What Won’t Work

Mankind has always sought to substitute energy for reason, as if running faster will give one a better sense of direction. Periodically, we should stop and ask ourselves if our efforts are focused upon the crux of the problem – the things that must be settled if there is to be a manageable solution – or if we are expending our energies on side issues which cannot yield a decision, no matter what their outcome.

-Bernard Baruch

To continue the topic of Taking Back America, the following list outlines those things that won’t work:

• Either listening to, or dishing out, meaningless “patriotic” rhetoric, whether in the form of slogans, admonishing statements, or appeals to custom and tradition. None of this “patriotic” gibberish will do one thing to change the realities of where we now stand.
  You are not indebted to government (politicians) for allowing you to exercise some of your remaining natural rights. You were born with these rights, and government can take them away from you only through the use of force.
  Self-proclaimed patriots profess a love of “country”; libertarians profess a love of human freedom.
• Continuing to listen to half-cocked, short-term solutions served up by vote-conscious politicians. We’ve had our fill of them, even though our nature is to emotionally follow a charismatic leader who offers easy solutions.
  It is time to start ignoring the political “solutions” that have actually been the cause of our problems. They have been ignoring you for years.
  To paraphrase Voltaire, men will stop committing atrocities when men stop believing absurdities.
• Looking to the government for solutions to your problems. Government cannot solve your problems because government is the problem. When people proclaim that “there ought to be a law” to correct what they deem to be a “social injustice,” they are advocating the use of government force to make others conform to their desires or moral beliefs.
  Compassion is a good thing; charity is a good thing; concern is a good thing. Force is not a good thing. The question is not whether man loves his fellowman enough to insist on “helping” him. The survival question for mankind is whether man loves his fellowman enough to leave him alone! Your neighbor has the right to be left alone to live his life as he pleases.
• Getting hung up on the question of equality. Guaranteed security and equality conflict with freedom. Forcible equality conflicts with freedom. The American Dream gives all men equal rights; it does not call for making all men equal.
• Wasting your time arguing with irrational people – people who believe that something for nothing is possible, that theft is justified by a “worthwhile” end, or that government is a living, omnipotent, omni-benevolent entity that can solve everyone’s problems. You do not have enough time to improve your well-being, enhance the cause of liberty, and also function as a flyswatter. 

This post is based on Robert Ringer’s Restoring the American Dream.