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Home There Ain't No More Middle-Ground

There Ain't No More Middle-Ground

"There is no more neutrality in the world," said Black Panther leader, civil rights activist and fun-loving rapist; Eldridge Cleaver. "You either have to be part of the solution, or you're going to be part of the problem-- there ain't no more middle ground."

We live in Eldridge Cleaver's world now, a world with no more middle ground. Where not doing anything does not mean you will be left alone. This is no longer a nation founded on the curious premise that the government should leave people alone unless they are causing problems.

That peculiar idea was held by a nation of farmers and merchants who fled religious persecution, and whose great contribution to human history was the notion that governments shouldn't be all-powerful and that everyone should mind their own business when it comes to other people's affairs. Our present-day rulers revile them as racist slave owners who only cared about money, but they also happen to be racist slave owners who only care about money, and they have far more of both.

The average American still holds the fanciful belief that, if he isn't annoying anyone, he should be left alone. To the people running his country, this is as bizarre and unworkable as Phrenology or the Geocentric theory or handing out universal health care without also compelling everyone to buy it.

This is not a nation where people are left alone anymore. This is a nation where they are hounded from the moment they are born until the moment they die by the arms of a regulatory state run by men and women weaned on Cleaver, Alinsky, Fourier, Marx, Wells and countless others. This is a nation, where accordingly, being left alone is the greatest of luxuries.

It takes a lot of money to be left alone. Regulatory space is much more expensive than physical space, and buying it requires investing in lobbyists, fundraisers and lawyers. If you make the right payoffs, then you can buy the privilege of being left alone, exempted from regulations, going uninspected and protected against the agents of the state. But once you do that, you are no longer neutral. You have bought yourself the privilege of not being considered the problem; instead, you have become part of the solution for the people you are paying off.

The Americans bushwacked by ObamaCare, the scam artist's dream of a tax paid to a third-party in exchange for benefits accrued to a fourth party, still thought they had the freedom to take the middle, to despise meddling politicians in both parties, ignore most things the government did, while living their own lives. They had seen their savings devalued, their homes seized, their lives bedeviled by a thousand regulations, but they still thought that it was possible to take a middle-ground, to reject the solutions by asserting that they are not the problem.

They did not understand that in Cleaverland, in Alinskytown and in Obamaville-- no one opts out. Either you volunteer or you get drafted. Raise your hand or you will be called on anyway. Not volunteering to be part of their agenda means that you are the problem.

You, sitting right there in your chair, watching these words move across your screen, are the problem. A problem 311,591,917 human souls strong. You eat too much or you don't pay enough taxes, you drive your car too often, you haven't bought solar panels for your roof, you browse extremist websites when you should be browsing government informational sites for tips on how to do or not do all of the above. But most of all... you still don't understand what a great problem you are for the people running this country into the ground between the Atlantic and the Pacific. They keep trying to solve you, but you don't go away.

There is no neutrality when dealing with people who reject the very concept of neutrality. Who draw everyone into the long columns of their spreadsheets and catch everyone in their spider's web. There is no middle ground with people who don't believe there is a middle ground, who believe that every human on earth is part of the problem and can only opt out of being the problem by joining up with them and following their directives.

That is what we are up against. We confront the Great Solvers of the Human Problem who are determined to arrange everyone and everything to their liking. They began by controlling everything that people did. Now, they have moved on to controlling what people don't do. If you live, if you breathe, if you stir, move your muscles, track moving objects with your eyes, then there are obligations imposed on you.

ObamaCare is one of the final declarations that there is no opting out. Even if you don't drive, own a home, own a business, own a dog, or do one of the infinite things that bring you into mandatory contact with the apparatus of your local, semi-local, trans-local, national or global government, you are committed to a task from maturity to death. Your mission is to obtain health insurance, and, in a system in which you become the ward of the government as soon as you taste air, it is the price that you pay for being alive.

In a free country, you are not obligated to do things simply for the privilege of breathing oxygen north of the Rio Grande and south of Niagara Falls. But this isn't a free country anymore; this is a country in which you get things for free. And there is a big difference between those two things.

We are a nation in which everyone is entitled to everything, except the right to opt out of all the entitlements and the cost of paying for them. We may not have the Bill of Rights anymore, but we have a hell of a bill to settle and, every year, the deficits keep making it bigger and bigger. Our forefathers passed on to us a Bill of Rights, and we shall pass on to our descendants a Bill. A tremendous Bill which can be unrolled from the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foam... and all the way across the ocean to China.

The Bill of Rights was a list of things that the government could not do. The Bill is a list of things that the government has done. It's an endless bill, because we have an endless government that is doing things all the time. And though we didn't do any of them, we are still stuck with the bill. Even if we could reach into our pockets and settle the bill with a couple of loose trillion dollar bills, this Bill doesn't just demand money, it demands power.

