This is my response to a blog post by Jason Wharton that made the front page of Digg recently. As his post was (obviously) heavy with politics and religion, so too will mine. Expect colorful analogies and strong metaphors ahead.

Although I am not a supporter of Ron Paul or any of the other Republican candidates, I found in your post a lot to agree with. You quoted some of my favorite parts of the Bible, for starters. However, I seem to have learned a different lesson: help others, love everybody, and beware the wolves that would disrupt the previous two lessons.

I do not think that the laissez-faire philosophy preached by Ron Paul helps any of this.

In a time when the wolves of exploitation and the snakes of corruption are breeding and biting like never before, how can a “let’s turn a blind eye and let things play out, let’s not interfere” philosophy be the answer? That’s not a solution, that’s a surrender! The democratic system is a gift from God that lets us work together to create a society where the wolves and the snakes power can be limited.

But we were fooled. “Get the government off our backs!” whispered the snakes back in Reagan’s day, and we rallied behind them. It was a pretty catchy slogan after all, seductive enough to make us forget that life was pretty decent and the Bill of Rights was doing a pretty good job of that. We stripped away the laws and rules that our democratic system had produced, thinking that we were being more democratic and free for doing so. “The market will cure itself of anything bad that happens!” whispered the wolves, offering to hold for us the shield we had built to keep them back while licking their teeth.

We allowed the corrupt and the shameless to fool us into thinking that the democratic system was an impediment to liberty, and so we turned on the very thing that protected our freedom from those who would manipulate and abuse us.

We thanked the wolves and the snakes as they began to eat us for protecting the “right” of the wolf and snake to eat us. But of course, we keep hearing the same thing. “The government is on your backs! Repeal the laws and regulations that democracy produced, because what is good for the corporations is good for you!” And so they chewed. “Corporate regulations mean that you don’t have any rights either!” And so they swallowed.

The corporations have gone too far though lately. They’ve eaten too much, and we’ve finally glimpsed what’s going on. People have begun to see that they’ve managed to sneak into the government. For instance, all I need to say is “Oil” and the word “Corruption” probably comes to your mind, or perhaps if I say “Environment” the word “Crisis” flickers through your thoughts.

The solution is to restore the vibrant democracy that America once had. Their rights stop where mine start, and that is where regulations come in. Let’s work together. Let’s use that democratic system our Founding Fathers gave us to stand up for ourselves again, together. Let us never again cease the fight against evil with the belief that evil will fight itself.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 12:53 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.