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What would Bill Buckley say? It is hard to believe that great and articulate thorn in the side of the left, William Buckley, has been gone for four years. What would he think of what has transpired since? A friend of his discusses that question and gives us a clarion call of resistance from the great man’s own words:
“I will not,” Bill wrote,
cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.
To which I will only add, Amen.
Resistance is not futile. It only takes 15% of a population opting out to bring any overbearing state to its knees. We only need a 15% Galt factor to completely spike the socialist enterprise.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Nice words. (I could do without the religious component, but that was Buckley’s signature style. He enjoyed rubbing his Catholicism in the face of his opponents at a time when religion was out of fashion.) But note that he talks about not ceding more power to the government et al, not about taking power away from it. I’m sure that’s not accidental (he was a careful writer). WFB was never a libertarian; he was a conservative Republican, perfectly happy with government power in the areas he approved of.
15% ? What are you talking about?
America has 48% of the country not working right now, and it chugs along.
Are you talking about another 15% of the whole on top of the unemployed / retired / imprisoned, or 15% of the fraction that contributes to the gross national product, or some other calculation?
I knew it wouldn’t take long….. In 1964, he (Buckley) wrote of “her desiccated philosophy’s conclusive incompatibility with the conservative’s emphasis on transcendence, intellectual and moral,” as well as “the incongruity of tone, that hard, schematic, implacable, unyielding, dogmatism that is in itself intrinsically objectionable, whether it comes from the mouth of Ehrenburg, Savonarola–or Ayn Rand.”[39]
Buckley had his faults – so do all of us.
But he did resist Progressivism (which MUST end in totalitarianism), both in the United States and around the world.
He did not believe in giving in to evil (which the Progressives call “history” and insist we must submit “adjust” to it), he believed in getting in its way – right in the road in front of it. And fighing back against it – not just sitting there waiting to get knocked flat.
However, I have no idea what the 15% opting out would bring the state to its knees thing is about.
Taxes can be collected without cooperation – they really can. And resisters can be tossed in jail (although they do not even need to be, just collect the money from their bank accounts, and laugh at their dissent – as I am sure Jon Stewart and other “rebel” establishment comics would laugh, and get the young laughing also).
And if people choose not to work (but also not to accept government benefits) they will starve to death – so they would not be around to vote.
Which I am sure would please Comrade Barack no end.
Passive resistance only works against a nonruthless enemy.
And the American government (at least in regards to conservatives and libertarians) is ruthless – ruthless to its core.
And the media (including Hollywood and so on) would get people cheering the punishment of the evil rich “fat cats”.
“But people like Tom Hanks and Harvey W. are rich”
That will not really occur to them – till it is too late.