If all that government officials did was go to Vegas, give each other prizes and sing silly songs, then the Bill would be large, but it wouldn't ask for a piece of our soul. But the amount of money that the government spends is almost beside the point. The amount may bankrupt us, it may destroy our economy, it may turn us into debt slaves-- but it's secondary to how the money is being used. It's bad enough to be eaten out of house and home-- worse to be forced to feed the occupying army that is taking away your freedoms one by one.

People often talk about the First and Second Amendments, the Fifth comes up, and even the Fourth. But how often do we think about the Third Amendment, that old relic of a time when we were ruled by a distant power with no concern for our lives or our freedoms? "No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner". It's one of the few amendments that goes unnoticed. No one challenges it. No Supreme Court blots it out with the stroke of a pen or rephrases it to mean that there is a Constitutional right to abortion or a ban on executing juveniles.

There is no occupying army quartered in our homes. They have sizable barracks with marble floors, gleaming chandeliers and metal detectors through which you must pass in order to meet with even one of their lower officers. They aren't quartered in your living room, they rent hotel names and build buildings and send the bill to you. And then they send you another bill, which informs you that they have decided that the War on Obesity, the War on Health Care or the War on the Economy requires you to do a set number of things, the costs of both the doing and the enforcement to be borne by you.

The old kings used to play chess games with human chess pieces, a metaphor for how they saw their power over their subjects. The new kings or czars play with hundreds of millions of chess pieces. They assess how many pieces they have in a census, determine what kind of pieces they are and pass laws telling them where to move, what to buy and how to live. And they are no more tolerant of pawns who fail to move when ordered to; than the old kings playing human chess in their gardens.

In the last century, the Great Solvers went to work on a national and global game of human chess. They called this game by various names, The New Deal, the New Frontier, Hope and Change, or, most commonly, Social Justice. The real name of the game is "There Ain't No More Middle Ground". Either you are a New Dealer, a New Frontierer, a Hope and Changer, a Tolerator, a Liberal, a Donor, an Activist and an Organizer-- or you are on the wrong side.

You might think that you are standing in the great moderate middle, the open-minded frontier of the old American, but the frontier and ground are both gone. There is only Problemtown and Solutionville and the bulldozers are coming to knock down Problemtown next week and deport its residents to Solutionville.

ObamaCare is the bus to Solutionville. It is the problem that is "You" being solved in the same inept brute-force fashion in which the Great Solvers solve everything, from Russian agriculture to European Union democracy.

The problems are many, and the Solvers are impatient. There are too many peasants, and weekends are too short, the golf courses are too crowded, the protesters are too annoying, and the numbers never add up. Each problem keeps needing to be solved many times, but they have already moved on to the next problem and the one after that in the great mass of problems that some people still call America.

The American Bushwhacked still wonder what happened. When did this stop being a free country? Then they finish pumping their gas, buy their sodas, paying several taxes on each and completing a transaction for two commodities whose production and distribution involve more laws than the entire legal codes of Rome and Greece combined, and then drive home, where they begin making notes for next year's taxes, while reading how the latest laws will affect them.

On the television, an anchor with carefully molded hair and the grave look of the career idiot who has learned to disguise this fact by always appearing concerned about something, interviews an activist who is proposing new regulations as the only responsible thing to do. "If you aren't part of the solution," she says with equally grave sincerity, "then you are part of the problem."

 The American Bushwhacked nod along because the proposal seems so reasonable. Who doesn't want to do something for the children, the oceans, the endangered red-banded shrub, the people somewhere who don't have something and that sincere young woman who really seems passionate in a way that few are anymore. Then he turns back to his desk, somewhere in the great middle ground that once was, studies the tax forms again and wonders when this stopped being a free country.





Comments

  1. There is another option to being left alone.

    One can be poor, and refuse to become a ward of the federal government. If one is not in the system taking the handouts the government leaves one alone.

    To be sure this is exactly why I never signed up for disability.

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  2. The other solution is to actively fight against the monster. There are many millions of allies among the people, and believe it or not, many are willing to resist as well. We must recognize that we are not alone, and that we really must organize and do what we must to remake America into what it was once and what it was meant to be.

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  3. What, dear Daniel do you want to do with those hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats in America or millions in Europe that should get unemployed if ever honest conservatism would prevail? We might long for the world of individualism but we have outsourced (no large workforce needing production) and streamlined (no large workforce needing agriculture) society to such an extend that it is unfeasible , especially in combination with the ever growing population. There is no other way anymore, as a society we are stuck with this, Brave New World like, ever growing and meddling government.

