How Long Will You Live Like A Slave?

How long will you live like a slave?

Last year, Governor Andrew Cuomo empanelled the Moreland Commission to investigate corruption in State government. In April, he summarily and abruptly disbanded the commission.  When questioned about it, Cuomo flatly state:  “I can appoint it.  I can disband it.  I can appoint you.  I can un-appoint you tomorrow.  I can’t ‘interfere’ with it because it is mine.”  

This imperious prerogative of the New York State governor is an example of the growing slavery to government we are experiencing.  This slavery erodes civil liberties, suppresses initiative, stifles unique expression and robs work product.

Yeah…I know the difference between slavery under overreaching government and that of the chattel slavery of pre-Civil War America, religious-based slave-trade in Africa, indentured caste slavery in Asia and the slavery of human trafficking related to exploitation of immigrants.  But the slavery of statism and the more overt forms of slavery both start from the premise that human dignity and personal liberties can be subject to a dominating force.

The slavery I speak is "slavery" by government that attempts to collectivize thought and the engines of production to channel personal initiatives to the goal of sustaining the power of the state.  We become subjects of state-sponsored goals rather than individuals capable of carving personal destinies.  We are asked, then forced, to surrender civil liberties in the interest of state security and the erstwhile equal treatment of the commonwealth. 

How is the slide towards state-based "slavery" demonstrated?  The examples are legion:

• Medical care is collectivized through the Affordable Healthcare Act.
• Privacy liberties are assailed under spying on         civilians by the National Security Agency and         through measures of the so-called Patriot             Act.  Aggressive and sometimes disrespectful         shakedowns by TSA agents denigrates personal   privacy liberties, and encumbers free passage of   travel, as well.  Warrantless searches are             permitted on persons and vehicles by police in a   growing number of jurisdictions.
• The right to personal property is eroded by over-broad use of eminent domain and unreasonably heavy burdens imposed by of environmental and other administrative agency rules.
• Local sovereignty is undermined by increasing federalization of state penal codes.  Schools and licensing agencies, long a bastion of home rule, fall increasingly under federal rules, Congress, the branch of government historically most accountable to the people, is weakened by the plethora of administrative agencies, the use of executive fiat and the trend towards judicial activism in which local laws reflecting the people’s will are disregarded.
• Civilians are disarmed for personal protection by unconstitutionally-broad gun control.  Meanwhile, every administrative agency of the federal government is being heavily armed for domestic coercion and compliance.
• Religious expression is suppressed by exaggerated interpretation of the separation clause of the first amendment at the expense of the free exercise clause.  Religious expression is squeezed from the public forum.  The Health and Human Service mandate compels religious institutions to violate conscience and doctrine in an effort for force compliance to provisions of the Affordable Healthcare Act.
• Free thought is hamstrung by the ever-shifting standards of runaway political-correctness imposed by an oligarchy of benighted social engineers reckless in their exposing private musings of individuals, regardless of the consequences to a person’s reputation, free association and property interests.
• Hate speech statutes create a dangerous tool for prosecution by its per se imputing of aggravated guilt by thought.  Division is fomented by class-, gender-, and race-baiting.  The ground zero of choice and privacy, sexuality, suddenly becomes a “protected class.”  The fertile field of parody, satire, free expression and social commentary is rendered arid by “thought policing.”
• The elevation of animal’s rights comes at the expense of human civil rights, so often.
• The proliferation of laws stymies initiative and makes citizens subjects.  The Roman historian Tacitus reminds us “The more corrupt the stats, the more numerous the laws.”
• The only universally-accepted role of government, to protect us from foreign aggression, is squandered. Dangerous foreign policy is made in deference to China’s credit and Arabia’s oil.  One-sided arms agreements with Russia revives the worst fears of the Cold War era.  Border security is laughably lax.
• And of course, Taxes:  Spiraling government spending puts us on the hook for suffocating tax burden.  Chief Justice John Marshall in McCullock v. Maryland stated “That the power to tax involves the power to destroy; that the power to destroy may defeat and render useless the power to cerate…” Add the IRS’s targeting groups for selected enforcement because of professed ideology and you see the power to destroy.

The slide towards slavery to state is not just seen on national and state levels.  Local governments join the trend by local officials' treating their jurisdictions as little feudal states for their own profit and power and that of their connected families.  This is seen by disastrously-high taxing, the endless cult of public school spending with their anti-bully faux-egalitarian agenda, zoning board overrules of the public’s desires, per se crimes such as the red-light camera and social host laws which play havoc with the fifth and sixth amendment, bully cops, hidden cameras, patronage and the endless cult of connected “famous families” and the inordinate support of public workers and their benefits on the backs of producers.  Independent leverage for local governance is stifled by being on the “bread-line” for federal and state grants that dictate a local jurisdiction’s course of governance by imposing rules if one wants the money.  This includes the rush for Common Core in the schools, wanting to get a piece of the Head Start money.  

Local government, especially on Long Island, has created a “slave class” in which  producers are at the beck of local leaders to work to support the government and its apparatchik of civil servants and connected families. These big fish in small ponds, in effect, turn their “Mayberries into mayhem.”

The government on all levels is no longer “servant.”  The people are being stacked to serve the government.  And there has not been a champion to stop the trend towards slavery to the state.  The Democrat Party, which as been historically “liberal” has abandoned its classical liberal theory for collectivist-oriented government overreach to achieve social goals.  They are the neo-fascists now.  Ironically, a new generation of libertarians is rising up within the Republican Party.  But while the establishment GOP shows feckless temerity and capitulation to expanding government, the libertarian voices lack the support of major party platform and pulpit to be realistically effective.

We work too hard to let our work-product and dreams become buttresses to support a benighted ruling class of irresponsible elected and appointed “leaders.”

How long will you live like a slave?  I am not asking rhetorically.  Some of you might be comfortable with statist trends.  Some may object.  Some may not comply.  Some may overtly resist.  As for me, I will not comply and I will resist by whatever means are commensurate to the liberty taken by the state. 

What will you do?  How long will you live as a slave?