I used to drive a stretch of highway where the speed limit was routinely flouted by a wide margin. Even when there were radar traps.
The penny finally dropped: this allowed the police to arbitrarily stop anyone. If you’re speeding, you’re breaking the law. If you’re going the speed limit, you’re “behaving suspiciously”.
Now it was a known drug route, so maybe the people they were stopping needed stopping. But maybe they didn’t.
Are we de-evolving, do you think? Like the whole infantalization (is that even a word?) of adults, or this next generation? I mean, I know neurological damage is my schtick, but it’s useful for comparisons. Like I have to lay out specific rules for my autistic kids. Like, “I can’t believe I have to say this, but no, do not open your window and pee out the window to the front yard.” (Maybe that’s just boys, haha.) So I have to make a rule not to pee anywhere but the toilet, because they simply do not grasp the nuance between peeing in the backyard real quick so you can keep playing, to dropping your pants at a busy waterfall in the mountains and peeing in the water in front of 200 startled hikers. Have we taken so much of the actual thinking out of life that people really are de-evolving into a more childlike approach to norms and structure?
You mean the moment I deleted the comment because I suddenly thought I shouldn’t be revealing my kids’ bathroom habits like that, and then changed my mind? 😂
By the same token, totalitarianism happens when every single regulation is treated as unbreakable under any circumstances, with absolutely no latitude for interpretation given to either enforcers or enforcees. That, combined with the encroachment of the regulatory apparatus into every domain of human life, has produced an intolerable situation.
In fact, there's almost certainly a connection between that and the breakdown of unwritten social codes. Life more or less demands that certain rules be broken or bent under certain circumstances. When everything is treated as inviolable, people start treating everything as breakable.
Or the variation when there are so many laws that they can't possibly all be enforced or even known, so they're just arbitrarily used as tools against designated categories of social enemies.
This is actually the most important takeaway from this piece. The goal appears to be (and is well accomplished) to make sure that EVERYONE is ALWAYS breaking some law. Then they can round up whomever they want whenever they want -- the point is absolutely a structure for selective enforcement against one's enemies -- very few of the rules have to do with much else, irrespective of how they are originally defended.
I've heard cops in post-soviet Russia would use that to solicit bribes. Some of your regulations were mutually contradictory. Obey one and break the other.
In some ways, it's worse. The Soviet cops knew it was contradictory; the USSA inspectors don't know, and don't care to know. Not Their Problem, you know.
I agree with you, Chris, on the variation. It is the arbitrariness of enforcement that leads to authoritarianism. If you are connected to the right people, laws don’t apply, if you aren’t, well then, gulag for you my friend.
Thanks Chris, great post. I actually think a large part of this is due to simple cowardice. Negotiating rules with one's neighbours requires a willingness to not only work out the rules, but occasionally risk a confrontation in defending or clarifying them. It's much easier to simply delegate both the rule-making and enforcement to central authority. Also, I think as society strays further from Christianity, we lose our ability to judge whether the rules are rational or just; do they comport with 'Love thy neighbour', 'Do unto others', etc?
Now imagine those students being empowered to censor the internet, and to put Americans in work camps and take all their posetions for not doing what the Government or Health Care/Pharma wants, or for questioning anything really....
Everything is all about "Zero Tolerance" now. Trust is being destroyed.
I know a guy who got busted in South Carolina decades ago for a couple of joints, they took him to jail, he shelled out $250 and they let him go that evening.
Then, here recently, he got busted again, but it is "legal" so they gave him a ticket.
He told me it had run him about $1600 total for all the hassles.
"I liked it more when it was 'illegal,' you know?" he told me.
The classic literary example of this for me is the character Dolores Umbridge, from the Harry Potter series. Trying to assert control over the wretched young wizards, she created new prohibitions and posted them on the walls. Her standing and respect decreased with every new rule and she spiraled into comic irrelevance. The essence of an ineffective bureaucrat. And she loved cats more than people.
"Law reflects but in no sense determines the moral worth of a society. The values of a reasonably just society will reflect themselves in a reasonably just law. The better the society, the less law there will be. In heaven there will be no law, and the lion shall lie down with the lamb. The values of an unjust society will reflect themselves in an unjust law. The worse the society, the more law there will be. In hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed."
I was thinking today about an illustration of written vs real rules. I was more or less a 'free-range kid', wandering all over town by foot or bicycle. I didn't get in any real trouble, and learned the limits imposed by nature and grumpy adults.
One time (around age 15) a non-free-range friend was visiting. His parents had precise rules for every contingency. He had never ridden a bicycle, and audaciously stretched his rules far enough to get on my bike for a moment. But he wouldn't go into the street, just pedaled forward and backward a couple times in the driveway. I tried to persuade him that real riding was fun, but Ordnung Ist Ordnung.
This reminds me of Soren Kierkegaard's ethics. In the final stage of development, the person is capable of making and following his own ethical rules and discarding bad rules imposed upon him. It's a good short read.
The reason we need so many rules and laws now is because the Marxist education system brainwashing program instituted over the past 25 years has not only ignored common sense, but actively worked to removed it from people's minds, in order to create a mix of either good little conformist zombies or nihilistic violent lunatics. Either way, they have made it easier to control society through fear and intimidation.
“We’ll answer cultural disintegration by writing down more prohibitions. It won’t be an answer to the deeper crisis.”
I suspect doing so will accelerate the disintegration. There’s a huge gulf between those writing the rules and those they suppose will follow them.
Once you've codified a rule, you've justified enforcing it, up to and including imprisonment and death.
Giving us no room to move is the point. Criminalizing existence is how you achieve totalitarian power within a democracy.
Now put your fucking mask on.
I used to drive a stretch of highway where the speed limit was routinely flouted by a wide margin. Even when there were radar traps.
