Smoke and Mirrors

They say that seeing is believing.  The question is, how far do you look before you believe?

As long as we remain convinced that we are lacking a heart, or a brain, or courage, we are easily manipulated by those who play on our fears and our deep-seated desires.  We are swindled into believing that we do not have the ability to make our own life decisions and to choose our own destiny.  We must seek the wisdom and power of The Wizard, because over time we, as a people, have allowed Washington to abrogate our liberty.  We, collectively, either lack the courage to look behind the curtain, or are perfectly content to buy the illusion.

I'm not sure when this trend first began, but it's certainly no recent development.  Since the time our republic was founded, there have been concerns about the growing scope of power that is wielded by our federal government.  Perhaps the ratification of the Tenth Amendment (December 15, 1791) was believed, at the time, to be a bright-line rule that would endure through the ages.  However by 1941, perhaps well before, the highest court in the land referred to the Tenth Amendment as a "truism" in the United States v. Darby Lumber Co. decision.  Lest one not recognize the gravity of such a reference, consider the definition of a truism (I state this, not to be condescending, but to drive a point home):

"Truism: an undoubted or self-evident truth; especially : one too obvious for mention"

Self-evident truth?  Absolutely.  Too obvious to mention?  Give me a break.  Why would our founders choose to make the Tenth Amendment a statement that is too obvious to mention?  How about that whole "We hold these truths to be self-evident" thing in the Declaration of Independence?  Was that also too obvious to mention?  I think not.  What we trivialize soon becomes irrelevant.

Over time, charismatic leaders, in whom we want to believe and trust, have sold us an illusion.  Some have truly believed that the change they championed was for the good of the people, the country, and in the furtherance of freedom.  Others have not.  When will we, like Orwell's Boxer, be unwittingly carted off to the knacker's?

In my lifetime, I have seen the gradual erosion of liberty facilitated by a litany of "wars" on the evil du jour and manufactured crises that threaten to destroy the planet or cause our civilization to crumble if we don't act now.  By the way, "act now" is the code phrase for buying the show; sitting back and watching the third act of our collective tragedy, where the pigs move into the farm house and anyone who challenges or disagrees with them mysteriously disappears.

The lie we are being sold today is nothing but a refined version of the one we bought yesterday.  You had a heart, a brain, and courage all along; use them.  Before you decide that seeing is believing, check behind the curtain.

© the stiff lizard