Interesting little article from a private journal from 1962.

Here’s an interesting little article from a private journal from 1962. The author is long dead. But what he foresaw is utterly relevant:

H. Verlan Andersen
Personal Journal, 1962

When the people commence to look to the federal government for their support, and if they don’t receive what they feel they are entitled to, they will strike against the power which is withholding that to which they consider themselves entitled. Just as in times past, men have struck against the companies who gave them jobs and provided them with a livelihood when they felt they were entitled to higher wages or shorter hours.

In both cases the recipients are not grateful for what they are receiving. They are angry because it isn’t more. The difference lies in this: When the strike is against a private company there is an independent unbiased police force to maintain peace and arbitrate the case in court, but where the government is one of the parties to the dispute there is no appeal to anything except force.

The employees can come to hate the government and its officers just as they come to hate the company and its officers when the law is not based upon moral principle. When the law can no longer appeal to either reason or justice, and where it is nothing more than a power which takes what is available and dispenses it with an arbitrary hand, with no fundamental principle to guide it in saying how much is to be given to which group, people lose respect for such a law and the police power which enforces it. No appeal to justice, reason, or compassion will prove effective. The people who are the backbone of civilized nations—the thrifty, hardworking self-respecting independent honest class—cannot respect such a law.

Where the right of private property is protected man is encouraged to look to himself to supply his wants. He is even forced to this just as nature and nature’s God decreed: Thou shalt eat thy bread by the sweat of the face. But when government announces that it will now see to it that his wants are supplied, he no longer feels the need to rely upon his own brains and body. That man loses respect for the rights of others. He looks to the use of force to provide for his needs. He looks to force which takes from others what they have created, and the more he is pampered the more he demands. He comes to believe what the government tells him: That there are no property rights which may not be invaded to provide for his wants. He no longer regards it as necessary to conserve and limit his desires or to save and provide for the future. In our complex economy this is the worst possible attitude, for when it breaks down the suffering will be most intense.

When a government encourages and advocates the belief that force may be used by groups, acting together through government to despoil others of their property, the reliance upon force becomes accepted. As the reliance upon force becomes accepted and as the numbers increase who depend upon government largesse, the greater becomes the problem of restraining this group when government can no longer supply their demands. The government must resort to force to keep them in place when their demands reach that point (which they soon will), where it is impossible to give them what they ask. Civil war will occur just as it did in Rome.

There are always large numbers in any society who are industrious and thrifty and who respect the rights of others to own and control property. These people know within themselves that it is morally wrong for the government to take from them the fruits of their own labors and saving practices and give to those who won’t work and won’t save. As the immoral practice of government grows, disrespect for law also grows. They no longer can be counted on to uphold and obey a law they know is immoral and is at variance with their conscience. The foundation of any stable government is respect and voluntary obedience by the masses of the people. When this is destroyed, free government is no longer possible and dictatorship becomes the only answer. Such a form of government must resort to a policy of foreign war to keep the people united in any respect. They must conduct a war against some real or imagined foreign government and cry danger in order to get any support.

In such a government only the corrupt will accept positions of responsibility, or those who are so blind that they are unable to see the perversion of government. Such a group will not scruple to stay in power. The love of power becomes the dominant aim in their lives. No means is too devious or too reprehensible. They will use force, lies, bribery, murder, and imprisonment to hold their opponents in check.

The loss of political and economic freedom is an inevitable consequence of socialism. Self-government becomes impossible because centralized planning displaces all local planning. As immorality grows apace, the people are unable to act in concert in sufficient numbers to put respectable and moral men in office. Each group is striving to protect its own selfish and government protected interests. Any man who stands up and says this is all wrong is vilified, maligned, and literally torn to pieces by the mobs who want government to continue to protect their labor monopoly, business monopoly, subsidy, welfare check, etc.

The moral element, seeing that it is impossible to restore government to its proper function, begins to plot its violent overthrow. This is the only recourse they have. Appeal to the ballot box is futile. Death is preferable to slavery to them. If there are no moral reference points, then government becomes nothing more than an instrument of force which treats man as if he were just another beast of burden. Not only does the government presume to own and control all land and natural resources, but it arrogates unto itself the power to treat each citizen’s labor as its own, to dispose of as it pleases, and even to direct what labor shall be performed.

