I've been reading the Hunger Games Trilogy, and last night, I watched the actual movie with my kids and wife. If you have not heard about the books or the movie, the trilogy deals with a totalitarian government that punishes a rebellion, which happened 74 years go, by forcing each of its 12 districts to pony up two children each, one boy and one girl. The government forces the 24 kids, aged 12 to 18, to fight to the death in a government crafted "Arena" full of lethal choreography and trickery, all designed by the game makers. The government televises and glamorizes the entire event on national television and includes each death scene.
Watching the movie was an experience that I highly recommend for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, whether or not it is a work of fiction, it gives a very real introspection of what totalitarianism can look like. Granted, it may never happen; however, fights to the death are not undocumented, i.e. see the history of the Roman Empire for anecdotal evidence. We also know that governments around the world are guilty of atrocities that "no civilized countries like our own" could ever experience. Of course, it is worth noting that this past week, two Islamic extremists attempted to cut the head off a British soldier in broad daylight while hundreds of onlookers avoided the situation or filmed it at the requests of the thugs.
Back to Totalitarianism. Can anyone be so naive as to think that no government, the least of which might be our own, can resort to totalitarianism? Are we so far removed from the tyranny of King George that we are absolutely certain that it can never happen again? Might we remind ourselves that the "tyranny" of which our Founding Fathers spoke had more to do with "taxation without representation" than about government forces butchering people in the street? If you think you are immune, or if you think the system of checks and balances within our Constitutional Republic is infallibly perfect, then I would hate to pop the bubble of complacency in which you find yourself nesting; however, it might be time to remove the sleeping cap and wake up a little. A system of checks and balances only works in a system in which each of the branches jealously guards their own authority from encroachment by other branches. Checks and balances mean nothing when the politics of complicity begin to play out. Complicity and complacency create a continuous concentration of power into branches of government that become difficult if not impossible to remove.
Here is the verdict: Tyranny is bad. Tyrannical leaders can impose any sort of unjust and merciless circumstances upon the people, and the larger the government, the harder it is to reject the rule. Imagine a country where a large majority of your neighbors work for the government or receive their sustenance from the government. Given the circumstance of you being unjustly accused of something, perhaps for simply speaking your mind, what happens when you need help? Who will come to your aid or stand for you? How many people will reject their meal or jeopardize their own safety for the sake of yours? I dare say that not many will come to your aid unless they simultaneously feel the brunt of the tyranny themselves. Sporadically applied, tyranny is hard to overcome especially when the observational capabilities of the government are so advanced.
John Locke is a classical liberal, political philosopher, and one of his prime tenets is the Right of Revolution. In his tenet, he stated that when a government ceases to govern justly and exists only to benefit itself, it becomes the responsibility of the people to reject its rule, dissolve the social contract, and formulate a new government. Our Founding Fathers implemented within our own Bill of Rights, the right to keep and bear arms, specifically stating that the federal government shall not infringe upon it. The right to keep and bear arms is not meant to hunt and target shoot. During British rule, colonists were not allowed to keep and bear arms without supervision. It is that governmental supervision that defangs the resistance to the point of inability to act. A defenseless population is much more easily contained, is it not?
What can a tyrannical government accomplish? It can accomplish a lot if you happen to be in the government, especially of high echelon. I suppose that if you are part of tyranny, you can guarantee yourself the nicest meals, highest pay rates, best seats in the nicest restaurants, and all the rights and privileges that you can imagine. Of course, all of these positive advantages as shared by the top echelons is borne on the backs of the workers who pay usually inordinate amounts of taxes. Let us not forget about other methods to punish political enemies, the likes of which might just include torture and death by any of the most painful means available.
Back to the Hunger Games movie. Is it unrealistic to think that a tyrannical government can actually force you to donate your children to a death match? Is it unrealistic to believe that a government can mistreat its people by whipping them, hanging them, and publicly humiliating them? Can a government force you at gunpoint to perform acts which you do not want to complete? It really does not matter if it might not happen. I think if any smidgen of tyranny is possible at all, then we should do all that we can to prevent it from ever happening at all. Decentralize the governmental powers, arm yourself for your own protection, jealously guard your freedoms from the government, resist all urges to give up rights even temporarily due to so-called "safety or national security concerns", demand accountability from the government at all levels, refuse to accept cronyism from businesses or politicians, root out corruption among politicians, and above all else, never believe anything the government tells you unless you can see if with your own eyes.
Never accept that which the government states you must take. Reject statism in all forms. Live free and be free. Let freedom ring, and let us teach our children in these ways.
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