SWGA Politics

The Opiate Of The Masses

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. –Karl Marx

Those words were written in the middle of the 19th century, when people turned to religion for their every need. I hold that we could replace “religion” with “government” and thus update the quote to the 21st century.

People today turn to government for their every need and desire. And it isn’t just those “evil” entitlement programs that THOSE people use that are the problem. No, “normal”, every day people also turn to government for their needs and desires too. Sign ordinances are a prime example. Someone doesn’t like the way a particular business’ sign looks, so they go to their local government to have that sign banned. Or they don’t like what a book says, so they have it banned from their local library. Or they are afraid of “radicals”, so they ban a church from buying land to expand. Or they don’t like the smell of cigarettes, so they have them banned from every place imaginable. Or they don’t like a particular group getting married, so they put laws in place preventing it. Or some people can’t afford healthcare, so they put laws in place that make healthcare a “free” government service. They think they find freedom in these actions, yet they are only feeling the illusory affects of the opiate called government.

I’m told that there are some opiates that are so powerful that once a person is addicted to them – which can occur after the first use – that to suddenly stop using these drugs would literally kill the person. We are in a similar position today with government involvement in our lives. If some Libertarians had their ideologically-pure ways and un-Constitutional and un-just government programs were stopped immediately, there truly would be chaos and people would die.

That is why, like with true opiates, we must work to gradually reduce these involvements. We work for incremental cessation, knowing that eventually we will get things completely stopped. It is why we call for loosening of regulations such as sign ordinances, rather than outright repealing them. It is why we call for the end of specific aspects of programs such as Social Security and Medicaid rather than outright ending those programs completely. It is why we urge volunteer community effort to build public parks rather than opposing public parks completely. The abolition of the opiate from the system is the eventual goal, but we know we must not kill the user in the process.

You see, we want people to enjoy true freedom, not just the illusory freedom promised by the next hit from the opiate of government. We want them to experience the wondrous exhilarating highs possible only with true self determination rather than the fake “high” promised with the opiate of government. We want them to face the lows of failing on your own with the hope of building yourself back up rather than the despair caused by being trapped in that low by the very drug that brought you there.

So we work tirelessly, year by year, month by month, day by day, hour by hour, second by second, to reduce the amount of opiate in the patient’s system. To reduce both their desire for it and their actual need for it. Because one day, we can get it out of their system completely and allow them to experience the real world in its entire splendor.

Without the opiate of government.