The Real Communicable Disease
Deborah Venable
01/16/11
I’d
like to think that ignorance, stupidity, and apathy are not “catching” as we
used to say in the old days. They are
diseases, though, and unfortunately they also must be communicable.
They
spread like wildfire in an increasingly so-called educated, sophisticated, and
politically correct society. Symptoms
might include an overwhelming desire to preach tolerance from a pulpit of
intolerance, compromise from a philosophy of rigidity, charity and justice from
the tongues of liars. Sufferers feel
sick with rage when confronted with evidence of their own denial of truth. The more they are forced to face that truth,
the deeper they sink into their own sickness.
There is no proof that can be presented which will ease these
symptoms. The disease resists treatment
as it happily infests the minds and bodies of an otherwise healthy collective.
Therein
lies the key to survival of these highly communicable diseases.
Breaking
away from the collective dictates of political correctness is the cure for what
ails. Individual thinking,
investigating, and learning provide the cure and the inoculation against this
particular pandemic.
Frenchman,
Frederic Bastiat, wrote a book called, “The Law” published sometime in the
middle of the 19th century. The second
edition, transcribed from French, was first published in 1998 and several
reprints have occurred since then.
Bastiat recognized that the “greatest single threat to liberty was
government.” Since we are supposed to
be a self-governing society, I would extend that definition of threat to
include any collective that considers its rights more important that those of
the individual.
The
book is well worth the read and can be found quite easily if you look for
it. Here is a small excerpt – actually
the very end of the book:
My attitude toward all other persons is well
illustrated by this story from a celebrated traveler: He arrived one day in the
midst of a tribe of savages, where a child had just been born. A crowd of
soothsayers, magicians, and quacks—armed with rings, hooks, and
cords—surrounded it. One said: “This child will never smell the perfume of a
peace-pipe unless I stretch his nostrils.” Another said: “He will never be able
to hear unless I draw his ear-lobes down to his shoulders.” A third said: “He
will never see the sunshine unless I slant his eyes.” Another said: “He will
never stand upright unless I bend his legs.” A fifth said: “He will never learn
to think unless I flatten his skull.”
“Stop,” cried the traveler. “What God does is
well done. Do not claim to know more than He. God has given organs to this
frail creature; let them develop and grow strong by exercise, use, experience,
and liberty.”
Let Us Now Try Liberty
God has given to men all that is necessary for
them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well as a
human form. And these social organs of persons are so constituted that they
will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty. Away, then,
with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers!
Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental
administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs,
their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank
monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by
taxation, and their pious moralizations! And now that the legislators and
do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they
finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try
liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.
Ignorance,
stupidity, and apathy – communicable diseases all – but the real communicable
disease is resistance and aversion to hearing and seeing truth when it is right
in front of you.