The Price of Freedom Is Eternal Vigilance

SEE HERE Thomas Sowell, one of my favorite people tells it like it is. Our leaders are increasingly nothing but orchestrators of eternal emergencies, the crises they need to gain our indulgence as they enslave us. Actually C.S. Lewis talked about this all the way back in 1954 in his inaugural lecture at Cambridge called "de descriptione temporum" loosely, "A description of the times."

Lewis said:"The change is this. In all previous ages that I can think of the principal aim of rulers, except at rare and short intervals, was to keep their subjects quiet, to forestall or extinguish widespread excitement and persuade people to attend quietly to their several occupations. And on the whole their subjects agreed with them. They even prayed (in words that sound curiously old-fashioned) to be able to live "a peaceable life in all godliness and honesty" and "pass their time in rest and quietness". But now the organisation of mass excitement seems to be almost the normal organ of political power. We live in an age of "appeal if drives", and "campaigns". Our rulers have become like schoolmasters and are always demanding "keenness". And you notice that I am guilty of a slight archaism in calling them "rulers". "Leaders" is the modem word. I have suggested elsewhere that this is a deeply significant change of vocabulary. Our demand upon them has changed no less than theirs on us. For of a ruler one asks justice, incorruption, diligence, perhaps clemency; of a leader, dash, initiative, and (I suppose) what people call "magnetism" or "personality"."

We have come somewhat further now. Beyond personality now to crisis mongering. We must turn back the tide or we are quite lost.