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  4. Look up the later part of Eldridge Cleaver's life. After living in the "paradises" of Algeria and the U.S.S.R, he eventually became something of a conservative.

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  5. This is no longer a nation founded on the curious premise that the government should leave people alone unless they are causing problems.

    That peculiar idea was held by a nation of farmers and merchants who fled religious persecution, and whose great contribution to human history was the notion that governments shouldn't be all-powerful and that everyone should mind their own business when it comes to other people's affairs.


    See I Samuel, Chap. 8 for an earlier parallel.

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  6. The only real hope is to return to a govnerment of the people and by the people. Elect leaders, who have faith in us, and are resillient enough to withstand the corruption on government.

    This would take an exceptional person.

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  7. What, dear Daniel do you want to do with those hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats in America or millions in Europe that should get unemployed if ever honest conservatism would prevail?


    How about paying them to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING? (But who would make sure they do it?)

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  8. There is always a fly in the ointment when it comes to punks like Obama and their plans.
    The E.U. oil embargo goes into effect today.
    Iran warned that an oil embargo will be seen as an act of war.

    The old Yiddish saying ; 'Man plans,God laughs'is in play.

    Everybody in Sleepyhollow America seems to forget
    God has a track record of raising up foreign armies and sending them against his wayward people.

    The problem is that what is coming upon us will make all of us soon forget Obamacare.

    Psalm 9:17
    The wicked shall be turned into hell,
    And all the nations that forget God.

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  9. I told a friend of Obama's disgusting Twitter comment and he literally replied with the same comment you made, Daniel about having to scrub the White House when he leaves.
    This country, if not helped out immediately, will be a thing of the past in so many ways. I fear for us....

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  10. Anonymous1/7/12

    @American Genie - that's the point of this blog - there is no option to opting out. You can say "no thanks" to ObamaCare and as a result get "taxed" for that decision now.

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  11. Anonymous1/7/12

    Good article.
    There is no turning back. America of yore will never exist again. We have a supremely corrupt Uniparty in power, taking turns at raping us over and over under different names and pretenses; a perpetual good cop / bad cop game on the national level.
    The break up of the USA is inevitable, and the sooner it happens, the better. The old USSR did it, the EU will disintegrate eventually, and this country should split into 3 or 4 independent pieces and start anew. Until then we will remain a third-world banana republic with the first-world military.

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  12. Do Not Fear the darkness of these evil ones who despise Liberty and love Oppression. The huge Federal Office Buildings they occupy can be emptied by the Will of We The People. THAT is a fact. Where there is a Will, there is a Way. Do not despair. Do not fear. Resist, resist, resist. No act of Resistance is too small against these Evil Oppressors.

    Those who gave us the Liberty that we are now called to defend Pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor for the cause of Individual Liberty.

    The Evil Oppressors that would enslave us today believe with all of their wicked heart that We The People are now so coddled and brainwashed and corrupted by material wealth that we are no longer capable of Fighting the Good Fight.

    Do NOT prove our Evil Oppressors correct by giving up and knuckling under to The Fear that they use to entangle and enslave us.

    Fight Back! Resist!

    Resist the mutant bureaucracy that will not enforce the laws of the land but will do all in their power to arrogate the wealth of private citizens to their own malignant purposes. The Internal Revenue Service is the favored tool of these Evil Oppressive Bureaucrats.

    Resist these Evil Oppressors and Elect Representatives who will empty the Federal Buildings of bureaucrats and return the ill-gotten lands and real property of the Federal Bureaucracy to the hands of We The People.

    Yes! It can be done! The United States of America was fought for and taken from the oppressive bureaucracy of King George III.

    The oppressive King seeking to eat out our substance now is the Federal Bureaucracy in general and the Internal Revenue Service in particular. The AFLCIO-AFSCME Richard Trumka bossed bureaucracy has become the Sworn Enemy of our Liberty. City-county-state-federal. Every level of government bureaucracy is corrupt and in need of radical reform. That's where We The People come in: it is our turn and our time to Step Up.

    Do not knuckle under to the Fear & Greed that the Internal Revenue Service uses to divide and conquer US: We The People. Do YOU really want to live with a Federal Bureaucrat breathing down your neck for the rest of your life? Obamacare & Obamatax creates and funds 159 new Federal Bureaus. Enough! The time has come to shut'em down! Let's get busy.

    Thank You Daniel Greenfield Sultan Knish for inspiring us to hope and work for the Restoration of Constitutional Liberty in the United States of America!

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  13. No amount of semantical legerdemain on the part of a blackrobe holding lifetime tenure can change the fact that ObamaCare’s individual mandate defiles the very essence of American freedom. John Roberts looked at America with disdain, and said, “If you dress like that, you were asking for it.”

