Affluent Slaves

With the commencement of the 2004 Republican National Convention, the Houston Chronicle announced today that "after four years of keeping conservatives content," George W. Bush and the national leadership of the Republican Party shall henceforth be distancing themselves from "conservatives" in an effort to woo the votes of "moderates" and "independents."

The Chronicle (and untold other media outlets), while invoking these tired and ambiguous labels, takes care to sidestep the truth about the Bush administration -- and its record vis-á-vis the U.S. Constitution -- just as adroitly as the administration itself has done.

The so-called "conservatives" with whose contentment Bush is credited apparently favor ever-increasing federal spending, deficits, and national debt. They prefer that their medication choices (and others') be controlled by a socialist bureaucracy, instead of any free market alternatives.

These "conservatives" are so fed up with the Constitution's protection of their right to free speech -- and so enamored with the gang of political opportunists whose heels are presently dug in on Capital Hill -- that they're refreshingly pleased to be muzzled by their federal government for a full 60 days leading up to any federal election -- the truth about any incumbent's voting record or political agenda be damned.

And they so abhor the right to self defense guaranteed in the 2nd Amendment that they're quite "content" with a president who would happily renew the (entirely ineffective) Clinton "assault weapon" ban, were it to arrive at his desk for a signature.

Oh, and these same "conservatives" delight in the expenditure of untold billions of their children's and grandchildren's wealth on an endless string of imperialistic (albeit doomed to failure, every one of them) adventures abroad in "nation building" and "tyrant toppling," while at home, U.S. borders welcome all manner of criminal, "terrorist," and welfare aspirant among the "undocumented."

This, apparently, is what a "content conservative" is today, as defined by the Bush administration and the American Press.

Supposedly, if you don't like leftist (i.e., "liberal") socialist statism, your only alternative (so long as you remain paralyzed by your own misguided belief that the two-party system is all that matters) is "conservative" socialist statism. And now Bush apparently wants to bring into the Republican fold those who subscribe to some brand of "moderate" or "independent" socialist statism.

Has it really come to this? Do so very few actually care about real freedom any more that the very principles of liberty upon which this nation was once founded have vanished from the political radar screen?

Robert Higgs, of The Independent Institute, in the introduction of his recent book Against Leviathan, suggests rather lucidly that the chief reason why the U.S. government has become such a swollen collectivist monster is that "so few people in the United States today really give a damn about living as free men and women," having chosen to "label their servitude as freedom and to concentrate on enjoying the creature comforts that the government still permits them to possess. They may be slaves, but they are affluent slaves, and that condition is good enough for them."

Mr. Higgs appears to have hit the nail on the head. This ugly truth stands as a perpetual indictment of the historically and politically ignorant, spineless, self-serving character of the American People today, the price of whose "contentment" will ultimately be the slavery of us all and innumerable generations after us.