The penny finally dropped: this allowed the police to arbitrarily stop anyone. If you’re speeding, you’re breaking the law. If you’re going the speed limit, you’re “behaving suspiciously”.
Now it was a known drug route, so maybe the people they were stopping needed stopping. But maybe they didn’t.
The obvious (to me) solution is to expel disruptive students. But since the administration favors the disruptors, that won't happen.
"It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people cant be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it."
Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
Are we de-evolving, do you think? Like the whole infantalization (is that even a word?) of adults, or this next generation? I mean, I know neurological damage is my schtick, but it’s useful for comparisons. Like I have to lay out specific rules for my autistic kids. Like, “I can’t believe I have to say this, but no, do not open your window and pee out the window to the front yard.” (Maybe that’s just boys, haha.) So I have to make a rule not to pee anywhere but the toilet, because they simply do not grasp the nuance between peeing in the backyard real quick so you can keep playing, to dropping your pants at a busy waterfall in the mountains and peeing in the water in front of 200 startled hikers. Have we taken so much of the actual thinking out of life that people really are de-evolving into a more childlike approach to norms and structure?
The Substack comment function appears to have melted down for a moment, here.
You mean the moment I deleted the comment because I suddenly thought I shouldn’t be revealing my kids’ bathroom habits like that, and then changed my mind? 😂
By the same token, totalitarianism happens when every single regulation is treated as unbreakable under any circumstances, with absolutely no latitude for interpretation given to either enforcers or enforcees. That, combined with the encroachment of the regulatory apparatus into every domain of human life, has produced an intolerable situation.
In fact, there's almost certainly a connection between that and the breakdown of unwritten social codes. Life more or less demands that certain rules be broken or bent under certain circumstances. When everything is treated as inviolable, people start treating everything as breakable.
Or the variation when there are so many laws that they can't possibly all be enforced or even known, so they're just arbitrarily used as tools against designated categories of social enemies.
This is actually the most important takeaway from this piece. The goal appears to be (and is well accomplished) to make sure that EVERYONE is ALWAYS breaking some law. Then they can round up whomever they want whenever they want -- the point is absolutely a structure for selective enforcement against one's enemies -- very few of the rules have to do with much else, irrespective of how they are originally defended.
agree
I've heard cops in post-soviet Russia would use that to solicit bribes. Some of your regulations were mutually contradictory. Obey one and break the other.
Not just the Soviet Union. There are lots of regulations in the US that are mutually contradictory. For example, food safety and employee safety.
Implying that the USSA isn't functionally more or less the same as the USSR.
In some ways, it's worse. The Soviet cops knew it was contradictory; the USSA inspectors don't know, and don't care to know. Not Their Problem, you know.
I agree with you, Chris, on the variation. It is the arbitrariness of enforcement that leads to authoritarianism. If you are connected to the right people, laws don’t apply, if you aren’t, well then, gulag for you my friend.
BINGO!
The government is there to make laws. So it does. None are ever repealed
Thanks Chris, great post. I actually think a large part of this is due to simple cowardice. Negotiating rules with one's neighbours requires a willingness to not only work out the rules, but occasionally risk a confrontation in defending or clarifying them. It's much easier to simply delegate both the rule-making and enforcement to central authority. Also, I think as society strays further from Christianity, we lose our ability to judge whether the rules are rational or just; do they comport with 'Love thy neighbour', 'Do unto others', etc?
Now imagine those students being empowered to censor the internet, and to put Americans in work camps and take all their posetions for not doing what the Government or Health Care/Pharma wants, or for questioning anything really....
Everything is all about "Zero Tolerance" now. Trust is being destroyed.
I know a guy who got busted in South Carolina decades ago for a couple of joints, they took him to jail, he shelled out $250 and they let him go that evening.
Then, here recently, he got busted again, but it is "legal" so they gave him a ticket.
He told me it had run him about $1600 total for all the hassles.
"I liked it more when it was 'illegal,' you know?" he told me.
Bidenflation!
The classic literary example of this for me is the character Dolores Umbridge, from the Harry Potter series. Trying to assert control over the wretched young wizards, she created new prohibitions and posted them on the walls. Her standing and respect decreased with every new rule and she spiraled into comic irrelevance. The essence of an ineffective bureaucrat. And she loved cats more than people.
I wrote about this sort of thing here:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/whats-been-lost-frank-hood.
"Law reflects but in no sense determines the moral worth of a society. The values of a reasonably just society will reflect themselves in a reasonably just law. The better the society, the less law there will be. In heaven there will be no law, and the lion shall lie down with the lamb. The values of an unjust society will reflect themselves in an unjust law. The worse the society, the more law there will be. In hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed."
Grant Gilmore, The Ages of American Law
I was thinking today about an illustration of written vs real rules. I was more or less a 'free-range kid', wandering all over town by foot or bicycle. I didn't get in any real trouble, and learned the limits imposed by nature and grumpy adults.
One time (around age 15) a non-free-range friend was visiting. His parents had precise rules for every contingency. He had never ridden a bicycle, and audaciously stretched his rules far enough to get on my bike for a moment. But he wouldn't go into the street, just pedaled forward and backward a couple times in the driveway. I tried to persuade him that real riding was fun, but Ordnung Ist Ordnung.
Great post!
Greatly enjoyed this!
Very well said, indeed.
This reminds me of Soren Kierkegaard's ethics. In the final stage of development, the person is capable of making and following his own ethical rules and discarding bad rules imposed upon him. It's a good short read.
The reason we need so many rules and laws now is because the Marxist education system brainwashing program instituted over the past 25 years has not only ignored common sense, but actively worked to removed it from people's minds, in order to create a mix of either good little conformist zombies or nihilistic violent lunatics. Either way, they have made it easier to control society through fear and intimidation.