—H. Verlan Andersen (1914 – 1992)

A bit about writing…

So, a bit about writing here, and sort of off the cuff. First of all, I’m working on a couple (or actually several) books at once. But, over the last few weeks and especially the last few days, something else seems to be intruding into my space. I suppose it’s another project of sorts, but I think it’s actually a series, if anything. It’s still unnamed, I don’t know any of the character’s names, I’m unsure of the locations, and I’m only partially sure of one thing—this will be action-adventure/mystery, but in a different format than I’ve ever attempted. It has the feeling of third-person omniscient. A number of factors seem to be coming together in my mind, and really, instead of these being full-blown images, they’re rather more like colors and lumps of emotion, and distant, indistinct voices, much like a softball game going on so far across the park that you don’t know who’s winning or losing and couldn’t begin to care, you’re simply sort of glad there’s a game going on and people are having a good time. Today, I was in Sallie’s bathroom, and she has this huge frosted window. The amorphous image and the colors were not unlike a painting that she did a few years back—one of my favorites among her myriad wonderful paintings, and I was compelled to snap an image of both, since both were available. (I’m showing you both images below.) Anyway, that’s my long way of saying that the idea is still in its early gestation stages and it’s sort of like those two pictures—the window and the painting. Another thing that happened today was that I was on ebay (which is another awful habit of mine, since I have WAY too many books and other things) and it kind of came in from left field—I remembered the 1968 publication (or rather, the re-publication from 1902) of Howard Pyle’s Robin Hood, with it’s green cover and its long, double-columned pages, lavish with pen and ink illustrations throughout. Well, I did an ebay search and bought the damned thing, the same one I had when I was a kid! Another thing I started doing was to search for the old Doc Savage paperbacks and pulps. I decided not to buy any more of those (I have more than a hundred already), but even those images stayed with me. And I won’t begin to go into the hundreds of other things flitting through this little inner space known as the mind of yours truly, but suffice it to say, there’s a whole lot more to it than these few scant elements. So I do know this: it will be action and adventure, it will be in third person (as opposed to the Bill Travis 1st person viewpoint), it will be a team of heroes instead of just the one, it will be righting wrongs and punishing evil-doers and generally supporting the good guys and exacting vengeance upon the bad ones, and it will be in modern times. And that’s about all I know. It does feel, however, like there’s a volcano underneath my feet, ready to explode. I can feel the ground deformation, I can smell the sulphur dioxide. And I’m prepping for a rocket ride. I guess that’s all I wanted to say.

 

A Rant On The World We Live In.

[NOTE: This is the closest I’ll ever come to an out-and-out rant, I promise]

A word about the world we live in and a little different perspective on things. For instance, we see and hear quite a bit out there about “police brutality this” and blah blah blah. Well, I’m sure some of it is even true. Sure, some people go to extremes. They get in the heat of the moment and they go a bit overboard, or even quite a bit overboard. But those are the extremes, and let me tell you, they’re not as common as we’re being led to believe. I’ve known quite a few police in my time, and I have found them to be, by and large, terrifically honest, hard-working and diligent people. They have to be to wear that badge for very long, or at least wear it well.

               So, while there may be a few instances where things get out of hand and go badly rather quickly (and we’ve all been both assaulted and insulted by the various videos people are posting showing how bad everything is), I propose something new that may help the matter. Let’s–as a people–start reporting it whenever an officer helps someone. Let’s let them know that we think it’s great they saved a life, that they stopped a burglary in progress, that they helped an old woman change a flat tire on the side of the road. You know, many of the American Indian tribes of yesteryear would train their children early on by encouraging every action they saw that was a good and proper action, and they frowned and turned away in disfavor whenever they saw questionable behavior. Now, I know these fine men and women are not children, but the principle is a good one. The worse thing you can do to someone is withdraw your support. I don’t want my local police feeling as though they’ve been abandoned by us. Why aren’t we getting behind them and encouraging their good deeds? How else are they going to continue to do them if we don’t? It’s expecting a great deal out of an individual to risk his or her life for meager pay and…no thanks from the people they are protecting. So, let’s all chill a bit. And let’s restore their faith in us. I think we’ll find it will come back around to us. When we need them, they’ll be there, and we’ll be so glad they came. That’s all I’ve got to say on that.