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Title: Americans have become “tenant citizens” under COVID-19 lockdowns
Title: Americans have become modern versions of “tenant farmers” under COVID-19 lockdowns
Title: The real virus that threatens America – it’s not COVID-19, it’s socialism
Summary:
- A person is only free if he/she is able to fully use the property they own, and to trade the work of their mind/body for the values that others possess, by both parties’ unforced agreement.
- Americans are told that we are a free people. Yet many of us have now accepted being told, by our public servants — our subservients, whom we hire — what we are allowed to do, where we may go, and with whom we may interact, and how, all backed up by force of law (violence).
- We are being denied the free use of our faculties, and our property, supposedly in order to protect us both from ourselves, and from COVID-19 — even though the actual number of infections & deaths have been a tiny fraction of what the experts, upon whom our public servants rely, predicted.
- Many if not most Americans have docilely accepted the role of tenant farmers, subservient to public servants’ dictates — even though it we citizens who own America, and all governments at all levels, and our national, state and city parks, and the personal property we create or legally acquire.
- Americans who peacefully exercise their natural right to assemble, to speak freely, and to petition our governments for redress of our grievances, are being depicted as “extremists” by many influential, left-wing public servants, and their allies in the news media, the arts and academia.
- Unless Americans peacefully reassert our collective role as the givers of all government power, the owners of all “public property” that we pay for, and begin to responsibly re-open our economy and culture, storefront by storefront, public park by public park, we will continue down the road of national suicide, causing far more death, misery, poverty and conflict than anything that the COVID-19 pandemic could produce.
For generations, Americans have allowed our government-run “educational” system to progressively whitewash out of existence the natural rights of individuals, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. Constitution. The proof of this assertion is abundant; here are several examples (sources here):
- Less than 50% of American adults understand the basic purpose of the Constitution, or can identify even one of their rights under it.
- 71% of American adults are unaware that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land; 85% cannot define “the rule of law.”
- 40% of American adults cannot identify a single right protected by the First Amendment; 21% said the First Amendment contains the “right to own a pet”; 17% said it contains the “right to drive a car.”
- Nearly half of U.S. college graduates don’t know that the U.S. Constitution establishes a separation of powers within the federal government.
- Only 26% of Americans can identify all three branches of the government — a sharp decline from 2011, when 38% could do so.
- Elected officials at all levels in the U.S. are even less literate regarding U.S. history and civics than the general population.
While such facts are shocking to those who cherish freedom and the miracle of America’s Constitutional framework, this is the climax, the fruit that has blossomed from what we’e allowed our schools to do to our children:
83% of U.S. college graduates and 68% of elected officials cannot identify the functional differences between the free market and a command economy.
Let that sink in: The next generation of America’s most “educated” leaders in business, industry, the arts and government, don’t know the difference between a free economy, and communist totalitarianism.
We’ve allowed our children to be taught that there is effectively no limit to government power, supposedly for our own good; that we are not capable of running our own lives, or our own economic affairs. Rather, as Ronald Reagan said in his 1964 speech, “A Time For Choosing,” and in other forms, many times in the following years:
“This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”
The part that Reagan didn’t point out — probably because he felt it was so obvious, it didn’t need to be said — is that what he described is not optional, as in, an individual checking a box to say, “I’m outsourcing the control over my life to the government.” What’s unsaid is that the only way such control is executed is through the use of force, on all Americans, whether they want it or not. For if any American rejects such controls over where he/she is permitted to go, when and how, and with whom he/she is allowed to interact, and under what circumstances, they will be advised that “it is the law.” And if they further refuse, they will be visited by threats — and ultimately, physical violence, by the very government that they are forced to pay to enable.
This may also help explain why so few Americans know that:
- “The Communist Manifesto” is the most-assigned economics textbook in U.S. colleges, assigned more than twice as frequently as any other economics book.
- The number of Millennials who say they approve of communism jumped from 28% in 2018, to 36% in 2019, and 22% think all private property should be abolished (see #2 here).