    Great post, Dan.

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  14. Linda Rivera1/7/12

    Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com:

    Supreme Court's Obamacare decision hands federal government unlimited power to force you to spend 100% of your paycheck on things you don't even want.
    Regardless of whether you agree with the fundamentals of

    Obamacare, the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has now ruled the
    federal government has the power to tax Americans into mandatory purchases of private industry products means an end to economic freedom in America. Why? Because it hands the federal government the power to force the American people to buy
    anything the government wants or face tax penalties for refusing to do so. It is the equivalent of announcing a federal monopoly over all private purchasing decisions.
    Thus, the government can force Americans to buy anything it wants by simply characterizing the forced payment as a "tax."

    Perhaps the worst side effect is that Obamacare isn't really about health care at all. It's about protecting a Big Pharma monopoly over medicine; forcing consumers to buy into a system that offers zero coverage for alternative medicine, nutritional therapies, natural
    remedies or the healing arts.It forces consumers to buy into a system of monopoly medicine of drugs and surgery...
    http://www.naturalnews.com/036329_Obamacare_Supreme_Court_economic_freedom.html

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  15. Anonymous1/7/12

    There is no longer an orderly political mechanism by which the Founding values can be restored because the culture has been lost to identity groups who think of themselves as entitled victims. Such folks and their Marxist Pied Pipers have never learned and forgotten, respectively, that all the material goodies which they so take for granted are highly contingent. They depend upon sufficient wealth production by a segment of the population still willing to produce surplus wealth to be redistributed. Reminding statist zealots of this hard, cold fact is like speaking in tongues to the deaf. Thus it is always with idol worshippers, who now worship their own power exercised through the state, redistributing all except that power.

    There is no doubt that we are headed for an economic collapse of unprecedented proportions. Unlike the last depression, we live in a time where the essentials for subsistence are far removed from the bulk of the population and are not stockpiled. Failure in such a complex system will be catastrophic. Food, water, electricity, and gas supplies will become scarce or non-existent. We will have a new dark age, even without the help of a WMD attack(s) from some Judeo/Christian/Secularist-phobic quarter (which must remain unnamed) and that is likely in the works as well.

    Maybe, just maybe, after all that plays out over decades, centuries or a millennium, the true tragic nature of humankind - as it was understood by a much-maligned group of white men of European heritage - will be discovered once again.

    That is, I am afraid, what it will take for this oh-so-entitled culture to reacquaint itself with the contingency of all the material wellbeing it takes so much for granted.

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  16. Anonymous1/7/12

    LOVE IT!!!
    I will post this to facebook, but no one will read it. They are to busy being lazy and entertained. No worries, the government will fix everything.
    BTW, I wish I didn't have to post as anonymous, but it is the easiest way, for now.
    Shalom, Daniel

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  17. Anonymous1/7/12

    "Justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns." ~Plato (c. 424 B.C - 348 B.C.)

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  18. Time to just let it all collapse, and start over.
    Our economy is a house of cards right now.
    I'm starting to pray for a good gust of wind to come along and knock it down....

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  19. See also Bill Whittle's entertaining and thought-provoking youTube on his trip to Thailand.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8vzdFo_cuI

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  20. There is growing decension within the ranks of the military as far up as the Joint Chiefs. Its funny you brought up the 3rd Amendment. there is a grwoing movement, of those of us who have served, or are serving who took an Oath, and we plan on following that Oath as we pledged before God.

    The Oath has three parts to it:
    1.) I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic - I will defend the U.S. Constitution against ALL enemies.
    2.) that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same - I pledge my complete loyalty to the U.S. Constitution.
    3.) and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God. - I will obey the orders of the Commander in Chief, and all Officers superior to me, according to Military law (The U.C.M.J. is subordinate to the Constitution and applies only to members of the Armed Forces).

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  21. Adam2/7/12

    Please notice, that if the Commander in Chief's orders are contradictory to the first two parts, we will not follow those orders. Our main concern currently is the implimentation of Martial Law.

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  22. When we win with GOD's Help we shall just add to all the Oath's the Declaration Of Independence.

    The most IMPORTANT document of MAN.
    We already have all the AUTHORITY we shall ever need.

    Now all we need is GOD's Grace.

    That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

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  23. Great article, Danny boy!
    If I may suggest a correction. You write: Either you volunteer of you get drafted.
    You probably meant "or" you get drafted.
    Otherwise, it's a smashing, to-the-point, right-on Article.
    Thank you.

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  24. I think you could've used for this article the words of the great progressive Justice Louis D. Brandeis, a Jew.
    “The makers of the Constitution conferred the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by all civilized men—the right to be let alone.”

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