The Mind of a Statist

By Tim Stebbins

Let’s begin with a simple axiom:

“The mind of a statist is impervious to the logic of liberty. “

Because that is true, nothing that follows will penetrate the mental armor of a statist. I don’t write for them because they will raise the drawbridge and prepare to defend the walls of the prison they have built for themselves. I write for my people and their right to the same peace and happiness everyone else desires.

What then, is a statist?

A statist believes that human nature requires direction and control outside and apart from the hard-won deposit of human knowledge available to any reasoning human being. A statist lives in Orwell’s eternal present. An ever shifting, ever changing narrative that is interesting only in its immense tediousness.

A normal, healthy person lives in the present, hopes in the future, and looks to the past to heal the rootlessness of the modern heart. A statist gnaws on that sense of rootlessness and holds up the central power as its healing balm.

“We’ll take care of everything,” they say. “Just hand over your free will as you leave, and mind you don’t cause any trouble cuz we’ll come getcha in the middle of the night.”

A statist is the harbinger of the greater, more complete tyranny to follow. He is not the tyrant. He is the tyrant’s footstool. On the back of a statist, the tyrant rests his feet.

We all come from somewhere and somewhen, but we are where we are and when we are, because of all those who came before us. We cannot escape our ancestors, nor should we want to. There is immense value in honoring and emulating the heroes of our past. We make from these heroes the myths that sustain us as a people. This is not something to be mocked and derided. It is something to be protected and guarded. The statist would see our ties to the past severed so we are left drifting, without mooring, without safe harbor. A target for every passing political whim dreamed up by the purveyors of the pleasures of serfdom:

“You will own nothing and be happy!”

In the mind of a statist, cutting off a people from their roots is a primary tool to gain leverage over the prerogatives of family. Their bureaucracy becomes the provider, standing in the place once reserved for kin and clan. They seek the perfecting of man, no matter how many men must die to achieve the level of tyranny appropriate to the building and administering of their collective Camelot. To horribly misquote King Arthur in an old movie:

“It is a dream they have.”

There are still many who would oppose the rule of the sort of men I’m describing. Such people draw knowledge and understanding from certain, select contemporaries and, more importantly, from our ancestors. Think of it as getting hit in the face with a bucket of cold water from the one and drawing a cool bucket of well-water to slake your thirst from the other. I’ll leave you, dear reader, to decide which is which.

Certainly, it is imperative that we think for ourselves, but why should we not draw upon the accumulated knowledge of the past in order to temper the passions of the present? Free men must always be searching for a path to an unassailable liberty of thought, speech, and yes, of action, insofar as that action does not proscribe, or harmfully diminish the liberty of another.

Of course, liberty must have boundaries, lest it devolve into anarchy (not the good kind), so let us add a needed modifier. Ordered liberty is what every reasonable man should seek, both in his own life and in the greater life of the Republic. Liberty is not license and freedom is not an excuse for deviancy, and thuggery. So let us not be so shallow as to think that the degradation of our culture is anything other than a direct attack upon us as a people.

Now, we must have at least a passing definition of liberty to further lubricate the discussion. In one sense, Liberty can be expressed as a negative, i.e., no human being possesses the liberty to harm another except in defense of one’s life or the lives of others. It can also, obviously, be expressed in its more common positive forms. Liberty is the freedom to live one’s life as expansively as they wish (see only the limitation noted above.)

Ordered Liberty is all those things, but it is more than that. Ordered Liberty is the freedom to not live in fear of one’s government or its enforcers. Ordered Liberty is the freedom to dissent as much or as little as one wishes. Ordered Liberty is freedom from worry about the potential consequences of opposing the powers that be. Ordered Liberty is stoplights and traffic signs, and “rules of the road.” Ordered Liberty is the best of things.

Dare I invoke the Deity to save us from democracy and return to us the Republic we were bequeathed. We have done much to squander that gift. We have let fear take root in the American heart, and as it grows, it stifles all that is good in a man. Rest assured; I feel it too. It has taken root in my own heart. I battle it every day. Writing helps, but the cascade of bad is almost too much to bear. One thing, though, I know for certain. Solzhenitsyn was right: Fear is teaching us to not love our liberty enough. It will be axe handles and fireplace pokers later if we do not, somehow, arrest this headlong descent into serfdom.

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