Their Tactics Cannot Be Used Against Them

I've seen people suggest in several places that we ought to visit upon the Statist the same sort of incremental resistance to their tyranny as they employed to steal our freedoms. The reason we can't act like them is not because such dishonesty and duplicity is wrong, it is because our adversaries will not permit it. They know where they are headed, but will always deny their real ends. A number of us will surmise their ends and attempt to convince the more gullible, but you and I do not own the big megaphones that they own.

But it is far worse than that. There are, to use a precise term, modern casuists in the ranks of our adversaries. These are what you would better recognize by the label "true believers." What happens when the veil falls from their eyes and they see the truth?

The leaders of the avante-garde:
With the radical Left, anyone who tells the mob "hey wait a minute. You're doing it wrong." or "you're going in the wrong direction," or "this is not what we were seeking," is subject to sudden and violent termination for the sin of being a counterrevolutionary. Whatever their actual sins, Robespierre and Trotsky are probably good examples. What was there in power did not need them any longer -- they had outlived their usefulness.

The strategic leaders:
The "Progressives" (as the Jacobins before them) had the appearance of being the rational planners. The radical Left criticized the established order, raised the objections to whatever injustice in the news they could capitalize upon, and with their often violent demonstrations, pushed the envelope of what became tolerable public discussion. All the while the nice sounding and popular "Progressives" like Theodore Roosevelt would stage pleas for leniency to protect the Marxists or anarchists from answering fully to the law for their lawlessness. Those who quite often wanted nothing more than have the miscreants answer for their lawlessness were labeled as reactionaries, no doubt aided by the image painted of the men who reacted in self defense but painted by the media as acting outside the law. Seeing the lies with which today's media has painted both the TEA party and Occupy groups, and knowing of the yellow journalism of the time, I think I'm on firm ground with this speculation.

The pattern to power repeated:
But what of it? Well, it was because the "Progressives" could hide their long range plans and simply repeatedly call for cooler heads to reign, that the Leftward march into and throughout our institutions could be facilitated. They gained one niggling foothold after the other until, voilâ, there we have all sorts of radicals in the Dem party and Progressives Incrementalists in the GOP, and the American equivalent of the Roman Leftist known as Marius sitting in the Oval Office for at least 12 years and maybe more. (We may be at the point of bloody counter-revolution as Ancient Rome under Sulla. But I cannot see how that is any real answer. What will prevent a strong man dictator to come out the other side as happened to the hapless patriotic republicans of Ancient Rome?)

We simply cannot duplicate the actions of the Incrementalists:
But this is why we cannot mimic the actions of the Incrementalists in how they undermined our government. People in our government and in society at large, responded to pressure to allow that the Incrementals were well meaning, so we ought to tolerate their simple requests. Don't punish the radicals too harshly, and allow for little compromises with the radicals. Give in a little and let's see what happens; if their ideas fail, we end the experiment and go back to the way things were -- what's the harm in that? Tolerance, that's the ticket. Do unto others as you would have done unto you.

Like I said at the top: Can you see that being tolerated within in a Statist system? Argue against the top down diktat and find yourself in reeducation camp, sedated under heavy drugs as a mental case, or sent off to the gulags as a counter-revolutionary.

I've seen people suggest in several places that we ought to visit upon the Statist the same sort of incremental resistance to their tyranny as they employed to steal our freedoms. It cannot work that way. And this was why.

Cross-posted at Crusader Rabbit.