- 52% of Millennials say they’d rather live in a socialist (46%) or communist (6%) country, vs. 40% why say they prefer to live in a capitalist country (see #1 here).
- 70% of Millennials, and 47% of American adults overall, say they’re likely to vote for a socialist for elective office (see #1 here).
We have allowed ourselves and our children to be transformed, little by little, like the proverbial frog in the pan of water, from a once proud, ruggedly individualistic, independent and self-reliant people, into the role of “tenant farmers.” Since mid-March 2020, we’ve become a people whose normal life actions and possessions are governed not by us, but instead, by tiny groups of public servants, under the auspice that it is they — not us — who own the ground on which we stand, and what we may do there.
If you’ve never heard the term “tenant farmer,” it is defined as:
“a farmer who works land owned by another and pays rent either in cash or in shares of produce”
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“All of history demonstrates that the rights of the people are never lost in one fell swoop. Instead, the process is always a slow erosion, whereby initial emergencies justify previously unthinkable restrictions, which rapidly become normalized and expanded upon by later administrations.”
October 1992’s ominous indicator of where America was heading
On October 15, 1992, freedom-oriented Americans witnessed a jarring indicator of how close we were to completely sacrificing the individualist philosophy on which our national was built, and developed into the world’s most powerful economy.
During a televised town hall debate between the three candidates for president, Governor Bill Clinton, President George H.W. Bush, and businessman Ross Perot, a member of the audience submitted the following question to all three men:
“The focus of my work is domestic mediator, meeting the needs of the children that I work with by ways of their parents, and not the wants of their parents. I ask the three of you how can we as symbolically the children of the future president expect the two of you, the three of you, to meet our needs? The needs in housing, in crime, you name it, as opposed to the wants of your political spin doctors? Can we focus on the issues and not the personalities and the mud?”
To which Gov. Clinton responded:
“I agree with him!”
The complete video of this town hall debate (cue up to 20:40; ends at 24:32) shows that not one of the candidates either challenged or denounced the questioner’s entire premise, or affirming the fact that the entire American system of government — the entire American core philosophy, of individuals being capable and responsible to create and earn what they desire, and need.
“Democratic socialism, to me, is about democratic control of every single facet of our life.”
– Ugo Okere, Democratic candidate for Chicago city council, February 2019, from Chicago Dem Wants Socialism to Have ‘Control of Every Single Facet of Our Life’
This process reached its climax in recent weeks, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, Americans we are no longer legally
Most Americans today have never heard of this term. We have such an abundance of food and food choices, all produced by so few farmers, as compared to a hundred years ago, whom most of us never see, that food has become a sort of given: The sun rises in the east, water flows downhill, and if you’re hungry, just go to a store or restaurant and buy food (or, if you’re poor, go to the food bank).
The biggest single factor that enabled American farmers to become the most productive in the world, starting in the late 19th century, was the mostly full application of capitalism, aka economic freedom, and the right to own and trade one’s own property, with that of others. Similarly, makers of farm equipment, agricultural technology, and people in innumerable other occupational specializations developed and offered their unique products or services to the farmer. Those with superior offerings prospered; those with inferior ones did not. And the system kept rewarding both farmers, and technology and service providers, who helped make America’s food supply and distribution systems the most efficient in the world.
It all was made possible, at a philosophical level, by the recognition that for a human being to thrive, he or she must be free to function, to reach, to take chances, to compete in the unsentimental marketplace of products and services, and to deal with his or her fellow citizens as both property owners and traders. Capitalism is the only system that recognizes that the work of one’s brain, as much as the work of one’s body, is that person’s property — unless he/she trades it for the values of another, such as money, in the context of a job.
The tenant farmer exchanged his/her
Michigan’s Whitmer says armed protesters displayed ‘worst racism and awful parts’ of US history, by Gretchen Whitmer, Fox News, May 3, 2020.