would never have crossed my father's mind that shooting a home invader would cause him a moment's legal trouble. Because it wouldn't have. Everyone was clear on the concept that a home invader was a criminal, and deserved what he got. Even the police. Even the judge. Remember?

But we aren't those people anymore. We look to government to tell us what we must do and what we may do. Well, I'll tell you what we need to do. We need to reawaken, rediscover, reclaim the notions and ideas of freedom our founders, ancestors, & parents had; ideas that inform our outrage, our rebellion, our action against the Creeping Crud, and the Cruddites who push it.

The Matrix Model:
We need to wake people up from their induced comas.

The Cult Model:
We need to de-program people who got caught in the Sheep Cult.

The Time-Machine Model:
We need to return people to the time when what's happening now would be seen for what it is: outrageous violations of our rights, and infringements on our liberty.

The Computer Model:
We need to RE-SET the minds of people to the Original Founding Father defaults.

The Gunslinger